#ruling-class

[ph4z0n]

Confession from the profession: ‘Presstitutes’ in the service of the CIA

It is well documented that the CIA uses the media to spread disinformation. After 1945, the agency, in what is known as “Operation Mockingbi

[evokit-notes]

By the end of World War II, the spectre of an imminent working-class uprising that had so haunted the ruling class of Europe and North America for the previous century had largely disappeared. This was because class war was suspended by a tacit settlement. To put it crudely: the white working class of the North Atlantic countries, from the United States to West Germany, were offered a deal. If they agreed to set aside any fantasies of fundamentally changing the nature of the system, then they would be allowed to keep their unions, enjoy a wide variety of benefits (pensions, vacations, health care ....), and, perhaps most important, though generously funded and ever expanding public education institutions, know that their children had a reasonable chance of leaving the working class entirely. One key element in all this was a tacit guarantee that increases in worker' productivity would be met by increases in wages: a guarantee that held good until the late 1970s. Largely as a result, the period saw both rapidly rising productivity and rapidly rising incomes, laying the basis for the consumer economy of today.

Debt: The First 5000 Years | David Graeber | p. 373