economics – Ecological Era

Divide Between Town and Country. Large Landowners and Unions. 11 28 2025

Much like eastern Europe, America is in a period of reaction. The bourgeoisie has leveraged the rural people, some of whom are workers in large scale agriculture, to people who believe they are small businessmen growing on farms as capitalists.

The latter group, not exactly small farmers but also not large scale agriculture, are sort of becoming a petty bourgeoisie, who sell their products as commodities to the merchants. They may have a few hands, but often are still labouring.

These people supported Trump. In so doing, they also supported the large scale production of food, even though they have seen many of their counterparts lose their farms, to have their lands subsumed by large landowners.

They feel it is not simply the large scale agriculture bourgeois who have spared them, probably due to their political bent, that has given them prosperity, and allowed them to keep farming. Although they are clearly the chosen ones, they feel it has been their good business sense that has kept the farm. This is why they support Trump, even though economically they are on shaky ground; a few bad harvests and that’s it, bankruptcy follows.

Harnessing this form of ignorance is common throughout capitalist society. It is rare for one to acknowledge his posh lifestyle simply came through a process of vetting, undertaken by the upper class into their ranks. Rather ignorance most often restricts the knowledge of this from the petty bourgeoisie.

The view of Trump having made himself rich as a businessman; a sort of man who became rich with his own money and business sense, is fiction. Trump was born into money, his dad was a real estate tycoon from New York, who helped his son get into casinos at a young age, like Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. He built a small empire after his dad died in luxury properties, he traded the profit of the bourgeoisie from capitalist industry, the money kept as surplus value by capitalists for their own personal enjoyment. Trump has been chosen to represent his class, but he has always been a casino owner. It is doubtful he would be intelligent enough to be pulling some sort of scam, supporting the proletariat from his position as president.

He is leveraging the ignorant by the bourgeoisie, just like in Russia and Eastern Europe, where employee ownership ended due to ignorance of what capitalism really represented.

The large landowners are represented in government by the constitution, that keeps them at the table , so to speak ,with large capitalist industry. There was a time all the country was only used for agriculture under the British, when America was a colony. The planters who rebelled understood that industry would follow revolution, that the north in particular would build heavy industry, eventually challenging the South where the slave plantations were.

This was rectified by having the upper house of Congress have 2 seats for each state.

The phenomenon of support for landowners, not the family farm, rather the more industrial form of agriculture, heavily mechanized petroleum dependent large scale agriculture, is what Trump harnessed. Without unions, large agriculture’s labor is low paid, often m Mexican immigrants many of whom are in the country illegally. There is little or no movement to nationalize the land, rather a distant belief in a capitalist who will buck the system, and support the little guy.

You don’t get rich supporting the little guy. Trump is a billionaire, he represents capital, he is the living embodiment of capital, it is his hand that creates the surplus value.

Perhaps it is the idea a person can go to the casino, and walk out a millionaire It is the roughest place in town, where if you don;’t spend enough you get kicked out. If you went there hungry you would get bounced for asking for food.

In the cities it is a little harder for capitalists. Libraries, museums, theaters, etc. are part of urban society, and the proletariat is thus a little harder to fool. There is less ignorance in the city, rural society has none of these advantages. Collectively large scale industry comprises much of the activity in the city, with buzzing ports, retail capital workers, large commodity producing recycling operations. It is a stark difference to rural America, reflecting a massive divide between town and county.

Rectifying this divide will take time. Nationalizing large scale agriculture, large landowners by a union of farmers at the site of harvest and in the fields would put the successful large farms in the hands of the workers, where they owudl be worked for the benefit of all members of society, rather than a cash cow for a small group of large landowners.. The cooperative markets will be where the money comes from, and outreach for the small and large cooperatives that will replace the capitalist landowner will come from here.

The state will not be buying the land for the cooperative. The workers may have to use the money created in production to buy additional land, or nationalizing the land if the landowners refuse to cooperate with their workers.

This will not be easy, but will start to rectify the huge gap between town and country. Getting used to being in a union at work on the farm, much like his proletarian cousin in the city, will follow.

The system is geared against them. There will be losses, but also victories. As recognition of membership in the class of laborers comes, that they do not own the stocks in the means of production, collectively the poor rural man will support more radical leadership.

Nicholas Jay Boyes

Milwaukee Wisconsin

American Democratic Republic

11 28 2025

Try as they may, regardless of the size or sophistication of their latest technology, there is no changing material conditions. Even with all the new weapons, the fact remains the companies are owned by a monopoly, a duopoly, or cartels.

Every crisis consolidates ownership further, as the companies concentrate ownership. Often bought in crisis conditions, for ridiculously low prices, or merged by companies with larger wallets to absorb functioning capital, more and more joint stock companies dominate industry.

It is rare now to have a large company not listed on the stock exchange, the center for trading of joint stock companies. The days of an industry being private property of an individual have basically come to an end.

With this change competition begins to fall behind making surplus value by setting prices due to monopoly. When there are only a few large companies owning, say, electricity and gas, and distributing this gas to consumers on their own lines, it is not hard to see competition come to an end.

Wisconsin Gas and Electric produce all the electricity from power plants here Milwaukee Wisconsin, and also own the lines for transmission of high voltage to Milwaukee. They also own the gas lines, and distribution facilities, including pipelines. There is no alternative source in any sense, and short of cutting your own wood, the houses are all gas burning forced air heating. Solar is still prohibitively expensive, and Wisconsin Gas and Electric do not pay for excess production from solar generation in homes.

