Using the Vocabulary of Class Solidarity: the Example of AOC

AOC Uses the Vocabulary of Class

 In last week’s post, I said that if Democrats want to defeat the MAGA movement, they will have to recover the ability to talk about class oppression, and in an earlier post, I said that the anti-Trump movement will have to make hard choices about what it stands for. Fortunately, there are leaders in the Democratic Party who understand what needs to be done, and the best known of these is Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (AOC). Her campaign website is full of ideas about how the party can move forward.  (In the interests of transparency, I should say that I do not work for AOC or her campaign, and I am not recommending that you do so or that you vote for her. I am using her campaign website as an example because her positions are particularly clear and detailed.)

Her List of Issues Prioritizes Class-Based Concerns

Her list of campaign issues includes (in this order):

1. Medicare for All
2. Housing as a Human Right
3. A Peace Economy
4. Justice for Workers and Small Businesses
5. Real Public Safety
6. Honor in Immigration
7. Just Recovery for Puerto Rico
8. Green New Deal
9. Elevate Public Education
10. Women's Rights
11. Support LGBTQIA* Rights
12. Aging With Dignity

2.    Of these 12 issues, only 4 (numbers 6, 7, 10, 11) refer to benefits for specific social groups like races or genders. Number 12 refers to seniors, but seniors are different because everyone who lives long enough becomes a senior. No one is born a senior.

Moreover, the order of the items in the list shows that she prioritizes issues that affect all working Americans. The first five issues in her list are important to all working Americans. Not one of them mentions a races, genders or even generations.

Her Way of Talking Emphasizes Class Solidarity but Not Socialism

Her descriptions of her positions on these issues show how she thinks that Democrats ought to talk about them. She does not talk about socialism or class conflict on her campaign website although she has described herself as a democratic socialist. She simply says that her policies would be good for all working Americans. 

•          On Medicare for All, she says, “Medicare for All uncouples healthcare from your job.  It allows everyone to receive quality care that is affordable at the hospital, pharmacy or doctor’s office. It will cover primary, mental, dental, vision, women’s health, and emergency room care in addition to prescription drugs.” She is also cost conscious. “A national healthcare system has stronger buying power and can negotiate lower prices for drugs and medical equipment as well as curb the astronomically high administrative salaries."

• On Elevate Public Education, she says, “Our schools should never be on the chopping block, even when budgets are tight. Now is the time to strengthen our education system and make it more affordable to all, so that students are prepared for jobs in a post-COVID economy.” Her website adds, “Rising tuition costs have made college and trade school inaccessible for millions and saddled millions of others with student loan debt.  That is why Alexandria is working to liberate people suffering from student-debt and make our public college system affordable once again.”

• On Justice for Workers and Small Businesses, she says, "Far too often the United States government chooses to side with corporate wealth at the expense of working people and small business. This must end." 

This is a vocabulary of class solidarity among working Americans, but it is not a vocabulary of socialist revolution. It focuses on specific issues and demands incremental changes rather than revolution.  It focuses on policies that restore equity for all working Americans and not on issues that divide working Americans along the lines of race or gender. That is the way that Democrats should talk. That is the way forward.

The Price of Forgetting How to Talk About Class Oppression

Democrats Don't Know How to Talk About Class Oppression 

Democrats have forgotten how to talk about class oppression, and they have paid a steep price for their forgetfulness. In an earlier post on this blog, I talked about how the Democrats came to forget what had been the core of leftist politics in the early decades of the twentieth century. The anti-communist fervor of the time made it politically difficult to talk about class oppression without being accused of being a communist, and then, the Civil Rights Movement and the Women’s Movement gave American leftists a way of talking about oppression without mentioning class.

The Limits of Talk About Race and Gender

In this way of talking, the oppressed are said to be women and people of color, and the oppressors are said to be white men. There is some truth in this, but it hides the fact that while our country is indeed run by a small group composed mostly of white men, the majority of white men do not belong to that small group. Most white men are also among the oppressed. They may be less oppressed than working-class women or people of color, but focusing exclusively on that difference only serves the interest of the real oppressors. 

The Democrats' inability to see class oppression even extends to working-class women. They are among the most oppressed people in our society but neither the Democratic Party nor the women's movement - which is mainly a movement of business and professional women - has really addressed their concerns. 

On the wall of the office of the Democratic Party in the county where I live, there is a mural that exemplifies the way that Democrats have come to think. The mural consists of portraits of famous figures in the struggles for racial and gender equality. It shows people like Cesar Chavez, Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It celebrates their struggles, their achievements and their suffering. 

