Why were the 70s such a tacky decade?

[jamespowers]

I think you could argue if we have ever seen a true communist society, or ever will. Communism doesn't really mesh theoretically with dictatorships, much less ruthless ones. Many of the communist countries have a ruling "class" which is valued above the worker... which flies in the face of actual communism.

One could argue the same with capitalism, but at least we've seen that system applied with various forms of government (even if not true democracy, but representative ones).

We have only seen unfettered capitalism for the first twenty years of our country's existence. They have been screwing with it ever since. Now we have crony capitalism---nothing more.

 

[Big J]

Fake is a good word for all of the 70s. Everything seemed fake from the clothing to the "economic Malaise."

+1
And I agree with your comment about crony capitalism.
I suspect half the reason some people rail against capitalism is because they've never experienced it when someone wasn't messing with the way it's supposed to work.

 

[jamespowers]

+1
And I agree with your comment about crony capitalism.
I suspect half the reason some people rail against capitalism is because they've never experienced it when someone wasn't messing with the way it's supposed to work.

Exactly!

 

[vitanola]

We have only seen unfettered capitalism for the first twenty years of our country's existence. They have been screwing with it ever since. Now we have crony capitalism---nothing more.

I would certainly not call the first twenty years of our nation's existence a shining example of pure capitalism, given that the (bare) majority of our national output was from states whose economies were based in chattel slavery. Of course you might be obliquely making another point entirely...

 

[jamespowers]

I would certainly not call the first twenty years of our nation's existence a shining example of pure capitalism, given that the (bare) majority of our national output was from states whose economies were based in chattel slavery. Of course you might be obliquely making another point entirely...

And again we see the slavery red herring swimming along......

 

[vitanola]

And again we see the slavery red herring swimming along......

No red herring at all. I see that someone has neither read his Fitzhugh nor his Carlyle.

The antebellum South cannot by any stretch of the imagination be considered a "pure Capitalist" economy. It was responsible for more than half of our national output during the period under discussion. How then can one honestly write "We have only seen unfettered capitalism for the first twenty years of our country's existence."?

Our economic system during the early National period was a wonder. Parts of it did display elements of "unfettered capitalism" in the best sense of the term, but not the whole, not at all!

I suppose that an argument is alway a red herring when one prefers not to address it...

 

[jamespowers]

No red herring at all. I see that someone has neither read his Fitzhugh nor his Carlyle.

The antebellum South cannot by any stretch of the imagination be considered a "pure Capitalist" economy. It was responsible for more than half of our national output during the period under discussion. How then can one honestly write "We have only seen unfettered capitalism for the first twenty years of our country's existence."?

Our economic system during the early National period was a wonder. Parts of it did display elements of "unfettered capitalism" in the best sense of the term, but not the whole, not at all!

I suppose that an argument is alway a red herring when one prefers not to address it...

If slavery is a sticking point for you then you will need to write off the greatest civilizations in history known to man because ALL of them had it. Rome, Egypt, the Incas, The Aztecs etc., etc. Every continent on this globe has had slavery on it at some time in their history. That is the way it was. We have to judge a society based upon the standards at THEIR time---not ours otherwise we write off ALL of humanity trying to be PC.

 

[sheeplady]

If slavery is a sticking point for you then you will need to write off the greatest civilizations in history known to man because ALL of them had it. Rome, Egypt, the Incas, The Aztecs etc., etc. Every continent on this globe has had slavery on it at some time in their history. That is the way it was. We have to judge a society based upon the standards at THEIR time---not ours otherwise we write off ALL of humanity trying to be PC.

I think you can justifiably say, "Slavery is a disgusting institution and it detracts from these societies." I certainly think that the U.S. involvement with treating other people like livestock DOES detract from our history. I also recognize that from the beginning of our history as a nation there were people who called for an end to owning other human beings. Since there were people pointing out the wrongness of the institution of slavery at that time, it is certainly not backwards or PC only thinking to discount slavery and the economic products of it.

I would also add that some of the places that captured slaves in wartime had very different forms of slavery than in the US. In some cases, slavery was more of an indentured servitude after which individuals were given the chance to join their society as full citizens. While still wrong to "own" someone, that is a different type of slavery than life-long servitude with no chance at freedom where your children are sold to the highest bidder.

 

[Fading Fast]

I agree that it is fair to consider the slavery practiced in a country in the context of how it was viewed at the time of that society - as Sheeplady avers - and I believe it does diminish a society even if it was the norm of the time, but I do not bring a 21st Century arrogant PC superiority view to it (and I am not saying that anybody here has as I have not read through the entire thread - so truly - not casting any stones).

