When you read a report about how the “middle class has shrunk” or that the president gave a speech vowing to “strengthen the middle class,” what does it mean?

Given how much attention is paid to the “middle class,” you may be surprised to learn that there isn’t a hard official definition of who gets to be in it. The vague parameters may help to explain why people aren’t great at deciding whether they themselves are middle class or not.

For example, while we know that wealth inequality is growing, and therefore presumably those in the middle class are showing signs of falling down the economic ladder (or for a rare few, up), the number of Americans who report being in the middle class has remained largely unchanged for years – until recently. What is perhaps more surprising and even a little bit galling is that some of the wealthiest Americans in the country consistently self-report their status as “middle class.”

An analysis published by the Pew Charitable Trust took a look at this question. Pew defined middle class households as those earning 67%-200% of a state’s median income.

Take a look at the chart below. Pew computed their range using median income numbers published by the US Census Bureau’s 2013 American Community Survey. The ACS median numbers are listed in the leftmost column. Pew shows the median figure opposite the range, which it breaks out further by state, to show how much middle-class earners make in each state. The states are listed in descending order based on median income.

Middle Class but Economically Insecure

Middle-classness is very often not as much about actual earnings, but about how people actually feel. And as it turns out, people’s feelings (in terms of their identifying with middle class status) are remarkably broad. Many wealthy as well as poor people can be found to simultaneously identify as middle class, even when their incomes fall far outside of the middle range. Earnings and assests are thus, for many of us, only part of the definition of class. That is to say, there is an important “psychological” component to class that interacts in a dynamic way with the economic dimensions.

Consequently, you might look at this chart and think that the “lower bound” middle class income category doesn’t really feel like middle class at all. That’s because the term “middle” here is being used in its most literal sense. Middle income, in other words, does not always signify middle class. So if you find yourself located in the middle range, but find that this doesn’t feel like middle class to you, it might have something to do with the skyrocketing cost of living, which is being driven up principally by housing costs, and the fact that the majority of people aren’t seeing large boosts to their salaries. Lost jobs, stagnating income, and general feelings of insecurity are all as important as economic criteria in determining how a given individual feels about their class status.

Interestingly now, because there is such an extreme concentration of earnings at the top end of the scale, the “middle” number is starting to show signs of trending higher over time. If the trend persists, more and more people fall outside this range. It’s no wonder that a Pew survey found that between the years 2000 and 2013, the number of people considered “middle class” fell in every single state. People are falling out of the middle class at an alarming rate! These numbers should serve as a stark reminder of just how little most Americans actually have. The take-away here is that middle class ain’t what it used to be.

More than this, there isn’t one middle class, rather, there are “many” middle classes. What all of them require, according to experts, are feelings of income security. Without income security then, theoretically and practically speaking, there can be no middle class.

[Note: using the “median,” rather than the “mean” measure of income, generally produces a statistical result that reflects a more accurate picture of income/earnings, because data are less likely to be skewed by abnormalities in the extreme ends].

Median Household Income and the US Economy

Since 1980, U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) per capita has increased 67%, while median household income has only increased by 15%. An economic recession will normally cause household incomes to decrease, often by as much as 10%.

Median household income is a politically sensitive indicator. Voters can be critical of their government if they perceive that their cost of living is rising faster than their income. Figure 1 shows how American incomes have changed since 1970. The last recession was the early 2000s recession and was started with the bursting of the dot-com bubble. It affected most advanced economies including the European Union, Japan and the United States.

The current crisis began with the bursting of the U.S. housing bubble, which caused a problem in the dangerously exposed sub prime-mortgage market. This in turn has triggered a global financial crisis. In constant price, 2011 American median household income is 1.13% lower than what it was in 1989. This corresponds to a 0.05% annual decrease over a 22-year period. In the mean time, GDP per capita has increased by 33.8% or 1.33% annually.

The Politics of Poverty

Now, if we were to think about these findings in light of poverty issues, the picture becomes even more grim. The federal guidelines for what we consider the “poverty line” set an income threshold to determine who is poor enough to qualify for benefits. That threshold, as it turns out, is painfully set at a very low level.

So for example, according to the 2015 guidelines, anything above $11,770 and, as far as the government is concerned is an indicatior that you aren’t really poor. Unfortunately, this delusion has real world consequences. Everything from healthcare subsidies to food stamps to help with housing is based on this rigid guideline, which has demonstrated that it is difficult to change for reasons that are largely political. This means that many people who are struggling can’t get access to the help they need.

Discussion Questions

How do you feel about your individual or family status, based on what is reflected on the income chart?

Do you feel anxiety about your earnings ability and your ability to secure a comfortable lifestyle?

How do the psychological dimensions of class interact with the economic dimensions of class in your own life? Do the numbers say one thing, and your feelings another? In other words, do you sometimes feel conflicted about your class status?

Sociological Concepts: Class, Status, & Party

It might strike you as odd that classical sociologists were deeply engaged with broad questions about modernity and social inequality. This led them to question the very basic structures and functions of society and how all of this further bound up with questions about social change.

Marx, Weber, and Durkheim used the concepts of “class” “status” and “party” to explain how people organize themselves into a society. Social groups, furthermore, reflected how people self-organized into social niches or social “strata.”

Contemporary sociologists still turn to this foundational work, because it furnishes concepts that we can use to understand complex issues like social inequality and the role that capitalism plays in society.

Why Should I Care About Social Inequality?

Isn’t it more or less dumb to assume that everyone should be equal? Isn’t it just “natural” that some people are smarter, stronger, and richer than other people? Don’t people achieve success and better outcomes simply because they work harder than others? Superficially, many might say “yes.” But the real answer, of course, is that “life is more complex than this.”

Concepts like social “class” allow us to think critically and pursue an answer to these questions. That’s why it is such an important component of theory building in the social sciences. Yet “class” can be understood as both a theoretical concept and as a “variable.” In the case of the latter, when we look closely at it, we find that what appears to be one variable “class” is in reality comprised of other related interlocking concepts and/or variables like wealth, income, and education. 

Given this, social science researchers are keen to study the different ways that the “class” variable is constructed. Moreover, they are interested to understand how this dynamic variable potentially interacts with other variables that reflect different levels or “dimensions” of social stratification like race and gender.

Whenever researchers try to understand the interlocking dynamics of concepts (or variables) like class, race, gender, and party, this is called taking an intersectional theoretical approach. Some people might call this a “radical” approach, however, social scientists think it merely reflects an effort to understand the complexity of human social life.

Defining concepts and variables is the first step in the process of undertaking a systematic effort to measure outcomes that embedded within social patterns. This helps us to appreciate the dynamic multifaceted nature of social group experience.

Looking deeper into social class, we find it is interesting to look at how groups maintain their “groupness.” In doing so, they often make great efforts to not only distinguish their class, but to also assert social status (because “status” confers social advantages). They do in ways that are both conscious as well as unconscious.

As part of this process, they similarly make choices about how to socially identify with political parties (and candidates). To this end, they may not have an especially deep grasp of a party or candidate’s stated policy goals; however, they make subjective choices to affiliate with them based on “feelings” as well as the sense of belonging they achieve through political group affiliation.

Groupthink

Often, and perhaps more interesting, are the ways in which individuals demonstrate their committed desire to maintain a social group affiliation, which political scientists find often overrides any one individual’s desire to demonstrate independent thought on a political issue. Psychologists sometimes refer to this as “groupthink,” a mode of thinking in which individual members of cohesive groups tend to accept a viewpoint or conclusion when it represents a perceived group consensus; they do this regardless of whether or they, as an individual group member, believe it to be valid, correct, or even optimal. For this type of person, it is more important to be socially recognized as professing beliefs that are consistent with their social group identification than it is to be “right” about any given issue.

Equality vs. Equity

Karl Marx

Marx analyzed the development of modern capitalism and predicted the emergence of polarized social class conflict. He became interested in how a given individual’s relation to the means of production. His simple approach understood people fit into one of two basic social groups. His logic dictates that people are either part the bourgeois ownership class (the capitalists) or they are part of proletariat working class…and nothing in-between.

