I've been fascinated by the Civil War for a long time. Most recently, I have been listening to a lecture on Civil War Reconstruction by Yale Professor David Blight. Most studies of the Civil War concentrate on the build up to the war and the battles and political struggles during the war. It's as if the war ended and was just over and forgotten, if you judge by what is usually taught on the Civil War.
So, given the current political divide and much of the debate going on in public now, it occurred to me that the current situation has some similarities to our country just before the Civil War.
One analysis I listened to about the Civil War broke down slavery as an economic system. It was profitable and successful, from an economic standpoint. There was a small amount of rich plantation owners that made an enormous amount of money off of slavery based agriculture, mostly cotton, but also tobacco. Slavery was a system which stole the labors of the slaves and caused them to toil and put all their efforts into the profits of their masters. They did not benefit from the system, to the contrary, they were trapped in the system with no way out and no recourse to escape or be treated more fairly.
Democrats in that pre-Civil War era had a direct stake in perpetuating this economic system that directly benefited such a small number of people. Whigs were not much better, they did not want (for the most part) to break down the system. Some of their motivation was not to upturn the economy, or to create a political rift in the country. Only the emergence of the Republican party brought out politicians that were more open about discussing the abolition of slavery.
I occurs to me that we here in present day America are a lot like that pre-Civil War society. We have two parties that protected economic systems that do harm to people. There can be no doubt that the default position for politicians today are that rich people are the capitalists that provide the prosperity of society and should not be interfered with, even when they exploit workers or the environment that we all live in and that should belong to all of us. We live in a world where the ultrarich are taxed at the lowest rate they have been in decades, and where workers' rights are more and more non-existent. Income disparity is higher than it has been since the late 20s. The power of unions is waning so rapidly that they have almost ceased to be a political force. The Supreme Court has declared that Corporations are people and that they cannot be restricted from spending unlimited money to influence politics.
For parallels to pre-Civil War society to be complete, there would have to be the emergence of a third party that may emerge from an existing party, but would be for championing the downtrodden class. Instead, in today's world, there has been the emergence of the Tea Party, which centers its attentions on keeping taxes low and shrinking the power of government in our lives. The primary beneficiaries of these ideas are ultra-rich and corporations, yet the average Joe Sixpack in the Tea Party does not understand or appreciate this. Many blue collar or low wage workers in our country support the small minority of ultra-rich in their rights and pursuits. There was a poll that revealed that most people believe that they, too will strike it rich some day, and do not want to finally arrive only to find all their rights and privileges taken away. This is a strange situation where there are a large number of people who have been convinced to vote and act against their own self interests.
So, where will we go from here? There was an interesting analysis of unrest in the Arab world, the so-called Arab Spring, where this was shown as the masses of young and powerless society finally rising up against those entrenched in wealth and power.
I've often thought that one reason Communism failed because it was never actually tried (don't get me wrong here, I also believe pure Communism would fail, but that's not my point here). "Communism" as it was set up in Soviet Russian and Red China is not a true redistribution of wealth and power, but a concentration of wealth, power, and privilege into a small elite group, which is no different than what happens when Capitalism runs away and concentrates wealth and power in a small minority. One of the differences between Soviet and Chinese communism and pure runaway capitalism is that they paid lip service to the rights of the workers (as they trampled them).
My frustration is that you need the promise of profits and wealth in order to drive innovation and motivate investment in technological and economic progress, but that it inevitably leads to individuals or corporations trying to control that technology. It does not serve society as a whole to allow technology to be controlled and restricted by individuals or individual corporations. How is this any different from people's fears of government control of tech? I tend to agree with government oversight when it protects people's health or the environment, but not when it slows down or restricts the development of technology. Of course, another major problem with communism was that it tried to control and direct technology and the markets, which also proved to be disastrous. Just like you need biological diversity in order to have a healthy environment, you need economic diversity, which is really nothing more than many companies trying many different things, in order for the most valid technology to emerge and serve society as a whole.
I believe that we have to find a way to correct the imbalance, protect individuals and the environment, and make opportunity more widespread and accessible, without taking away the profit motive and the situation that allows for good ideas to be rewarded.
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