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Who Is the Real Working Class?

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Who Is the Real Working Class? CHAPTER 3 WHO IS THE REAL WORKING CLASS? Moving beyond the Construction of the White Male Industrial Worker as a Marker of Authenticity INTRODUCTION The 2016 election revealed the enduring nature of assumptions about the working class as white male manual laborers as well as appealing to the needs of the “middle class,” also a stand-in for a specific type of white workforce (Winant, 2017). Even though overt racial language was rarely used in outlining the contours of class, it was pretty apparent in discourse surrounding the election that only some workers mattered: The common denominator of so many of the strange and troubling cultural narratives coming our way is a set of assumptions about who matters, whose story it is, who deserves the pity and the treats and the presumptions of innocence, the kid gloves and the red carpet, and ultimately the kingdom, the power, and the glory. You already know who. It’s white people in general and white men in particular, and especially white Protestant men, some of whom are apparently dismayed to find out that there is going to be, as your mom might have put it, sharing. The history of this country has been written as their story, and the news sometimes still tells it this way—one of the battles of our time is about who the story is about, who matters and who decides. (Solnit, n.d., para. 3) Shortly after the 2016 election, as people attempted to cobble together some sort of analysis of what exactly happened, a bipartisan narrative emerged of the beleaguered, economically targeted white working class who was driven to support Trump because the Democratic Party overlooked them in favor of lavish attention granted to minorities and women (Demeter, 2016; Walters, 2017; Mason, 2017). This only “reaffirmed the message that whiteness and the working class were the same thing and made the vast non-white working class invisible or inconsequential,” including the idea that their economic suffering was apparently irrelevant (Solnit, n.d., para. 9). This mirrors what Resnikoff (2017) identifies as a hallmark of populism: that the white worker is part of a vanishing working and middle class, despite the fact that minorities have experienced the brunt of a capitalist economy. Even within socialist organizing, the white, male, heterosexual, manual worker has © FAITH AGOSTINONE-WILSON, 2020 | DOI: 10.1163/9789004424531_004 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC 4.0 License. Faith Agostinone-Wilson - 9789004424531 Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 03:14:08AM via free access CHAPTER 3 been presented as the universal stand-in for all of labor (Hill, Sanders, & Hankin, 2002). Walters (2017) outlines how both the right and the left devoted endless time and bandwidth to folksy interview portraits of small industrial and rural towns in economic ruin and their Trump supporter residents. Taken together, these stories broadcast the message that “racism and sexism were unfortunate side effects of the real illness of economic vulnerability and insecurity” while identity politics also served as “so much elitist petulance that ignores the populist surge at the heart of Trump’s victory” (para. 2). McAuley’s (2019) analysis of the right-wing drift of the mostly white Yellow Vest protest movement in France finds that even though the protesters represent a minority of the country (with other demonstrations drawing much larger crowds around issues of climate change and women’s rights), “the concerns of this minority are treated as universal by politicians, the press…working class whites command public attention even when they have no clear message” (p. 61). Even two years after the election, the media remains focused on how Trump’s policies have impacted his supporters, not on the non-Trump voters who comprehended the impacts of a Trump administration to begin with (Solod, 2017; Walters, 2017). Their narratives remain hidden because they are not considered part of the authentic working class. As Demeter (2016) points out, if we’re paying attention to reality, most members of the working class would, by definition, be women and/or people of color. But that’s not what people who talk about the politics of the “working class” mean. Women and people of color are engaged in ridiculed “identity politics,” while white men who haven’t done well economically are the sainted “working class.” (para. 2) For all of the media attention it receives, one would expect this authentic working class to be highly politically engaged and dominant from a demographic standpoint. However, in light of the overall population, Trump’s base is essentially a minority. Maison (2017) provides the example of McDowell County, West Virginia, located in coal country which is highly supportive of Trump and other conservative candidates. Even though Trump won the majority of the county by 66%, less than 35% of eligible voters turned out, compared to other parts of the state with turnout at almost 60% (para. 6). McDowell