For Marx, it is the dynamic contradictory social relationship between the two different social classes that forms the basis for social class conflict – he sees conflict as the major motive force for change in social systems based on capitalism.

Put another way, Marx saw social class as the main axis around which power relationships are organized (economic and political). An individual’s class outlook (how you see the world) is determined by their material position (wealth). Of course, there are theorists that followed Marx, who find this conceptual framing to be a bit too limited (i.e. Pierre Bourdieu). In short, they felt that there are other things like “feelings” (i.e. rage) that might motivate people to override/disregard their class interests.

Researchers have found over and over again that the material position you are born into has not only a major impact on the way you see the world, but also on how you understand things like politics, major issues, and social problems.

Sadly, they have also found that it is common for people to betray their class interests in favor of indulging their emotions, feelings, and desire to seek proximity to  power (even if that “power” seeks their perpetual subjugation).

They love the “invisible hand of the free market” until it one day slaps them in the face. This is the basis for a lot of today’s grievance politics.

Social Mobility

For the record, many people can and do change social classes. Yet despite the efforts of some people, whose engage in “hard work” to facilitate this, this is increasingly not a statistically a common occurrence. In the United States, for example, the statistical norm is for people to remain in the social class that they were born into.

The concept of social mobility refers to a process when someone moves from one class to another, either up or down. Such people are known as “class travelers.” That is to say, they change their social classes over the course of their lifetime. When this happens, the highest attained social class status will tend to exert the most influence over how one sees the world.

Despite what you might expect, even lower class/status people can possess what are called “aspirational” social identities; which is to say, they identify more strongly with the social class situated above them (the class status they hope to achieve), as opposed to their current social class.

The Tools of Distraction

Marx understood that one of the primary goals of capitalism (capitalists) was to distract working class people (the proletariat) to prevent them from achieving class consciousness. This can be accomplished though any number of ways. To this end, it accounts for why capitalists spend a lot of money and effort trying to entertain working class people – the classic “bread and circuses” ploy.

Workers are easily distracted by entertainment, because the have hard jobs and simply desire some level of pleasant distraction that doesn’t require hard thinking. They don’t always have the luxury of time to think about, let alone understand, abstract concepts like “capitalism” to reflect on how they are being exploited in society by capitalists, who can use their money and power to manipulate them into buying their products (that they often cannot afford) and serving their interests.

When working class people buy into the belief system that they must conspicuously consume/buy things (materialist ideology) to be seen as worthy, one of the outcomes of this, according to Marx, it that it prevents them from achieving class consciousness and solidarity with other workers. Now, they have to work even harder to pay for the things they bought, they remain committed to their individualist endeavors, because they are always chasing the next paycheck to pay the bills.

Why is this important? Because alienated workers who carry debt burdens are easy to manipulate; they don’t have the time or inclination to seek out/create social bonds with other workers, which are their best shot at leveraging the force of their collective power to overthrow the system oppresses them.

Now, some people may say “exploited my ass….just quit your job if you don’t like the work.” But that’s not always an option for poor or working class people, who are often focused on “survival” activities so they can get through another day. Future planning looks like a luxury to people who are struggling to survive.

Marx & Conflict Theory

Conflict theorists in the social sciences trace their intellectual roots to Marx in light of his emphasizing that social “conflict” defines the relationship between class factions and is the motive force for social change. Conflict, according to Marx, is inevitable, because the capitalists that control the material resources and wealth in society are they are not likely to ever give up the game of exploiting workers in order to attain more wealth and profit.

More to the point, capitalists keep the deck stacked in their favor by using their influence to shape the key major social institutions in society: the education system, the criminal justice system & laws, the media, and healthcare.

Violence is hard-wired into the System

Violence is, according to Marx, understood to be a hard-wired feature of capitalism. In order to keep people laboring at low levels of compensation (or maybe even working for free, i.e. slavery), capitalists will at some point have to resort to coercion; that is, violence. This refusal by capitalists to acknowledge and compensate workers relative to the important contributions that they make, in Marx’s view, necessitates the violent overthrow of the social system. 

Marx says that the only way to end the cycle of violence is to end to capitalism and reorganize the social order in a more equitable fashion, this way ALL people can profit from the system, not just the wealthiest of the wealthy.

Alienation

Another concern Marx had with regard to capitalism and social inequality is how this also produces alienation. According to him, as capitalism advanced and people were forced to sell their labor to survive, the division of labor was increased; this resulted in them becoming alienated. Marx says workers became alienated on 4 different levels:

• alienated from the objects/products they produce
• alienated from the process of production
• alienated from themselves – their “species-being”
• alienated from other people.

In other words, the experience of selling their labor resulted in a loss of control and power over their life as well as their labor. People became slaves of the objects they produced in the same manner as they became appendages of machines.

The inherent structural disparity between the members of the working class and the owners of capital, Marx believed, contained the seeds for revolution, where the working class would have no choice but to rise up to throw off their capitalist oppressors.

Put another way, he believed that the two social classes must eventually “clash” and that capitalism, as s system of social organization, must be superseded in order for man to recover his alienated self and be free from class domination.

Here’s a little video to explain Marx’s concept of alienation:

Max Weber

Weber was most interested in the formation of the modern state and the rise of modern organizations. He formulated a three component theory of social stratification, which included class, status, and party. Some people describe his intellectual work as the sociology of domination.

He was also committed to understanding the history of “rationality.” To be more specific, we might understand his intellectual project as one dedicated to understanding why modern forms of domination – rational legal authority – developed first in Europe. For Weber, rationalization was a process whereby “ends” and “means” were progressively clarified.

Unlike Marx, Weber thought it was important to think about social positioning in terms that took into account non-economic qualities like honor, prestige, religion, and the political power domain.

Weber does not see class as forming a basis for social action and change. He doesn’t theorize a “working class” in the same manner as does Marx. Weber rather speaks of an upper, middle and lower class within lifestyle groups. Nevertheless, he still considers social class to be important to determine an individual’s “life chances.”

Weber, in this respect, understood there to be a multiplicity of classes in any given society, which contained multiple overlapping dimensions and groups. People were driven to achieve their individual goals/ends by employing different means within these overlapping structures. That’s because for Weber, unlike Marx, it’s not just about economics.

Weber is also known for his seminal work The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, wherein he coined the term the “Protestant work ethic” to describe how links made by theologians between religion, work, and capital laid the groundwork for capitalism.

Calvinist theology is heavily invested in the idea of “predestination,” which dictates that only an elect few are predestined for salvation from birth. Confoundingly, the opposite also held true: poverty and abjection were signs you’d been denied God’s grace; that you were not one of the “chosen” people. You don’t have any material success to point to as an outward sign of God’s grace and so you are damned.

This double predestination doctrine, despite being cruel and despotic, has been (and remains) very successful. Historically, protestant societies are always wealthier than Catholic, which are wealthier than Orthodox. The United States represents an example of a wealthy society built on Calvinism. Yet here, even as the “Protestant Ethic” persists, most people have long since forgotten about its religious origins. Yet is is worth noting that when this ethic developed in the U.S., many people in the country weren’t even considered people (i.e. slaves). In this social context, slaves were blamed for their misfortune, subjugation, and torture even as they at the same time had the legitimacy and value of their labor erased (slaves worked hard but weren’t even regarded as human).

Naturally, all of this caused people quite a bit of personal anxiety, and so they were compelled to look for hints or signs that they were members of the elect. Since they were invested in the idea that material success was among the most notable indicators of God’s favor, the spent their life doing the hard work, where they set about to create God’s kingdom on Earth through a secular vocation. Hard work thus was considered the primary pathway to achieve God’s grace.

Again, these feelings and beliefs continue to persist, even though the original religious connection may be no longer recognizable. A strong argument can be made that this kind of religious morality continues to inform how many of us think not only about work but also about people whose ancestors were slaves (African Americans).

