MISSING: EVEN A LANGUAGE ON THE "LEFT" OF THE USA
Here's a commentary from the "left" of the US, coming at us 3 days before the inauguration of Creep1. Factually correct, yet, . . . everything is says is . . . pretty much . . . wrong. Daft. And I'm saying this from a lifelong commitment to critique from the left.
But not like this, please.
Given the context, the expression "industrialized nation" is meant to say 'rich, happy and well managed country'. However, in 2025, (since the mid-seventies, actually) industry per se is increasingly synonymous with 'middle-income'. Industrialization involves reliance on a first-generation labor force freshly released from peasant existence into industry . . . hardly a fitting description of the US nowadays . . . more like China, Indonesia, Vietnam today, South Korea, Taiwan or Hong Kong a generation ago . . . and Japan, the USSR and east European socialist countries two generations ago, etc. . . In other words, "industry" became much less of a marker of technological advancement and well being than it used to be, quite some time ago. Certainly in the USA. Today "industry" signals an attempt at "catching up" and, pretty much everyone understands, in today's worldl reliance on "industry" is a transitory step toward a high-intellectual-content services-driven economy, something everyone among the poorer societies of the world are trying to achieve. Industry is of course not eliminated--we all use their products--but it is becoming less a marker of "progress" and more a reference to the past. Sometimes even a 19th-century past. Or even earlier, if you get rid of the Euro-centric vision of capitalism, and consider early Chinese (proto-)industry , something that was at least co-terminous with, but most likely preceded, Europe and north America by centuries.
A cursory internet search would teach you that. There's even a term to describe that process in the early industrializer economies: deindustrialization. BTW, Google Scholar returns OVER FIVE MILLION articles with the search "decline in the share of industry in the world economy." Jus'sayin'. To the extent it has something to do with advancement, the idea of industry must be split into various segments such that only its technologically most advanced, innovative parts--e.g., Chinese electrical vehicles, advanced space technology, and new and newly emerging technologies of warfare, etc.--should be seen as markers of progress.
Here is a relevant page on a popular global data site, reflecting shares of the three main sectors of the world economy between 2012-2023 (blue: agriculture; black: industry; grey: services):
Then, there is the problem of the use of the term "America." My fellow Americans! America, as it turns out, is . . . a continent. The use of that term to denote 'the United States' is a self-centered, imperial delusion. The precise term for that is politically motivated reverse synecdoche where a part of a bigger whole is named after the--presumably, much bigger--whole. Usually a sign of an injury in political identity formation, see, e.g., the many instances where the EU, or even single countries within the EU are referred to as "Europe." Clearly a self-aggrandizement attempt. Often it is to be described as a symptom of compensation for an inferiority complex. A manner of speech that makes educated / reasonably well traveled people in- and outside the US shudder. It is so frequent in US English that only people who learned English elsewhere notice it.
Then again, none of that has anything to do with nationhood. What you are talking about has to do with the relationship between state, capital and technology. There are, like, literally, libraries' worth of writing about this, should anyone care. BTW, I learned that literature in the US--it's not like journalists or politicians "couldn't" figure it out if anybody cared to speak in a way that is not imprecise, sloppy or outright misleading. It's just the near-total lack of sensitivity to meaning and precision in the current public sphere, dassall.
Now. "Technically," if the stock market does well it doesn't necessarily mean there's anything to write home about the life of the everyday citizen. It is entirely possible for the rate of exploitation to go up, i.e., there being no "trickle down" effect. By now everyone should be very well aware of that fact, especially in the USA where a certain jovial retired Hollywood B-actor turned neocon-neolib politician introduced that into policy. That was a total failure, we should all remember that.
Then, there is the problem of the use of the term "America." My fellow Americans! America, as it turns out, is . . . a continent. The use of that term to denote 'the United States' is a self-centered, imperial delusion. The precise term for that is politically motivated reverse synecdoche where a part of a bigger whole is named after the--presumably, much bigger--whole. Usually a sign of an injury in political identity formation, see, e.g., the many instances where the EU, or even single countries within the EU are referred to as "Europe." Clearly a self-aggrandizement attempt. Often it is to be described as a symptom of compensation for an inferiority complex. A manner of speech that makes educated / reasonably well traveled people in- and outside the US shudder. It is so frequent in US English that only people who learned English elsewhere notice it.
Then again, none of that has anything to do with nationhood. What you are talking about has to do with the relationship between state, capital and technology. There are, like, literally, libraries' worth of writing about this, should anyone care. BTW, I learned that literature in the US--it's not like journalists or politicians "couldn't" figure it out if anybody cared to speak in a way that is not imprecise, sloppy or outright misleading. It's just the near-total lack of sensitivity to meaning and precision in the current public sphere, dassall.
Now. "Technically," if the stock market does well it doesn't necessarily mean there's anything to write home about the life of the everyday citizen. It is entirely possible for the rate of exploitation to go up, i.e., there being no "trickle down" effect. By now everyone should be very well aware of that fact, especially in the USA where a certain jovial retired Hollywood B-actor turned neocon-neolib politician introduced that into policy. That was a total failure, we should all remember that.
My point is that, even to begin to understand that problem, we need to have the basic distinction between capital vs. labor (something that even Adam Smith (1723-1790)--I translate that for you: A LONG TIME AGO--and David Ricardo (1772-1823) were adamant about, let alone Karl Marx (1818-1883), the greatest theoretical anthropologist of capitalISM, etc. Clearly, it's not necessary to subscribe to Marx's more radical propositions, let alone suggestions for the collective, livable future of humankind, to understand that capital and labor are two things apart. Even Max Weber (1864-1920)--and it never gets more "bourgeois" than him--has, at least implicitly, accepted and widely used that distinction in his work on what he calls "class" . . . not the same "class" as Marx's, but I digress). Had the people who talk this way taken my undergraduate classical theory intro course, they would never utter / write down such falsehoods.
Finally, contemplate the metaphor "kicking butt" and its close cousin, "kicking ass." According to the Oxford Dictionary, they are "VULGAR SLANG / NORTH AMERICAN" expressions denoting "act[ing] in a forceful or aggressive manner." Applying that to US business elites as a synecdoche for US society . . . in what way is that a desirable / laudable thing? Is that a good thing? Do "we" (i.e., people who critique the existing system, supposedly from the left) really want that?? Remember, this online poster was signed by "Occupy Democrats." Not the Democratic Party, let alone the neonazis, but those who oppose it, supposedly from "the bottom-up" and . . . ostensibly, "the left."
Oh, well. Even language is failing the supposed "left" of the Anglo-sphere. We are barking and howling, instead of talking. Things will be very frustrating for a while.
Finally, contemplate the metaphor "kicking butt" and its close cousin, "kicking ass." According to the Oxford Dictionary, they are "VULGAR SLANG / NORTH AMERICAN" expressions denoting "act[ing] in a forceful or aggressive manner." Applying that to US business elites as a synecdoche for US society . . . in what way is that a desirable / laudable thing? Is that a good thing? Do "we" (i.e., people who critique the existing system, supposedly from the left) really want that?? Remember, this online poster was signed by "Occupy Democrats." Not the Democratic Party, let alone the neonazis, but those who oppose it, supposedly from "the bottom-up" and . . . ostensibly, "the left."
Oh, well. Even language is failing the supposed "left" of the Anglo-sphere. We are barking and howling, instead of talking. Things will be very frustrating for a while.
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