However, the heroes of earlier class struggles are not included. The long list of white men who have struggled, suffered and sometimes died in the fight for social justice in our country is not represented. As a result, the mural conveys the message - probably unintended - that the Democratic Party is not interested in the suffering of working-class white people or in their contributions to the struggle for justice.

The Price That the Party Has Paid

By focusing on race and gender to the exclusion of class, Democrats have thus come to appear to be indifferent to the oppression of white, working-class people, and they have paid a heavy political price for their apparent indifference. White working-class people in large numbers have given up hope in the Democratic Party and have joined the Republican Party. Some of this change was triggered by the Democrats’ support for the Civil Rights Movement and for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but that is not the whole story. It explains why the southern states shifted to the Republican Party in the late twentieth century, but it does not explain the success of the MAGA movement, which did not exist until after 2010.

Donald Trump the leader of the MAGA movement offered the white working class an explanation for its oppression.  He told people that they were oppressed because of DEI and because of immigration. This explanation was false, but it was persuasive, and millions of people believed him. He has also come up with a few policies that appear to favor working-class people. Eliminating the income tax on tips is such a policy.

Now, we are seeing the results. Trump has control of all three branches of government, and he is pressing universities and other institutions to abandon DEI; he is arresting and deporting tens of thousands of immigrants; he is close to eliminating the independence of the Federal Reserve; and he is pressing museums and national parks to downplay any references to racial oppression. None of this will really help the working class because the source of its suffering lies elsewhere, but in the meantime our democracy may be destroyed.

The Way Forward

If Democrats wish to counteract the MAGA movement effectively, they are going to have to rediscover the vocabulary of class oppression, and they are going to have to speak for all of our oppressed people including the white working class. The Democrats are going to have to find a way to talk about working class solidarity across the lines of race and gender if there is to be any hope for democracy in our country.

Is Reducing Taxes for Seniors a Trap?

A Movement to Reduce Taxes For Seniors

We are seeing a movement to reduce taxes on seniors, and it is a blatant attempt to make ordinary people fight among themselves instead of uniting to fight against the ruling class. Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill included an increased deduction in taxable income for seniors, and many states offer partial exemptions on property taxes for seniors. States are also promoting income tax breaks for seniors.

One argument for reducing taxes on seniors is that many seniors live on fixed incomes, which do not rise as the value of their homes rises. Younger people, it is said, benefit from increased salaries in inflationary times, while seniors do not. Another argument is that seniors have “paid their dues” and so, they should be exempt from taxes in retirement.

The Movement Ignores Reality

The problem with both of these arguments is that they ignore the fact that there is a wide range of income and wealth among seniors. Some old people struggle to get by while others are quite well to do. Some are very rich. It makes sense to provide tax relief for seniors who struggle to get by but not because they are old. It makes sense because in a country as rich as ours, everyone can easily be provided with a decent minimum standard of living.

The seniors who are well to do or rich are a different case altogether. A person who is living comfortably can well afford to pay taxes just like the rest of us. A person who receives a sizable amount of passive income from retirement accounts or other investments does not need to be subsidized by the young. Moreover, seniors are big users of public services like Medicare and Social Security, and there is no good reason to allow them to shift the cost of those services to the young. In short, seniors who are poor should be helped because they are poor, not because they are seniors.

An Attempt to Split The Forces of Social Justice

We should see the movement to exempt seniors from taxation for what it is. It is a blatant attempt to create a rift between the old and the young in order to prevent them from uniting to work for a more just and equitable society for all of us.  Just as the ruling classes in the United States have often promoted racism to split the working class and to defeat labor unions, the ruling classes now promote special treatment for the old. We who care about social justice should avoid succumbing to pleas to provide special treatment for the old because such pleas are designed to weaken us in our struggle.

Keep the Focus on Social Justice For All

We must maintain a focus on proposals to advance the cause of social justice for everyone. A decent national healthcare system would benefit all Americans. A system of free post-secondary education would benefit Americans throughout their lifetimes by eliminating the crippling debts that burden Americans today. It would make it easier for young people to save for retirement, and it would relieve parents of the need to provide support for their grown children. Affordable childcare would benefit all Americans because it would allow working families to earn and to save more on their own. The baby bonds proposed by Darity and Hamilton would help to reduce the unreasonable disparity in income between lower and upper-class people that exists in our country today. These are the kinds of things that we need to focus on, and we should not allow ourselves to be trapped by proposals that encourage working Americans to fight against each other.

What is the Real Purpose of Trump's Tariffs?