Note, if religious Calvinism served as the nasty model for capitalism, by way of contrast, the Nordic model (based on Lutheranism), represents an attempt to clean it up a bit, as it aimed to smooth over capitalism’s rough edges and messy exploitation, while still emphasizing the virtue of working hard. This is why people tend to praise the Nordic model whereas they criticize the U.S./neoliberal model of capitalism.

Race & the Protestant Work Ethic

“The Protestant work ethic that influenced the founding of this country included a belief that the more material wealth you have, the closer you are to God,” said Robin DiAngelo, a professor whose research focuses on how white people are socialized to collude with institutional racism.

“So during slavery, we said, ‘You must do all the work but we will never allow that to pay off.’ Now we don’t give black people access to work. Then and now they have not been allowed to participate in wealth building or granted the morality we attach to wealth” (DiAngelo)

This historical entanglement of property and virtue continues to inform racial views.

“Property among white Americans is seen as something to be treasured and revered,” said Winbush. “Black Americans, for reasons having to do with this history of disenfranchisement, have not viewed themselves as truly owning anything in America” ((DiAngelo).

Put differently, when we think about people within a context where work/labor contributes to building God’s kingdom on Earth in a very physical way, anyone whose labor was not recognized as legitimate was denied access to material wealth, success, and social status – all the things that supposedly were indicators of one’s “chosen” status.

Denying the labor of black Americans thus became an important part of the legitimating ideology of white supremacy – it helped reinforce it.

Ethicist Katie Geneva Cannon has written at length about how the institutional denial of citizenship and freedom to black people essentially precluded the possibility of them ever being seen as virtuous in white society.

“The ‘rightness of whiteness’ counted more than the basic political and civil rights of any Black person…

Eventually, institutional slavery ended, but the virulent and intractable hatred that supported it did not,” Cannon wrote in The Emergence of Black Feminist Consciousness. For it is through both erasure and ignorance that we continue to deny the virtue and legitimacy of black citizenship and labor (Cannon).

Although it has been a long time since the ideas of the Protestant work ethic took hold – and slavery too was a looooong time ago – nonetheless, we are still trapped within the legacy of inequities brought about by these social dynamics and ways of understanding who “works hard” and who is socially worthy. While the religious explanations that underlie the logic no longer seem to be relevant; the economic logic remains, emptied of its religious content.

American industriousness would not have come about without free slave labor. War and Imperialism (“offense” taking other people’s stuff combined with a little bit of “defense”) was also key to industrial progress. That these things are plainly obvious, yet they still manage to escape critical recognition, is a problem – one that gets in the way of achieving real social progress.

Pierre Bourdieu

Bourdieu’s work represents something of an elaboration and synthesis of the work of both Marx and Weber. He proposed a functional theory that linked the “material” elements of class with the symbolic “psychic” dimensions of class (could it be that they’re not really separate at all?). Bourdieu was, in this respect, interested to explore how social class gets internalized; that is, how it not only reflects the material aspects of your life, but how it also affects your habits of mind, including the tastes and preferences that you develop for culture (i.e. hair, clothes, music, art, food, sports, people, body style, and other aesthetics). All of these things, according to Bourdieu, reflect the individual’s relation to the dominant class in society; they distinguish the dominated from the dominant.

In light of this important work, we might consider how the cultural realm continues to constitute an important site of tension, conflict, and expression, as people jockey for position in the status hierarchy and engage in status-seeking behavior in order to claim their position in the social order. Bourdieu’s ideas further illuminate how economic and cultural relations might be merged with relations of subordination, based on class, age, and gender (he didn’t say much about race) and in doing so shows how multiple forms of subordination articulate and may be deeply intertwined.

Wealth Distribution

Presently, in the United States, we have an economic situation similar to what Marx described.

The vast majority of people are resource-poor, relatively speaking, when compared to their well-off brethren, who own upwards of 40% of the country’s wealth. The following video clip offers a powerful illustration of wealth distribution dynamics in the contemporary U.S.:

How to Fix it: Policy Solutions

For a long time, economists, policymakers, and many lawmakers have argued we shouldn’t worry about social and wealth inequality; that the real problem to solve is how to reduce poverty. Many of these same people insisted that high levels of inequality were unimportant because policies that benefit wealth accumulation among high-income earners effectively help everyone. “A rising tide lifts all boats” is how the wisdom goes.

New research by Branko Milanovic and Roy van der Weide takes issue with this kind of thinking. They assert that policies derived from such flawed logic are dead wrong. According to the authors, social inequality doesn’t produce gains for the economy as a whole (and everyone across the earning spectrum); rather, inequality only benefits the very very rich.

Thomas Piketty advances claims that echo Marx, as he argues that social inequality is not an accident or the simple result of individual actors/groups making better or unfortunate bad choices; rather, he says social inequality is a distinguishing feature of capitalism that can only be reversed through state-based policy intervention. Unless capitalism is reformed, he says, the entire democratic social order will be put at risk.

Prior to this research, economists were prone to argue that wealth redistribution slowed down economic growth. These economists maintained that any attempts to reduce economic inequality through the stimulus of policy mechanisms would have the effect of making poverty worse.

If you can follow this contradictory logic, they are essentially saying is that financial incentives/rewards are a good way to incentivize the wealthy to stimulate the economy; but similar financial incentives/rewards provided to poor people don’t work. This logic further suggests that incentivizing poor people with money will only make them lazy and less likely to work hard and achieve. In short, incentives for me but not for thee.

Given the benefit of an expanding literature on the subject, we now know these assumptions aren’t true; that social inequality actually reduces economic growth. That is to say – the assumptions of many leading economists were backward.

The latest research findings indicate that by structuring economic and tax policies to motivate  rich people to invest, thereby increasing social inequality, resulted in even higher levels of social inequality, which prompted poor people to take on more debt as a means to catch up/survive. This has had the effect of destabilizing the economy.

In a consumer driven economy, where there are not enough poor and middle-class families to consume products, businesses are forced to  contend with less revenue and fewer customers. Consequently, instead of providing the poor and middle class with an incentive to better their lives (so they might achieve the American dream), higher levels of social inequality gave rich people an incentive to pull up the economic ladder, leaving everyone’s boat stranded.

The rich, in other words, left the poor and the middle class behind. More than this, they invested their riches in building walls to seclude themselves, out of fear of needing to protect against angry poor people, who they know at some point are going to figure out that they got played. Now you know why people increasingly feel like they need so many guns to protect themselves….and why billionaires are building bunkers in New Zealand.

So now, instead being forced to always work harder, the rich are able to sit back and enjoy the fruits of their accumulated wealth (check out HBO’s “The White Lotus”). Research on spending patterns demonstrates that when they’re not spending their wealth on luxury consumables, they often choose to redirect earnings outside the local economy and into off-shore tax havens, through the use of complicated accounting mechanisms and tax deferment schemes.

The poor and middle class, not surprisingly, lose hope and become disenchanted…so much so that they sometimes argue against their own economic interests, where they too will sometimes argue that the rich have every right to become rich by any means necessary (even if it means stepping on the necks of poor and working people)….because that’s just “smart business.” This disenchantment comes from restricted opportunity, a perceived lack of fairness in the system, and the lack of belief that they might help organize the world in a different way, so that poor people didn’t have to be exploited.

The problem with the continued oppression of poor people is that: 1) they will at some point get angry and rise up; and 2) with earnings are depressed and employment not always stable, they will have less money to spend/invest to keep the system chugging along. Bear in mind, one of the consequences of all this is that they probably have less money to invest in their own education to get ahead, as they are increasingly buried in debt and find it nearly impossible to plan for their future.

Social inequality reduces economic growth because it reduces demand at the same time as it curtails upward social and economic mobility.

In light of this, it is important to think about how your different class and status positions might influence how you think and feel about things like social problems. Or are you so privileged to think that social inequality is not a problem at all.

What Does a More Equitable Society Look Like?

A more equal society would mean everyone has shelter, healthcare, education, food, and time to rest and play as well as work. It would mean not discriminating on grounds of identity, sex or skin color.

It would mean having a social system that provides people with access to facilities such as libraries and galleries and parks which could be participated in by everyone.

It would involve foregrounding egalitarian goals and dramatically curbing corporate power and high pay.

