The US government was never not captured by the bourgeoisie, because the US was born of a bourgeois revolution[1]. The wealthy, white, male, land-owning, largely slave-owning Founding Fathers constructed a bourgeois state with “checks and balances” against the “tyranny of the majority”. It was never meant to represent the majority—the working class—and it never has, despite eventually allowing women and non-whites (at least those not disenfranchised by the carceral system) to vote. BBC: [Princeton & Northwestern] Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy

[–] timbuck2themoon@sh.itjust.works -3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Sure sure sure. FDR never existed, etc. etc. etc.

Excuses right on cue.

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

When you have to go back 93 years to the Great Depression to find an example, you’ve made my point.

FDR did what he did to save capitalism from the threat of socialist revolution, and politicians have spent the last three generations clawing back the concessions he had made to socialist & labor agitators. They also purged socialists from labor unions, and they purged and even assassinated communists, to avoid any such thing happening again.

Chris Hedges, America: The Farewell Tour:

The New Deal, as Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, saved capitalism. It was put in place because socialists were a strong and serious threat. The oligarchs understood that with the breakdown of capitalism—something I expect we will again witness in our lifetimes—there was a possibility of a socialist revolution. They did not want to lose their wealth and power. Roosevelt, writing to a friend in 1930, said there was “no question in my mind that it is time for the country to become fairly radical for at least one generation. History shows that where this occurs occasionally, nations are saved from revolution.” In other words, Roosevelt went to his fellow oligarchs and said, “Hand over some of your money or you will lose all your money in a revolution.” And they complied. That is how the government created fifteen million jobs, Social Security, unemployment benefits, and public works projects. The capitalists did not do this because the suffering of the masses moved them to pity. They did this because they were scared.

[–] BrainInABox@lemmy.ml 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Lol. Yeah, it's a good thing we live in a Just World.

[–] CarlMarks@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 2 days ago

The capitalist party that writes its own rules and does not adopt literally any positions via bottom-up mechanism? No, nobody can take it over except other capitalists. So in a sense you are correct, as US progressives are still fundamentally of the political ideology of capitalism.

The party works against you but, ironically, convinces you to help it for your own and others' interests. Instead, we must work together against capital if we want liberation and justice.