The Tariffs Are Intended to Shift the Tax Burden to Working Americans

Trump’s tariffs are intended to increase the tax burden on working Americans so that the tax burden on the very rich can be reduced. The tariffs are not intended to boost American manufacturing. Trump's talk about boosting American manufacturing is just a sales pitch. It is fake just like the rest of Trump’s populist pitch. The real purpose of the tariffs is to shift the tax burden from the wealthy to working Americans and in this, the tariffs have been and continue to be successful. Many economists have taken the sales pitch seriously and have said that the tariffs will not boost American manufacturing. Trump has ignored their criticism because he doesn’t care. Boosting manufacturing was never really the goal.

The Tariffs Have Not Been Designed to Boost Manufacturing

The haphazard, arbitrary and scattershot way that the tariffs have been designed and implemented shows clearly that they are not intended to boost American manufacturing. A tariff that boosts manufacturing must be very carefully planned, and it must be narrowly focused on specific sectors that the tariff can benefit. Trump and his advisors know that. Of course, they do, but they have not designed his tariffs that way. Instead, they have imposed tariffs on all sorts of imported goods in an arbitrary and capricious manner that leaves businesses full of uncertainty. None of this would make sense if the purpose of the tariffs were to promote American manufacturing.

On the other hand, if the purpose of the tariffs is to raise revenue in a way that shifts the tax burden from the wealthy to working Americans, Trump’s approach is very effective. A tariff is a consumption tax just like a sales tax. Ordinary working people spend most of their incomes on consumption because they have to. Rich people, on the other hand, are able to save and invest a larger share of their incomes. Thus, ordinary people are more heavily affected by a tariff than rich people are. The president and his advisors know all of this. So, the idea that their policies are intended to boost American manufacturing is not credible, but the idea that the tariffs are intended to shift the tax burden to working Americans makes perfect sense.

Deporting Immigrants Makes Boosting Manufacturing Impossible But Trump Doesn't Care

Our president’s policy of deporting immigrants also gives away his real intentions. The policy shows that he has never really intended to boost American manufacturing. Deporting immigrants is incompatible with boosting manufacturing because manufacturing needs workers. There are currently almost 400,000 unfilled manufacturing jobs in the United States, and deporting a large share of our work force will not make filling those jobs any easier. Certain key sectors will be especially hard hit by the deportations, and one of those sectors is construction. Around 32.5% of the workers in the construction trades are immigrants. If they are deported, who will build the factories that boosting manufacturing will require? The president and his advisors know this, too. So, we must assume that Trump is lying when he says that he wants to boost American manufacturing.

On the other hand, if the tariffs are intended to increase the share of our government’s revenue that is paid by working Americans instead of the rich, the president’s policies make perfect sense, and in that way, they are already successful. The tariffs are bringing in substantial revenue. Moreover, this understanding of their purpose fits well with the reduction in income taxes that was recently passed in the president’s OBBB.

The Tariffs Are Working as They Are Intended to Work

This blog has said many times that Trump’s populism is fake. Neither he nor his party has any interest in improving the lives of working Americans or in creating manufacturing jobs. His real goals are the goals that the Republican Party has pursued at least since Reagan’s days. Republicans want to cut the taxes paid by the wealthy, and they want to eliminate government programs like Medicare that effectively redistribute income from the wealthy to working Americans. The populist pitch is just a way to attract votes to Republican candidates.

Critics of Trump’s tariffs who take his populist pitch seriously are missing the point. Trump and his advisors are not clueless. His tariff policy is working exactly as it is intended to work, and working Americans are paying its price.

The Supreme Court Is Becoming a Racist Institution

The Court is Becoming Racist

The Supreme Court is becoming a racist institution because it is dominated by originalists in constitutional interpretation. Originalism is inherently racist although it does not appear to be racist at first glance. Originalism is,

... a theory of the interpretation of legal texts, including the text of the Constitution. Originalists believe that the constitutional text ought to be given the original public meaning that it would have had at the time that it became law.   

On its surface, this sounds like a reasonable idea (although some prominent legal scholars have debunked it), and there is nothing in the definition that appears to be inherently racist. However, the definition says that the Constitution ought to be interpreted in the way that it would have been interpreted by the people who lived in the United States at the time that the Constitution was adopted, and that interpretation was unavoidably racist

The Constitution Was Originally Understood in a Racist Way

The Constitution of the United States was adopted in 1788. At that time, slavery was legal in all of the 13 states. Both law and public opinion recognized that black people could be owned as slaves, and that view was justified by an ideology that said that white people were superior to non-white people both culturally and biologically.

