Documentary: Plutocracy

Plutocracy: government by the wealthy; an elite or ruling class of people whose power derives from their wealth

Plutocracy is a five part documentary that describes the brutal conflict between American labor and owners. Each part is about 1 hour, 50 minutes to 2 hours long. This is a low-budget production that includes interviews with historians, e.g., Peter Rachleff. The series relies heavily on documented history and paints a dark, gruesome picture of economic struggles in the US that public schools do not teach. The series is online and can be viewed at many sites, e.g., here and on YouTube.

Part 1 of Plutocracy, Divide et Impera (Divide and Rule), focuses on how American people were intentionally divided by rulers and wealthy people on the basis of race, ethnicity, sex and skill level. The point of fomenting division was to keep society distracted and weak in the face of unified wealth which was fighting hard and dirty to keep people misinformed and in poverty.

When West Virginia coal miners in the early 1900s decided to form labor unions, the owners fought back. Extreme working conditions including long hours, high accident rates and severe health hazards led workers to try organize themselves. They fought back by striking and forming labor unions. The coal industry itself fought back by importing replacement workers, and imposing contracts that barred workers from unionizing. In the process of fighting for freedom from the brutal capitalism that wealthy industrialists imposed, thousands of lives were lost, and thousands more were wounded or jailed.

Plutocracy, Part 1 at 59:11

The documentary suggests that when workers united to fight for fair and equal rights, some progress was possible. The documentary argues that the country's Founders saw a potential for these class conflicts. One can argue that attempts to protect individuals, for example in the Bill of Rights, were directed more at protecting the masses from government than they were at protecting them from capitalists and brutal laissez-faire capitalism. It isn't clear that similar brutalization of workers cannot occur under socialism or communism. This just shows one vision of the American experience.

This documentary makes it much easier to understand and accept the argument that in America, power and wealth are synonymous for the most part. The amazing power that industrialists were able to bring to bear in brutalizing and murdering workers speaks for itself. The question this work raises is how accurate and fact-based is it? Heavy reliance on historical records lend credence to the work and its message. Nonetheless, propaganda can take truth, optionally mixed with lies and misleading content, and present it in different lights, good, bad or ambiguous.

How real is this?

My search for a review of the series by a historian turned nothing up, which is concerning. The left wing sources I scanned all cited this work approvingly. The right wing sources I looked at either don't mention it or I missed reference to it. If anyone knows a historian who has reviewed some or all of this documentary, their thoughts about the historical accuracy of this work would be appreciated. My guess is that this is mostly truth with modest propaganda woven into it.