Yves here. A problem I have with this analysis is that it is not adequate to explain Trump’s support among Hispanics. A January USA Today poll found 39% favored Trump, versus 34% for Biden. Readers?
By Richard D. Wolff, professor of economics emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a visiting professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, in New York. Wolff’s weekly show, “Economic Update,” is syndicated by more than 100 radio stations and goes to 55 million TV receivers via Free Speech TV. His three recent books with Democracy at Work are The Sickness Is the System: When Capitalism Fails to Save Us From Pandemics or Itself, Understanding Socialism, and Understanding Marxism, the latter of which is now available in a newly released 2021 hardcover edition with a new introduction by the author. Produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
By “class system” we mean the basic workplace organizations—the human relationships or “social relations”—that accomplish the production and distribution of goods and services. Some examples include the master/slave, communal village, and lord/serf organizations. Another example, the distinctive capitalist class system, entails the employer/employee organization. In the United States and in much of the world, it is now the dominant class system. Employers—a tiny minority of the population—direct and control the enterprises and employees that produce and distribute goods and services. Employers buy the labor power of employees—the population’s vast majority—and set it to work in their enterprises. Each enterprise’s output belongs to its employer who decides whether to sell it, sets the price, and receives and distributes the resulting revenue.
In the United States, the employee class is badly split ideologically and politically. Most employees have probably stayed connected—with declining enthusiasm or commitment—to the Democratic Party. A sizable and growing minority within the class has some hope in Trump. Many have lost interest and participated less in electoral politics. Perhaps the most splintered are various “progressive” or “left” employees: some in the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, some in various socialist, Green, independent, and related small parties, and some even drawn hesitatingly to Trump. Left-leaning employees were perhaps more likely to join and activate social movements (ecological, anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti-war) rather than electoral campaigns.
The U.S. employee class broadly feels victimized by the last half-century’s neoliberal globalization. Waves of manufacturing (and also service) job exports, coupled with waves of automation (computers, robots, and now artificial intelligence), have mostly brought that class bad news. Loss of jobs, income, and job security, diminished future work prospects, and reduced social standing are chief among them. In contrast, the extraordinary profits that drove employers’ export and technology decisions accrued to them. Resulting redistributions of wealth and income likewise favored employers. Employees increasingly watched and felt a parallel social redistribution of political power and cultural riches moving beyond their reach.
Employees’ class feelings were well grounded in U.S. history. The post-1945 development of U.S. capitalism smashed the extraordinary employee class unity that had been formed during the Great Depression of the 1930s. After the 1929 economic crash and the 1932 election, a reform-minded “New Deal” coalition of labor union leaders and strong socialist and communist parties gathered supportively around the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration that governed until 1945. That coalition won huge, historically unprecedented gains for the employee class including Social Security, unemployment compensation, the first federal minimum wage, and a large public jobs program. It built an immense following for the Democratic Party in the employee class.
As World War II ended in 1945, every other major capitalist economy (the UK, Germany, Japan, France, and Russia) was badly damaged. In sharp contrast, the war had strengthened U.S. capitalism. It reconstructed global capitalism and centered it around U.S. exports, capital investments, and the dollar as world currency. A new, distinctly American empire emerged, stressing informal imperialism, or “neo-colonialism,” against the formal, older imperialisms of Europe and Japan. The United States secured its new empire with an unprecedented global military program and presence. Private investment plus government spending on both the military and popular public services marked a transition from the Depression and war (with its rationing of consumer goods) to a dramatically different relative prosperity from the later 1940s to the 1970s.
Cold War ideology clothed post-1945 policies at home and abroad. Thus the government’s mission globally was to spread democracy and defeat godless socialism. That mission justified both increasingly heavy military spending and McCarthyism’s effective destruction of socialist, communist, and labor organizations. The Cold War atmosphere facilitated undoing and then reversing the Great Depression’s leftward surge of U.S. politics. Purging the left within unions plus the relentless demonization of left parties and social movements as foreign-based communist projects split the New Deal coalition. It separated left organizations from social movements and both of them from the employee class as a whole.
Despite many employees staying loyal to the Democratic Party (even as they disconnected from the persecuted left components of the New Deal), the Cold War pushed all U.S. politics rightward. The Republican Party cashed in by being aggressively pro-Cold War and raising funds from employers determined to undo the New Deal. The Democratic Party leadership reduced its former reliance on weakening unions and the demoralized, deactivated remnants of the New Deal coalition. Instead that leadership sought funds from the same corporate rich that the Republicans tapped. The predictable results included the failure of the Democratic Party to reverse the rightward shift of U.S. politics. The Dems likewise abandoned most efforts to build on the achievements of the New Deal or move further toward social democracy. They increasingly failed even to protect what the New Deal had achieved. These developments deepened the alienation of many workers from the Democratic Party or political engagement altogether. A vicious downward cycle, with occasional temporary upsurge moments, took over “progressive” politics.
That vicious cycle entrapped especially older, white males. Among employees, they had gained the most from the 1945-1975 prosperity. However, after the 1970s, employers’ profit-driven automation and their decisions to relocate production abroad seriously undermined their employees’ jobs and incomes, especially in manufacturing. This part of the employee class eventually turned against “the system”—against the prevailing economic tide. They mourned a disappearing prosperity. At first, they turned right politically. The Cold War had isolated and undermined the left-wing institutions and culture that might otherwise have attracted anti-system employees. Left-leaning mobilizations against the system as a whole were rare (unlike more single-issue mobilizations around issues like gender, race, and ecology). Neither unions nor other organizations had the social support needed to organize them. Or they simply feared to try. Even more recently the rising labor and union militancy has so far only secondarily and marginally raised themes of systematic anti-capitalism.
Republican politicians and media personalities seized the opportunity to transform the disappearing post-1970s prosperity into an idealized American past. They carefully avoided blaming that disappearance on profit-driven capitalism. They blamed Democrats and “liberals” whose social welfare programs cost too much. Excessive taxes were wasted, they insisted, on ineffective social programs for “others” (the non-white and non-male). If only those others worked as hard and as productively as white males did, Republicans repeated, they would have enjoyed the same prosperity instead of seeking a “free ride from the government.” Portions of the employee class persuaded by such reasoning switched from Democrat to Republican and then often responded to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) mantra. Their switch stimulated Republican politicians to imagine a possible new mass base much broader than their existing mix of religious fundamentalists, gun lovers, and white supremacists. Leading Republicans glimpsed political possibilities unavailable since the Great Depression of the 1930s had turned U.S. politics leftward toward social democracy.
