CLASS OR RACE OR BOTH?

With the importance of the white working class in the election of Donald Trump, was this election a product of racist sentiments or of a class struggle?  Has the coalition of the Democratic Party become one of higher income professionals and inner city blacks which has thrown the interests of working, Midwestern whites to the curb?  This writer’s response to these questions is that yes, the election was both an expression of racism and of class struggle.

          As pointed out in the last posting, Democratic strategists and policy makers such as Lawrence Summers had ignored the blatant economic demands of the displaced workers hit by foreign and domestic cheap labor and the effects of automation.  The reasons for this neglect are not so clear.  Was it a matter that what was called for was just beyond the ability of any politician to address and remedy?

          Of course, along comes Mr. Trump who promises solutions, but at what cost?  If his solutions call on, in effect, freezing those manufacturing facilities that exist and somehow forcing the ones that left back to the Midwest, then those policies would be either so un-capitalistic and/or unconstitutional that one wonders how the feat will be accomplished.

          It would be un-capitalistic in that it would call for trade wars.  A way to freeze existing plants and foundries is to slap tariffs on imported goods.  The thing is, that would most likely be met with tariffs from the other countries involved.  Hence, international trade would be highly curtailed and that would raise our prices and make our economy very unproductive.  It would also limit the economy by hurting existing exports.

          What is needed is a vast retraining program and its accompanying governmental investment that, up to now, this government, when run by either party, has been unwilling to do.  And it would also call for employment program(s) that would supply the needed income while such retraining was taking place.  Again, a strong government effort.  Conservatives, who basically have controlled the policy making organs of government (Congress and legislatures), are ideologically antagonistic.

          If there is one thing that unites all conservatives, it is the idea of smaller government and these problems call for, albeit for a limited period, a much bigger government – the type of effort characterizing the New Deal of the 1930s.  And that is the class side of this concern.

          As for the race side, here is where government, as in the words of Hillary Clinton, is not so effective in changing minds or hearts.  What government can do is put laws in effect making discrimination illegal and it can place resources in the grasp of targeted groups experiencing the deficiencies in the system – but not change hearts.[1]

          Secretary Clinton had the plans, but she was deficient in communicating them, plus all her accumulated baggage (mostly placed there by Republican efforts to discredit her).  The point was the challenge for a more dual view:  attacking the inequities of class and the racism that exists against blacks and immigrants.  What was missing was the language which “Working Together,” as a slogan attempted to capture, but fell short.

          Why?  It fell short because the nation abandoned a federalist view some fifty or sixty years ago, and assuming that a slogan can rekindle the type of collaborative inclinations that once existed is unrealistic.  Building bridges, not walls, is dreamy for people who feel and understand the collaborative nature of our constitutional makeup.  The res publica is simply not there and that is part of the problem that cannot be fixed in a political campaign.  It calls for a concerted effort.

          Some have been vocal for a dual message – meeting the class challenges and the racism, especially held among the affected white working class – but that order cannot be met or addressed when there is an opposing side countering with messages more resonant with the existing electorate.  What is heartening is that the collaborative side received more votes, albeit poorly distributed to make the difference needed in the Electoral College.

---

[1] George Packer, “The Unconnected,” The New Yorker 92, no. 35 (2016):  48-61.

A WORRISOME VIGILANCE

Globalization:  who has won and who has lost?  This past election has put the issue of globalization front and center.  Apparently, the results have pointed to disgruntled voters among the white working class (WWC) and their demands for more equitable treatment.

One of their reported complaints is the results accrued from several decades of a shift toward a more global economy.  Simply put:  this shift is characterized by markets opening to global competition by doing away with tariffs and other restraints.  This move has been further advanced using the web and other communication advancements.

          Along with communication there has also been deregulation of finance.  With a relatively few calls and other moves, any entrepreneur can identify and establish working relationships that lead to an entire array of products being produced by cheap labor.  That puts American workers in competition with workers who are more than willing to work for a few dollars a day.

Hardest hit have been those workers in what used to be strong labor union areas of the country such as the northern midwest states.  This development was described in the last two postings.  They are the big losers of globalization, but who has won?

          Well, of course, workers and, in turn, countries who previously were described as under- developed nations have made significant advances during this globalization period.  For example, poor Asian countries have been able to close the gap between themselves and Western developed nations.  Within those countries, middle and upper class groups have been particularly favored by these developments.

