#Plutocracy film for free#
#Plutocracy film free#

With this increase in industrialization and finance came great concentrations of wealth, and with it, massive inequality. The banking system was modernized, and a national network of railroads were built connecting it all. An explosion in manufacturing and infrastructure dotted the land, as the federal government passed pro-business legislation and awarded lucrative contracts to industrialists. The Civil War (1861-1865) profoundly transformed the U.S.

Noble's film realistically portrays the social forces that unite the working class, while simultaneously showing those that divide it.ĬLASS WAR centers mainly on the period stretching from the profound economic transformation and social ferment following the Civil War, through the post-First World War class confrontations of 1919. They have organized themselves collectively into unions, identified openly with socialist politics, braved extraordinary levels of ruling-class violence and have often transcended deep divisions inherent to the American experience, such as racism, sexism and nativism.īut none of this has come without contradictions or limitations.

Today, when the labor movement has been in retreat for a number of decades, mainstream politics is so openly reactionary, and socialism is just beginning to gain a new hearing, it can be difficult to visualize the working-class combativity that Plutocracy III: Class Wardescribes.īut throughout history, American workers have often been among the most tenacious. The film includes fascinating commentary from movement activists, writers and labor historians such as Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Brian Jones, Justin Akers Chacon and Peter Rachleff, juxtaposing analysis and anecdotal, with stirring imagery from past struggles. history from the bottom up, centered around the fiery struggles of the working class and the downtrodden. Plutocracy III: Class War, in the best tradition of Howard Zinn and other 'people's historians,' is a sobering, compelling and inspiring look at U.S. have come through intense struggles, and even loss of life. The gains working-class people have made in the U.S. Plutocracy III: Class War, part three of a five-part documentary by Scott Noble. It's a logic built into the fabric of the system. Capitalism pits a minority of powerful elites who control the nation's wealth against a laboring majority that produces it, creating the basis for social struggles and upheavals. The 'chaotic state,' so pregnant with war, that Jaures poetically describes alludes to the class nature of capitalist society. history have run far afield of this description.

#Plutocracy film free#

history we're typically taught in grammar school-the popular narrative that tells us the motive force of history is great men, with even greater ideas that those who suffer must be patient, for social progress comes slowly that progressive reforms are the product of benevolent politicians and while there are certainly flies in the ointment, the wondrous free market will sort it out, if only left to its own devices.Īs Noble shows, however, the experiences of working people throughout U.S. Noble's latest addition is a powerful rejoinder to the anodyne version of U.S. Reviews of parts one and two by Ruth Hurley can be found here and here.

#Plutocracy film for free#

THESE WORDS are the opening salvo to filmmaker Scott Noble's Plutocracy III: Class War, the third installment of a non-for-profit, five-part film series intended for free viewing online.

Jean Jaures, French socialist, assassinated on the eve of the First World War 'Your violent chaotic state always bears within it war as a sleeping cloud bears the storm.'