How We Stopped Thinking About Class in Politics

This is the second post in my series on the problems and future of the Democratic Party. In the first post, I said that Democrats had become the party of the patrimonial middle class. In this post, I want to talk about how we got here and about how we became reluctant to think about political issues in terms of classes.  We got here partly because of events that we could not control and partly because of our response to those events. 

Events That We Could Not Control

First, the decline of the labor movement weakened working-class support for the Democratic Party, and as a result, workers’ issues became less central to the party’s platform. Second, the anti-communist hysteria of the 1940s and 50s made it very difficult for any politician to talk about classes or class conflict without being accused of being a communist. So, we got out of the habit of talking about classes.

Third, two movements emerged in the 1960s to dominate political discussion among American progressives. The Civil Rights Movement and the Women’s Movement provided ways for us to think about oppression and inequality without talking about class, which was very useful in the political context of the time. Many of us adopted the view that the oppressors were white men, and the oppressed were women and people of color.  Consequently, women and non-whites were drawn to the Democratic Party, while white, working-class men became Republicans. This process of sorting was accelerated by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Our Party’s Response

The Democratic Party responded to these events by embracing its connection with women and racial minorities. We accepted the idea that white men were so well served by our economy and by “white privilege” that a party dedicated to redistributing wealth could ignore them and build an electoral majority based on women and minorities. The idea that our economy serves all white men well had never been entirely true as anyone knows who has read The Grapes of Wrath or The Jungle, but it served as a useful basis for progressive, political action.

A Changed World and a Missed Opportunity

Then, the world’s economy changed radically. China and other countries took over much of the work of making things, and many of the people who had been doing that work in the United States lost their jobs.  Entire communities were devastated, and there emerged a large part of the white working class that was full of anger. Their anger created an opportunity for charlatans like Mr. Trump to turn the anger on women, minorities and foreigners.

We failed to see that the suffering created by globalization also created an opportunity to foster working-class solidarity across racial lines. White working-class communities were not the only ones that suffered. Black workers were also laid off in places like Detroit, Chicago and Milwaukee. Black communities in those cities were devastated just as much as White communities in the steel towns of Ohio or the mines of West Virginia. We might have seen this as an opportunity to build working-class solidarity across racial lines, but we did not do so, and we missed a chance to build the strength of our party. We left it up to the Republicans to claim the support of the white working class by appealing to the racism and xenophobia that are parts of American culture.

We missed the opportunity because we had forgotten how to think in terms of class oppression. We could see only the oppression of races and genders. We did not understand that a black, working-class woman is oppressed not only because she is black and a woman but also because she is working class, and she shares her plight as a working-class person with all other members of her class. A middle-class black woman is in a different situation.

For example, Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County in Georgia, is a black woman, and as such she has surely encountered obstacles in her career. Her movement up the career ladder has undoubtedly been slowed by men’s resistance to promoting women. As an attorney, she has had to overcome the common tendency to take women and blacks less seriously than white men. Like all professional women, she has had to put up with the sexual harassment that pervades women’s professional lives. Very likely, she earns less than a man in a similar position

On the other hand, she does not have to worry about being evicted from her house because she cannot pay the rent. She does not have to see her children get sick because she cannot afford routine, preventive care for them. She does not live in a “food desert.” Millions of black women suffer in these ways, but she does not because she belongs to the patrimonial middle class.

Our focus on racial and gender-based oppression has prevented many of us from seeing the difference between Ms. Willis and the millions of black people (men and women) who are working class. Moreover, because we don’t see that difference, we don’t see that there is an opportunity to build coalitions across racial lines.

The next post in this series will take a more detailed look at the class that now forms the basis of the Democratic Party.

The Party of the Patrimonial Middle Class

 A Critique of Our Party

This is the first in a series of posts in which I will lay out a critique of the direction that the Democratic Party has taken in recent years and suggest a direction for its future. I write as a member of the party in the hope that my comments may help it to change its direction.

