Jurgis recollected how, when he had first come to Packingtown, he had stood and watched the hog-killing, and thought how cruel and savage it was, and come away congratulating himself that he was not a hog; now his new acquaintance showed him that a hog was just what he had been-one of the packers' hogs. What they wanted from a hog was all the profits that could be got out of him; and that was what they wanted from the workingman, and also that was what they wanted from the public. What the hog thought of it, and what he suffered, were not considered; and no more was it with labor, and no more with the purchaser of meat. That was true everywhere in the world, but it was especially true in Packingtown; there seemed to be something about the work of slaughtering that tended to ruthlessness and ferocity-it was literally the fact that in the methods of the packers a hundred human lives did not balance a penny of profit.

Upton Sinclair

I read The Jungle a few months ago and its aged so depressingly well. Nothing has changed, it was obvious what was happening long ago, but we've done nothing but watch it get worse.

[–] KevonLooney@lemm.ee 19 points 7 months ago (1 children)

"The Jungle" famously spurred large reforms. The FDA exists and has a lot of power because people were disgusted by what they read.

That's why you're reading a hundred-year-old book: it was influential.

[–] inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world 15 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

it was influential.

But only on one topic. Yes the FDA was created in large part from outrage over food condtions described in the book. But that really is only one chapter of the text, the majority of it deals with the exploration of workers in ALL sorts of industries (not just food), how preadatory home loans lead to finical ruins, how voting systems are rigged and how our policing system only produces more experienced criminals, not reform.

The last 2-3 chapters are explicitly socialist talking points that are still being said, for good reason, today. If the book was as influential as Sinclair wanted it to be, then we would've seen FAR FAR FAR more than the FDA.

I mean, heck, reread the passage I copied in. It's not really about food.

[–] Cryophilia@lemmy.world 9 points 7 months ago

The last 2-3 chapters are explicitly socialist talking points

My high school English class (in the Deep South) explicitly left those chapters out of our study of The Jungle lol.

[+] KevonLooney@lemm.ee -9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

So you're intentionally exaggerating when you say "nothing has changed". Yeah nothing has changed, except an entire Executive Branch department that didn't exist before. It was more influential than many other books written at the time.

Of course the author wanted the book to be even more influential, that's why authors write. No writer says "this book kinda sucks, I hope people read half of it and put it down".

[–] inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world 12 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

intentionally exaggerating

🙄🙄🙄

You can "uh actually" my phrasing if you really want to, but playing tone police is to miss my actual point how these are long standing and well known problem that Sinclair spoke about extensively.

If you don't have anything meaningful to contribute to the conversation, it's okay to just keep scrolling.

[–] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 16 points 7 months ago (2 children)

We haven't done nothing. There's Rojava and the EZLN building whole competing systems. There's loads of people doing mutual aid or building cooperative economic structures all over the world, and those movements are gaining a lot of traction as people are waking up to how shit things are.

You don't usually hear about all these projects, in the same way you may not notice termites hollowing out a structure until it's far too late to save it.

[–] CaptainSpaceman@lemmy.world 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Do you have any links at hand for all that?

If not, I will try to add find and them to this chain for future reference.

[–] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Oh thanks for reminding me!

Anark | Liberation in Action Playlist

It used to be really hard to give a good list of these sorts of movements, but this series by Anark just puts it all in one place.

The first video is him just reading off a list, but this is the list in written form, which I find much easier to parse: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1W1wWjWNXhvHjMzzyxT5z5Es_kE6xmTYSadGSJfuVtpE/edit#heading=h.p04t775v871g

The next few videos are deeper dives into some of these, and the series is ongoing, so this playlist link should stay current as he releases more.

[–] CaptainSpaceman@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

Thanks for the quick reference links!

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.zip 1 points 7 months ago

I hope you have noticed that Rojava is next to Turkey, has lost much of its territory to Turkey, and can lose the rest anytime. Definitely fighting against it better than a certain UN member state too bordering Turkey (I'm being ashamed of Armenia here), but still.

EZLN may be in a better situation. Mostly because in Latin America "live and let live" seems to be not such an idealistic approach, since I'm confident there's a lot of force which could squash them.