It would mean heeding the call for universal public services (i.e. internet, heat, and hot water).

It would mean prioritizing climate change as a social issue that affects everyone.

It would mean prioritizing healthcare as a social issue that affects everyone.

These are structural social problems; they are not “work ethic” problems.

Discussion Questions:

Why is there social inequality? Is it “natural” as many people assume? Is it made by our institutions and social policy? Or is it simply a reflection of the fact that some people don’t work hard?

Is the United States, land of the free, a “classless” society? Or are there defined social classes? If so, what social class do you relate to? Can you identify your class position (as determined by your birth) and relate to how it might impact the way you see social problems as well as opportunities in the world?

Apply concepts and theories related to class conflict, social inequality, and social stratification (i.e. social class, race, gender) explain your own life experiences. 

How might your class position influence how you see people located at both the lower and high end of the wealth scale?

Where have you traditionally believed that most of the wealth is located in our society? Do you think it is held by middle-class people? How might your class position influence the way you think about social problems and policy solutions? 

If you don’t feel particularly “exploited” based on your present-day economic circumstances, does that make it difficult for you to relate to someone else who might feel that way?

Do you find yourself saying things like, “if you don’t like the way you are being treated, get a better job?” (without questioning why exploitation should be a natural part of someone’s work experience). Think, for example, about McDonald’s workers, Walmart workers, and even union workers.

Do you think that the accumulation of assets at the high end is a simple reflection of “hard work” or “smart work” invested by the people who end up there?

Do you think that the people at the bottom of the wealth distribution are there because they are the natural losers, who didn’t work hard/smart; that they simply failed?

How is the notion of “bootstrapping” and/or the philosophy of “individualism” challenged by the video?

Why do you think working class people are often among the loudest complainers with respect to redistributive politics and programs (programs critics call “socialism”). What is the major source of their complaint? Do you think, for example, that maybe they complain because they don’t like or relate to many of the people who comprise the working poor (blacks and Hispanics) or do they simply just not support any form of benefits (i.e. “handouts”) for poor people in general?

Why do these same working class people often not often complain about giving away tax dollars to support tax incentives for wealthy people (i.e. policies that give money/handouts to banks, wall street, etc.)?

The chart clearly indicates that most of the country’s wealth is concentrated among the top 1% of wage earners. When you add to this the fact that most government and social programs are paid for by wage taxes extracted from the middle class (because neither the very poor or the very rich pay a high percentage of their income in taxes), why do you think it is that so many people across the income spectrum are calling for the poor (and not the rich) to pay more taxes? Does this seem logical?

Why do you think that programs that benefit poor people (food stamps/SNAP benefits) are referred to as “welfare,” but programs that benefit the working and middle-class people (home mortgage interest deduction, unemployment compensation, GI bill), wealthy (capital gains taxes), and corporations (tax incentives, subsidies) are not similarly thought of as corporate “welfare?”

Why do you think so many people accept the upside down logic that rich people need financial incentives (high pay or tax cuts) to produce jobs, but providing financial incentives to poor people is bad policy, because giving them money/benefits rewards bad behavior?

Do you think corporations are the true “wealth” generators in society….or might the be the real “Welfare Queens?”

People in general (and especially politicians) love to talk about the American Dream – the idea that competitive individualism and hard work pay off with guaranteed steady progress up the economic ladder. The “dream,” as such, is theoretically attainable for anyone who is willing to chase it. But what if this were not true? Have you ever stopped to think about how you came to believe this?

The American Dream speaks to us all in different ways. Realistically, then, there is not just one dream, but in all likelihood, there are many dreams, even if they are just a variation on a theme: “If I work hard I will be rewarded.”

Why do some people believe in the dream fervently, whereas others do not? How might the extent to which someone embraces the dream (or rejects it) depend on social factors (i.e. circumstances of their upbringing, which includes family status, household wealth, social class, and education)?

Regardless of whether or not one “believes” in the dream, the power of its allure is real. Here is the simple formula that comprises the dream:

“hard work = wealth/success.”

Here again, the beating heart and soul of this type of thinking is an American obsession with competitive rugged individualism and self-reliance. This makes it acceptable to do things like applaud people for giving up vacation, family time, and leisure activities. So much so, that many people work themselves to death to prove themselves worthy of the dream. This formula for success has become so culturally ingrained it almost functions as a social law.

And so it follows, the people who can’t “make it” are those who fail to exert sufficient hard work and effort to achieve success.  When or if they fail, it is assumed that they made a “choice.” To quote Donald Trump, from his book “Crippled America,” people who don’t buy into this vison for America are looked at in terms of  “disgust,” “weakness,” “losing,” and “pathetic” (Lowndes, 2020).

Presently, during a time when nations the world over are struggling with the COVID-19 pandemic, it is curiously only in the United States that we see people calling for, at best, benign neglect, and even worse in some cases, outright death for the elderly and disabled. Don’t want to risk exposure at your minimum wage job at the grocery store or care home? Too bad. Toughen up. Sux that you don’t have a strong immune system. When people are deemed no longer useful for business, many of their fellow Americans are willing to let them perish. All because they are deemed no longer productive members of the work force.

The rhetorical oppositions of work vs. welfare, self-reliance vs. dependence, individuals vs. the state, citizens vs. foreigners are all oppositions that are animated by the social categories of race, gender, and class—they run deep in American political culture. All are reflected in the politics of the pandemic right now, and offer a grim political vision of American freedom (Lowndes, 2020).

The fact that so many people fail and fall through the cracks, as it were, is more indicative of a flawed economic system than it is ant given individual’s work ethic. Failure, defined in economic terms, is not always a simple matter of being lazy.

Alternatively, those who are either wealthy or have good paying jobs are considered the good people, as indicated by their success. And how do we know they are successful? Well, they usually have the “toys” to prove it (i.e. nice cars, nice house) which proves they worked harder than the average person. In short, they “made it” through their own individual efforts. Right?

This logic, unfortunately, only accounts for a limited spectrum of dynamics that may influence a person’s opportunity for success. It fails, for example, to take into consideration that people’s life chances, more often than not, are determined by not only factors associated with their birth, which includes access to family wealth, but also access to institutions and other opportunity structures (check out the voluminous body of social mobility research that proves this) .

Briefly put, one’s attained success in life is not a simple linear formula predicted by the single magic variable of “individual effort.” The reality is more complex than this.

Dreaming But Not Believing

According to a recent annual American Values Survey of 4,500 Americans, nearly half of Americans who once believed in the American dream (defined as working hard to get ahead) now think it no longer exists. Similarly, close to half of all Americans over 18 think their generation is better off financially than their children’s will be (Pathe). That’s pretty bleak.

What symptoms are Americans experiencing that have led to this gloomy outlook? With the results of the survey, the Public Religion Research Institute created an Economic Insecurity Index to try to pinpoint the source of the American economic malaise. They asked their survey participants whether they’d experienced any of six different forms of economic insecurity: Had they reduced meals or cut back on food to save money? Were they unable to pay a monthly bill? Did they put off seeing a doctor for financial reasons? Had they lost a job or had hours reduced? Were they receiving food stamps or unemployment benefits?

The most common reported economic insecurity reveals there may be a less publicized dimension of human suffering compared to layoffs or unemployment: food insecurity, with 36 percent of respondents saying they’d experienced it. Why food? For a lot of Americans, this is the one  budgetary item that they may feel they can manage/control (compared to whether or not they pay a monthly required bill) and so they find it is the easiest expense to cut.

Research demonstrates that blacks, more than Hispanics or whites, have had to cut back on food for economic reasons [note that there are variations among whites based on social class, particularly when education is indicated as having/not having a  college education]. These factors are strong predictors of who will have to make food sacrifices.

Even more sadly, the research documents there is increasing food insecurity among college students. In light of this, colleges are establishing food pantries as a way to help combat the problem.

