02-01-2018, 05:42 PM
(02-01-2018, 02:01 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote:(02-01-2018, 12:52 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: > I see an old pattern from early capitalism: at the start,
> capitalists need veritable armies of day laborers to do the hard,
> dirty, dangerous work of building the basic infrastructure. So it
> was with laying railroad track, building structures, and digging
> ditches. The workers usually end up in temporary housing, the
> housing typically jerry-built with poor sanitation. Vice
> flourishes. But once the early boom ends, the day laborers are no
> longer necessary. Maybe they move on. More troubling, they might
> want to stay and take a piece of the action as regular employees,
> skilled workers, or as small-scale entrepreneurs. Many do not make
> the transition, and the powers-that-be want such people out. The
> technology may be different, but the social pressures are much the
> same.
> The day laborers are the most genuine proletariat in the Marxist
> sense. They see capitalism at its worst and get the least out of
> it. Of course they want better. But will they get it?
So what would be an example of a capitalist society where the laborers
built a city, and then the government came in and evicted 10% of the
population and threw them out into the streets in a period of a few
months?
Or is your point that you want to claim that China is in "early
capitalism"?
It is treating workers much as early capitalism did.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
