It wasn’t a fluke - it was a benefit from the capitalist overlords to workers in the belly of US imperialism to hedge against workers coming to a class consciousness that might have them taking over ownership of the means of production as they did in the Soviet Union. It was an indirect benefit because of the USSRs existence. That is how scared of communism the ruling capitalist class is…they gave us a little to lose because when we have nothing left to lose, we will start to mobilize as a working class.
Arguably, the fluke was Germans shitting the bed and failing to have a communist revolution. If Germany went communist instead of fascist in 1930s, then the rest of Europe would’ve almost certainly followed. The US had a strong isolationist movement at the time, so it likely would’ve remained a regional power. There was also a strong communist and union movement as a result of the great depression, and with Europe being communist, it would’ve had a huge amount of international support. So, we basically live in one of the worst possible timelines thanks to the Germans.
If Germany went communist instead of fascist in 1930s, then the rest of Europe would’ve almost certainly followed.
Germany (at least, half of it) did go communist fifteen years later. Half of Europe followed. The entire Eastern Bloc did the Communism. The failure of the movement wasn’t a failure to start, but a failure to endure.
There was also a strong communist and union movement as a result of the great depression, and with Europe being communist, it would’ve had a huge amount of international support.
The communist / trade movements of the Atlantic Nations were still plagued by religious schisms and racial animosity. Where the AFL-CIO succeeded(ish) was in harvesting labor from the lower castes for the benefit of the white nationalists. And where they failed, forty years down the road, was in reconciling the racial conflicts that underpinned the class conflicts. The movie “Blue Collar” does a really good job of painting this picture.
Any path upward for the colored worker was defined as managerial. And the white workers were taught to resent this, in order to cultivate a nationalist movement built on the fear of a colored aristocracy. Modern day Obama/MAGA politics is rooted in the Reagan-Era managerial liberalism and white nationalist professional class turned on each other, with Barack Obama and JD Vance being the avatars of this phenomenon.
Nothing in the Great Depression Era really stood in the way of this trajectory. A few electoral flukes defined its precise shape, but the end result was all overdetermined.
It was a completely different world after WW2 because the US got to develop its productive forces while the rest of the world burned, and then dragged the Soviet bloc into the Cold War right after which was specifically designed to force socialist nations to divert inordinate resources towards the military. The Cold War was also what justified communist purges in the US and how the communist movement was gutted under McCarthyism.
It wasn’t a fluke - it was a benefit from the capitalist overlords to workers in the belly of US imperialism to hedge against workers coming to a class consciousness that might have them taking over ownership of the means of production as they did in the Soviet Union. It was an indirect benefit because of the USSRs existence. That is how scared of communism the ruling capitalist class is…they gave us a little to lose because when we have nothing left to lose, we will start to mobilize as a working class.
Arguably, the fluke was Germans shitting the bed and failing to have a communist revolution. If Germany went communist instead of fascist in 1930s, then the rest of Europe would’ve almost certainly followed. The US had a strong isolationist movement at the time, so it likely would’ve remained a regional power. There was also a strong communist and union movement as a result of the great depression, and with Europe being communist, it would’ve had a huge amount of international support. So, we basically live in one of the worst possible timelines thanks to the Germans.
Germany (at least, half of it) did go communist fifteen years later. Half of Europe followed. The entire Eastern Bloc did the Communism. The failure of the movement wasn’t a failure to start, but a failure to endure.
The communist / trade movements of the Atlantic Nations were still plagued by religious schisms and racial animosity. Where the AFL-CIO succeeded(ish) was in harvesting labor from the lower castes for the benefit of the white nationalists. And where they failed, forty years down the road, was in reconciling the racial conflicts that underpinned the class conflicts. The movie “Blue Collar” does a really good job of painting this picture.
Any path upward for the colored worker was defined as managerial. And the white workers were taught to resent this, in order to cultivate a nationalist movement built on the fear of a colored aristocracy. Modern day Obama/MAGA politics is rooted in the Reagan-Era managerial liberalism and white nationalist professional class turned on each other, with Barack Obama and JD Vance being the avatars of this phenomenon.
Nothing in the Great Depression Era really stood in the way of this trajectory. A few electoral flukes defined its precise shape, but the end result was all overdetermined.
It was a completely different world after WW2 because the US got to develop its productive forces while the rest of the world burned, and then dragged the Soviet bloc into the Cold War right after which was specifically designed to force socialist nations to divert inordinate resources towards the military. The Cold War was also what justified communist purges in the US and how the communist movement was gutted under McCarthyism.
Wer hat uns verraten? Sozialdemokraten!