With the news early this week of a compromise between the two factions of the ruling party in American politics on the debt ceiling drama, the future and welfare of the working class is on the block, to be reduced to flaccid rhetoric or elimination.

Faced with the prospect of continued 9-10 percent unemployment (double that, if real unemployment and underemployment are calculated) for the foreseeable future, the Republicans and, now, the Democrats, have decided that the so-called entitlements can be sacrificed on the altar of the “low taxes-no government” policy of the nation’s extreme right wing.

Therefore, Medicare can be chopped down a little, Medicaid, which serves the poorest and most vulnerable among us, can be reduced or eliminated, and the integrity of Social Security can be attacked, to the extent that it will provide social insecurity. The next generation will be made to pay for tax breaks for the rich and for Corporate America.

Coming generations should not be made to suffer the demise of Social Security and Medicare. Powerful elements have tried to convince them that such benefits will not be there when they need them. These same interests have tried their best to discourage them from fighting to save the retirement benefits. As well, young people are trying to survive at relatively low-paying jobs, while paying off their college loans.

The prospects for their futures are being further limited as months and years go by, because the jobs that allowed their parents to enjoy the lives they have had between World War II and the turn of the 21st Century have all but disappeared. The single-family house, a couple of cars, vacations, health care, education, and all of the perks of the “American dream” have been disappearing at an increasingly fast pace.

The fortunes of the working class have risen and fallen with the fortunes of the 90 percent of Americans who are not among the wealthy. The fortunes of those workers rose at the end of World War II, when the great union organizing drives began. Organized labor was the engine of wealth for the millions in the U.S. There has not been enough research to say without reservation that, as the working class prospered, the entire economy of America prospered, but it certainly seems that this was the case for nearly half-century.

The past two decades, however, have seen such an assault on the well being of American workers and their unions that the standard of living of millions of families has been reduced to a low level, and the assault by Republicans and those on the right, assisted by too many Democrats, continues. What is happening is the inexorable dismantling of the New Deal of 75 years ago. That, too, was a time of economic misery and potential danger to the political structure.

Instead of retracting and regressing, however, President Franklin D. Roosevelt pursued bold government programs that put people to work and provided a way for communities to develop and for farmers to survive on the land. At that time, farmers were important to the survival of the country.

FDR’s actions as president were in sharp contrast to what is happening in the U.S. right now. Smelling blood, those who want to finish off government programs are poised to do so. This week’s debt ceiling agreement prepares politicians of every stripe to begin the process of eliminating the social structures that came out of the New Deal, most of which were a benefit to the masses of the people. To Tea Party Republicans and some Democrats and Independents, the masses of Americans have already been written off. To a high tech and consumer economy, people, especially the unemployed, are excess numbers, excess baggage.

The indicator of the health of the economy says that America is not doing so well. What is called “union density” (the percentage of the wage and salary workers who are in unions) has dropped again, from 2009 to 2010. According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the percentage of unionized workers last year was 11.9 percent, down from 12.3 percent a year earlier.

Those numbers have been in decline for a number of years. In 1983, the first year for which comparable union data are available, the union membership rate was 20.1 percent, and there were 17.7 million union workers. The BLS also pointed out this year that, in 2010, 7.6 million public sector employees belonged to a union, compared with 7.1 million union workers in the private sector. The union membership rate for public sector workers (36.2 percent) was substantially higher than the rate for private sector workers (6.9 percent). The declines of both union membership and the national economy have been spiraling downward together.

The old saying that you can’t do the same thing over and over and expect that there will be a different outcome is appropriate here. In a country in which there is a democratic structure and people can vote for or against their politicians, how is it that there seems to be no way for the working class to make any progress? (For some sociologists, working class is described as those white collar and blue-collar workers who are paid wages or a salary.)

Although there are many reasons, one of the primary reasons is that our two-party system tends to keep out any third party or parties that might threaten to alter the status quo that keeps them in power. Neither of the two parties actually wants to see any change in the way the system is structured, because they are comfortable in it and they benefit from it every day of their lives. The pay is good, the perks are good, and there isn’t a lot of heavy lifting. Also, politicians (most of them, with few exceptions) have a direct pipeline into Corporate America which, in 2011, is accustomed to calling the shots and pays for the campaigns. More importantly, they fund some of the most scurrilous campaigns against anyone who might challenge their hegemony over the economy.

Also of great importance to the powers that be in maintaining control of both the economic and political structure was to create and maintain splits in the working class: ethnic differences, regional differences, skilled versus unskilled workers, and of course, the primary and old split between black and white. Keeping those separations open was the key to controlling the working class.

G. William Domhoff, a sociologist from University of California at Santa Cruz, in a paper on social power, wrote of the working class: “First, the ‘primary producers’ in the United States, those who work with their hands in factories and fields, were more seriously divided among themselves until the 1930s than in most other countries. The deepest and most important of these divisions was between whites and African-Americans. In the beginning, of course, the African-Americans had no social power because of their enslavement, which meant that there was no way to organize workers in the South. But even after African-Americans gained their freedom, prejudices in the white working class kept the two groups apart.”

Even after laws were passed in the 1930s to allow union organizing, it still was difficult for workers to organize, because the police could be called in to arrest picketers and the courts would issue injunctions against workers and the unions trying to organize them. This happens to this day, and union density numbers show this very clearly. Without political or social power, workers are relegated to the bottom of the heap.

As if to emphasize the powerlessness of the working class, during the entire “debate” over the debt ceiling, neither side mentioned the plight of American workers. This is a real tragedy that is shaping up, with 14 million looking for work and an equal number who are underemployed and largely forgotten. An even greater tragedy is the unemployment rate in ghettoes and on Indian reservations. No one talked about it and no one can be expected to talk about it, because, if they talk about it, they might be expected to do something about it. As it is, silence is golden for politicians and Corporate America.

The only time during the entire debate when there was anything close to mentioning the working class was when they discussed “entitlements,” meaning such things as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and any other social or welfare program that is a benefit to the masses of America. And the only reason they mentioned entitlements was to prepare the people for reduction or abolishment of those programs, on which so many depend for their very lives.

One of the supreme ironies of the past few years is the emergence of the Tea Party, a right wing movement that has directed the momentum of the Republicans during its short lifetime. Most Tea party members are working class as we have described and they have allowed themselves to be used by the very people who have pushed the working class to the edges of society. Yet, they would defend the idea that the rich should not pay their fair share of taxes and that social programs that their parents or their children might need should be eliminated to ensure the rich their continued privileged position.

Rank-and-file Americans have been easily controlled by the divide-and-conquer strategy, whether at work, in their places of worship, in election campaigns, between generations, and in other areas. Even so, they believe they are the freest people in the world, because the country has a democratic structure, guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and expressed in the Declaration of Independence. As long as the people believe they are free because they are allowed to cast a ballot every couple of years, they will believe that the political and social structures are not oppressive and that their government is of the people, by the people and for the people.

Working class Americans need to address all the elements of the nation that divides them. Only when they mend the divisions will they create the kind of society that will truly strive to achieve the constitutionally mandated public welfare, the public good, or the common good. Right now, solidarity is what America needs.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, John Funiciello, is a labor organizer and former union organizer. His union work started when he became a local president of The Newspaper Guild in the early 1970s. He was a reporter for 14 years for newspapers in New York State. In addition to labor work, he is organizing family farmers as they struggle to stay on the land under enormous pressure from factory food producers and land developers. Click here to contact Mr. Funiciello.