• Wakdem@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The wealthy want us to fight a culture war to distract us from the class war we should be having.

      • Vyxor@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        In any war the only winner is the rich. If the rich lose, then it’s called a revolution instead.

            • LegalAction@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              No, the Revolution got rid of the monarchy and neutered the clergy and nobility, but it was an urban revolution of the Parisian middle class, or bourgeoisie. The situation of the peasants changed little through the revolution, and it was persistent efforts of the bourgeoisie to impose Parisian culture on the countryside. It took until WW1 to construct a coherent French nation. Weber (not that Weber) showed that in Peasants into Frenchmen in the 70s.

              And Napoleon had family connections in the Italian nobility. His uncle was a cardinal. His father was a lawyer and inherited a fair chunk of change. Napoleon was hardly any sort of peasant.

        • tooting_lemmy@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          I think most revolutions just lead to a new ruling class that is just as bad as the old. It didn’t take Stalin long to become just as bad as the Czar. After fighting a war to stop taxation from Britain, one of the first things Washington did was put down a rebellion to enforce a federal tax on whiskey.

          • Mayoman68@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            The thing is the American revolution wasn’t about taxation itself. The taxation without representation bit was more of a minor component over how society should be organized. The question was whether the inherited aristocratic titles or ownership of land(later means of production) determined your social power. There’s nothing about the ideology of the American revolution that is about the levying of taxes, it is about who gets to collect them.

            With the soviets, the problems and successes are significantly more nuanced than “Stalin was bad dictator”(although that is a true statement). Which on one hand makes a lot of western criticism of the USSR questionably true, but also makes the actual issues(which there were) harder to address because they happened not because of one guy being bad.

            • tooting_lemmy@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              Taxation was the main reason for the war. Britain had levied some new taxes to recoup the cost of the French and Indian war. It put a significant strain on the economy.

      • Cruxifux@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The rich waged wars on democracy since the beginning of European colonization in North America. They’ve been winning steadily, with few losses since the beginning of money in society.

      • tooting_lemmy@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Democracy is good for the oligarchs. Trump is a populist. The oligarchs definitely don’t like him. Even the Koch family is against him.