thats very true, the US draws its legitimacy from the fact it says it has democratic institutions & the legacy from the founding fathers, but i mean i dont think they are wrong & that theres some information we are missing by some voices being neglected in the academia like 1619, i just think that the world adam smith envisioned in the 18th century began decaying in the 19th century & becoming an instrument of oppression, & by the dawn of the 20th century the working class finally managed to be conscious enough to finally target imperialism, & fascism but couldnt adequately challenge the CIA & free trade so the USSR gave up their imperial preference just how britain lost the sterling area. but im not saying the USSR was an empire im more saying that it liberalized to the US just like how britain was hollowed out in the aftermath of the lend lease agreement in the 1945
Discussion
I think the world Adam Smith envisioned was entirely idealistic. Ignoring how a system works, it requires the backs of chattel slaves then to underpaid and overworked individuals when they couldn't use slaves, or the destruction the system causes in other countries. It was bound to decay as it was always an instrument of oppression. Plantations were still capitalistic even if the rest of society hadn't been converted yet. Tobacco, Cotton, and Sugarcane through our current coal, lithium, avocados, cobalt, etc. The system hasn't changed only the commodities did.
ah, i see. well, i took my analysis of 1776 from platypus affiliated society & gordon wood, & i agree with them until reconstruction & the gilded age & outright disagree with them when they talk about the history after 1917, but in general im much more sympathetic to arguments by michael parenti, michael hudson & jason hickle because i do think the world that the renaissance/bourgeois society tried to create got outcompeted by the industrial revolution & pulled the rug on the founding fathers because nobody couldve predicted the intensification of the US as an industrial powerhouse creating business cycles, creating a bloodthirsty national security state that "administers society in its best interest" & citizen's united.
i do genuinely believe the US began & sought out to expand self governance, but as the US began needed to get stronger capitalist institutions they needed to develop more european styled institutions to create a powerful nation state, which changed american aspirations for an "empire of liberty" to turn into manifest destiny & the erradication of natives
also, on the point of adam smith, i disagree staunchly. you will never find anyone more critical of capitalism than adam smith because he was the one who articulated how people needed to be freed from the unfreedom of economic rent seeking & also how the employer & employee were at odds with each other, with employers demanding less & employees demanding more, but karl marx is a radical figure because he inverts the ideas that adam smith had on its head & emphasises that the society of free labor is coming into contradiction with itself & becoming a source of unfreedom from where there used to be freedom, & the only way the continuation of the enlightenment could continue is through the recomposition of the dictatorship of the proletariat