The New York Times ran a piece on Saturday about how the Democratic Party lost the support of working class voters. The story is a familiar one from recent commentary, but probably has more than a kernel of truth in it, for all that. Basically, the author's contention is that the fundamental bargain at the heart of neoliberalism didn't work. Why? Because it failed to take account of people's deeper needs.
When Democratic politicians changed tack on issues like trade protection and globalization in the Clinton era, after all—it was clear to everyone that these policies would impose some highly-concentrated costs on blue collar workers in manufacturing industries. Some would lose their jobs; others would have to see their wages and benefits slashed in order to compete with cheap, nonunion labor overseas.
The implicit bargain of neoliberalism was that these obvious concentrated downsides would be more than compensated for by diffuse economic benefits: prices for consumer goods would go down, as cheap imports came to market; increased productivity and efficiency would spur economic growth and generate tremendous prosperity—some of which would inevitably trickle down through all of society.
And in many ways, this is exactly what happened. These neoliberal policies did in fact spur multiple decades of astonishing economic growth. But, as the New York Times article recounts, the enrichment of coastal cities was not in fact enough to compensate a displaced steel worker in the rust belt. The wealth did not all trickle down.
Of course, Democrats were slightly more conscious of this fact than their conservative peers. Unlike Reagan-style Republicans, they didn't think all the newfound wealth would trickle down on its own; instead, it needed a push. And so, there was a second implicit bargain at the heart of specifically Democratic support for neoliberalism: namely, the new-made wealth would be used for social programs.
In other words, it wasn't only society as a whole that would benefit in aggregate from the new policies—the argument went—but specifically the people who stood to bear the immediate concentrated loss. Democrats knew these individuals might lose their livelihoods in the short term. But, the politicians would make it up to them through investing more in cash transfers, social benefits, and job retraining.
As the Times article notes, this was a fatal miscalculation. It turned out that people were not in fact eager to sign up for the proposition of exchanging their well-paid jobs for the promise of bigger cash benefits down the road. Why? Because people have needs beyond money: needs for things like respect and the knowledge that they are supporting themselves and their families through socially-valued labor.
As one of Biden's economic advisers, quoted in the Times piece, notes: there was a "disregard for the importance of work, the dignity of work." The journalist adds: "What was less appreciated," when Democrats were striking their grand bargain "was the psychological damage that would be done by factory closures, large and small, in communities where prestige, stability and identity centered on those plants."
Such, at any rate, is the article's narrative about how elites from the two parties lost the support of blue collar voters; and as I say, it's probably more right than wrong. It turns out that—perplexing as it may be to the economists—people do in fact value stability, dignity, and autonomy more than cheaper goods and diffuse prosperity. Growth may not in fact be the ultimate good that can justify all other losses.
In many ways, elites have been neglecting this fact since the very dawn of capitalism. The pauperized Silesian weavers who were thrown out of work in the era of early industrialization were "weaving the winding sheet" of the political order that did this to them, as Heine's poem on the subject puts it. And so too, the displaced factory workers of our time wove the death-shroud of both major parties.
Likewise, in Oliver Goldsmith's haunting eighteenth century poem "The Deserted Village"—about the displacement and proletarianization of rural England during the period of early capitalism—he argues that elites woefully neglected the fact that prosperity for the few could not justify loss of independence to the many. A thriving independent peasantry, he writes, "When once destroyed, can never be supplied."
Goldsmith's poem could well be written about the United States of the last fifty years. The elites and major coastal metropolises gained enormously from the growth than the neoliberal bargain unleashed; but countless working class Americans lost their sense of respect, stability, and meaning in the process. And so we too became a land, as Goldsmith puts it: "Where wealth accumulates, and men decay."
But aren't people pleased with the fruits of this transformation? How—elites often ask (and indeed, I confess, I've asked it myself)—can people still be so discontented with the way things are, when the U.S. remains the world's most prosperous country? The answer, according to the Times, is the same Goldsmith gave: growth has introduced penury among our plenty: "The country blooms—a garden, and a grave."
For all the new wealth it created, as the Times recounts, NAFTA and the rest of the neoliberal package also cost many people their jobs and ways of life. As Goldsmith would put it: "trade's unfeeling train/ Usurp the land and dispossess the swain[.]" And so, it would seem, there are some losses that sheer economic growth cannot salve. "[H]ow wide the limits stand," says Goldsmith, "Between a splendid and a happy land."
The tragedy of all this for the Democrats, however, is that they realized the need to change course, only to have this moment of self-discovery (as in all true tragedy) come just slightly too late to repair the damage. The Times notes that the Biden administration actually made American manufacturing jobs a priority, and saved many more of them than Trump ever did. But the battle for blue collar hearts and minds had already been lost.
The other great tragedy is that, by turning to Trump, voters have once again entrusted their fate to a con man who has no solution to this problem other than to scapegoat foreigners and immigrants. This is a cruel irony, since the migrant workers coming to the U.S. today are doing so in order to escape exactly the same kind of neoliberal economic displacement in their home countries that factory workers are facing here.
Moreover, today's displaced blue collar workers in the U.S. are in many cases the descendants of immigrants themselves—who had been displaced in their turn by earlier waves of capitalist "prosperity." Goldsmith's poem, after all, describes how many of the rural workers ejected by elite-driven policy change in the 18th century (like enclosures) ended up migrating to America.
Economic growth under capitalism has been displacing people and forcing them to migrate abroad since the very origins of that system. Blaming other immigrants today who have fallen victim to the exact same forces does nothing to solve this problem. The only thing that can possibly save the U.S. working class long term is not to scapegoat these immigrants—but to make common cause with them.
In the face of the depredations of globalized capitalism—with its false promise of prosperity hiding a real face of displacement and pauperization—the only solution is a globalized labor movement. The most forward-looking workers' leaders have known this too since the dawn of capitalism, and some—like the UAW's Shawn Fain—still acknowledge it today.
As Fain put it at the DNC this summer: instead of blaming some "destitute and desperate person at the border," American workers need to be in solidarity with them. They need to not let themselves be distracted from seeing their commonality of interest with other workers—and keeping their focus on the real force that is displacing them all alike—namely (as Fain put it) "corporate greed."
It's the same age-old enemy of humankind that Goldsmith denounces in his poem as "the rage of gain[.]" May we learn not to be taken in by its false blandishments, this time—before it is once again too late!
No comments:
Post a Comment