The PRII study additionally found that most Americans have a decidedly negative self-evaluation of their financial situation. Roughly 4-in-10 Americans say they are currently in excellent (7%) or good (34%) financial shape (down 50% from 4 years ago in 2010) while a majority of the public report being in only fair (37%) or poor financial shape (20%). In 2010, half of Americans indicated they were in excellent (9%) or good (41%) shape financially (Pathe).

Today, only 30% of Americans believe the economy has gotten better over the last two years, while 35% say it has gotten worse, and 33% say it has stayed about the same. Keep in mind, this is occurring at a time when the stock market is performing at an all-time high. That says something about who is benefitting (and who is not) from our economic policies in the United States. More on that later (Pathe) [Note: most stocks in the United States are owned by members of the top 1% of society].

Psychology & the Virtue of Selfishness

Imagine for a moment a person who enjoys great wealth and status. What would happen to them if they discovered that the success and privileges they enjoy are not the result of their own hard work?  In other words, how do they process the fact that the model of hard work = wealth/success doesn’t really explain their particular case? They are forced to confront what is perhaps an uncomfortable contradiction; one that may provoke an existential crisis (something they would rather avoid). Psychologists call this mental disconnect “cognitive dissonance.”

To overcome the disconnect/cognitive dissonance, wealthy people have to create a competing narrative: one that lets them return to a state of mental balance. Otherwise, they might have to ask themselves: Do I truly deserve what I have? Do other people deserve to not have the things that I have? Is it fair that I have things (despite not having worked hard) when other people work hard, can’t claim the success that I was given, and thus enjoy the same things that I enjoy? 

This is why many people who identify as wealthy/financially well-off (and even those who aspire to wealth) put extra effort into rationalizing that they are the “natural” beneficiaries of their own hard work and virtue (I’m genetically smarter, work harder, etc.). I should point out here that this is not to say that they don’t work hard. Many do. But many more do not for reasons that they are the beneficiaries of wealth handed down to them by parents, family, etc. This goes on quite a bit with some middle class people too (think about someone you know who inherited a family business).

Perhaps more than others, they invest a lot of time and effort to stress the hard work = success logic. That’s because they have to continually prove to themselves and everyone else that  1) they too are hard-working people who are worthy (not frauds, lay about heirs/idle rich); and 2) the poor are truly poor because they refuse to adopt a hard-working enterprising lifestyle.

As the economist and social philosopher Max Weber points out here, they can never be satisfied that they have simply been fortunate; they have to continuously work to prove they have a right to their financial rewards/fortune; and they want make extra certain that everyone else is assured that they deserve it (because they themselves can never be assured). They’re gaslighting us all while they gaslight themselves.

Avocado Wars

This leads me to sidestep into one of the more recent meme wars that perfectly illustrate this contradiction – the avocado wars! Millennials, in particular, have taken a bashing, as they are told they spend too much money on luxury food items, including avocado toast and brunch. As the logic goes, they are more or less told “your financial problems are not the result of a broken economy; they’re the result of your self-indulgent food choices.”

So along comes Mr. Moneybags – let’s call him Avocado bruh – a supposed “self-made” millionaire to point out the error of their ways:

But as it turns out, here’s what’s really going on:

There are many examples of this type of thinking in our culture. The fact of the matter is that most people in the United States who are financially well off – not that there are not exceptions to this – probably got that way the old fashioned way – they inherited wealth or were given the money. Imagine what you could do if someone gave you a pile of money?

Looking Out for Number One

When all else fails to sustain the delusion, appeals to the philosophy of Ayn Rand are often trotted out as a means to claim some literary credibility. Rand’s writing, as demonstrated in works like Atlas Shrugged and The Virtue of Selfishness, is often used to justify a moral philosophy that refuses any ethical basis for a social contract (an ethic that recognizes mutual social obligations to others), particularly when those social obligations are thought to be achieved at the expense of curbing individual desire and ambition.

We know from interviews with Rand that she modeled the protagonist (Danny Renahan) of her first novel, Anthem, on the notorious serial killer, William Edward Hickman – a despicable psychopath if there ever was one. This was her first-draft portrayal of what she conceived as her “ideal man” which she would later refine and portray in the Atlas Shrugged character, John Gault. Rand writes in her journal entry:

“[Renahan] is born with a wonderful, free, light consciousness — [resulting from] the absolute lack of social instinct or herd feeling. He does not understand because he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people … Other people do not exist for him and he does not understand why they should.”

This is the psychopathic model of rugged “individualism” as Rand imagined it; it is a model for behavior that continues to inspire people (and many politicians among them), who fantasize about life free from mutual obligations and “government interference.”

Not only is this thinking deeply depraved, it’s the polar opposite of the altruistic empathy for others that Christian moral philosophy mandates for its adherents. Neither does it constitute an effective basis for governance. One cannot aspire to live in a complex modern “society” governed by rules and cooperation if one imagines they are an unaccountable free-agent.

Boot-strapping Psychology

Where it really gets interesting is when we look at the different ways this type of thinking manifests among people of average means – the “boot-strappers.” These are people, who generally worked to overcome some level of disadvantage, but through their own efforts (and often with help) managed to “bootstrap” their way to success.

As a result of having undergone this experience of working hard, with no perceived help from others, they now feel that everyone, regardless of obstacles that they might encounter, should similarly be able to overcome disadvantage and achieve success. Compared to the wealthy person, who often inherited their privilege, the existential anxiety that this person experiences is bit more complex. So let’s take a closer look at this person.

Not having been blessed with the luck to be born into privilege, the rugged individualist/bootstrapper must contend with at least two significant fears: Fear #1: someone might discover the “secret” of their less privileged/low birth past, thus they work even harder to maintain the veneer of success – success they further equate to evidence of their inherent “goodness” as a person (the very thing that they hope  distinguishes them from the people and social groups they are aiming to stand apart from). Fear #2: That if they stop working, even for a minute, they will fall back to the low place from where they ascended to success and in the process cease to be a good person.

Buying into the American Dream is critically important to the intellectual disposition and psychic make-up of the “bootstrapper.” While they might perceive they derive some limited benefits from the current system, their social relation remains one of subservience to true wealth. But rather than recognize this, this person would rather “shoot the messenger” that dares point out these facts and contradictions. Consequently, they are easily aroused and become upset when anyone dares to unmask the system of exploitation from which they only marginally benefit.

Personal responsibility narratives run a close second to beliefs in rugged individualism, and maintain a powerful hold in compelling conforming behavior among the rich and poor alike. Nevertheless, regardless of how popular or entrenched the thought process might be, one thing is certain: it is a fatal error to assume that people without money are lazy moochers.  People don’t simply “choose” success. Again, success is not a simple calculus of hard work plus the sum total of our individual choices. There’s a lot more going on beneath the surface that explains success.

The same people who lay claim to boot-strapping ideology are likely also to subscribe to the belief that there is no such thing as structural poverty (or structural racism, etc.). In denying this, they put the onus for failure totally on the individual. It’s the secular version of the prosperity gospel that has in the recent era destroyed the social justice mission of many churches.

The idea that individuals alone are responsible for what happens to them is not supported by empirical research and evidence. Notwithstanding, the idea, as such, is highly destructive and corrosive of our collective social well-being.

To this end, we would all be better served if we simply questioned and attempted to understand the root causes when there are so many people not doing well. At the very least, we should be open to considering that  attaining the American Dream for many people is not as simple as many of us so desperately want to imagine.

Sources:

Excerpts from this post were derived from the article by Simone Pathe, “Why half of U.S. Adults No Longer Believe in the American Dream.” Last accessed May 2016.

Public Religion Research Institute, Economic Insecurity Index, by Daniel Cox,  Juhem Navarro-Rivera, and Robert P. Jones

Discussion Questions:

How do the two-car advertisements engage with the idea of the American Dream? What vision of the dream are they each selling?

What kind of language and symbols do they employ to motivate potential car buyers?

How do the ads subtly (and not so subtly) exploit issues of race, class, and gender?

What is George Carlin’s basic argument about the American dream?

How is Carlin’s argument similar to Marx’s argument?

Do you think the American Dream can be attained in today’s society? If so (or not) comment on your own experience trying to “live the dream.” Do you think it is attainable for you?