This has been building for some time. It is a common feature of industry to become concentrated in a few hands, often in the form of monopolies. They set prices as they control the production facilities, the distribution,the lines etc., and do not practice competition.

The days of competition regulating the price of major commodities is rapidly fading. The grocery stores are now all consolidated into huge markets, dominated by WalMart, Kroger, Albertsons, and Costco. Smaller family owned stores are becoming rare, only for an item or two needed between visits to the big stores. Kroger and Albertsons attempted a merger, which looks like a failure, but would have meant about half of grocery stores would have been controlled by WalMart and Kroger Albertsons combined as one company.

The largest computers cannot stop the consolidation of industry, the growth of joint stock companies and monopoly conditions. It is a built in condition of late capitalism, described by Friedrich Engels in Anti Duhring in the 1890’s; the growth of joint stock companies, and concentration and consolidation of industry. here is a quote

T0″he period of industrial high pressure, with its unbounded inflation of credit, not less than the crash itself, by the collapse of great capitalist establishments, tends to bring about that form of socialization of great masses of means of production which we meet with in the different type of joint stock companies. Many of these means of production are, from the outset, so colossal that , like the railways, they exclude all other forms of capitalistic exploitation. At a further stage of evolution this form also becomes insufficient. The producers on a large scale in a particular branch of industry in a particular country unite in a “Trust”, a union for the purpose of regulating production. They determine the total amount to be produced, parcel it out among themselves, and thus enforce the selling price fixed beforehand. But trusts of this kind, as soon as business becomes bad, are generally liable to break up, and on this very account compel a yet greater concentration of association. The whole of the particular industry is turned into a gigantic joint stock company; internal competition gives place to internal monopoly of this one company. This has happened in 1890 with the English alkali production, which is now, after the fusion of 48 large works, in the hands of one company, conducted on a single plan, with a capital of &6,000,0000.”

“In the trusts, freedom of competition changes to its very opposite- into monopoly; and the production without any definite plan of capitalistic society capitulates to the production a definite plan of the invading socialistic society. Certainly this is so far still to the benefit of the capitalists. But in this case the exploitation is so palpable that it must break down, No nation will put up with production conducted by trusts, with so barefaced an exploitation of the community by a small band of dividend mongers.”

Anti Duhring First wellread books edition 2017

Part 3 socialism II Theoretical p. 329

Which is optimistic that a society will not tolerate trusts and monopolies, which is precisely what we have learned to do. The important part is trusts and monopoly were recognized by Engels as being the dominant form of capitalism.

This was published in 1890. Vladimir Lenin published Imperialism, the Highest Form of Capitalism, in 1916. Clearly Lenin agreed with Engels, and developed this idea further.

It is all connected, and the presence of these monopolies looks unlikely to change. Internet service is also dominated by two large companies, one of which has been the subject of antitrust activity, American Telephone Telegraph, AT&T. The only choice is Charter, also called Spectrum, and these companies cooperate to keep the price of internet at a set price, by removing, for instance, subsidies by the state to keep the price of internet low for seniors. There is AT&T again controlling prices; last time it was their long distance telephone service, broken up by congress, resulting in the baby Bells.

Computers are dominated by Apple, who produce most often computers used in homes. International Business Machines, IBM, is no longer a competitor of home computers to Apple, who are close to monopoly. Google as the search engine, also a monopoly, caps off much of our computing.

This list could continue, but I think I have made my point. Consolidation and concentration of ownership into joint stock companies, often exerting monopoly power, is a fixture of modern capitalism. Rarely it is addressed as antitrust by capitalists who want to artificially change what is a dominant feature of capitalism, to control the market by monopoly.

Every capitalist wants to drive his competitor out of business. When they are successful at this, they control the market, competition ends, and they then set prices for the commodity they control. It seems to be universal; there are no sectors of the economy left untouched by consolidation of ownership. Breaking them up is only a temporary fix, AT&T for instance is now back to its old self again, in a duopoly of internet service with Charter, as they own the fiber optic cables. Antitrust activity towards AT&T, breaking up the long distance telephone to the baby Bells, did not stop AT&T from again attempting to set prices by control of markets,this time in internet transmission .

This system is a form of capitalism referred to as imperialism in the late 19th century and early 20th century by Friedrich Engels, and later by Vladimir Lenin. It was becoming more obvious then that joint stock companies would dominate capitalism, and consolidation of ownership would only continue.

Names like J Peirpont Morgan, and his domination of 20th century large scale industry, is a case study in the growth of monopolies and trusts. By the early to mid 20th century Morgan’s empire included railroads, Steel production (US Steel), General Electric, AT&T…. Morgan personified the bourgeoisie of the 20th century, with control of markets for just about every large industry.

When the next crisis comes the trend will no doubt continue. Capitalism is at the stage where competition is becoming rare, only lasting a few years in a new industry, until monopoly control and joint stock ownership is achieved. Crisis comes and ownership is consolidated further, the likes of which are a recurrent theme in capitalism. It seems unlikely this will end without leaving capitalism, antitrust does not deter companies from concentration ownership of the means of production (like AT&T) from continuing to exert monopoly power over the industries they own, it just sets them back a decade or so. It is just way too tempting to remove competition by these capitalists , and set prices.

Nicholas Jay Boyes

Milwaukee Wisconsin

American Democratic Republic

1 4 2025

revised 9 16 2025