• Arcanepotato@crazypeople.online
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    24 hours ago

    You are wage slaves who have a higher standard of living than the other wage slaves that are exploited in order to enable the availability of cheap consumer goods which keep the people docile.

    This is about the English (and written in 1882) but now also applies to the USA:

    Engels wrote: “You ask me what the English workers think about colonial policy. Well, exactly the same as they think about politics in general. There is no workers’ party here, there are only Conservatives and Liberal-Radicals, and the workers gaily share the feast of England’s monopoly of the world market and the colonies.”

    This is an expert from Lenin: Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism which I think should be read prior to Settlers if only to disarm the reader from defensiveness. Sakai didn’t invent the idea of the bourgeoisie proletariat, he was building on the ideas of others.

        • nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de
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          18 hours ago

          They’re some of that forced slave labor making the goods that the Americans are wage slaves to consume.

          • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            3 hours ago

            Yeah, in America control is done with Circus & Bread, with the “Circus” being not just Entertainment (which includes “Faux News”) but also hyper-consumerism, whilst the control via “Bread” being with things like Private Healtcare and Student Loans.

            People run around happily being shafted (and not even in a good, sexy way) as long as they have the latest smartphone and claim they pay much less tax than Europe whilst paying for the by far most expensive Healthcare and Higher Education in the World (both in average being actually worse - worst healthcare outcomes and most universities also worst - than in other countries).

            How many Americans are actually politically aware and willing to fight for their rights?!

            Mind you, some of this shit has been exported and at least here in Europe adopted to quite an extent, though clearly nowhere as much as in the US, though not for lack of trying.

          • Arcanepotato@crazypeople.online
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            18 hours ago

            Oh, I see.

            I don’t think the US can be said to be exerting imperialist power over the Chinese though. China is probably the place least vulnerable to the US trade sanctions, for example.

            Imperialism is the export of capital and the import of resources, profit from capital and labour.

    • arrow74@lemmy.zip
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      18 hours ago

      I’d rather have less buying power to buy useless shit I don’t need than to be one paycheck away from homelessness