How The American Bourgeoisie Is Practicing Divide And Conquer To Keep People Poor [View all]

[TexasTowelie]

Are today’s “pauper patches” a threat to the bourgeoisie?

While reading The Field Guide To Fields by Bill Laws, published by National Geographic, I came across a revealing quote from an English Victorian era bourgeoisie landowner. It seems the bourgeoisie’s fear of self-sufficiency was very much alive in Victorian England. The parallels with the fears and tactics of today’s American capitalist class are eerie, and the working classes’ racial and political divisions fit well within a divide and conquer strategy.

What is bourgeoisie?

If you’re not familiar with the term bourgeoisie, it’s the Marxist term for the capitalist class that owns the means of production and gives laborers wages. We now have a sort of super-bourgeoisie group that doesn’t necessary produce anything. This ruling class mainly consists of Wall Street pinheads, big bankers, lawyers, corporate executives, and other heroes of the oligarchy . If you are one of these individuals, you are likely not reading this. If you are, your skin is thick and your wallet thicker, so I think you can handle a jab from a recovering financial representative.

Victorian “pauper’s patch”

Back to The Field Guide of Fields; at one point Laws discusses the history of field enclosures and allotments. In doing so, he writes of the “paupers patch,” which was an allotment of land most often used for gardens given to commoners in Victorian era England. He explains how the program wasn’t too popular as land owners feared laborers might steal seeds or not work as hard as they could. After all, how could they put sufficient effort into working bourgeoisie land when they had their own land to cultivate?

The quote

This direct quote from a landowner is revealing, “The extent of the garden of a labourer ought never to be such as to interfere with his employment as a labourer.” This seems to be the mantra of too many of today’s executives. The idea that the wealthy want people working for them is not startling. The tragedy is how much the working class still falls for the mind numbing gimmicks of those with the means. Self-sufficiency lost its glory when it was traded for wage slavery.

Read more: http://www.liberalamerica.org/2014/12/24/how-the-american-bourgeoisie-is-practicing-divide-and-conquer-to-keep-people-poor/