Increasing Inequality Damages the Stability of Our Political System

We Live in a Time of Increasing Inequality

Yesterday, the Huffington Post reported a speech by Elizabeth Warren in which she said that if workers’ incomes had kept pace with the increases in their productivity since 1960, the minimum wage would be $22 an hour. I do not know whether her number is exactly correct, but no one disputes her central point, which is that during the last 50 years, businesses, their owners and their allies, the upper middle class professionals have received a growing share of the wealth that has been created and that middle class people have received a decreasing share.

The Increasing Inequality Undermines our Political System

This is a troublesome trend because it undermines the political and social stability of our country. We can expect that if the trend is not reversed, we will see more and more extremist politics on both the left and the right. Karl Marx predicted that capitalism would ultimately be undone by its “contradictions.” What he meant was that even as the wealth created by the system increased, the workers would become poorer and their situation ever more desperate.

Are We Becoming Trapped by the “Contradictions of Capitalism?”

For more than a century, his prediction has appeared to be wrong because rising productivity allowed American workers’ incomes to rise. There were other factors as well. The colonial systems of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries protected American workers’ incomes from competition from workers in poorer parts of the world. The expansiveness of our economy and the availability of good, public education allowed our workers to feel that they or their children could rise.  They did not feel trapped in low positions with low incomes. 

As a result of all these factors, we were able to avoid the politics of class conflict. We had a political system based on compromise and shared goals and values. Our ruling class was not oppressive, and our working classes were not militant. There was a kind of compact that the system we had provided so many benefits to everyone that its stability should not be threatened.

That compact is threatened by the trend that Ms. Warren refers to.  If our workers become poorer, while our upper classes become richer, we can expect those who are hurt to become more desperate and more militant. At the same time, we can expect those who have benefited to become more and more concerned to protect the benefits they have received.

The Dominant Classes Have Acted to Preserve Their Gains

The latter group, being better educated and fewer in number than the workers, have organized first and acted first.  They have acted to minimize the taxes they have to pay.  They have worked to cripple the system of public education that has provided opportunities to so many people. They have worked to limit or eliminate the power of labor unions. They have gerrymandered electoral districts and worked to depress voter turnout to keep themselves in power.

Class Warfare Calls Forth Class Warfare and Leads to Stalemate In Government

This kind of class warfare will of course lead to increased militancy on the part of those who are injured by the political programs of those who dominate our government. Class warfare from above will call forth answering class warfare from below. We can expect that just as the Republican Party has moved to the right, the Democratic Party will move to the left. We can expect our political system to include more marches, more demonstrations, more extremist talk radio and fewer pragmatic and useful decisions. We can expect that at a time when we need our government to act effectively, it will be unable to do so.