I believe that, although my party claims to be the party of the dispossessed and the marginalized members of our society, it has become the party of what Thomas Picketty calls “the patrimonial middle class.” The party has focused mainly on issues that are of concern to the members of that class, and as a result, the party has failed to build a national, political coalition that could enact policies to benefit working Americans of all races. The Republican Party has been able to exploit our failure by promoting a politics of anti-elitism and racism that has drawn the white working class away from the Democratic Party. Our country has become immobilized politically and unable to deal with many of the challenges that face us. As a party of the political left, we must find a way to break the stalemate and move our country forward.

What Is the Role of a Party of the Left?

We live in a society where an outlandishly large share of the income and of the wealth are held by a tiny minority of our people. Our economic system produces enormous wealth, but it distributes the wealth so unequally that it creates enormous inequity and destabilizes our society.  In such a society, the primary task of a party of the political left ought to be to provide the means to redistribute the wealth more equitably. This is a matter of providing economic justice to all classes. It is not primarily a matter of racial justice, although racial inequity is a part of the problem, and it is not primarily a matter of gender-based justice, although gender inequity is a part of the problem. The core of the problem is to find ways to redistribute income from our society’s richest people to the class that makes up the poorest 50% of our society, which corresponds roughly to what used to be called the working class.

Redistributing Wealth

There are various ways to redistribute wealth, but the most common in all rich countries is through tax-supported programs that provide income in kind. For example, a program of affordable child care would charge the families receiving the care less that its cost, and remainder of the cost would be covered by tax revenues. Similarly, a national health care system would reduce the cost of health insurance by paying a part of the cost with tax revenues. Such programs would provide income in kind in the form of services and pay for the services with taxes.

The recipients of the services would not be a minority of our population. They would include most of us, but especially, they would include the poorer half of our population. The bottom half of our wealth distribution includes people of all colors and genders, and they share common problems, which have common solutions. A single woman who is struggling to raise her children on a waitress’s wages would be helped by a system of affordable child care no matter what race she belonged to. Any person struggling to pay off student debt would be helped by forgiveness of the debt. Any person without health insurance who becomes ill would be helped by a decent national health care system. This kind of wealth transfer would help non-whites and women disproportionately because they are overrepresented in the poorer half of our population, but people of all colors and genders would benefit.

What Have We Become?

The Democratic Party used to focus on policies for redistributing income. We passed Social Security, the GI Bill and Medicare.  However, we have lost that focus. We now focus on issues that are mainly of concern to members of the patrimonial middle class while failing to provide strong support for proposals to increase equity across the classes. One result of our change in focus is that conservative propaganda can plausibly claim that white, working-class people have no place in the Democratic Party. The Republican Party has used such propaganda to draw the white working class away from the Democrats. Consequently, the Democratic Party, which ought to be the party of the working class, has become the party of comfortable members of the patrimonial middle class, and our party is weaker than it ought to be. 

How we got into this situation will be the topic of the next post in this series. The third post will deal in more detail with the makeup of the patrimonial middle class and with its connection to the Democratic Party. The fourth post will discuss the ways in which our political actions reflect the makeup of our party. Finally, the fifth post will suggest some ways that we can move forward.

Irony and a False Choice: Gloria’s Speech in "Barbie"

 The Irony

One of the high points of the Barbie movie is Gloria’s monologue. In it, she expresses her frustration and anger over the contradictions in our cultural ideal of womanhood that – she believes - make it impossible for anyone to be a woman successfully. The speech has been widely reviewed and hailed as a strong expression of feminism. However, I think that the speech is deeply ironic and that in the end, it presents a false and harmful choice to women and ultimately to men as well.

The irony of the speech appears in its opening sentence, which says “It is literally impossible to be a woman.” The line is ironic because the actress delivering the speech is America Ferrara, who is herself a successful woman. She does not have the culturally ideal body type, and she is a Latina. These things have undoubtedly created obstacles for her, but she has overcome them.  She has found a way to be a woman in our society.