Emerging from within or around the Republican Party, the new 21st-century far Right revived classic U.S. isolationist patriotism around America First slogans. They combined that with a loosely libertarian blaming of all social ills on the inherent evil of government. By carefully directing neither criticism nor blame toward the capitalist economic system, Republicans secured the usual support (financial, political, journalistic) from the employer class. That included employers who had never prospered much from the neoliberal globalization turn, those who saw bigger, better opportunities from an economic nationalist/protectionist turn, and all those long focused on the employer-driven project of undoing the New Deal politically, culturally, and economically. These various elements increasingly gathered around Trump.
They opposed immigration, often via hysterical statements and mobilizations against “invasions” fantasized as threatening America. They defined government spending on immigrants (using native and “hard-working” Americans’ taxes) as wasted on unmeritorious “others.” Trump championed their views and reinforced parallel scapegoating of Black and Brown citizens and women as unworthy beneficiaries of government supports exchanged for their voting Democratic. Some Republicans increasingly embraced conspiracy theories (QAnon and others) to explain diverse plots aimed at dethroning white Christianity from dominating American society. MAGA and America First are slogans that articulate resentment, bitterness, and protest at perceived victimization. Repurposing Cold War imagery, Trumpers synonymously targeted liberals, Democrats, Marxists, socialists, labor unions, and others seen as close allies plotting to “replace” white Christians. Trump referred to them publicly as “vermin” that he would defeat/destroy once he became President again.
The larger part of the U.S. employee class has not (yet) been won over by the Republicans. It has stayed, so far, with the Democrats. Yet aggravated social divisiveness has settled everywhere into U.S. culture and politics. It frightens many who stay within the Democratic Party, seeing it as the lesser evil despite its “centrist” leaders and their corporate donors. The latter include especially the financial and hi-tech megacorporations that profitably led the post-1975 neoliberal globalization period. The centrist leadership studiously avoided offending its corporate patrons while using a modified Keynesian fiscal policy to achieve two objectives. The first was support for government programs that helped solidify an electoral base increasingly among women, and Black and brown citizens. The second was support for aggressively projecting U.S. military and political power around the world.
The U.S. empire protected by that policy proved especially profitable for the financial and hi-tech circles of the United States’ biggest businesses. At the same time, another part of the U.S. employee class also began to turn against the system, but it found the new Right unacceptable and “centrism” only slightly less so. The Democratic party has so far retained most of these people although many have increasingly moved toward “progressive” champions such as Bernie Sanders, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, and Cori Bush. Cornel West and Jill Stein carry similar banners into this year’s election but they insist on doing that from outside the Democratic Party.
Hostility has intensified between the two major parties as their opposition has become more extreme. This keeps happening because neither found nor implemented any solutions to the deepening problems besetting the United States. Ever more extreme wealth and income inequalities undermine what remains of a sense of community binding Americans. Politics ever more controlled by the employer class and especially the super-rich produce widespread debilitating anger, resignation, and rage. The relatively shrinking power of the United States abroad drives home a sense of impending doom. The rise of the first real economic superpower competitor (China) raises the specter of the U.S. global unipolar moment being replaced, and soon.
Each major party blames the other for everything going wrong. Both also respond to the declining empire by moving rightward toward alternative versions of economic nationalism—“America First”—in place of the cheerleading for neoliberal globalization that both parties indulged in before. Republicans carefully refuse to blame capitalism or capitalists for anything. Instead, they blame bad government, the Democrats, the liberals, and China. Democrats likewise carefully refuse to blame capitalism or capitalists for anything (except the “progressives,” who do that moderately). Democrats mostly blame Republicans who have “gone crazy” and “threaten democracy.” They erect new versions of their old demons. Russia and Putin stand in for the USSR and Stalin as chief awful foreigners with Chinese “communists” a close second. Trying to hold on to the political middle, the Democrats denounce Republicans and especially the Trump/MAGA people for challenging the last 70 years of political consensus. In that Democratic Party version of the “good old days,” reasonable Republicans and Democrats then alternated in power dutifully. The result was that the U.S. empire and U.S. capitalism prospered first by helping to end the exhausted European empires and then by profiting from the United States’ unipolar global hegemony.
Biden’s plans pretend the U.S. empire is not in decline. In 2024, he offers more of the old establishment politics. Trump basically pretends the same about the U.S. empire but carefully selects problem areas (e.g., immigration, Chinese competition, and Ukraine) that he can represent as failures of Democratic leadership. Nothing fundamental is amiss with the U.S. empire and its prospects in his eyes. All that is necessary is to reject Biden and his politics as incapable of reviving it. Trump’s plans thus call for a much more extreme economic nationalism run by a leaner, meaner government.
Each side deepens the split between Republicans and Democrats. Neither dares admit the basic, long-term declining empire and the key problems (income and wealth inequality, politics corrupted by that inequality, worsening business cycles, and mammoth debts) accumulated by its capitalist foundation. The parties’ jousting turns on substitute issues that offer temporary electoral advantages. It also reinforces the public’s incapacity for systemic critique and change. Both parties endlessly appeal to a population whose alienation deepens as relentless systemic decline worms its way into everyone’s daily life and troubles. Both parties increasingly expose their growing irrelevance.
Neither party’s campaign offers solutions to systemic decline. Gross miscalculations of a changed world economy and shrinking U.S. political power abroad underlay both parties’ failed policies in relation to Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine, and Gaza. The turn toward economic nationalism and protectionism will not stop the decline. Something bigger and deeper than either Party dares consider is underway. Capitalism has moved its dynamic centers yet again over the last generation. This time the move went from western Europe, North America, and Japan to China, India, and beyond, from the G7 to BRICS. Wealth and power are correspondingly shifting.
The places capitalism leaves behind descend into mass depression, overdose deaths, and sharpening social divisions. These social crises keep worsening alongside deepening inequalities of wealth, income, and education. Steadily if also maddeningly slowly, the rightward shift of U.S. politics after 1945 has finally arrived at social exhaustion and ineffectuality. Perhaps thereby the United States prepares another possible New Deal with or without another 1929-style crash.
