You only ever had the illusion of power. Power resides with capital, and as long as capitalists are allowed sole ownership over the means of production, the people will only ever be able to expend titanic effort gathering enough power to gain a temporary reform.
Unfortunately, nowadays populism is used almost exclusively about progressive ideas that are popular as a way to dismiss them because they’re not profitable or some shit.
I don’t think there’s some cabal of Oligarchs that directly control the world order, that’s conspiratorial thinking. It’s more that power manufactures culture, and the power in this case is one that requires exploitation to continue to exist.
I agree that there are cultural differences that result in different approaches to work and productivity, but there are historical and material reasons why those cultural differences exist that largely have to do with the degree of inequality in that society. In a wealthy social democracy with less inequality like the Netherlands, people are not oppressed by long working hours, they are instead bribed with a higher quality of living and endless commodities.
That’s the key, right? You’ve gotta build a society afterwards that doesn’t perpetuate the cycles of abuse and enlightens people with education. One that doesn’t exploit anybody and doesn’t have a class structure that divides people. That’s the only way you can build a society that can reliably raise every child healthily. Any society that strives for equality like that will necessarily have to ignore the voices of those who want to hold it back.
It’s not (just) incompetence. Capitalism relies on exploitation, so things like a culture of long working hours are deliberate strategies to prevent workers from having the time and energy to organize against their oppressors.
Historically, it has always taken violence to remove fascists from power.
It’s already happening. If I was trans I would be looking to flee the country ASAP. I wouldn’t even trust blue states to protect me.
“If you just vote hard enough the people with all the money and power (who designed the system to let them keep all their money and power) will just hand over all their money and power. “
Both the American and French revolutions were bourgeoise capitalist revolutions… and neither led to significant gains of power for the people of the nations, just for the bourgeoisie who led the revolutions.