Letting the cat out of the bag.
‘What did you tell the worker just now?’
‘I told him to hurry’
‘What right do you have to tell him to hurry?’
‘I pay him’
‘How much do you pay him?’
‘Four dollars a day’
‘Where do you get the money?’
‘I sell products’
‘Who makes them?’
‘He does’
‘How many does he make a day?’
‘Ten dollars worth’
‘Then instead of you paying him, he pays you $6 a day to stand around and tell him to hurry up.’
‘But, well, I own the machines’
‘How did you get the machines?’
‘I sold products’
‘Who made the products?’
‘Shut up. He will hear you’
God damn, we’ve made so much progress in so many ways since the 1930s, but this has almost gotten worse.
We’ve only had the illusion of progress. Many of the issues we are fighting now were the same issues MLK was marching for. The same issues faced under The New Deal and the depression.
And we’ve lost most of the gains since the new deal. The New deal seemed mostly effective in placating society to the inherent injustice of class rule by the capitalists. With us placated they were free to reverse progress and create inequality that exceeds the worst excesses of the old capitalists of the 1920’s.
I mean, race relations have vastly improved. That’s certainly not an illusion. We’ve made huge leaps in agriculture efficiencies, to grow more, better food with less nutrients and water, in harsher conditions. All kinds of medical progress. All kinds of engineering progress. None of those are illusions.
Race relations have only improved on the surface. Just below the surface Jim Crow still lives in a more covert, in a version that’s more palatable for white liberals.
So everything else you ignore and just go with race?
Of course racism is still a problem, and has been getting worse (along with xenophobia) in the last few years. However, they don’t regularly lynch black people, abduct/rape/murder black women, have sundown towns all over the south, etc. I think you don’t understand how crazy it was in the first half of the 20th century.