Hopefully, then, one crucial lesson of the New Deal will have been learned and applied. Leaving the capitalist class structure of production unchanged—a minority of employers dominating a majority of employees—enables that minority to undo whatever reforms any New Deal might achieve. That is what the U.S. employer class did after 1945. The solution now must include moving beyond the employer-employee organization of the workplace. Replacing that with a democratic community organization—what we elsewhere call worker cooperatives—is the missing element that can make progressive reforms stick. When employees and employers are the same people, no longer will a separate employer class have the incentive and resources to undo what the employee majority wants. Replacing employer/employee-organized workplaces with worker coops is the very different “great replacement” we need. On the basis of reforms secured in that way, we can build a future. We can avoid repeating the last half-century’s failure even to preserve the reforms imposed on a capitalism that crashed and burned in the 1930s.
Regarding the “Hispanics” political leanings, from my experiences living in Florida, I observed that Americanized Latino culture is very socially conservative. There is now a generation or more of fully assimilated American Latinos. They have entered the classic ‘American Dream,’ and are suffering the same fears and travails as the putative “White” American population. They bought into the American Dream and fear its dissolution, thus, Trump can run on a platform of “saving the American Dream” and win their support. The Democrat Party cannot make the same appeal to the American Latinos. By emphasizing, for want of a better term, Idpol, the Democrat party has portrayed themselves as not supporting the old American Dream. The perception is that, through the proliferation of diverse and often outlandish sub-groups in the population of the society, there is a threat that “the piece of the pie” will be reduced for the ‘hard working middle classes’ and given to the “others.” Divide and rule at its best.
I mostly agree and also live in Florida with large and settled Hispanic and Caribbean communities. As background, I worked with a Romanian man after the 1980 election of Reagan, whom he supported. He told me that Reagan was “a strong man” compared to Carter. I was puzzled at the time as Reagan appeared to be already showing signs of age and deterioration. He probably meant his aggressive foreign policy towards the Soviet Union, which being from Eastern Europe is understandable.
It is possible Hispanics, like everyone else, are seeing the physical weakness in Biden as opposed to his aggressive rhetoric. I have always wondered at the disconnect between the ‘progressive policy’ of the Democrat party being supported by a large group of predominately conservative Catholic immigrants. The two don’t synchronize well and I have always thought it a mistake. They may also be afraid that an open border policy can keep them from advancing economically in American society due to a constant influx of cheap labor.
I think that you are right about immigrants being conservative. Back in 2017 here in Oz, we had a mail-in referendum whether to change the laws to allow gay marriage. The result was 61.6% Yes and 38.4& No but it was noted that a lot of the No vote came from immigrant groups who were more conservative by nature. It was just that gay marriage went against their beliefs and so they voted accordingly.
My experience in South Texas is the same. The hispanic people who have been living there for a while have always been socially conservative, but in addition they resent the bad publicity that the newer immigrants, motly unjustly, receive. It makes them feel less ¨American¨ to be associated with them. They want to do a Clarence Thomas – pull up the ladder that they and their parents climbed.
I think this illustrates liberal and Democrat confusion. Not all hispanics are the same. Some, in California, Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico, come from families which have been here longer than any white person.
They have no reason to support unlimited immigration, or any other white man’s policy, if they rightly perceive it as undercutting union jobs and driving wages down.
Has Professor Wolff ever been forced to overtly state his feeling ( either positive or negative) about employer-class-favored Unlimited Illegal Immigration for union busting, wage busting, workplace safety busting, etc?
If his support for a politics of Worker Co-operatives includes support for Unlimited Illegal Immigration, then that politics won’t get anywhere either. Also, I wonder how Worker-Co-operatives in a ” high standards area” are supposed to survive a drowning flood of underpriced Mercantilist Production-Aggression flood of things from the new emerging centers of Capitalism . . . . especially if such a politics buys into professor Wolff’s demonization of “protectionism”?
Except liberal/urban North Americans and west Europeans, all bathing in the same cultural soup, the rest of the world, regardless of country, social status, or urban/rural location, is much more socially conservative, but not in the bigoted way is being presented. While not caring that much about what people do in the privacy of their bedrooms, they preserve a strong sense of propriety and have a certain esthetical sense: i,e. gay parades are gaudy, bordering on ugly, and infused with a crass vulgarity.
“He probably meant (Reagan’s) aggressive foreign policy towards the Soviet Union, which being from Eastern Europe is understandable.” Exactly my experience with a Polish couple I worked with at the same time. I was at the time surrounded by mostly apolitical scientists or confirmed “Democrats.” Their view of Reagan was a wake up call that have I never forgotten.
It’s not just Latinos. Almost all recent immigrants of every nationality I know in my family and neighborhood prefer the Republicans or at least Trump to Democrats. This could reflect religion, more conservative values, economic concerns, a distaste for socialist policy based on their own experiences and also their feelings that illegal immigration is unfair compared to their own immigration journey, Of course this could all change after one generation.
Yes, Hispanics (specifically usually naturalized Mexicans, Mexican descent) are the new “ethnic whites” as used by pollsters in the 1970’s, 1980’s.
For anyone under 30, “ethnic white” was the (politically incorrect?) term pollsters used in the 70’s-80’s to group 1st/1.5 generation white immigrants usually from eastern or southern Europe.
A class analysis is very important to this understanding. One problem is the Democrats have dropped material gains in exchange for symbolic gestures so the serious often miss it. As Democrats don’t offer anything besides paens to a faux diversity, they will simply she’d support. Like the “ethnic white”, eventually they stop being from the old country and won’t care about insulting messages such as Hillary is your Abeula now obey.
“Irish need not apply” wasn’t that long ago.
Hispanic is an east coast term. Latino is west coast and south west, generally. and for a reason. Surprised people here mix up the two. A subset of registered voters called ‘likely voters’ does not represent a general population anymore then Kamala or Obama represent African americans. “Latinos” generally yes, are to the left of the Democratic Party here in California and other places. Polls show this, the activist bottom up involved show this, the ‘real left’ profile here shows this. The turnout from possible voters for the two idiots/parties we have, has been and will be, the lowest among the ‘latino’ west workers. …compared to other generalizations. You of course never see a class breakdown in these polls.