That is not all. The speech appears in a film created by a whole team of successful women. It was written and directed by Greta Gerwig and produced by Margot Robbie, who also starred in it. The cast includes Kate McKinnon and Rhea Perlman along with America Ferrara.  All of these women have figured out – each in her own way - how to be successful as women in our society. Probably, none of them can measure up to the cultural ideal described in Gloria’s speech, but that has not prevented them from being successful as women. How then can we see the speech as anything but ironic?

The False Choice

The irony of a having a successful woman proclaim that no one can be a woman successfully would be funny if the speech did not present a false choice that sets women up for failure. If we say that the only way to be a woman is to live up to an impossible and contradictory ideal, then clearly no one can succeed, but we do not need to think that way. In fact, there are many, different ways to be a woman, and the real problem that every woman faces is to find a path that is right for her. Instead of measuring herself against an impossible standard, she needs to figure out who she really is or wants to be.

The problem is no different for men. For example, I am not a warrior-poet; I do not rescue damsels in distress with my expertise in karate; I am not an entrepreneurial billionaire or a high-level executive; I do not work at a manly occupation like that of a fireman or a cowboy; and I don’t have bulging muscles or washboard abs. Yet I have managed to lead a happy and successful life as a man in our society, just as many women live happy and successful lives as women. We do it by refusing to be bound by impossible ideals.

None of us can ever be happy or successful if we always measure ourselves against impossible ideals. We will always feel frustrated and angry at our failure. Gloria’s speech insists wrongly that we have no alternative to failure. The speech insists that we cannot reject the impossible ideals and that therefore, we must always fail. We know that is not true.

Preserving Our Democracy

 Our Democracy is Unstable

We are in danger of losing our democracy, and Mr. Trump’s indictment provides an opportune moment for us to think about why we are in this situation.  We must think this through because, although it is right that he should be indicted, we should not imagine that convicting him will eliminate the danger to our democracy. The roots of the danger lie deep in the sickness of our political system.

Mr. Trump is a symptom of our democracy’s illness, not its cause. The sickness manifests itself in the anger and resentment of his supporters. He did not create the anger and resentment. He only offered them a way for his supporters to express their feelings in a politically effective way. He also seemed to offer solutions to their problems, and the fact that the solutions were fraudulent does not mean that the anger and resentment were not real or justified.  Why is there so much anger and resentment in our society, and why do they render our democracy unstable?

Democracy and Market Capitalism

In The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism, Martin Wolf argues that liberal, representative democracy and market capitalism depend on each other but that their mutually supportive relationship is fragile. It depends in each country on a tacit bargain that capitalism will deliver an acceptable level of living to all of the country’s citizens. Otherwise, they will see that the system is rigged against them, and they may turn to authoritarian, anti-democratic leaders who promise to remedy their distress. Thus, a capitalist system that fails to live up to the tacit bargain that makes it compatible with democracy will inevitably render that democracy unstable.

What are the elements of an acceptable level of living? Wolf suggests that they include:

• Prosperity
• Opportunity
• Security
• Dignity

Prosperity is a level of national wealth that can provide reasonable incomes to all of its citizens, but national wealth is not enough. There must also be opportunity for everyone who wants and is able to work to obtain a job that provides a reasonable income. Opportunity also means that system must provide real and widespread opportunities for people to move up and increase their incomes. In addition, the system must provide security against economic disasters. People lose their jobs because of events over which they have no control. People fall ill and require medical care. An acceptable level of living in a rich country must include protection against disasters like these. Finally, an acceptable level of living must provide all citizens with a feeling of dignity, a feeling of pride that they can fulfill their responsibilities and look their neighbors and their children in the face.

Our capitalist system provides prosperity but falls very short on the other dimensions of an acceptable life. The shortfall is not just a matter of racial or gender-based disparities. It is true that non-white people in the United States fare worse than white people on average. It is also true that women fare worse than men. These disparities are real, but they are not the topic of this discussion. We are talking about disparities that affect Americans of all races and genders.

