one thing that having spinning/weaving as a hobby while being a marxist will teach you is that people in the first world, in 2025, take fabric way too for granted. for the vast majority of humans who have ever lived, fabric was something made by someone they knew. their grandmother. their neighbor. their sister. themselves. all the blankets, towels, underclothing, bandages, sacks, were made by somebody they could name. wealthy households, who had to keep up appearances to maintain power, had legions of impoverished women working in horrific conditions to provide them with embroidery, with lace, with elegantly dyed fabrics, in colors that commoners were forbidden from wearing. later, in the united states, different grades of cotton were sorted so as to be worn by different races: there were lower grades of cotton fabric that were reserved to be used for the clothing of enslaved Black people, the people who were forced via unthinkable violence to produce the cotton. entire generations of families enslaved and tortured, mass death, rape, and mutilation, the origin point of white supremacy, so that cotton could be grown cheaply as possible, generating vast wealth for white people, and providing white citizenry with cheap clothing. meanwhile higher grade cotton, that white people would purchase, was sent north to the cities, where it was spun and woven by immigrant children (mostly young girls) who were paid pennies for it. today all this labor is hidden from your average citizen of the imperial core. the enslaved people growing our cotton are prisoners and foreigners, people we can, if we want to, forget. the teenage girls dying in factory fires are asian and latina, living in countries you can't point to on a map
cheap cotton underwear is a lie. it isn't cheap. it's just cheap to you.,
source:
the golden thread, kassia st clair
a people's history of the united states, howard zinn