This is quite well put, but it is essentially the same old liberal analysis dressed up in Marxist garb rather than a genuinely Marxist analysis. I don’t see anything in it which explains very much other than the disaffection and demotivation of the mass of the populace. Moreover, it seriously understates the way in which the origins of most of Trump’s sloganeering lie in the politics developed decades earlier – racism and anti-worker policies disguised with fake populist appeals to workers’ cultural practices were a staple of US politics as far back as the late 1980s at least, and you could argue, of the 1968 campaign.
I also think that the conclusion is much, much too optimistic. It does seem quite likely that some sort of crash is coming which moneyprinting will not be able to resolve. But a New Deal? If that were really on the agenda it would have happened after the last financial crash. In fact, the structure of current plutocratic society in the West seems to make genuine redistributive and developmental policies almost impossible.
I think Varoufakis overstates his case in Technofeudalism, but the ideas there seem to give more of an idea of what will come out of the November election than I could get from this article, although I do respect the author for making the attempt.
obama was inserted to make sure there would not be a new deal.
So society is the factory. Political System (state) is the control room. If some is wrong with the way the factory is running you need to go to the control room to fix it. This is the dominant model of politics we have in the west and now increasingly everywhere else. This is backwards. You cannot use political action to “fix” society. The idea that the state and society are separate is a delusion. So we have ‘electocracy’ where politics is a winner-take-all fight to take over the control room so your ideological tribe can make the factory work by twiddling with the controls. This was the form that politics took hold in the US after the 3rd election when Jefferson claimed a mandate to govern by virtue of having won an election. This is not democracy and it is the worst possible political system you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. It will inevitably degenerate into tyranny.
Worker cooperatives, a.k.a. Soviets…?
More like the Mondragon cooperative in the Basque region of Spain. At least that is how I see Wolf’s proposal.
I’ve heard Wolfe talk about coops over the years, but I don’t know how it can actually happen. I know only one maybe example since a WinCo Foods opened in the next town over, it is significantly less expensive than other grocery stores:
WinCo Foods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinCo_Foods
It was established in 1967. I’m not sure something like this would be possible today.
So, I like Wolfe for his analysis of how we’re doing, but I question how the solutions he advocates can be enacted in our country. Our government is bought and run by the rich, for the rich.
While in NYC in 2020, I listened to a Spanish radio interview on politics and the election. Both the host and the political reporter being interviewed were Spanish but the conversation was in English. They soon got around to Trump.
The reporter spoke knowingly but regretted the fact that many Hispanics supported Trump. He suggested it was largely due to the respect Hispanics maintain for the kind of bravado, swagger, and machismo that Trump projected.
Bear it mind, in 2016 Trump took on the entire Republican Party alone and he dismissed the entire field, including top contenders like Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz, with tough taking insults long before he took on the Dems. Trump’s courage is fake, yet both men agreed it seems to work among many Hispanics.
There does seem to be a connection between Trump’s experience with the WWF, wrestling performance system and the Mexican “luchador” masked wrestler heroes system. Both are very much like “Professional Politics” insofar as each, in its own way, is a performative endeavour.
Trump has to have figured the ‘game’ out when he realized that Ronald “Spawn of the Devil” Reagan was hired to play the part of the President. If a two bit Hollywood actor can play the part, then so can a four bit Yankee Self Promoter.
Given the ‘quality’ of the politicos on offer this cycle, we are well and truly buggered.
Do tell. We’re here to learn! Growing up in a hotbed of Baptists I can’t claim to know much about Hispanic culture but bopping around town all the construction projects seem to be created by Hispanics these days. Perhaps in construction at least they are the new white working class.
And re the above, this may be overthinking the Trump phenomenon. First he was the un-Hillary and now he is the un-Biden. In our increasingly personality driven politics the importance of parties much less ideology could be fading. Capitalism is an unguided missile that works on “greed is good” as the motivator–consumerism above all–and for all the injustice, it does create a generalized prosperity in developed countries and this undermines the principle driver of socialism which is poverty. Marx may have been more of a snapshot than an enduring explanation of social behavior.
I am with Carolinian here. The Mexican “luchador” is something unknown to me. I would like to learn about it.
Everything you need to know can be found in this hard-hitting documentary.
Thank you!
Yep, a Nortenyo view of the phenomenon. Also see the numerous “B” pictures from Mexico starring ‘El Santo’ and others.
Classic Saturday afternoon matinee films, similar in spirit to the older American “B” westerns.
I’m not kidding about the films. “Santo vs the Martian Invasion,” “…vs the Vampire Women,” “… vs the Werewolf,” etc. etc.
Lucha Libre proper goes back to the early 1930s at the least. Mexican Wrestling interacts and co-operates with American Wrestling, (WWF) and Japanese Wrestling, (Puroresu, not Sumo.)
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucha_libre
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puroresu
It’s a big world out there. Enjoy!
>>>> Perhaps in construction at least they are the new white working class.
In my neck of the woods, it’s been like that for at least 15 years. If not a majority, definitely the biggest plurality.
IMO, the 2008-9 recession and aftermath discouraged a whole generation of non-Hispanics to enter the trades or construction (and made the old guard retire early).
Until I read Carolinian’s comment here, I assumed everyone knew/got this. If not Carolinian, many others too. You beat me to posting it, and I think it factors in.
The author has the following line in his article-
‘That vicious cycle entrapped especially older, white males. Among employees, they had gained the most from the 1945-1975 prosperity.’
But that does not help his article but merely plants the seed that these are the future Trump supporters. If you are going to get serious, then you have to acknowledge that class can be colour blind. Lambert linked to a video of Trump visiting a Chick-fil-A in Atlanta. Take a look at the faces of the staff. Not many white faces that I can see which may perplex some Democrats considering how they are pleased to see him but if you think of them as belonging to the same class as poor whites and poor Latinos, then it all makes sense. Here is that link
https://twitter.com/ACTBrigitte/status/1778183349929984493
If Trump is appealing to class, then all poorer people and lower middle class are potential voters for him regardless of colour. And here I cannot resist taking a dig about style. Joe Biden would go into a store and get himself an ice cream. Trump goes into a store and gets milkshakes for everybody else. When you are living from paycheck to paycheck, who would impress you the most?