What do see potentially getting in the way of your success and ability to live this dream?

Artist: David Horsey, LA Times

Wage and salary information indicated as a share of GDP. Statistics provided by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

Wages Are Declining

The chart pictured above offers a graphic representation of the trajectory of working people’s wages as a share of GDP since 1950. The downward decline indicates that over the course of the last 30 years since 1970 in particular, economic growth has stalled because people’s earning power and living standards have been eroded. To make matters worse, economic indicators since the Wall Street generated Financial Crisis of 2008 reveal that while the US economy has grown, worker wages have fallen sharply. Those individuals in low to middle income jobs are the ones who are seeing their wages suppressed, while the wages of top earners are reaching all-time highs. The number of workers making $5 million or more grew almost 27 percent since 2009, to 8,982 workers, up from 7,082 workers in 2011. Total wages earned by these highly paid workers grew 40 percent — 13 times the overall increase in compensation for workers.

For over thirty-five years American workers’ wages have been stuck. This comes while we’ve seen tremendous growth in our country’s productivity and soaring corporate profits.

What happened? Why is the middle class dissolving and childhood poverty rising while the economy continues to create more millionaires and billionaires?

The answer is simple. Our elected officials in Washington and across the country have adopted policies, written by the very wealthy, which are meant to ensure that the lions’ share of income growth continues to go to the top 1 percent while the rest of the country is left behind.

Wealth and Perception of Social Inequality

The video below which represents work conducted by a research group at Harvard is troubling for a number of reasons. Not only does it graphically illustrate income distribution and income inequality in the United States, it touch on another important issue – people’s perceptions of inequality. Why is this troubling? Because you can’t fix something if people don’t recognize the nature and depth of the problem.

To be sure, people have a “sense” that something is askew. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll of American adults found that in spite of the fact that the economy is registering record economic gains, 57 percent still think the economy is in recession. This is occuring at the same time that people don’t think social inequiality is a problem. How do we accout for these contradictions? What other social factors combined with a tangible knowledge deficit might be driving these perceptions?

One reason is that there both a wealth and a wage gap.

Robert Reich shared some statistics on social media that were recently published by the French economist Thomas Piketty. Notice how the bar chart dramatically illustrates almost ALL of the economic gains acrued in the recent recovery are going to the top 10%. Almost nothing is acruing to the vast majority of wage earners, who are within their rights to question: economic recovery for who?

To put this in terms Marx would use, the economy is growing, however, the growth is disproportionately accruing to the owners of capital, who are not sharing any of the profits with their proletarian wage earners. When you combine the weak job growth with abundant (increasingly desperate) cheap labor, toxic ideologies about “makers and takers,” “welfare cheats,” and immigration opportunists, the ability to mobilize public action to reverse the policies creating the pattern is virtually impossible.

So Where Are the Jobs?

Americans have for more than 30 years been deceived by the mythical narrative of “trickle down” economics, which assured them that all they had to do was support cutting taxes for the rich, who would in turn take all that money and pass it along to everyone else in the form job creation. The problem, as many economists and researchers note,  is that despite all indicators that corporations are reaping record profits, the promised jobs never materialized. Almost none of the profits realized from increased worker productivity from the last 30 years have accrued to workers. All of it went to the owners of capital. Put differently, corporations have realized the profits of their dreams, which they accomplished on the backs of their workers,  who made all of the labor concessions, contributed all of the productivity, and assumed more of the public tax burden in order that their employers could achieve these market gains.

Young people are especially hurt by these regressive economic policies. Often scolded and told to “stop whining” and “get a better job,” young people are facing increasing obstacles to realizing their goals and dreams. Much unlike college students who lived in the 1070’s and 80’s, today’s college students are often forced to work full-time while going to school; others who are not favorably positioned to attend college are forced to work a never ending series of unstable low-paid minimum wage jobs that not only don’t confer a living wage, they make it impossible for anyone to “work their way out of it” by getting the education that would permit them to escape that situation.

Discussion Questions:

Based on current demographics, among what social groups do we find wealth concentrated in the United States?

Do you think things like poverty and joblessness are chosen or deserved, due to deliberate choices made by individuals not to work hard, or are there perhaps other social factors that influence these outcomes?

After watching the video, do you think “bootstrapping” individualism alone can keep people out of poverty, or do you think there is a potential role for government to play (through social policy) to control the power of money and capital to make markets serve only the interests of the wealthy?

Do you think social policies should address the problem of social inequality or should everything should be left to “the free market.”

Do you think social policies should only be concerned with equal “opportunity” and not be concerned about unequal outcomes?

Which of your “beliefs” are challenged by what the video portrays?

Why do you think it is more often than not working class people who register the loudest complaint about redistributive politics and programs labeled “socialism” perceived to benefit poor people? Why is there not a similar outrage expressed about the redistribution of middle class wealth to support people who are wealthy (i.e. banks, wall street, etc.)?

Given that most of the wealth is concentrated among the top 1% of wage earners and given that most government and social programs are paid for by wage taxes extracted from the middle class (because neither the very poor or the very rich pay a high percentage of their income in taxes), why are so many convinced that the way to solve fiscal problems is by making poor pay more?

Why do you think that programs that benefit poor people (Food stamps/SNAP benefits) are referred to as “welfare,” but programs that benefit the middle class (home mortgage interest deduction, unemployment compensation), wealthy (capital gains taxes), and corporations (subsidies) are not similarly thought of as corporate “welfare?”

Mark Twain once wrote, “If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re misinformed.” This is a good place to start, considering how much of the contemporary discourse outside of academic and activist circles continues to get everything wrong when it comes to talking about things like Capitalism, Socialism, and Fascism.

People in the U.S. get caught up on labels like communism, socialism, left-wing, and right wing, Sadly, they are often indoctrinated by their social groups to see these words through an “emotional” lens, where they don’t fully appreciate the history and meaning of the terms, so much as they dive off the deep end, where they become convinced that their non-favored political candidate poses an existential threat to their “freedom.” Well, maybe?

Traditionally, Nazism, Fascism, Communism, and Stalinism are all are forms of authoritarianism governance. It is important to understand the nuances that separate these things. Unfortunately, labeling unfolds as parlor game and favorite political pastime for people, who throw these words around like hand grenades in public debates, all without ever thinking much about their substantive meaning.

As it stands now, we have never seen communism put into practice in the United States and the world for that matter (okay, maybe the kibbutzs in Israel come close to practicing this ideology). Many people don’t even realize that there are differences between Neoliberalism/Liberalism (forms of Capitalism), Social Democracy (also a form of Capitalism), and actual Socialism. What did the term socialism even mean to you before you might have passively learned it was used by Karl Marx to describe the tyranny of the proletariat?

To make things more difficult, our contemporary media landscape – online as well as print media – tends to privilege “entertainment” and “clicks” over “information.” Consequently, the average person is provoked a thousand different ways to fly off the handle without thinking to hard (a comfort for some). Driven to nearly endless distraction, it becomes next to impossible to stay informed on important ideas that are relevant to civic discourse. Think about it: how many of you took High School civics classes that were taught by the football coach? Is it any wonder that people are barely literate in this regard?

Motivated learners might try to  “do their research” on the Internet, but more than likely they are self- selecting (more like “cherry-picking”) sources of information that line up with a world view they have already formulated. This selection bias occurs even among good intentioned people who view themselves as “politically conscious”’ or “informed.”

Labels or isms like the ones listed above (i.e. Socialism) provide people with an opportunity to feel smart while they are engaging with important social issues. Yet their very appeal is grounded in the fact that as “isms” they are attractive because they tend to be simple and totalizing at the same time.

Take the terms, for example, left wing and right wing. Their meaning becomes even more difficult to grasp when you attempt to discern/compare their meaning to social contexts outside the U.S. In short, someone who identifies as right wing in the U.S. does not share the exact views as someone who identifies as right wing in England. This is because right-wing ideology in the US context privileges individualism at the expense of social order and social responsibility. Right wing and conservative ideologies in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada lean toward a more mixed understanding of what constitutes an ideal social order and social responsibility within a capitalist economic framework. The same is true about left-wing ideology in the US. Sometimes it is nuanced and discerning, privileging social responsibility and care for the human condition over unfettered individualism. But in some cases, much like centrism, it merely exists as a general oppositional ideology to US right wing conservatism.