But I also think one has to look at how a society ultimately changed. In the US, we fought a civil war where many, many white people died fighting to end the institution of slavery and, yes, many blacks fought as well, but it was not a slave revolt that ended slavery in the US, but one segment of its free population being willing to fight and died to end it. That says something about the US and its values as well.

And I also wonder, and I am sometimes guilty of this, but I am trying to get better, why some will raise their voices louder against historic slavery than they do about slavery going on in Africa and the Mid-East today.

 

[HoosierDaddy]

I might also suggest that many northern competing industries perhaps disdained southern economies richly prospering and getting away with practically free labor rather that a moral deep concern about owning other human beings during that time period.
HD

 

[Fading Fast]

I might also suggest that many northern competing industries perhaps disdained southern economies richly prospering and getting away with practically free labor rather that a moral deep concern about owning other human beings during that time period.
HD

That is a fair point, but I do not believe that all the letters I've read from soldiers of the time period, all the family testimonies, all the societies that advocated for freeing the slaves were not also part of the story. The Civil War was not a simple story of "free the slaves," I get that - there were many, many forces at work with many agendas. But freeing the slaves was one of those forces. It did motivate many people to fight and die for a moral cause.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Many of us are just as outraged over the fact that American consumers tolerate what goes on in places like Saudi Arabia or Bangladesh because it's profitable for American companies and consumers to overlook these things as we are about the historic outrages carefully packed away in capitalism's closet.

The thing that sticks in my throat the most is the fact that the fortunes built under slavery and many of the business enterprises built by the slave trade are still very much a part of contempary American capitalism. The Wall Street firm of Lehman Brothers, for example, profited directly from the slave trade in the 1850s thru its direct participation in cotton-commodity trading. Brown Brothers-Harriman was initially in the business of providing financing for slave-holding plantation owners, and profited extensively from the pre-Civil War trade in slave-grown cotton, and the Harriman family itself built its fortune on the backs of the hundreds of slaves that it owned. The company now known as Aetna Insurance began in the 1850s offering slave-insurance policies to plantation operators. Morgan Stanley's predecessor companies accepted slaves as loan collateral from the 1830s forward. These are just a few of many, many examples, and while all of these firms have admitted and apologized for the deeds of their founders, that doesn't change the fact that the companies, and the system they serve, are built on a tainted foundation.

Closer to where I live, we take great pride in our shipyards and our historic sea captains, legendary figures of rugged American individualism. And yet we overlook just how many of them were deeply involved in the slave trade or in the shipping of products produced thru slave labor.

Historian Meyer Weinberg, in his "Short History of American Capitalism" has a lot to say about the interrelation between the propagation of slavery in Colonial America and the oppression of indigenous people, and the rise of industrial capitalism in the US. Eric Williams' 1944 study "Capitalism and Slavery" covers much of the same ground but from a British perspective.

 

[Fading Fast]

But what are we suppose to do? If as you said they acknowledge and apologized. Most everything that has a long history will have some connect to something that immoral. Yes our business do, but so does our government. And are we suppose to destroy, punish, break apart, undo something today when the people there today did none of those things?

I have German ancestry on my father's father side and a Eastern European Jewish ancestry on my mother's side (although she wasn't raised Jewish). It is probably, that some of my ancestors were killing other of ancestors in the Holocaust. My two points are - we can't untangle history and somehow make it all fair and I don't think we should punish or reward people for historical rights and wrongs (truly historical, there is some time period where we can and do go back, but at some point it has to just be history).

I'm not making light of this, I just think we can't fix the past and that we might tear apart what we have today if we try. Maybe - and no sarcasm intended, truly - you want to tear it down with a revolution (as you have said), then we'll just be on other sides of that issue - but I don't and am afraid that we are going to break this society up by constant recriminations about things that nobody alive today did.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think the important lesson is that these things aren't artifacts out of the remote past -- a hundred and sixty years or so is not long at all in the grand scheme of things. In my own lifetime I knew people who knew people who were alive during the time of American slavery. It really wasn't that long ago -- and as I say, corporations that wouldn't exist today without the wealth accumulated as a direct result of slavery and the exploitation of slavery are still very much at the front and center of modern American capitalism. That being so, I think that, at the very least, capitalism isn't entitled to any claim of moral high ground, and it ought be scrutinized with the same fine-toothed historical comb as any other economic system or theory.

 

[Fading Fast]

I think the important lesson is that these things aren't artifacts out of the remote past -- a hundred and sixty years or so is not long at all in the grand scheme of things. In my own lifetime I knew people who knew people who were alive during the time of American slavery. It really wasn't that long ago -- and as I say, corporations that wouldn't exist today without the wealth accumulated as a direct result of slavery and the exploitation of slavery are still very much at the front and center of modern American capitalism. That being so, I think that, at the very least, capitalism isn't entitled to any claim of moral high ground, and it ought be scrutinized with the same fine-toothed historical comb as any other economic system or theory.