Agreed. Stingy old Grandpa versus free spending Uncle. This harkens back to when Carter gave his “malaise” speech, which many say was the beginning of the end to his re-election prospects.
Biden is promising America an “Intervention” when the people want a Birthday Party.
I think any local fast food or quick service restaurant location is going to hire whomever that can be easily found at local trends for the entry wage and who is also going to prove to be reliable. I can think of my experiences here in South Carolina and I’ll suggest restaurant locations are a mixed bag. As in it’s a lot of varied colors of the rainbow including white folk ( I am one of them white folk too.. ) that are employees.
But speaking of the Chik Fil A locations I know of, their entry level wage is usually higher to start than most… Performative theater maybe? I remember in 2004 how John Kerry was obviously not in his element trying to place an order at a Wendy’s…
From my conversations lately with fast food managers, shift bosses, etc. I can say that simply having an employee show up on time and willing to work has become a big problem, regardless of the wage offered.
If I didn’t know better, I would suspect that the American Economy is suffering from cafard.
Knowing the views of Chick-fil-A corporate owners and the views of typical Chick-fil-A managers and who they seek to hire, class is not the primary motivator. They tend to seek highly (right-wing) religious people.
As for Brigitte Gabriel, who posted the tweet, she may be a right-wing Republican, but I can recall her being quite pleased about the corrupt Democrat Shontel Brown defeating Nina Turner in her race for Congress.
I may not have a big income, but I was raised (and learned) to have principles. I like to hope I’m not alone.
One aspect of the Chick-fil-A customer experience that I appreciated was that the people were polite and solicitous. Compare and contrast with many restaurants and other service interactions where there can be some Service with a Snarl, or maybe just indifference or an air of resignation. Covid and economic pressures brought that out even more.
I stopped eating there due to their main provisioner.
Another favorable customer experience is at Trader Joe’s. The people genuinely engage and are knowledgeable and helpful. Other grocery stores present mixed results and mixed loyalty that proximity benefits may not overcome.
Chick-fil-A was my late mother’s favorite restaurant. She was disabled and usually treated as a second class citizen when we would go out. But the workers at Chick-fil-A always treated her like a queen. They were so nice and made her feel special. There was nothing phony about their kindness either. It was genuine. It meant so much to my mother and me.
I think a key aspect for almost all of these nationally known or regionally known chain restaurants, that the franchisee owners or groups are in the business to make profit. Owning a restaurant location that little traffic or customer buzz is a sure fire method to lose a small fortune…So to move the politics aside for a second, there is a reason the Chik Fil A model has flourished during three generations of the Cathay family and doing so without a courtesy bow or kow tow to Wall Street investing pressure.
I’m sure that their methods are modern and quite likely even cut throat to surviving and thriving just like the history of any other famous brand of food or so forth. As Ray Kroc puts it eloquently, it is dog eat dog.
Trader Joe’s is also one of the corporations suing the NLRB over it’s basic Constitutionality in order to prevent a favorable admin from empowering a pro-worker Board.
I was also struck by the contrast between Trump buying everyone milkshakes vs Biden giving us all the supreme pleasure of watching *him* devour ice cream.
Trump’s focus was on other people. He bought them milkshakes, chatted, charmed and joked with workers at the counter, made others feel important and seen. I don’t recall that he turned away from the workers to get his own close up taken.
But when Biden went for ice cream, he made it all about him. “Aren’t I cute? Look at *me, me, me* eating this common little person ice cream cone!” I don’t recall anyone else in Biden’s video. He cancelled them out. They weren’t seen or heard. No one else mattered.
Trump is a master at making other people feel important when he wants to. He can turn on the charm big time. Biden, not so much. His attempts at charm are awkward at best. He really needs to get over himself.
People want to feel seen and heard. They want to feel important. Plus they really like free stuff. Give them presents! Make it fun! It’s totally performance art in Trump’s case but it works.
So in other words he is a much more natural politician than Biden who thinks it’s all about a pretend image–the Corvette etc.
And that’s right. The Dem problem is an acute lack of political talent on their bench. They need another FDR and instead we get dim bulb wonks.
Yes, exactly.
I should have tied my above comment closer to the subject of class. Rich people are accustomed to feeling important, with being seen and heard. Also with getting lots of free stuff and presents! It is their right as people who matter.
Poor working class people of all races and ethnic groups are accustomed to being ignored and shamed. It used to be done by Republicans but now the Democratic Party has joined them, taking the working class vote for granted, throwing the New Deal and the Great Society out the window, telling people who aren’t doing well to ‘get over themselves’ and overtly pandering to their corporate donors.
Surprise, surprise in 2016! The Chick-fil-A came home to roost for the Dems. Will it happen again in 2024? The Dems don’t seem to have learned anything in the last eight years. That dreadful book on ‘white rage’ that Joe and Mika love so much proves it.
Here , enjoy their salty defense of their work:
https://newrepublic.com/article/180570/trump-rural-white-resentment-honest-assessment
No, poor white people are just inherently racist! Stop bringing class analysis into this and vote for Joe
Thank you for the link. The authors of “White Rural Rage” appear to have their sensitive elitist feefees hurt by criticism of their book. They also seem quite angry. One could even call them enraged.
Many have claimed that is what made Bill Clinton such a great and magnetic personality as a politician. Would make you feel like you were the only person in the room.
I have a friend who met him in a small group setting and claims that his magnetism and charm were truly industrial strength — which is part of what made him so dangerous.
Well, the DLC, the Clintonites, etc. have spent the last several decades carefully identifying and purging every possible Junior FDR as soon as they spot one. So a future FDR would have to emerge from a future party devoted to planting and growing such people.
A Social Democrat Party or a New Deal Revival Party or some other call-it-what-you-will Party.
And it will have to have a powerful Intelligence/ CounterIntelligence division to spot and exclude every Clintobamacrat sent to contaminate and pollute that Party before it can get itself established. Any new Party which does not rigidly exclude every single piece of ClintoBamacrat scum filth sewage from infiltrating its ranks shows itself to be a frivolous performative excercise deserving of the death by wax moth/ foul brood which permitting such scum into itself will doom it to.