          On the other hand, middle class and working class people in the US and other western countries have not seen real wage increases:

Thus while many relatively poor people did well during this latest globalization episode, those somewhat richer may have more complaints. People around the 80th global percentile, with incomes ranging from $13 to $27 international dollars per day, saw few improvements. Their incomes were stagnant or barely increasing.[1]

And this trend stretches back to the late 1980s.  Add to this the effects of the Great Recession and the WWC has lost its patience.

          The US is not the only place where this frustration is being seen.  In Great Britain recently, the electorate voted for Britain to leave the European Union (commonly called Brexit).  Comparable popular movements are currently gaining strength in other European nations; for example, the nationalist candidacy of Marine LePen in France.  This undermines the more international trend that has occurred ever since the end of World War II.

          Generally, this trend was seen as an antidote to the forces that led to that disastrous conflict in which over 50 million (some estimate more than 80 million) people were killed.  This human toll was accompanied by vast capital destruction.  The accepted truth after such an experience was:  what is needed is a set of international, peace seeking institutions such as the United Nations.

In this spirit, such collaborative organizations such as the European Union have been set up, but this has also led to opening up the free trade agreements that have led to the current economic conditions.  Along with these organizations have been policy changes that eased the way to encourage these international markets.

For example, in the US, there was the repeal of the Glass-Seagall law that prohibited commercial banks from investment banking.  This allowed these commercial banks to engage in derivative trading.  Some argue that such practices helped develop the conditions that led to the financial crisis of 2008 (some argue that they didn’t).  But either way, a name associated with that development is Lawrence Summers, former Treasury Secretary in the Clinton Administration.[2]

This is a quote from an article in which Summers tells how his and Robert Rubin’s policies were developed during the nineties:

In July, [George Packer] went to see Summers at his vacation home in Massachusetts.  When [Packer] arrived, [Summers] had just pulled up – in a Lexus – after a morning of tennis.  [The two of them] sat on a terrace overlooking Cape Cod Bay.  Summers described numerous trips that he had made during his years at Treasury to review antipoverty programs in Africa and Latin America, and in American inner cities.  “I don’t think I ever went to Akron, or Flint, or Toledo, or Youngstown,” he admitted.  To Democratic policymakers, poverty was foreign or it was black.  As for displaced white workers in the Rust Belt, Summers said, “their problems weren’t heavily on our radar screen, and they were mad that their problems weren’t.”[3]

This, this writer believes, captures the conditions that have befallen the Democratic Party and speaks volumes as to why there is a president-elect Trump.

          More concretely, the attitudes that are being catered to are those that are antagonistic to internationalism and domestic minorities.  In a word, they would be nationalist attitudes.  Nationalism can be summarized by the saying:  “my country, right or wrong, my country.”  It is an ideology that places the value of national interests above such values as fairness or equality.

In the extreme, it would be a fascist ideology as that espoused by Benito Mussolini in Italy or Juan Peron of Argentina.  When those ideas and values associate nationalism with a national stock or race, then one reaches Nazism.  One needs to be careful with such language and the president-elect has not made an authoritative policy decision yet.  So, one should not make accusations, but observations are legitimate; they indicate vigilance.

          One can therefore ask: is this what the nation is now facing?  The Trump “movement” has admitted that it is not for globalism, but is for giving nationalist interests higher priority.  And in their target sights are multiculturalist policies, programs, and initiatives.  This is what they call identity politics.  Their battle cry rails against political correctness; in doing so, the language becomes a weapon.  That language can debase sensitivities that promote equality of treatment.

          It is this backdrop that places Trump’s appointment of Steve Bannon, as Chief Strategist, in context.  Yesterday, the alt-right group associated with Bannon and the news service he headed, Breitbart News, supported a conference where Nazi salutes were noted and “heil” (or was it “hail”) was shouted.[4] 

This seems beyond mere symbolism.  It also follows a pattern:  blame a foreign element for the problems that a group is facing.  This is the formula often used by nationalists to gain support among disgruntled or disaffected groups such as the WWC.  Hitler used the Jews.

---

[1] “The Tale of Two Middle Classes,” Branko Milanovic, YaleGlobal, July 31, 2014, accessed November 21, 2016, http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/tale-two-middle-classes .

[2] Later still, he was Director of the White House National Economic Council in the Obama Administration.

[3] George Packer, “The Unconnected,” The New Yorker 92, no. 35 (2016):  48-61, 54.

[4] Shaun King, “The Alt-Right Movement Goes Full Nazi As Steve Bannon Prepares to Enter the White House,” New York Daily News, accessed November 21, 2016, http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/king-alt-right-full-nazi-bannon-lands-white-house-job-article-1.2882385 .