Ultimately, the labels themselves are a problem. Because, more often than not, they engage a limited spectrum of understanding. Again, this is because their very appeal derives from they way they offer intellectual shortcuts for people who tend to not want to think very hard about problems that are dynamic and complex!

Labeling Theory: Governments & Social Systems

In carving out an approach the study of these topics, one needs to first develop a habit of mind where they don’t accept everything they read at face-value. Ideally, they should want to cultivate broad sources of information (which they often don’t do, because why spoil the fun of being “right” about everything?). Failing to do so means that, despite even the best intentions to be informed, they will tend to achieve the opposite. Even worse, at the precise moment when they think they are sounding “smart” about a topic, those who are well informed will dismiss their ideas as superficial and ill-conceived.

Political labels like “Marxist” “Fascist,” “Communist,” and “Socialist” are perfect examples of this. We don’t need to confine our views of these things to history, as there are emerging/ongoing examples of them in action now, as indicated by dictatorships and autocratic type of governments.

Fascism

More recently, we have seen a resurgence of the word “fascist” circulating in American politics. What does it mean? Where does it come from? Is it a mere label? Or does the proverbial “shoe fit” in some instances?

Italy’s Benito Mussolini is credited with bringing the word fascism into popular usage. He coined the term in 1919 to describe his political movement (from the Italian “fascio,” which means group and refers to a kind of militant brotherhood).  Although there may be different definitions of fascism and people may debate its qualifying characteristics (some people refer to it as a political philosophy – one that relies on a on a “strong-man” type leader to promote the philosophy – or theory of mass movements, while others define it in terms of specific political actions). Whatever the case, most people agree that fascism is authoritarian, it has a fascination with racial purity, and it promotes nationalism at all costs.

Are all Fascists Nazis?

Not exactly. Whereas all Nazis were fascists, it is not always the case that all fascists are Nazis. An example of a modern day fascist is Hungary’s Victor Orban.  We know this because he tells us.

Oh, and for what it’s worth, there is no such thing as a “semi-fascist.” Nice try but take the gloves off and say the “F” word, as it is increasingly becoming the case that one is an out and proud fascist or they reject fascism in all of its manifestations, both in theory as well as practice.

What is a Social Democracy?

The closest nations have come to achieving a utopia for their citizens, in terms of the social organization of civic life, exists in social-Democratic states (i.e. Finland, Denmark) whereby these states have a record of recognizing, through the implementation of social policy, the social rights of their citizens. Programs and polices are, nonetheless, prioritized within the framework of capitalism; hence capitalism is to some degree humanized. They are not “socialists” in they way that people who are fond of labels tend to think of them.

By way of contrast, the U.S. is stands as the paradigmatic example of an an advanced industrialized state with the weakest social democratic values; it’s economy is based on unrestrained capitalism, which is to say freedom for companies, but not always people. This peculiar mix of freedom is what people in the U.S. are always banging on about. Far from being a welfare state (and I’m not taking about people on welfare or receiving welfare services), the U.S. offers its citizens the least return on their tax dollars in the form of social services investment (i.e. healthcare, education, recreation), when compared to other developed industrialized countries (OECD countries). This is because the U.S. prioritizes investment in the economy over investment in people. Superficially, in terms of policy, this looks like stimulus for corporations (tax cuts & subsidies) combined with robust military spending. The amazing part of all this is how they have managed to convince a large segment of the middle earning population (who don’t equally benefit) to pay for/support this system.

Take for example claims made about “free markets” or even “freedom.” There’s no such thing as “free” markets. Simply put, “the market” is fundamentally a political and social construct – it’s not something that exists in a pure form in nature. For as a political matter, governments everywhere impose all kinds of rules and regulations on “the free market,” beginning with the protections of private property (encoded in law and enforced by the police). They regularly enter into negotiations and dialog with representatives from industry to actively shape markets in ways that benefit national interests. This kind of activity is normal and varies across countries and states. As for the results of this approach, the financial rewards predictably line up to serve the interests of people with wealth and power.

Politics as “Team Sports”

Given the degree to which critical thinking is often stymied, when we combine this inability to think with the “sportsification” of politics, we find people are fond of screaming into the void – they loudly state their personal “beliefs” about issues and problems, without having even a rudimentary ability to advance an argument based on facts and evidence. Emotion rules. Not surprisingly, these beliefs tend to reflect their political ideology (their chosen political team).

Regardless of what ideology you subscribe to, many people have been effectively convinced (or conned) that the biggest social problem is the lazy poor people. Can’t afford a house? It’s because you didn’t work hard enough. Sadly, poor people themselves are not immune from getting caught up in this thinking, given how they have been indoctrinated to believe that poverty is their fault (and not structural) because they lack an appropriate work ethic. Really? Go tell that to the home health aid that’s taking care of your grandma in addition to the the nurse, the teacher (who must buy their own school supplies), and the guy hauling your garbage everyday that they can’t get ahead in this world  because they’re simply not working hard enough.

And let’s not forget “Schrodinger’s immigrant.” The term perfectly illustrates the paradox of twisted logic that relies on immigrant stereotypes. This particular expression has been used to call attention to the contradictions bound up in anti-immigrant discourse, as the term describes immigrants as simultaneously “stealing our jobs” and “laying around” stealing public benefits.

Put another way, its easy to mobilize an audience of people with emotional manipulation, as powerful media narratives call upon people to summon their own ignorance. They’ve been taught to focus criticism inward (blame self) and not outward and up the social ladder, as they dare not criticize their corporate Masters, who they think sit around all day trying to think up ways to create jobs for them.

Regionally and locally, we are seeing this play out among Appalachian people, steelworkers, and other labor groups who have been exploited and taken advantage of for years. Public lands were virtually given to coal barons and steel magnates, who extracted the resources (natural and human) for their sole profit, which they delivered in product form (coal and steel) for the rest of the country. In return for the wages and benefits their unions had to constantly fight for, they were forced to labor in unsafe and contaminated working conditions. The products of those industries fouled the air and the water to such an extent that the residual contamination still exists today. This continues to harm regional populations, who have some of the highest cancer rates in the country.

And yet some of these same people continue to act as full-throated apologists for the wealthy people and industries that did great harm to them (and their ancestors) even as they employed them. They continue to vote in solidarity with the people who exploit them. Why? Because the people who benefit from this social arrangement are skilled in making appeals to their emotions (FEAR), despite almost never delivering to them the promise of a better life.

Right wing extremist ideologies gave people something far more tangible than policy results: they gave people false hope that “life will get better if you work harder” (even as they move the goal posts for success). It’s a suckers bet and people continue to fall for it.

More moderate/centrist ideologies have tended to follow the technocrat playbook: instead of emotion, they appeal to a different kind of logic; one that privileges evidence and the granular details of social policy. The problem with this logic is that when they try to explain their reasoning to the public, they (the public) is often too tired and/or not interested enough to educate themselves on the facts of a given matter. Facts are boring. They are not sensational.

Emotion-based reasoning, by way of contrast, is far more satisfying. Consequently, even as political moderates have delivered incremental (slow) change, they are almost always perceived as failing to deliver (even as moderates have lacked the majority power within government to fully advance their agenda and deliver more impactful results, due to being blocked by the opposition party).

Another dynamic that is operating here is that scared middle class people, who are frantically left looking over their shoulder at the dreaded “poors,” are trying desperately to stay ahead by  consolidating their class advantage/position, so not lose ground. They are fearful of becoming poor themselves.

To this end, we see them (the middle class) embracing symbolic gestures and performing rationally calculated acts of solidarity with people they perceive to be their financial betters, who are situated far above them on the social class ladder. They are enacting what psychologists and call aspirational social identities; that is, they hope that by lending their support to their betters, engaging in gratuitous praise of wealth and power, they might insulate themselves from sliding back down the class ladder. Put another way, they are playing a deceptive game of “fake it until they make it.”