Several of the most prominent members of the Constitutional Convention were slaveholders. George Washington, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson all owned slaves. Alexander Hamilton did not own slaves, but he married into a slave-owning family, and as a young man on the island of Nevis in the Caribbean, he worked for a merchant who imported slaves. The Constitution itself included the provision that only 3/5 of the slaves should be counted in determining the voting population of a state.

There can be no doubt then that the American people of 1788 must have read and understood the Constitution as condoning slavery and the racist ideologies that underlay it. Moreover, the racist understanding of the Constitution persisted for many years. The Dred Scott decision of 1857 showed that just before the Civil War, the Supreme Court still shared the racism of the writers of the Constitution. The 14^th Amendment - ratified in 1868 - established that anyone born in the United States was a citizen entitled to the equal protection of the law, but the decision in Plessy vs. Ferguson, which established the “separate but equal” doctrine, was decided decades after the passage of the 14^th amendment and showed unmistakably that the racism that underlay the “original public meaning” of the Constitution still characterized its interpretation. 

Thus, the original public meaning of the Constitution was unavoidably racist. It was written in a racist society by people who owned slaves.  American racism continued to dominate the interpretation of the Constitution for many years after the Constitution was adopted. Although the writers of the Constitution espoused ideals of universal equality and freedom that continue to inspire us today, they understood those ideals very differently from the way that we understand them today.

Our Understanding of the Constitution Has Changed

Only since the Second World War has our understanding of the Constitution gradually changed. Pres. Truman integrated the armed forces in 1948, and the “Brown” decision that outlawed segregation in schools came in 1954. The Voting Rights Act came in 1965. Today, we have advanced beyond the ideas of our country's eighteenth-century founders. Today, most of us understand the Constitution as being opposed to racism, and the bulk of recent jurisprudence agrees with that view.

Originalist Judges Are Driving a Return to Racism

Now, several Supreme Court Judges are returning to interpreting the Constitution in terms of its original public meaning. Led by Clarence Thomas, our country's most prominent originalist, they want to return to the racist interpretation of the Constitution that prevailed in this country until quite recently.  They want to annul the progress that we have made so painfully. They are turning the Supreme Court back into the racist institution that it once was. 

Stop Talking About Socialism

A Stupid Waste of Time

We are engaged in a stupid and pointless discussion of “socialism” vs. “capitalism.” Candidates on the political left like to call themselves “democratic socialists.” On social media, we see criticisms of ”End Stage Capitalism” from the left, and on the political right, we see people arguing passionately that “socialism has never worked.”

This discussion is stupid and pointless because it gets in the way of discussions of substantive policies. The discussion is particularly bad for the political left because - due to decades of Republican propaganda - the word "socialism" turns off most American voters. By choosing to describe themselves as socialists, leftist politicians actually reduce their chance of being elected to office or of enacting the policies that they favor. Of course, the political right is only too happy to label all of the left's proposal's as "socialist."

Leftists should deal with this situation by dropping all talk of "socialism." Instead of talking about socialism, the left should insist on political debates on the merits of its proposals. Such debates would benefit the left because the left's proposals are really very moderate. Nothing that the political left has proposed is particularly radical or new in the context of American politics. So, instead of claiming that its proposals are revolutionary, the left should stress their moderation. To see just how moderate the left's proposals are, let us examine a few of them.

Moderate Policies That Are Portrayed as "Socialist"

Medicare for All

One signature proposal of the American left is Medicare for All, which would expand Medicare to cover everyone in the United States.  This is hardly revolutionary. It is a proposal to expand a successful existing program, and the reasons for the expansion are the same as the reasons for the initial creation of Medicare.

Medicare was established in 1965 because it had become almost impossible for old people to get health insurance.  Old people were starving or eating cat food because they could not pay their medical bills. So, we established Medicare, and it has become the most successful anti-poverty program in our history.

Today, again, the cost of health care is driving millions of Americans into poverty.  Health emergencies are the most common cause of personal bankruptcy in our country, and every day, more of our people cannot afford adequate health insurance.  To solve this problem, the left proposes that we expand a very successful program to cover more people. That is not revolutionary. On the contrary, it is precisely the sort of pragmatic, incremental change that has always characterized American politics at its best.

Free College

Another signature proposal of the left is free post-secondary education at public colleges and universities. This is completely unrevolutionary. In fact, we used to have it, but under prodding from the Radical Right’s anti-tax crusaders, we gave it up. When I attended the University of California in 1958, the tuition was free, and the fees were $140 per semester. State universities in other states were just as inexpensive.  That was also the period of the GI Bill under which military veterans could have even these modest expenses paid by the federal government.

