The Historic Plague of Individualism Continues Under Present Day US Capitalism [View all]

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--by Danny Haiphong

"Capitalists hoodwink the masses into belief in an ideal of individualism, which “places sole blame for the misery of capitalism on the individual person experiencing it.” The U.S. Founding Fathers – a group of very rich white men – created a political infrastructure in which “the oppressed are coerced into competing among themselves for the crumbs the capitalist class has stolen from them.”

(Snip)

"Individualism is a founding ideology of American capitalism. American capitalism is rooted in the colonial policy of the British Empire. Racism and "individual liberty" was a modification of the feudal "divine right," which to the English colonialists, more suitably justified the enslavement and murder of hundreds of millions Black Africans and Indigenous nations. The emerging profitability of the agricultural and merchant capitalist economy in the British colonies of North America created conflict between the interests of the British aristocracy and the growing colonial bourgeoisie. Individualism united the colonial bourgeoisie in opposition to the Crown’s demand to abolish slavery and pay outstanding debt (“taxation without representation”). What the English colonialists in North America meant by "individual freedom" was the ability of the American capitalist class to profit from African slavery and stolen land without having to politically or financially answer to the Crown. This conflict of capitalist interests led to the war of "independence" and the eventual formation of the United States of America."

Individualism flourished following the establishment of the American capitalist state. The "Founding Fathers," or more correctly the first “American” capitalists, primarily concerned themselves with a problem they deemed the "tyranny of the majority" while drafting the US Constitution. George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and the propertied interests they represented, feared popular revolt from indebted whites, African slaves, indigenous people, and women. The drafters of the constitution envisioned a federal state that would socially control exploited populations. In its early years, the US government was used to smoke out slave rebellions and create unfair treaties for indigenous land robbed directly from tribes and Nations. American individualism was never about "freedom" and "liberty” for just any individual, but rather an ideological weapon the capitalist class wielded to maintain and further the exploitation of the “tyrannical majority.”


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