Well I can assure you the wealthy arrogant plantation class or the Cotton Kings back then, (Read Apple, Silicon Valley in CA today) had no desire to create or build an industrial middle class. They were all about being the elites, in total control of the uneducated serfs.
Regardless of what your position is, there are a lot of similarities the author brought up here.
“there are a lot of similarities the author brought up here.”
No there aren’t. And that’s the problem with VDH’s tortured attempt to create an analogy. The planter class wasn’t alien to the rest of the South, they were part of it. They were as much a part of the fiber of the South as Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Mason, Henry and the rest of the planter class of a generation before that played an even bigger role in an earlier secession.
VDH illustrates his ignorance of ante-bellum southern history in this quasi-Marxist rendering of the South as two tiered consisting of aristocrats and serfs. But he’s desperate to make his analogy, so he equates planters with California’s uber wealthy. California’s rich do not share the culture of normal Californians, they have simply been able to impose their will on the rest of us through raw political power. They not only wouldn’t be leaders if civil war broke out, they would be targets.