Irish Migration, Shays’ Rebellion, Cromwell’s Dictatorship, Parsons’ Pattern, and Monopoly Capitalism**

By Sasha Alex Lessin, Ph.D., Anthropology (UCLA)

Introduction: THE STORY OF CLASS IS THE STORY OF DOMINATION

From Cromwell’s conquest to the Irish diaspora, from Shays’ Rebellion to modern monopoly capitalism, one thread ties the ages together: Class.  Class is not merely an economic location—it is a pernicious caste system, reproduced through culture, violence, and inherited privilege.

Talcott Parsons thought societies evolve from ascribed status (birth, bloodline, religion) to achieved status (talent, skill, performance). But in real history — Irish or American—ascription reappears in disguised form. Inherited capital, monopoly ownership, political capture, and cultural gatekeeping recreate the same old aristocracy under new names.

Marx explained the struggle. Bourdieu identified the subtle markers that enforce it. Piketty showed how wealth concentration accelerates it.

Parsons hoped achievement would replace birthright—but the modern world proves the opposite: birthright returns whenever capital accumulates. This is the pattern of domination, from Anunnaki epics to British plantations to Wall Street today.

This post integrates our mentors’ contributions to the study of class as follows: Irish migration→ Cromwell→ Shays→ Parsons→ Marx→ Bourdieu→ Monopoly Capitalism→ Chomsky’s contribution.

CROMWELL’S CONQUESTS CLARIFIED THE U.K.’S CLASS CONFIGURATION

In the 1640s–1650s, Oliver Cromwell ruled the British Isles with Puritan zeal and iron discipline. He crushed Irish resistance, seized Catholic lands, and redistributed millions of acres to Protestant English soldiers, merchants, and creditors. His regime resulted in an aristocracy of ascribed dominant Protestant landowners, dominated Irish farmers who suffered insecurity, debt, servitude, and evictions, and a plantation economy into which the British military force imposed servitude on the Irish Catholics. The Irish class wound up metastasizing later into Irish migration, famine, and rebellion.

IRISH MIGRATION: CLASS AND EMPIRE CRUSHED A PEOPLE

By the 18th and 19th centuries, Irish Catholics were locked into a caste: landless, disenfranchised, starved by policies designed to enrich British landlords.

When the GREAT HUNGER (1845–1852) struck, it was not simply famine — it was famine within a class system.

The Irish fled to America not as free migrants but as refugees from a forced class position created centuries earlier.

The largest waves of Irish emigration to America (especially the mid-19th century) departed from Queenstown (Cobh)—formerly called Queenstown — in southern Ireland. Many famine-era emigrants left from it aboard “coffin ships” and later steamships heading for North America.

Before Cobh became dominant, Irish emigrants also left from ports such as Dublin, Belfast, and Derry. Later, many Irish emigrants first crossed to England (especially to Liverpool) and then boarded ships to the United States.

Upon arrival in America, they met:

• Bosses who hired them as cheap labor,

• Nativists who despised them as “lesser stock,” and

• Police and political machines who exploited their desperation.

Yet they fought their way upward — often used as strikebreakers or soldiers in the Civil War draft, caught between domination from above and survival from below.

SHAYS’ REBELLION: WHEN AMERICAN FARMERS SAID “ENOUGH”

After the Revolution, poor veterans — unpaid by the new government — returned home to debt, foreclosure, and courts run by wealthy creditors.

Farmers like Daniel Shays rose, demanding relief.

Capital already ruled the new republic, and class already decided destiny.

This uprising foreshadows today’s struggles: When debt and monopoly crush the many, rebellion simmers.

PARSONS’ VISION: FROM ASCRIBED TO ACHIEVED — OR SO WE HOPED

Talcott Parsons argued that social evolution moves from ascribed status (birth, family, religion) to achieved status (education, skill, performance).

But the societies he praised (Britain, America) showed the opposite trajectory: Ascribed privilege becomes invisible but stronger once it hides behind “achievement.” When wealth is inherited, when schools filter by social background, and when cultural traits signal belonging, achievement masks domination. This is why Parsons’ original formulation must be reframed: The shift from ascription to achievement is never complete where capital accumulates.

MARX → PIKETTY → BOURDIEU: THE STRUCTURE OF CLASS AND THE CULTURE THAT ENFORCES IT

Marx wrote that class depends on your relationship to the means of production. Workers sell labor, but capitalists own the world.

Piketty added that over centuries, capital concentrates through profit + inheritance — creating a new aristocracy.

Bourdieu wrote: Class reproduces itself through economic capital (MONEY), Social capital (CONNECTIONS), and Cultural capital (TASTE, ACCENT, MANNERS, CLOTHES, MUSIC). The ruling class stays on top not just through wealth but through cultural codes that tell everyone where they “belong.” Together, they reveal the iron mechanism beneath “modern civilization.”

MONOPOLY CAPITALISM: THE ENGINE OF THE NEW CASTE SYSTEM

Modern capitalism produces monopolies — megacorporations, financial empires, tech giants, agribusiness, media conglomerates.

When a few own everything:

• Democracy collapses

• The middle classes evaporate

• Social mobility stalls

• Culture becomes a tool of obedience

• Achievement stops mattering

• Ascribed class returns — by inheritance of capital

Monopoly capitalism is caste with credit cards, feudalism with spreadsheets.

CHOMSKY’S “REQUIEM FOR THE AMERICAN DREAM” — A SUMMARY

Noam Chomsky’s Requiem for the American Dream shows how the top fraction of 1% systematically reshaped American laws, taxes, labor policy, education, and media to consolidate wealth and dismantle democracy.  He identifies 10 principles of wealth and power concentration, revealing how the elite engineer apathy, crush unions, privatize public goods, and convert citizenship into consumerism.

His core message mirrors Marx, Piketty, and Bourdieu: when wealth concentrates, democracy dies — and class becomes destiny.

ANUNNAKI FRAME: DOMINATION VS PARTNERSHIP

The Hybrids, who are the hidden Anunnaki controllers, Enlil/Yahweh and Marduk posing as Yahweh, imprint hierarchy, conquest, competition, centralized power, obedience on our societies; whereas the partnership-cooperative consciousness that Ninmah, the Anunnaki Great Goddess, offers, primarily through women and enlightened groups who free themselves from domination institutions and religions, teach sharing, caring and love.

From Cromwell to Wall Street, the Enlilite pattern dominates: Class stratification → monopoly power → cultural control → inherited caste → domination.

Yet the partnership impulse never dies. Irish communities, Shays’ farmers, and modern workers all echo the ancient struggle to reclaim egalitarian balance.

TOWARD A FUTURE OF PARTNERSHIP

History shows that class systems collapse only when people remember they deserve better.

Irish migrants remembered.
Shays’ farmers remembered.
Chomsky reminds us now.

The question is whether humanity — battered by monopoly capitalism — will choose partnership over domination.

REFERENCES

1. Noam Chomsky, Requiem for the American Dream, film documentary, 2016, Gravitas Ventures.

2. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the 21st Century, 2014, Harvard University Press.

3. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, 1984, Harvard University Press.

4. Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1 (1867), Penguin Classics.

5. History of the Irish Famine, BBC and RTÉ documentary sources.

6. Shays’ Rebellion, Massachusetts Historical Society.

7. Cromwell and Ireland, National Archives UK.