Comment by WalterBright
2 days ago
There was no workers' revolt in the 19th century US, but the lives of the poor across the board pulled scores of millions in poverty into the middle class and beyond.
The common thread of workers' lives improving is free markets, not revolts.
That is not accurate. There were many strikes in the industrial part of the US during the 1800's. That's how working conditions were improved in the mills. The free market would have crushed the working people had they not banded together and revolted to improve safety, reduce working hours, and increase pay.
Wikipedia has articles on the larger actions like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1835_Philadelphia_general_stri...
The rest of the US was primarily agricultural, and did not have major strikes until later, but the improvement in the lives of those people who lived there was not because of free markets. Their lives improved because of the immense natural resources that were literally being given away free to people to cultivate and exploit, after the Native Americans were subjugated and removed.
Strikes are not revolts.
> The rest of the US was primarily agricultural, and did not have major strikes until later, but the improvement in the lives of those people who lived there was not because of free markets. Their lives improved because of the immense natural resources that were literally being given away free to people to cultivate and exploit, after the Native Americans were subjugated and removed.
The same thing at the same time happened in Central and South America, yet prosperity and uplift never happened.
What's the difference? Free markets in the US. Unfree markets in Central and South America.
Japan, S Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong have no natural resources, but when they turned to free markets, it's boom time for their economies.
That is not accurate again. Not only did North America have much more available and abundant natural resources than Central America and South America, the immigration to North America was much higher, so there was a more able labor force to cultivate and exploit the land. Your reductionist stance about free markets is misleading. A free market is only one component of why these places prospered, and may be the least important. Civil liberties and political stability, in addition to the natural abundance already mentioned, were probably much more responsible for the prosperity of North America. Likewise, with post-war Asia you miss the mark. For example, you overlook Japan's pre-war industrial development as well as their embrace of defeat after the war to development their economy and civil society. I'm not arguing for planned economies (quite the opposite), but the lack of nuance in your argument means that you miss the mark.
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There was the Homestead Strike in 1892, during which 9 people died. The Pinkerton Detective Agency, which "handled" the strike for Carnegie, is notorious for violently busting strikes in the 19th century US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_strike
And how many workers did that affect vs the population of the country?
It was the beginning of a movement which affects all workers in the US today, so... 100%.
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There were quite a few slave revolts in the 19th century.
All the ones in the US were quite unsuccessful. Prosperity didn't happen in the slave states, either.
> The common thread of workers' lives improving is free markets, not revolts.
The common thread is both, not one or the other.
How did that French Revolution work out? The Communist revolution in Russia? The Cuban revolution?
Free markets always result in prosperity. Worker revolts never have.
I feel I need to repeat myself so you can properly read: I clearly mentioned both were required to bring forth better quality of life to workers. Without workers' revolt there is only ever increasing exploitation, every single perk the poorer have got after advances brought forward by free markets was through a revolt, a mass protest, general strike, without those there would still be slavery, legalised child labour, 16h workdays, etc.
Yet again you are lost in ideology, Walter, it gets very tiring after a while, you only got a hammer and you gotta nail everything with that hammer. It's comically myopic.
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There were plenty of worker revolts in the 19th century which laid the groundwork for the modern labor movement.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/themine...
The overwhelming majority of workers in the 19th century were not part of unions, yet they moved into the middle class anyway.
The war has never stopped https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_violence_in_the_United_S...