Trump to the Dems: “I drink your milkshake!” ;)
This isn’t a comment on whether or to what degree black people support Trump but fwiw
https://twitter.com/patriottakes/status/1778802764035891569
Good find even if most people never go past the headline and pictures of the media articles. Good stage work by the Trump campaign and supporters.
My mother used to go after my grandfather for watching professional wrestling.
The larger view is:
What am I looking at?
Who wants me to see it?
Who framed it and what is outside the framing?
(A long time ago I apprenticed under some old school newspaper reporters.)
The Cold War in the US that Dr. Wolff cites as the reason for the rightward drift in US politics was imposed on the American people, not chosen by them.
Russiagate, the product of an alliance between the Clintonite wing of the Democrats (e.g. Biden) and the ‘political’ Federal institutions, the CIA, FBI and Justice Dept., was used to revivify the Cold War and divide the citizenry between those on the side of power and those against.
In class terms, doing so allied the PMC with the oligarchs, and against much of the rest of the country. The result was the public expression of the deep hatred that much of the PMC feels towards any challenges to the oligarchs and malign state actors.
The ‘centrist’ party, the Democrats, to paraphrase Dr. Wolff, is currently paying for, arming, and providing logistical support for a racist genocide in Gaza. A deeper violation of ‘liberal values’ is difficult to imagine.
Looking at international class relations rather than just inside the US, this militarism is as clear a class war as is seen. American liberals are killing entire populations that they consider disposable for the benefit of the MIC and the corporate players of Western imperialism.
The point: Dr. Wolff’s characterization of each party’s ‘character’ gets flipped when the context is shifted from domestic to foreign relations. As events in Israel and Ukraine are demonstrating, American liberals are actually slaughtering ‘others’ while the assertion in this piece against Trump’s followers is that they are talking about doing so.
This isn’t to defend either Trump or his party. It is to argue that the Clintonites are likely the largest impediment to the good Dr.’s worker’s collectives. While either party would destroy what they imagine to be ‘the Left’ if they could, via the Russiagate alliance, the Democrats are the party with the power to do so.
Further, ‘socialist’ worker’s collectives don’t make ‘socialism.’ As part of a larger political project that includes ending US militarism abroad, they are a great idea. But they would still operate within relentlessly hostile and increasingly unhinged capitalist political economy.
Another question is where the capital to fund worker’s cooperatives would come from. Workers are being squeezed, reducing their capacity for ‘internal’ funding. Wall Street is an arm of the national security state and would quickly be put to the task of crushing said coops.(see ‘We Work’ for the imagined capitalist alternative).
So, there is little harm and plenty of benefit that could accrue from Dr. Wolff’s program.
But respectfully, if it isn’t part of a larger program that places malign actors out of the way, the result risks being utopian. The US had worker’s collectives. Most have been consumed by capital.
Historically the middle class/merchant class/priestly class tends to ally with the kings rather than the peasants. Chaos is their enemy and they do have something to lose–in the current argot “rice bowls.”
Didn’t the Bolsheviks see the middle class as their great enemy to be liquidated?
“…The ‘centrist’ party, the Democrats, to paraphrase Dr. Wolff, is currently paying for, arming, and providing logistical support for a racist genocide in Gaza…
That is simply not true, or highly misleading:
As we well know, the D/R duopoly support Israel unconditionally. Congress and POTUS all support, with very few exceptions, Israel unconditionally. So please be careful not to blame one faction – the genocide is clearly bipartisan as usual. And of course, the D/R duopoly represent the donor class, the oligarchy, not us.
Thanks for your thoughtful comment Mr. Urie.
I’m in San Antonio, Texas. New immigrants I talk to on city buses 1) speak Spanish only (although they carry signs in English asking for work), 2) are apolitical, 3) have no special job skills, and 4) don’t know that it gets cold in Chicago.
As a result, I conclude that what I hear from friends in the National Guard who have been deployed at the border is that the contention of the right-wing crazies is right:
vast numbers of people are being waved into this country, and that hard-working people who are already here aren’t taking this well.
The idea that Mexican-Americans (who are from Mexico or US-born) will automatically have solidarity w/a Venezuelan migrant because they are both “Hispanic” is laughably patronizing (in my opinion).
Only possible in the mind of an op-ed writer who is a professional migration activist or has little real-life interactions outside of their white collar bubble
The sort of person that thinks that there is no difference between a Mexican and a Venezuelan is the same sort of person that thinks that there would be no difference between a German and a Frenchman.
…or a “Cuban” and a Cuban
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
I’ll never forget years ago working at a restaurant during college, we made a big deal about Cinco de Mayo as this big celebration. A Hispanic coworker made it clear that, as a Colombian, he had 0.0 interest in that Mexican holiday and didn’t care to celebrate that date.
I generally agree with this article, but I think that there are major blind spots.
Where did this come from? “mammoth debts”
All of a sudden, we’re back at “government is a checkbook.” Mention of “mammoth debts” almost always leads to discussion of how to eliminate the so-called entitlements. So I think of this as a serious slip.
The last paragraph on co-ops is pie in the sky. Here’s an easier route: Repeal crappy U.S. labor law. Of course, first U.S. labor law has to become an issue, which isn’t likely given that the Republicans represent local grandees and poujadistes while the Democrats, being a Hillary Diehard Cult, are terrified of unions.
But: Put the labor-law regime of the 1930s back in place. Repeal “right to work” laws. Get rid of the Taft-Hartley Act. Get rid of at-will employment. Remove benefits like pensions (and the 401k scams) and health-care coverage from the workplace.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft%E2%80%93Hartley_Act
Otherwise, we’re going to be taking about co-ops till the flu-ridden cows come home. None of us have that much time on our hands.
I would add a few things, like codifying into law things like Griggs v. Duke Power, which prohibits non-bona fide occupational qualifications being required for jobs, and is ignored by many employers these days, banning algorithmic hiring, requiring employers to accept paper applications (Many employers have gone all-electronic…including my own fast food one…), and, of course, Medicare for all.