Not often I get to say this, but I agree, no free pass or take it lightly on capitalism - it deserves the exact same treatment and historical scrutiny as every other institution and government.

My point was that - that scrutiny - of capitalism, of government, of everything - needs to have a perspective, a context. 160 years ago is not long in the grand scheme, but none of us where alive, so what do we do?

To try and make it all "fair," is beyond impossible (we could punish a quarter of me for my WWII German ancestors and one quarter of me could be compensated for the Holocaust - please understand, I'm not being flip, I'm just trying to show how it is impossible to right the wrongs of the past). And even if we could allocate, is it fair to punish people for what their great grandparents did?

Yes, we should study the past with honesty and scrutiny, but if we want to bring all those grievance alive today in some quest for cosmic justice, I think we will tear apart what we have.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Well, I think part of being aware of the past is understanding how it affects the present. The end of slavery didn't mean "the end" of slavery. It was replaced in the South by the sharecropping system which made a mockery of any kind of "freedom" for the people trapped within it, and that system endured well into the lifetimes of many of us living today. And in turn, many in the North profited from that system indirectly -- textile mill operators, corporations that dealt in cotton goods. Berkshire Hathaway, to use one example of a company that's very much part of the current scene, made a very great deal of money out of that system. And that's not even considering companies today that benefit from the exploitation of slave or slave-level labor conditions overseas.

We are still a long, long, long way, as a people, as a society, and an economic system, from being fully removed from slavery. And we can't do anything about it until we, as a people, a society, and as an economic system, look ourselves in the eye and *admit* this.

 

[AmateisGal]

Well, I think part of being aware of the past is understanding how it affects the present. The end of slavery didn't mean "the end" of slavery. It was replaced in the South by the sharecropping system which made a mockery of any kind of "freedom" for the people trapped within it, and that system endured well into the lifetimes of many of us living today. And in turn, many in the North profited from that system indirectly -- textile mill operators, corporations that dealt in cotton goods. Berkshire Hathaway, to use one example of a company that's very much part of the current scene, made a very great deal of money out of that system. And that's not even considering companies today that benefit from the exploitation of slave or slave-level labor conditions overseas.

We are still a long, long, long way, as a people, as a society, and an economic system, from being fully removed from slavery. And we can't do anything about it until we, as a people, a society, and as an economic system, look ourselves in the eye and *admit* this.

Great discussion. But again, I think this has already happened. People *do* admit it - and certainly not everyone, but as a nation, I think we already have admitted it. Maybe I'm wrong. I guess, like Fading Fast, I don't know what else you can actually do about it. Reparations have been discussed for slaves' descendants; but then I have to ask, well, my family didn't even come to this country until 1908. Is it fair for me, personally, to have to pay those reparations as a tax payer even though my ancestors weren't even in this country at the time of slavery?

I get what you're saying, Lizzie; I just don't know when it ends. Some people will never be satisfied with mere acceptance of what you mentioned; they will insist on using it as a divisive mechanism to keep the undercurrent of race relations choppy.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I dunno, the events of the past week alone prove beyond doubt that race is still a raw gaping wound in American society, and that has nothing to do with "reparations."

My family came here in 1901, but I also realize that I've benefited in many ways by living in this society that I've done nothing to earn and nothing to deserve simply by the fact of my being white. Unless, as a society, we can destroy the very idea of "privilege" it's always going to be a problem.

 

[St. Louis]

I live in St. Louis, where race and class divisions are still painfully evident, yet I frequently meet fellow St. Louisians who are barely even aware of the problem. In fact, some claim there are no problems, at least none that have anything to do with them. Racism is a thing of the past, and the only lingering issues originate in the "bad" neighborhoods and ought to stay there. I find that beyond shocking. These are the folks who live "in the County," which circles around the western part of St. Louis City. The County is the home to all the McMansions iand country clubs in their gated communities, carefully patrolled by private security.

When people ask "but what can we do?" then I think is exactly the right question and one that I wish more of us would ask. The answer will be different for everyone, but I'm sure that just asking the question is a necessary first step.

 

[jamespowers]

I just don't know when it ends. Some people will never be satisfied with mere acceptance of what you mentioned; they will insist on using it as a divisive mechanism to keep the undercurrent of race relations choppy.

And THAT is the most important part. There are people who have made a great living off of "race pimping." They have no intention of letting it go and there will never be any end to it until we all say enough and just meet each other as equals---not rivals. It tears at the very fabric of the country and its institutions to constantly and endlessly shake slavery, poverty and racism around every corner. :doh:
I am now DONE with it.