Those countries, to a one, have significantly restructured their governments or have been dissolved and reformed to a system that at least gives lip service to being controllable by the masses. They didnt do it out of benevolence, but because there would have been riots and revolution otherwise. The US is a good modern example of capitalism because it was born after capitalism had already been developed and was privledged enough to gain an upper hand, through investment of existing powers and colonial extractivism (also a key feature of capitalism).
As an example, 1838-The People’s Charter was drawn up for the London Working Men’s Association (LWMA) by William Lovett and Francis Place.
The Charter had six demands:
• All men to have the vote (universal manhood suffrage)
• Voting should take place by secret ballot
• Parliamentary elections every year, not once every five years
• Constituencies should be of equal size
• Members of Parliament should be paid
• The property qualification for becoming a Member of Parliament should be abolished
What are you even trying to say. For one thing, the French Revolution can be argued was France saying, “Let’s capitalism harder!”
Everything you mentioned in the first chunk has nothing to do with capitalism either.
“Lip service to be Controlled by the masses” is exactly what the U.S. has been the entire time.
It doesn’t matter if we voted in new representatives monthly, yearly, every decade. The one main thing that makes a society capitalistic is private ownership of the means of production. So unless France, England, the U.S. or etc voted to ban private ownership of those means (which hasn’t happened) they have come no closer to getting rid of capitalism.
The context was that the previous economic mode was feudalism, in which the wealth was centralized under nobles and monarchs. The governments that supported those economic systems were deemed too oppressive by their people and forced to change. But the economic mode when it changed to capitalism didn’t differ that much in the long term. The wealth was redistributed initially to some extent with the changing of the government, but then reconcentrated into the hands of the few and then individuals were able to scale its extractive means globally.
The sentiment that forced the governments to change then was cooled by a change in system, and reality, but now we can see even more clearly that the issue is the concentration of wealth (and through it, power).
Now that we are back to a reality of inequality above previous levels (and we can see the outsize influence of the wealthy on every facet of policy), it is obvious that capitalism at this stage subverts the stated goals of democracy.
Those countries, to a one, have significantly restructured their governments or have been dissolved and reformed to a system that at least gives lip service to being controllable by the masses. They didnt do it out of benevolence, but because there would have been riots and revolution otherwise. The US is a good modern example of capitalism because it was born after capitalism had already been developed and was privledged enough to gain an upper hand, through investment of existing powers and colonial extractivism (also a key feature of capitalism).
As an example, 1838-The People’s Charter was drawn up for the London Working Men’s Association (LWMA) by William Lovett and Francis Place. The Charter had six demands: • All men to have the vote (universal manhood suffrage) • Voting should take place by secret ballot • Parliamentary elections every year, not once every five years • Constituencies should be of equal size • Members of Parliament should be paid • The property qualification for becoming a Member of Parliament should be abolished
Second example, The French Revolution
What are you even trying to say. For one thing, the French Revolution can be argued was France saying, “Let’s capitalism harder!”
Everything you mentioned in the first chunk has nothing to do with capitalism either.
“Lip service to be Controlled by the masses” is exactly what the U.S. has been the entire time.
It doesn’t matter if we voted in new representatives monthly, yearly, every decade. The one main thing that makes a society capitalistic is private ownership of the means of production. So unless France, England, the U.S. or etc voted to ban private ownership of those means (which hasn’t happened) they have come no closer to getting rid of capitalism.
The context was that the previous economic mode was feudalism, in which the wealth was centralized under nobles and monarchs. The governments that supported those economic systems were deemed too oppressive by their people and forced to change. But the economic mode when it changed to capitalism didn’t differ that much in the long term. The wealth was redistributed initially to some extent with the changing of the government, but then reconcentrated into the hands of the few and then individuals were able to scale its extractive means globally.
The sentiment that forced the governments to change then was cooled by a change in system, and reality, but now we can see even more clearly that the issue is the concentration of wealth (and through it, power).
Now that we are back to a reality of inequality above previous levels (and we can see the outsize influence of the wealthy on every facet of policy), it is obvious that capitalism at this stage subverts the stated goals of democracy.
(Edited for tone)