• ripcord@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    the national labor movements that made America great in the wake of WW2

    Ah yes, the wake of WWII. When America was on top and producing everything, because all of our competitors had the ever-loving shit bombed out of them. Also they needed to buy stuff too.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      The industry Americans retained could have been under the same monopoly conditions of the 19th century. American working class labor could have been little more than serfs under these same historic conditions.

      Instead, we got modern consumerism - private homes, cars, clothes, vacations, fancy liquors, home appliances, toys…

      That isn’t what the working class of Latin America or Sub-Sahara Africa got, despite also being removed from the war.

      Argentina was the 9th largest economy during the height of WW2. But Peronism looted the country rather than investing in it. South African apartheid and Brazil’s military coup set their economies back decades. These countries weren’t bombed by Germany or Japan, but they never took off like postwar USA.

      Strong domestic unions held back the capitalist rot in the States at least until the Volcker shocks under Nixon, Ford, and Carter.