Truly extraordinary piece from @doctorow about how the post-war shift of wealth towards working people ended…

Truly extraordinary piece from @doctorow about how the post-war shift of wealth towards working people ended in the late-1970s. I’ve Tweeted about how wars and plagues are the only two things that ever disrupt social hierarchies in a meaningful way. /1 https://t.co/Y4LKAbKvlB

WW2 did this, and between 1945 and the late-1970s, the previously wealthy licked their wounds after staggering war losses, patiently re-building their wealth or giving way to others. That process was complete by the late-1970s, which is when neoliberalism was born. /2

As I’ve also Tweeted about, neoliberalism was really just the wealthy using modern language and concepts to restore their position lost during the last Great War. Economics gave them cover with ridiculous fantasies of societies as free markets run by equilibrium equations. /3

The whole point of free market equilibrium economics is to rationalise the status quo, by saying everything that happens is a natural emerging evolution, and the ‘invisible hand’ of market equilibrium removes the need for any regulation or politics. Utter self-serving tosh,…/4

…but we swallowed it hook, line and sinker. Society became an ‘economy’, a fictitious construct capturing this free-market equilibrium fantasy. And again, all it really means is we returned to feudal serfdom, dressed in modern economic jargon. There are only two ways…/5

…I differ from Cory and others on what this all means. One, populism, which Cory rightly says is ordinary working people resisting their serfdom. It is that, but the problem is that populism is also a tool of the same wealthy elites. They invented it to weaponise this…/6

…dissatisfaction. To turn the anger at being screwed back against the people being screwed, by giving them fake enemies (academics, ‘MSM’ etc.) to attach their anger to, to divert it from the actual elites screwing them (the wealthy). And secondly, I disagree that real…/7

…progress in history would be a permanent levelling of hierarchy. Hierarchy itself is not a bad thing, it’s the unavoidable outcome of there always being a a gradient between bad and good, a gradient of quality, in all things. Between truth and fiction too. /8

That’s what we all work for, to aim for the ‘better’, in whatever we do. The problem is when it’s distorted to become a hierarchy of material well-being. People will always want to be led and have somebody to look up to, in every sphere if life. If you’re a guitar player, you…/9

..idolise great guitar players, there’s a fully visible hierarchy of them. None of that is elitist. But impoverishing 99% of all guitar players so they can’t afford to eat while 1% order superyachts is bad. Distribution of the wealth of society, that’s the key. /10

Preventing any of the natural hierarchies of quality in life and work taking that one extra step and demanding extra shares of wealth for their work. There may be an argument that royalty is an exception, that historically having the riches of royalty on magnificent display…/11

…acted as a circuit-breaker to widespread avarice, by displacing it to be about ‘noble’ wealth rather than social comparative/status wealth. Remembering that monarchical systems are usually accompanied by complex systems of ‘noblesse oblige’, requiring those with wealth…/12

…and status to perform an ongoing social responsibility role of care for others, in their employment and otherwise. All of that was stripped away by free-market ideas, which made all working people interchangeable work units for whom the wealthy employers and owners…/13

…had no responsibility at all. And we’ve discovered with Covid, that has meant a ‘globalised’ return of serfdom, for both developed and developing worlds. If we all get infected too many times and die or become unable to work, they can always import more serfs from overseas. /14

This is why neoliberalism is a true death cult. The wealthy recaptured control of society, and at at the same time removed any obligation they think they have to anybody except themselves. That was never what the old regal societies did, even in their worst versions. /15

This current plague tried to upend the status hierarchies in the same way WW2 did. We’ve seen how quickly and brutally the wealthy elites fought back against that, trying to implement a mass, global ‘live with the virus’ campaign. It’s complete nonsense of course. /16

We’re now living in the slow (or even rapid) collision between that nonsense and the virus’ ongoing takeover of our societies. Reality won’t be fooled. /end