The problem was that the US revolution was really a bourgeois revolution that primarily served genocidal Settler-Colonialists and slavers. It could have taken on a leftward character had it been led by indigenous peoples and the Proletariat, but because it wasn’t, we have the modern US Empire and all the sins it has wrought.
It seems like most big changes are set in motion by elites who benefit from them, with the teeming masses convinced a) to go along and b) that they’re driving. Historically this could be because elites have had a pulpit, either from holding office or having access to publishing and more recently broadcasting. In really recent times the masses finally got access to a broad audience via the Internet, but since they mostly use it to post boobs and complain about game companies, elites are still in the driver’s seat.
It’s possible that being led around by a privileged few is just how humans work, and it’s up to enlightened individual elites to make parts of the world better for short periods while they’re alive.
You’re right, and I think that it’s putting the cart before the horse. Marxist theory wouldn’t exist for another century, and a lot of Marx’s observations that led him to his theories were contingent upon the world that the enlightenment brought about. Had Marx been born 100 years earlier, he probably would have been a Republican (in the Jacobin sense, not the modern US party sense).
The problem was that the US revolution was really a bourgeois revolution that primarily served genocidal Settler-Colonialists and slavers. It could have taken on a leftward character had it been led by indigenous peoples and the Proletariat, but because it wasn’t, we have the modern US Empire and all the sins it has wrought.
+1 Insightful
It seems like most big changes are set in motion by elites who benefit from them, with the teeming masses convinced a) to go along and b) that they’re driving. Historically this could be because elites have had a pulpit, either from holding office or having access to publishing and more recently broadcasting. In really recent times the masses finally got access to a broad audience via the Internet, but since they mostly use it to post boobs and complain about game companies, elites are still in the driver’s seat.
It’s possible that being led around by a privileged few is just how humans work, and it’s up to enlightened individual elites to make parts of the world better for short periods while they’re alive.
You’re right, and I think that it’s putting the cart before the horse. Marxist theory wouldn’t exist for another century, and a lot of Marx’s observations that led him to his theories were contingent upon the world that the enlightenment brought about. Had Marx been born 100 years earlier, he probably would have been a Republican (in the Jacobin sense, not the modern US party sense).