Maybe he momentarily forgot, but he surely must know better. As Michael Hudson has outlined for decades: most of the debt, deficit spending is military in nature and, ends up abroad in foreign central banks – the imperial privilege of having the USD as “world money”. In this way, the US actually benefits from the deficit spending – it does not cause domestic inflation and gives the US a “free lunch” abroad. Foreign countries thus finance their own military encirclement underlining the need for de-dollarization.
401K’s and IRA’s are wagon for the Finance industry. I’m sick of tax deferred and tax credit rules where the benefits are for the corps. These don’t help the poor who don’t have enough tax liabilities.
>>>Trump’s support among Hispanics.
This is so blatantly obvious and blind to the op-ed crowd: make a basket of: 1) housing, 2) a new-to-someone used car/auto repairs (transport), 3) utilities + gasoline, 4) food.
That should be the political “super-core” CPI index.
Everything else related to the culture war is gravy/secondary.
1A: There is a Home Depot that is literally at the (proverbial) railroad tracks that east is majority Hispanic “working class,” west is white “working class,” 2 miles west is white “NPR white collar class”
Just in the past year (never before), every morning (even Sat) at least two dozen day laborers queue for a job. Hadn’t seen anything like it there—looks straight out of a 1980’s news clip about southern California.
Surely that has an impact?
The local Hispanics are Mexican/Mexican descent. I’m presuming that the newcomers are some of the local Venezuelan migrants that the area received.
If Trump loses Hispanics: blame 1. the economy, 2. the economy, 3. migration-culture war
this article displays many of the issues i have with pro-union leftists who focus entirely on unions instead of the whole picture. of course labor power and organizing is important, but as is large scale economic structure. returning power to workers is not as simple as organizing your workplace although organizing your workplace *is* important. and there are so many finer points to the structures of labor organizing. ack.
also, the glorification of the new deal irks me- sure, the policies were successful, but the post wwii boom was also because europe was devastated by the war and the us was the only big manufacturing core left. which was a unique situation that can’t really be replicated in today’s world order.
anyway. i think part of trump’s surviving popularity is that in his branding, he aligns himself with the working class. even though this is blatantly untrue if you think about it, it’s more than the democrats, who have aligned themselves with the PMC. plus trump speaks to the general malaise within society, he acknowledges the failures people feel, whereas biden’s messaging is a bit more optimistic. and thusly unrealistic.
NPR left hand: I am pro-union.
NPR right hand: I support de facto open borders that allow the chicken processors and sketchy contractors to take their pick of desperate new labor.
Sorry to repeat a theme, but it seems quite important: Millions have died and have been displaced by unilateral US “sanctions” (illegal siege warfare) on Venezuela, Cuba, Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, Russia… and the war in Ukraine, US funding genocide in Palestine… US sponsored regime changes in Honduras, Haiti, etc. etc. CIA running guns and drugs with cartels, etc. Not to mention bombing Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria etc. Forcing people to flee their homelands in desperation is good for MICIMATT and it’s good for the domestic oligarchy to exploit. It’s a win-win for them, but for the victims not so much. It’s a shame that so few can see the big picture and connect dots, easier to get caught up in the emotional hysteria of the election-year “border crisis”. It seems that blaming victims and worshiping the oligarchy is part of US culture.
digging the hole deeper, then pouring out some napalm and lighting it, helps no one.
Sure it does, just depends on who we are talking about: some make a “killing” some get killed. Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler told us about this nearly a century ago.
agree to disagree.
especially as I am aware that the Overton Window has moved so far in the media that my line of reasoning is now hate/bundle of sticks/nativist-adjacent.
the we exported massively in the 1950’s was not correct. exports and imports made up less than 10% of GDP.
https://homework.study.com/explanation/in-the-1950s-imports-and-exports-of-goods-and-services-constituted-roughly-4-to-5-of-u-s-gdp-in-recent-years-exports-have-accounted-for-approximately-12-of-gdp-while-imports-have-more-than-t-2.html
In the 1950s, imports and exports of goods and services constituted roughly 4% to 5% of U.S. GDP….
that means we internally consumed much of what we made. the new deal worked, sorta.
the new deal did not break with the rich, only contained them sorta.
all reforms must be aimed at understanding that the rich, will shoot themselves and us in the foot till we are dead, to make ever more more more.
to make ever more, they are feeding on their own seed corn, which means they are brain dead parasites.
till we become sovereign again, that is, the removal of capital out of government, the restoration of border control, that is trade, immigration, capital controls, tariffs excise taxes, duties etc., no real reforms will work.
to get reforms that are capable of with standing global capital, a economy must be as closed looped as possible to withstand global capital.
without sovereignty, no reforms can with stand global capital.
Thanks, good post.
People often say that (world was in ruins) but as you correctly point out global trade was not big back then. What WW2 did represent was a massive government infrastructure and R&D development plan.
China was able to accomplish the same (or even greater results) without a world war using global trade to their advantage by having a massive government infrastructure and R&D development plan.
I think you need to look at the US capital account as well as current account.
Here in the UK, the US corporate sector in the 1950’s would have included General Motors, Ford, IBM, the various defence companies, a whole raft of smaller businesses (Singer sewing machines, Selectric typewriters etc), the tobacco companies, the pharmaceutical companies, Esso (UK brand for Standard Oil), Texaco etc, Motorola, Hewlett Packard, Otis lifts, Goodyear tyre and so on. The point is, the US corporate sector ran a vast foreign direct investment effort, which would show up as US capital exports and subsequent profit repatriation. Its strength did not show up as exports, in part because high tariffs and protectionism and national preference all restrained “free” trade.
These foreign profits supercharged the virtuous circle of US companies paying high wages which drove domestic consumption behind strong tariff barriers and therefore rewarded domestic production.
US capital is no longer willing to share its profits and refuses to live behind tariff barriers. The US Empire and its debt service results in capital export. These US dollars are recycled offshore: Chinese consumers buy iPhones from Irish subsidiaries, and the dollar sales proceeds do not show up in US accounts and are not shared with US workers but with stockholders (who may be the Chinese iPhone buyers we began with).
but that is the results of protectionism. you have to build your factory in another country, employ their labor, pay their taxes, their were capital controls to how much you could take out of a country.
so your factory could not be located where its the absolute cheapest, and then exported all over the world, tariff, regulatory, and tax free. that’s what global oligarch capital is.
so yes, we made some profit off of factories located in europe, but europe was able to keep much of that capital, machinery, skills and factories, under european control.
so in reality, in america, we at one time consumed over 90% of what we made. the capitalists did make a profit in europe. but that did not hinder americas consumption of what we made.
