Questions of Definitions, Objectives … and Freedom
I confess my understanding of modern European history may be less than profound, but ever since my undergraduate days as a history major at a liberal arts college (nearly six decades ago!) I have been unable to escape the haunting portrait of the world painted by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto. I know there are perfectly legitimate intellectual critiques of Marx, and I take them all seriously … but still that haunting continues.
Everything about our current 21st century state of politics in both Europe and the United States, even now Asia and Latin America, seems to reflect some variation on a theme of class warfare. Accept it, tweak the philosophy, but don’t reject it – at least if you have any sense of moral integrity. The world is not conflict-free. And it sure seems to me that peace versus war depends upon how we perceive the elements of some primal conflict. Perhaps there isn’t a single cause, but rather basic biological tendencies we share with all other species (fight or flight, competitiveness, etc.). My human sensibilities, however, impel me to favor peace over war – to mitigate frictions, to adapt rather than fight.
Yet, looking around me, that preference appears to be less than universally shared. Marx and Engels saw “class” as their paradigm. They interpreted the desire for justice in terms of 19th century European (including English) social and economic structures. The perceived threat to power they posed was great enough to spur many efforts over the next century-and-a-half to accomplish much mitigation in all Western societies; thus, the struggle for justice they had defined. The world we inhabit today is better than the one they inhabited. Justice has advanced almost everywhere – but we still see forces of revanchism, new feelings of victimization. Politicians in democracies, as well as in less-than-democracies, often exploit such popular feelings.
So, what does class struggle look like in the American political context of the 2020s? Most socialist language from the 19th and 20th centuries has been rendered obsolete. A new definition of “working class” is becoming fashionable. Today’s proletariat is perceived as those without much formal education (still probably more than was typical of the working class in Marx’s time) who typically work in what has become known as the “gig economy” or some equally precarious employment situation. If unable to make ends meet, or laid off, the market must absorb them. And if there is enough labor surplus, among their class, then they can’t demand higher pay or greater income security. Labor unions become unavailable to them. Since they don’t have enough social or financial capital to be considered bourgeois in Marx’s terms, they are today’s working class — as I understand it. It’s not very different from what was described in the Manifesto. But interpretations of that pamphlet have changed over the ensuing ages.
Although much real, tangible progress has been made for the American working class since the Manifesto’s 1848 publication, there has also been much greater concentration of wealth over the last 50 years. One of the main reasons for the obsolescence of Marx and Engels 19th century vocabulary has been the Manifesto’s failure to anticipate the neoliberal “trickling up.” Token bourgeois stake holding via homeownership and, later, 401(k) retirement plans were unforeseen by Marx. And industrial capitalism’s framework for the laboring classes has been replaced in our post-industrial age. When Abraham Lincoln first read him, Marx was aligned with radical Republicans in opposition to slavery – but white Americans never felt exploited in the same way as their European cousins. American workers were merely “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” in John Steinbeck’s famous words. This was American exceptionalism. Class was a structure that America, from its founding, sought to escape – whether the landowner aristocracy or the crown itself. To Lincoln, slavery was the American equivalent of Marx’s class struggle – perhaps uglier because of race, but nevertheless part of a bigger structural issue. Lincoln did not live to see the “gilded age” of industrial capitalism in the United States. FDR and John Maynard Keynes did not live to see the neoliberal counterrevolution of the 1980s and ‘90s. Piketty’s Trente Glorieuse described their times, and maybe Reconstruction as well. Equality had made great strides, both in the post-Civil War era, and in the post-World War II Keynesian industrial recovery. But what of counterrevolutions? Current interpretations of Marx and Engels emphasize that they never said the collapse of capitalism was inevitable within any reader’s lifetime – it was a more apocalyptic prediction for them (eventually inevitable). It took Lenin and certain anarchist elements to translate that into a call for urgent action now.
The Cold War coincided with those “Trente Glorieuse.” The capitalist West clearly established decisive geopolitical advantage over the Marxist-Leninist East (and South). Growth became key to ever-increasing prosperity and equality. But as time went on, and the Soviet Union disappeared, China discovered capital, which also became the secret to development for the Global South. A new enemy emerged. Those who controlled all that capital, a global elite, became identified as the primary obstacles to further advancement of the new proletariat. Indeed, to many, this incurred a new life or death struggle. Its primary objective: command a greater share of scarce resources for ourselves – at the expense of others! Yet peace can only supersede war if resources became less scarce for everybody. Hence, growth.
But how to guarantee growth? This is the question of the 21st century. Degrowth thinking is associated only with radical elements – the new anarchists. But it does look like competition for whatever increased resources we create (via technology, political subsidy, or taxation) is not going away. Few of us now have much confidence in the ability of the normal sociopolitical structures to reduce inequality much. Even our hopes for technological breakthroughs (AI) are chastened by our suspicions of who controls the wires. Neoliberalism seems dead. Is this our new class war?
On one side are the Silicon Valley “establishment” of Musk, Bezos, Altman, and their ilk – on the other side we have everybody whose livelihood may be threatened by AI development. It’s a modern Luddite revolution. This implies we must redefine once more what it means to be “working class” – it consists of those who DO NOT control the levers of power. That bachelor’s degree may no longer confer social capital. Especially for younger, entry-level, white-collar workers who cannot afford to enter the homeowner market, and whose precarity prevents investing in a 401(k). The only capital that counts resides on Wall Street, the Crypto exchanges, the VC world. In fact, those with less knowledge of that world may ultimately do better in this new revolution. So far, “technical” education (2-year post high school max) does not surpass the earning potential of that liberal arts degree, but the trend line is unmistakable.
But there may be bigger questions to focus on: like the future of our whole society. Can we afford to lose a generation of workers in the commons? Is the current competition for resources ultimately going to benefit new workers, or only their bosses? Ultimately, can we pursue freedom … that classic American dream? Perhaps we haven’t moved that far beyond the 19th century Marxian view, after all.
— William Sundwick
Warp and Woof 