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Throughout
U.S. history, class has been bound up with other forms of
oppression—so the disenfranchisement of Black men after
Reconstruction decisively shifted class relations.
Many
political analysts, including some on the Left, are positing a
radically new configuration of class in the United States. Their
argument, reduced to its essence, is that the traditional markers of
class are no longer relevant, and now the great divide is between
those who have graduated from college versus the rest. It is further
argued that this new class structure is reshaping our political party
system in dramatic ways: the Democrats are becoming the party of the
educated, in addition to traditional constituencies among African
Americans and single women. Conversely, the Republicans are becoming
a party of the working class—defined as the
non-college-educated—across
traditional racial and ethnic lines (for a cogent example of this
analysis, see Matt Karp’s “The
Politics of a Second Gilded Age”).
I
think this analysis is wrong in all respects. We need an analysis of
how class functions in the U.S. that is based in our distinct history
of stratification (and division) along ethno-racial lines. Beyond
that, we need an accurate reading of the Democratic Party in
particular, if we are to advance the struggle for a multiracial
democracy against white nationalism.
The
Democrats
Certainly,
the bases of the two parties are in motion. As Karp points out, the
Democrats have successfully invaded formerly Republican turf, pulling
in large numbers of suburban white women. On the other hand, the
numerical shift towards Republicans among rural whites in places like
Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is jarring. But these large-scale
electoral trends require a different kind of examination than many on
the Left have provided: we should stop making or accepting flat
pronouncements about “working-class” defection from the
Democratic Party. There may be some, but it is an open question who
is disaffected and why, and indeed how far back this alienation from
the Party of the New Deal reaches.
The
Democratic Party has never been a party of the working class, and
suggesting it once was, presumably because for many decades after the
New Deal it received a majority of votes cast by waged workers, is
reductive in the extreme. At no point did the Democrats resemble a
socialist, labor, or communist party in Europe or anywhere else,
formations in which trade unions enjoyed a preponderance of power in
party councils. From the 1930s through the present, powerful
corporate interests have exercised a large, often decisive influence
among Democrats, along with urban machines dominated by ethnic
interests, and, until recently, white southerners of all classes.
Certainly, the trade union apparatus mattered—they got out the
vote–but any examination of party dynamics indicates their role
was always contingent and subordinate.
In
the post-1945 era, for instance, extractive industries based in Texas
and Oklahoma were central, via Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson
of the former and Senator Robert E. Kerr of the latter, who, as head
of the Finance Committee, controlled more pork than anyone else in
Washington. More recently, since the 1990s, significant elements of
the tech and finance sector have bankrolled the Clintons’ grand
plan to move the party to the center-right, away from any alignment
with organized labor. That the latter had been in free-fall since
the 1970s is obviously relevant.
It
is not enough, however, to assert that the Democrats have never been
a “party of workers,” as Matt Karp describes them, let
alone a party of the working class. We, as socialists, must refuse
the insistence of professional pollsters, and the liberal media
trailing after them, that “working class” is directly
correlated to “non-college educated.” No Marxist I have
read would make that assertion. For us, class is measured by one’s
relation to the relations of production—what one does, and for
whom, not the size of a paycheck, or educational credentials.
"We
must refuse the insistence of professional pollsters, and the liberal
media trailing after them, that ‘working class’ is
directly correlated to ‘non-college educated."
The
demographic pool of Americans without a bachelor’s degree
includes millions of business-people (retail shop owners,
contractors, farmers, home maintenance techs, computer programmers,
and more) many of whom deploy
capital to employ others.
They are not “workers” at all, unless one succumbs to
elitist tropes equating “working class” with trucker
caps, Carhartts, and certain food or music tastes. This large
stratum fits the historical definition of the petty bourgeoisie;
indeed, throughout the advanced capitalist world, it has functioned
as the social base for reactionary nationalism and nativist
pseudo-populism. In the U.S., they flocked to the Second Ku Klux Klan
of the 1920s, and then Huey Long’s Share the Wealth clubs and
Father Charles Coughlin’s National Union for Social Justice in
the mid-1930s. Why would we let mainstream corporate Democrats and
their acolytes in the press, who share little with us other than
opposing Trump, define these people as “workers?” (To be
clear, we should not concede the petty bourgeoisie to the Right—there
are many small-business owners, technicians, professionals and
tradespeople who agree with us!)
Equally
important is the flipside to this deep misunderstanding that class
correlates to educational credentialing. Right now, there are vast
numbers of people with college degrees who are definitely
working-class. All kinds of institutional employers, especially
those in the “non-profit” sector like my college, require
a B.A. degree for skilled clerical jobs. For that matter, does
anyone want to insist that nurses, one of the most militantly
class-conscious sectors of today’s proletariat, are somehow not
“working-class” because they have at least one, often
several, college degrees? And then there are the thousands of
baristas, a visible precariat; we should scoff at the notion of
separating them into two different classes because some finished
college and some did not.