Opportunity in the United States is very unequally distributed. There are plenty of opportunities for people with post-secondary educational degrees, but the situation for people with less education is bleak. Rich families can easily provide post-secondary education for their children, while children from less wealthy families must shoulder enormous debts in order to take advantage of such opportunities. Our government could adopt policies to spread opportunity more equitably, but it has not done so.

Security is also very unequally distributed. A corporate executive in the United States who loses his job will often continue to be paid for a whole year (a golden parachute) while he looks for a new position. An ordinary worker will likely get two-weeks’ notice, very limited unemployment benefits and even more limited opportunities for retraining. People who lose their jobs in the United States also lose their health insurance, and if they cannot provide it for themselves, they are vulnerable to financial disasters caused by illness. That is why health care costs are the number one cause of personal bankruptcy in the United States. We could adopt policies to alleviate the extreme insecurity of our people, but our actions in this area have been weak and inadequate.

Finally, deindustrialization and other changes in our economy have robbed millions of people of their dignity. Millions of men can no longer provide for their families, and millions of single women with children are even worse off. The loss of dignity has led to epidemics of drug addiction and suicide.  The loss of dignity may be the most dangerous failure of all. People deeply resent the loss of dignity, and when they do, they often turn to identities that seem to restore their it. They may for example, feel dignity because they are white or because they are Christians. Leaders like Mr. Trump emerge to ride the wave of identity politics.

Status Anxiety and the Instability of Our Democracy

Our economy’s failure to provide opportunity, security and dignity underlies the anxiety over loss of status that has been widely cited as a basis for white working class resentment in our country. Our society grants high status to people who are “successful” economically. Part of the “American dream” is that each generation in a family can live better than the previous generation. In addition, we say that each person’s success is due to his/her efforts and talents rather than to events or conditions beyond his/her control. In this situation, a narrowing of the opportunities for “success” must inevitably create anxiety in many people.

The lack of security is also a source of status anxiety. Many people know that their social position has been hard won and that it is not secure. Millions of people are a hairsbreadth from financial ruin. An unexpected illness or the loss of a job can ruin them financially, and with the loss of their money goes the loss of the social status that the money provided.

It Didn’t Just Happen

American capitalism’s failure to deliver an adequate level of living to millions of Americans is not due solely to the impersonal workings of the market. The failure is also due to deliberate policy decisions. Americans are insecure because we have chosen not to provide more generous unemployment benefits or retraining opportunities; Americans are insecure because we have chosen not to have a national health care system. Similarly, the lack of equality of opportunity in our country is due partly to the way that we have decided to fund post-secondary education. Our people can see that their distress is due in part to deliberate, political choices that we have made. So, when a leader like Mr. Trump tells them that “elites” have rigged the system against them, they know in their hearts that he is right. They have known it all their lives.

The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism

This situation is the basis of Wolf’s “crisis of capitalism,” which is also a crisis of democracy. Fear and anxiety make our democracy unstable. They make it vulnerable to the appeals of demagogues like Mr. Trump. People’s distress leads them to search for scapegoats: foreigners, people of other races, gays, transgender people, “the elite.” There will never be a shortage of would-be leaders to encourage anxious people in their search for scapegoats, and there will never be a shortage of money to support those leaders because citizens who blame foreigners, non-whites or gays for their problems do not blame the extremely wealthy people whose political power prevents us from solving those problems. In effect our inability or unwillingness to make our society more equitable makes our entire political system unstable. Mr. Trump did not create the instability. He has only exploited it.

If we want to have a stable democracy that is immune to demagogic appeals, we must move beyond indicting and convicting Mr. Trump. We must do that, of course, but we must also reform our system of market capitalism. We cannot allow such a large share of our wealth to be concentrated in the hands of a few, very wealthy people. It must be used in a way that allows our people to feel that they have security, dignity and the opportunity to get ahead. Otherwise, convicting Trump will only open the way for the next populist demagogue who wants to overthrow our democracy.