In the years since, radical rightist anti-tax crusaders have persuaded us gradually to reduce the states’ support for higher education and shifted the burden more and more onto the students. We have gone so far in that direction that the left’s proposal now seems revolutionary to some people, but it is not. It is merely a restoration of the normal, American way to pay for the higher education of our people.

Green New Deal

Politicians on the left of the Democratic Party have proposed the idea of a Green New Deal.  It proposes large investments in green energy projects that would reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and help to save our planet from global warming. At the same time, in theory, the projects would create millions of good jobs.

The Green New Deal sounds revolutionary, but in fact, it continues our long-standing policy of promoting the development of energy sources.  We have always believed that adequate supplies of energy were crucial to the development of our economy, and the Green New Deal merely redirects our energy policy toward promoting new energy sources that fit our country’s current needs in a time when the use of fossil fuels is endangering our country and its economy.

Today, we spend enormous amounts subsidizing the fossil fuel industries, as we have for many years. The Green New Deal proposes that we continue to subsidize energy production but that in doing so, we should focus our subsidies on green energy rather than fossil fuels. Today, the climate crisis has given rise to new needs, and we must shift our policies to meet them. Again, that is not revolutionary. It is precisely the sort of pragmatic, incremental change that has always made our country successful.

Let's Stop Wasting Time

Let us not waste our time in stupid arguments about socialism. Let us focus on real policy questions with real implications for people’s lives. We on the left should stop using the word "socialism," which turns off most voters, which has nothing to do with any real policy proposals, and which contributes nothing to advancing the cause of making life better for all Americans

The Movement Has Choices to Make

A Successful Rally

The rally at Houdini Plaza last Thursday evening was a great success, and the organizers should be proud of what they accomplished. The rally was part of a national movement to “make some good trouble” and to express resistance to our Grifter-in-Chief’s campaign to destroy our democracy. An article in The Dairyland Patriot expressed the goal of the rally well in the words of John Lewis.

My philosophy is very simple. When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, say something! Do something! Get in trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble.

The article also quoted Emily Tseffos, one of the organizers of the rally and one of its speakers.

There’s a bridge in Selma, Alabama. … [It is] just concrete and steel. But in 1965, it became sacred ground. John Lewis – just 25 years old – led hundreds across it. They were met with tear gas, horses, and clubs.  And they kept walking. That’s good trouble. Necessary trouble. The kind we’re called to right now.

So let’s march like Selma, … Rise like Stonewall (the 1969 protests that marked the beginning of the modern gay rights movement). … Strike like Amazon workers. … Dream like the people who know this country has always been remade from the bottom up. Because good trouble isn’t history – it’s a mandate.” 

A Weakness Revealed

These are beautiful and powerful words, and in my view, they are completely correct. We must organize and act. However, Emily's words also reveal a key weakness of the rally and of the movement it represented. The movement is an expression of national revulsion against the policies and actions of the Trump administration, but a successful, political movement cannot be only against something. It must be for something as well. The march across the bridge in Alabama had a goal, which was true freedom for Black people in the United States. The Stonewall protests, and the strikes at Amazon also had clear, positive goals.

The movement represented by the rally has no such clear goals. The people who attended the rally have goals: some are fighting for fair treatment of immigrants; others are fighting for fair treatment of women; still others are fighting for Medicare for All or affordable childcare; other goals were represented, as well. But the movement itself has not coalesced around a set of clear positive goals, and it must do so if it is to succeed.

Hard Choices to Make

Selecting a clear set of positive goals will require some hard choices. A movement cannot fight for everything at the same time. It must demand a small number of clearly defined specific changes. So, this movement at this time and in this place will have to choose, and it will have to put some worthy goals aside for another time. 

Moreover, an effective American political movement should also link somehow to our electoral system, which means that the demands of this movement should point to policy positions that congressional candidates can run on in 2026. It also means that the movement's demands should be capable of being presented in a way that will allow them to attract broad support from the voters.

If the movement’s demands do not point to policy positions for candidates, the movement must expect to reach its goals through civil disobedience. The Montgomery Bus Boycott is an example of the successful use of that strategy as is Gandhi’s March to the Sea to make salt. However, effective civil disobedience is very difficult, and civil disobedience that extends over a long period of time requires an enormous commitment from its adherents. A movement that can make use of the electoral system can achieve its goals much more easily.

So, the movement to “make some good trouble” has choices to make. What will its demands be, and how will it pursue them? It must make those choices if it is to be effective in bringing about change.