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Discussion
Discussion Blog: I've created this blog to supplement class discussion. Questions will be posted at random and often coinciding with discussion questions from class.
Points: Each time you make a comment to any question on this blog you will get 1 speaking point added to your discussion grade (for all you modest mice).
Comments: Should be at least 6 lines in length, thoughtful, relevant, polite, politically correct, clean, and feature analysis and evidence. They should also address at least one other person's comment on the question (unless of course you are the first to comment!)
Points: Each time you make a comment to any question on this blog you will get 1 speaking point added to your discussion grade (for all you modest mice).
Comments: Should be at least 6 lines in length, thoughtful, relevant, polite, politically correct, clean, and feature analysis and evidence. They should also address at least one other person's comment on the question (unless of course you are the first to comment!)
Capitalism means that wealth is privately owned; not distributed evenly among the population. Because of capitalism, the gap between the rich and the poor get wider and wider. This poses a threat to democracy in the antebellum era as such a small percentage of the nation's wealth is concentrated in a few people. The rise of the Industrial Revolution has provided many jobs for poor people to work in factories, but the wages aren't fair. More slaves are demanded and not everyone is given equal rights as to earn their share of the wealth.
ReplyDeleteI would like to take this opportunity to make an analytical point about the inherent incompatibility of capitalism and true democracy.
ReplyDeleteA capitalist system is fundamentally service based. In this system, politicians compete for political capital in the form of votes. The type of politics this encourages are despicable, and would probably cause Democritus to turn in his grave. Take the example of the election of 1840, in which "Old Tippecanoe" was ushered into the White House on barrels of "hard cider". Rather than discussing the issues and allowing the electorate to make an informed decision (god forbid), a capitalist system encourages politicians to resort to mud-slinging and meaningless promises in the hopes of outcompeting all other electoral contenders. This results in a misinformed voting body politic and a government which has policies that are not legitimized (let alone fully understood) by a significant portion of the population.
I agree with Catherine. Because of capitalism the social status became more defined. Capitalism really only look after one class which was the rich. Democracy wanted to help everyone and make everybody equal but capitalism wasn't making that happen.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with Catherine that capitalism cause many unfair things within a democracy. To expand on her comment about the division with the rich and the poor, the wealth becomes completely isolated within the rich during the antebellum period because there is no true restrictions on what these rich people can do. The rich is simply getting richer while the poor is getting poorer. If we look in psychology (Thanks Ms Ford) at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, than we see that those who are poor simply do not care enough about how the government is run or if they are voting. At that point, capitalism contradicts democracy because it requires the opinion of all people to run the country, not just the elite class deciding what to do. In the case of the Antebellum period, the rich are basically the ones running the program, until a variety of movements take place. Thus capitalism did threaten democracy during the antebellum period, but things were done to put restrictions on captitalism making it compatible with democracy.
ReplyDelete~David Wu