Now you might say, “well, what’s wrong with aspiring to acquire money and to live a comfortable life?” And the answer is, in and of itself, absolutely nothing. Where the problem lies is in the incessant need to “punch down” on poor people as a way to psychically separate yourself, if only so you can feel better about the fact that you’re forced to work in an economic system that’s rigged against just about everyone except those born into wealth and privilege.

Why are people like this? Does working three jobs to make ends meet cause them to be so tired they can’t manage the effort to question the organization of the system? Is it any wonder that people have become seething rage monsters, whose anger can only be soothed by a combination of White Claw and trips to the firing range to shoot their AR-15s?  Have they taken so many drugs and eaten so much junk food to manage their pain that it clouds their thinking? Why have people come to accept this state of affairs as normal? And why, when given the opportunity to vote, do they tend to vote against their own best interest?

The Power of Labels & Elections

Every time election seasons roll around, you will hear people letting loose with labels and insults. Senator Bernie Sanders was regularly savaged by candidates like Donald Trump and even some Democrats for the seeming crime of being a Socialist. Alternatively, proponents of unregulated capitalism are argued to be inherently fascist. Many people are saying Donald Trump is a Fascist. And they may be right. Believe people when they tell you who they are.

Ultimately, the effect of label-slinging is that it shuts down substantive debate about actual social policies and does nothing to invite interrogating the nuances of argument. What prevails instead is gamesmanship and name-calling. This is not an accident. Focus groups have found that voters are more responsive to emotion-based appeals than they are reason and logic. Consequently, appeals to labels aren’t going away any time soon because they effectively reach people, even as they remain poisonous to engaged debate on important issues.

What’s the Difference Between Socialism, Democratic Socialism, and Communism?

Political Scientist Jeffrey Isaac explains in an interview as follows:

“in the most general terms, ‘socialism’ is the idea that the productive wealth of society—factories, offices, large-scale service firms, etc.– should not be owned, controlled, and deployed for the benefit of a small class of people, but should be owned, controlled, and deployed for the benefit of the society as a whole. The basic rationale for such “socialization” of productive wealth is simple: the knowledge, techniques, and relations of production that produce wealth are all social. In the story of Robinson Crusoe an individual works more or less from scratch (with his “man Friday!”) on “virgin” nature. But in reality, all wealth is social. Particular individuals may innovate. They may even deserve special rewards for their innovations. But most members of “the one percent” are not innovators of this kind. Further, even those that are innovators did not grow up in the wild and innovate through their own efforts alone. They matured in a society with an educational system and a knowledge base and an infrastructure and a division of labor, and their innovations involved a complex network of others.

The idea of socialism is the idea that because all innovation and all production is “social” in this way, the production process ought to be organized in a way that ensures some democratic social control and some broad social welfare. Socialism is a very old idea, and it can be traced back to Plato, the early Christians, Sir Thomas More, and many important modern writers who wrote before Karl Marx was even born. Marx and Engels were socialists who claimed that their socialism was “scientific.”

Marxism is a complex subject. Suffice to say that the founder of Soviet Communism—Lenin—was a Marxist, but so too were founders of German social democracy and advocates of a parliamentary road to socialism, such as Eduard Bernstein and Karl Kautsky. More importantly, while most Marxists have been socialists, and some even democratic socialists, most socialists are not Marxists at all. Some examples include Albert Einstein, George Orwell, Bertrand Russell, W.E.B. Dubois, and perhaps even Martin Luther King, Jr.

Democratic socialism is a variant of socialism that emphasizes the importance of democracy in two ways: a socialist society ought to be run on a democratic basis and not as a dictatorship—as Lenin and his Soviet and Chinese followers believed—and it ought to be achieved by working through the institutions of a liberal, representative democracy, mobilizing citizens and voters, winning elections, and legislating social reform.

In the 20^th century U.S. a number of important figures were democratic socialists, most notably Eugene V. Debs, Norman Thomas, and Michael Harrington, whose book Socialism is but one example of a good book on the topic. Harrington was the founder of Democratic Socialists of America, a group that is strongly backing Bernie Sanders. This group does NOT believe in state control of all economic assets. It believes in the use of a democratic state to institute egalitarian social reforms and a more “progressive” system of taxation and to steer social investments in more public ways (think public transportation as opposed to publicly-subsidized, privately-owned sports mega-stadiums). Sanders has had some ties to this group—which has always seen itself as “the left-wing of the Democratic party—and the things he supports are the kinds of things this group has long supported, and also the kinds of things that European social democrats—in Germany, the UK, France, and Scandinavia—have long supported.

People like Donald Trump are red-baiting when they call Bernie Sanders a ‘Communist,’ even though this vision of socialism is democratic and historically it is anti-Communist.

If the broad mass of Americans were more historically informed, they would know that self-styled socialists have played an important role in U.S. history, that most of the leaders of the early trade and industrial union movement were socialists, that important New Deal figures were socialists, that one of the most important leaders of the U.S. civil rights movement—Bayard Rustin—was a socialist, and that a socialist—Michael Harrington—is widely credited with having inspired LBJ’s “Great Society” programs through his book on poverty, The Other America.

Indeed, the so-called “neoconservative” movement in the U.S. was founded by former socialists, many of whom had earlier been not just simple socialists, but Communist Trotskyists. These people turned hard to the right. Others like Harrington and Irving Howe, the founder of Dissent magazine, and also Sanders, continued to be active in the struggle to democratically achieve democratic socialism.”

But Isn’t There a Strain of Democratic Socialism That Advocates for State Control of the Economy?

Issac continues: “This is a complicated question. The simple answer is no.  One of the defining features of modern democratic socialism is an opposition to the widespread “collectivization” of the economy as was practiced by the Soviets.  Some European democratic socialist parties have supported public enterprise and some forms of nationalization of certain industries—but so have non-socialists in Europe. (Indeed, one need look no further than the enormous bailout of U.S. banks in 2008 to see that it is not only socialists who advocate for government socialization—they simply advocate socializing the losses of big business, but not the gains.) But none support the wholesale collectivization of the economy. Sanders, for example, supports a “mixed economy,” as any of his statements and/or position papers makes clear.

Puerto Rican rapper Residente! Residente, real name Rene Perez Joglar, is one of the founders of the alternative rap group Calle 13.  Not only is he the recipient of numerous Grammy awards, he is also an out and proud self-declared socialist (as it turns out, his father was a member of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party who traveled to Cuba and Nicaragua during the Sandinista Revolution).

How is what Sanders wants the same/different from what modern European social democrats want/have? Or from modern Russia? Or China?

It is very similar to what European social democrats have long advocated and enacted, as he himself has stated repeatedly.  It is also much less ambitious than the most ambitious social democratic party platforms. For reasons explained above, it is totally different from the Soviet or Chinese or Cuban or North Korean models.

Sanders does NOT advocate the abolition of private property in the means of production. He does not even advocate massive wealth expropriations. He advocates breaking up banks and more progressive income taxes and the public subsidization of health care and public education (most of these things are quite common in Europe). Further, all of his policy proposals are contributions to the ongoing democratic debate of a democratic society, advanced as proposals to be legislated when and if a democratic majority of citizens can bring such an agenda into office through democratic elections.

Sanders is seeking the freely given electoral support of American citizens. He is not organizing a vanguard revolutionary party intent on seizing power! He is, in other words, a democratic socialist.

Sources

Jeffrey C. Isaac, “Bernie Sanders, Democratic Socialist: A Primer,” by Jeffrey C. Issac. Last accessed Feb 12, 2016.

Discussion Questions

Take a brief moment (after looking up definitions for the terms) and consider the following questions:

Are Marxists the same as Communists?

What are the defining characteristics of a Fascist?

Is it possible to be a Fascist, a Communist, and at the same time a Socialist?

What is a Democratic Socialist?

How is being a Democratic Socialist different from being a Socialist and from being a Communist?

Do you think labels like this contribute to productive political discourse, or do they confuse important issues?