“…Neither party’s campaign offers solutions to systemic decline. Gross miscalculations of a changed world economy and shrinking U.S. political power abroad underlay both parties’ failed policies in relation to Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine, and Gaza….”
If neither “party” offers solutions to systemic decline, and offers no solutions to the deepening institutional corruption, then why bother?
I agree with most points he makes but overall:
Prof. Wolff knows the US is an oligarchy, so why waste our time talking about DT this, JB that, Ds this, Rs that. Sorry to sound insensitive, but I don’t give a toss who “Hispanics” will vote for, or anyone else for that matter. As the good professor indirectly states himself: it won’t make a damn bit of difference
The rearranged deck chairs get uglier, older and more defective as time goes by, but no one will keep the ship from going down.
this is how russia and china have become rich, and are really the most technologically advanced economies now. russia had it forced onto them, and now they are stunned that it works(that’s how stunning the free trade cult has had its feverish death grip on the throats of the world), and how china knew full well it works, although today, its going to cause them trouble if they do not do a internal new deal. and they can do it within their system, as long has the heavy boot is not lifted off of the throats of the rich.
” those who saw bigger, better opportunities from an economic nationalist/protectionist turn,”
with Lincoln being a very very astute economically president who understood franklin and hamilton, turned america into the most advanced richest economy in the world.
A “growing minority” of the employee class are supporting Trump? Growing? Not even the Trump campaign believes that. Even if you gift Trump total support of four years-worth of new 18-year-old voters (absurd), the number of Trump voters who died within the last four years is greater. The Biden-voter turned Trump-supporter is a mythical creature. Which explains the roll-out of the all new abortion-agnostic Donald and anthropomorphic nutritional supplement, RFK 2.0’s presidential campaign anabolizing into an AG bid before a grateful Trump (if Trump could feel gratitude). Two lemons driving into a mob, voters whom happen to be leveraging the power of dual-X chromosomes.
Even before that, you may find yourself acting as both employer and employee during various parts of the day so as to make that class dichotomy meaningless for hypothesis-testing purposes. “Well? How did I get here?” Doc Wolfe should ask his graduate students to diagram their personal class distinctions relative to his career and the university. Then Wolfe should dump those papers in the trash along with any hope of being “redeemed” by ideology as read into any economic system which read a lot like less-prosaic analogs of Christian theology.
The most consequential “Marxist Analysis” that I’ve witnessed is the long-division calculations regarding book sales Karl Marx jotted in the margins of a publishing contract for a book which would have preceded his Communist Manifesto, had Marx not taken the advance money and abandoned writing the book altogether. It is profound marginalia in light of Marx’s later Manifesto (completed under a different publishing contract) arriving months too late to have been read by anyone participating in the actual 1848 revolutions. (Spoiler: they failed.) Karl Marx’s personal profit margins.
Making Shit Up is against our written site Policies. As you surely know, blacks have overwhelmingly supported Team Dem. Trump is doing better with blacks than in 2016 or 2020, disproving your fact free diatribe at the top.
From Black Enterprise in March, “Polls Show Trump Support Rising Among Black Voters”
https://www.blackenterprise.com/polls-show-black-support-rising-trump/
Attacks on site authors are not on either.
I trust you will find your happiness on the Internet. Elsewhere.
Richard Wolff’s class analysis is far to broad and overly simple to be useful. A better, more nuanced framework using his employer/employee dichotomy would include the following.
Among employers would be FIRE+Transport, industrial, and small businesses. The FIRE+Transport sector–which produces nothing–is devoted to making money with money derived from certain services. During the past 40+ years it has risen to exploiter-in-chief. The industrial sector–much weakened domestically by the FIRE sector–still make things but to do so is largely reliant upon workers laboring in facilities abroad and support of services provided by the FIRE+T sector. The dimishing remains small businesses, traditionally home of the petite bourgeoisie, will the smaller the business identify with the interests of employees, e.g., payments to the FIRE+T sector, precarity.
Employees may be divided among the PMC, service workers, and productive workers. The PMC are employed as executives and administrative functionaries in government, the FIRE+T sector, industry, and small businesses. They are likely to identify with the goals and ideology of their employers to the extent to which they are on a career path. They have little interest in organizing. Service workers, e.g., secretaries, bank clerks, wait staff are a very fluid work force. They are difficult to organize. Productive workers are skilled or unskilled. The former are more apt to be self-organizing in order to protect their guild status. Unskilled workers, more fluid than service workers, are difficult to organize.
Within and across classes are active elements of identity: gender, recentcy and degree of assimilation, and race. Women in a capitalist economy are saddled with the centuries-old traditions and ideology of domesticity. The more recent one’s immigration status and the less skilled one’s abilities the the lower one’s place in the workforce. Being non-white is an abiding detriment no matter one’s class, and also within one’s class.
Prejudices associated with such identity issues hinder building class solidarity and may readily contribute to eroding class solidarity under severe economic stresses.
I am a little confused at lumping Transport in with FIRE. It is true that Transport does not literally make things, but Transport makes it possible for thingmakers to make things. If somebody does not transport coal, limestone, iron ore to a steel mill, how are steelmakers supposed to be able to make steel without the ingredients first being transported to the place where the steel is made?
As per Yves introduction, to me, these large generalizations are always for the game sake of pundit talk, and ignore, the majority of African american and latino/hispanic possible voters just don’t vote. Also ‘likely voters’. narrows it down too. Since most people just don’t like Trump and Biden. Pew research is generally ok, and if you look there, ‘latinos/hispanics’ have the lowest turnout of potential voters. 39% could easily translate in the real population of about 5%.
Both Biden and Trump won by relatively razor-thin margins in the swing electoral college states in ’16 and ’20.
https://twitter.com/Barchart/status/1778629216033984584
Per Fed, Credit Card Delinquency Rates hit the worst level since data started being recorded.
The bottom 66% of Americans are in atrocious fiscal shape; and the op-ed crowd is keeping their heads in the sand ignoring real world facts, just like w/respect to Ukraine and Gaza.