Capitalism and Slavery: An Interview with Greg Grandin

[YoungDemCA]

3. "Freedom" in the context of liberal capitalism is bourgeois freedom

The freedom to exploit, to destroy, to steal, to manipulate and con and lay waste, to treat the working class as expendable and to sneer at poorer people as less than human, deserving of nothing but scorn and contempt.

In practice, bourgeois freedom is an elite privilege-not a universal right, by any means. To look at this from a Hobbesian, International Relations perspective: the United States (as a State) has the single-most powerful and coldly efficient military in the world, not to mention all of its economic, political, cultural, and social power and influence around the world.

The reason that middle and upper-class bourgeois Americans feel "free", "safe", and "secure" in their class position is because of the monopoly of violence that the American State (which is a historical creation of the bourgeoisie, both as an abstract institution and operationally/in practice) has over the rest of the country-and the world.

I would like to close this post with the following quote:

"Do not allow yourselves to be deluded by the abstract word freedom. Whose freedom? It is not the freedom of one individual in relation to another, but the freedom of capital to crush the worker."

-- Karl Marx

EDIT: K&R for the article and post.