County is not a unique phenomenon as many high-poverty regions of the US have low voting rates, which, of course, benefits Republicans. The problem is, that as long as the meme of the authentic working class persists, the solidarity of the working class needed for mass mobilization remains an impossibility (Winant, 2017). An important aspect of understanding the problem of working-class solidarity is acknowledging that color and genderblind capitalism is not possible, especially in a colonial settler state like the US (McLaren & Farahmandpur, 2002; Cole, 2018; Stanley, 2018). Capitalism is intertwined with sexism, racism, homophobia and xenophobia. These are not mere “strategies” used by the ruling class used to control workers, or side effects of capitalism, as the common line of left reasoning goes: 62 Faith Agostinone-Wilson - 9789004424531 Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 03:14:08AM via free access WHO IS THE REAL WORKING CLASS? In the United States, the hold of racism on white workers has been a constant historical problem for working-class organization. It has been a barrier to union organizing and socialist class consciousness. There are many instances where white workers have actively rejected unionism, typically in the South, because it implied shared membership with black workers. Even in the face of utmost hardship, white workers have traded away economic improvement and class strength for illusory cultural privileges of whiteness. (Martinot, 2000, p. 43) The left needs to confront the problem of racism within white workers and stop diverting it to the middle or ruling classes or minimizing racism and sexism as “just part of capitalism.” It needs to let go of the “authentic working class” meme. This will require a dialectical historical engagement with the conditions that shaped white supremacy and patriarchy as part of the rise of capitalism. This chapter addresses several concepts related to the persistence of the white male worker as “authentic working class,” beginning with an overview of the impacts of neoliberalism. This then creates the conditions needed for backlash, which Trump and other authoritarian populists took advantage of during the election. Next, an examination of capitalism as constructed by race will include the historical development of white worker identity and why this remains a major barrier for socialist organizing. In particular, the strategic significance of white rural spaces will be analyzed along with a dialectical reading of what shapes those spaces. The chapter will conclude with a revised portrait of the working class as highly diverse, including more members than ever before due to drastic changes in the contexts of waged work. Examples of organizing drawing on these strengths will also be presented. NEOLIBERALISM’S EFFECTS Representing a specific form of capitalism, neoliberalism can be defined as “a corporate domination of society that supports state enforcement of the unregulated market” which includes limiting the rights of the working class, eviscerating the social safety net and shielding the capitalist class from the consequences of their actions (McClaren & Farahmandpur, 2002, p. 37). Also known as “socialism for the rich,” or “third way,” neoliberalism brings with it lower taxes for the top 1%, removal of environmental protections, and movement to financialization-based economies that trade in debt—a key factor contributing to the 2008 global recession (Collins, 2015). As A. Smith (2017) explains, neoliberalism replaced the older state infrastructure-funding philosophy of Keynesianism, which was in place from the New Deal era of the 1930s to the early 1970s. Reagan and Thatcher cemented the policies of neoliberalism in the 1980s, which continued through the Clinton administration in the 1990s, ushering in the politics of austerity that continue today (Fraser, 2017). Because it is supported by the capitalist class, neoliberalism can accommodate various presentation styles, from conservative and militaristic to multicultural and global cutting-edge. 63 Faith Agostinone-Wilson - 9789004424531 Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 03:14:08AM via free access CHAPTER 3 Currently, a significant portion of the global white working class (in particular, the middle class), instead of resisting the neoliberal onslaught, has been drawn to nationalism with its attendant isolationism and economic protectionism. This has happened in the absence of viable left organizational alternatives such as rank- and-file unions (Post, 2017). Intensified targeting of minorities, refugees, LGBTQ, and women has been a feature of the platforms of the Republican Party in the US, the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), Marine LePen’s National Front in France, and the Five Star Movement in Italy, to name a few. This section will first present a picture of the current economic situation facing the working class under neoliberalism, with a focus on the philosophy of progressive and regressive neoliberalism and its impacts after the 2008 global recession.
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