In the 1920s, the United States saw an economic boom. With the rise of industrialization, the economy was reshaped and money poured into it created a massive increase in wealth for a very few. For the others, the lower classes, it became common to work objectionably long days in unsafe conditions. Child labor was normalized. Wages and benefits were suppressed, and regulation of these industries was almost unheard of as government supported the interests of big businesses with almost religious fervor. Attitudes toward big business were not unanimous within government, but rather a mixed bag with democrats at the time attempting to hold these plutocrats feet to the fire, and republicans leaning on a sophisticated propaganda machine to convince common people that their lives would be made better if they simply let the rich get richer, because surely the rich, seeing new gains in their wealth, would use it to create jobs, increase pay, and generally allow that wealth to leak down into the lower classes.
When it rains, it does pour.
But big business did not, in fact, use their wealth to better the lives of the working classes, and instead used their extra income to lean on government in order to cut the red tape and allow them to engage in unsafe and unfair practices which would destabilize the economy so substantially that on October 28, 1929 a historic stock market crash would plunge the economy into a decade long depression.
The Great Depression.
If this is all sounding familiar to you, it is because we are seeing the very same struggle play out today. With Donald Trump elected into office, we can assume much of the deregulation and noncompetitive practices of the 1920s will resurface, but this idea ignores the fact that we have already been seeing a trend toward such practices returning which dates back to the 1980s, and extends across four decades and seven (soon to be eight) administrations.
What this amounts to is....
Class Warfare
What is Class Warfare?
Class Warfare is the struggle between the elite upper classes and the working classes who support them. It has taken different meanings for groups with different ideologies, with consistent biases toward the term inherent in discussion about it which follow along partisan lines. When used in the conservative sense, it most often refers to increasing regulatory red tape on big businesses and thus hampering their ability to operate. When used by liberals, it references a hostile relationship between big business and the working classes which disproportionately and negatively impacts the working classes' ability to sustain themselves and move upward in the economy.
In the U.S., this dichotomy sits at the heart of the American Dream, informing it as a vehicle for propaganda that either upholds the institutions by which corporations, their executives and their owners expand on their wealth, or highlights the struggles those institutions place against the working classes and seeks to dismantle them in favor of better working and living conditions for them. Though the term originates from a mistranslation of the German word klassenkämpfen (which means Class Struggle), it was frequently utilized throughout the late 19th, 20th and 21st centuries to serve the agendas of liberal and conservative politicians and their allies in forming policy that either benefitted or disenfranchised the working classes.
Class Warfare Historically
In the context of history, the idea of a war between classes dates all the way back to the founding of the country, and to the debates between architects of the constitution surrounding the language therein, which would pit the working classes against the wealthy elites in a struggle for control which would, as it was hoped, keep both parties in check and prevent either from amassing too much power and influence over the other. This is laid out in a quote taken from the Hoover Institute article: "Class Warfare, an American Tradition".
Revolutionary War hero General Henry Knox in a letter to George Washington explained the outbreak in terms of class warfare. The rebels, Knox wrote, “have never paid any, or but very little taxes––But they see the weakness of government; They feel at once their own poverty, compared with the opulent, and their own force, and they are determined to make use of the latter, in order to remedy the former.” [1]
During the boom bust cycle that defined the 1920s and 1930s, sentiments were similar, with those who valued working class rights and upward mobility in the economy favoring the ideology that a rising tide raises all boats, and those in favor of deregulation and the resultant liberty of the rich to engage in the business practices they desired to supported by ideas that some of the wealth granted to them would inevitably descend into the lower classes, a system of belief popularized by Ronald Reagan as Trickle Down Economics during his presidency in the 1980s.
In practice, what this meant was providing tax breaks to the rich, regulating union activity and making collective bargaining practices harder and less effective as a result, and generally ignoring transgressions by big business against their workers in favor of a model that supported their ability to amass immense fortunes. These policies led to the formation of monopolies, which were then dismantled under the guidance of President Taft,
Taft, and his predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt, were responding to policies under President McKinley which substantially disenfranchised the working classes in favor of business interests and created fertile ground against which big businesses flourished and consolidated power and influence under themselves. This trend would continue through the early 20th century as republicans sought to dismantle institutions designed to regulate big business, and democrats cleaned up the resultant messes they made, thus creating better conditions for working class Americans.
At the end of the 1920s, a stock market crash which was largely made possible by an unregulated system of banks and investment firms making risky gambles with their investments ushered in a period of intensive poverty which crippled the U.S. economy and left a majority of working class people destitute. This period, the Great Depression, saw numerous reforms put into place to protect the middle class and bolster it which we refer to collectively as the New Deal, and later the Fair Deal. One critical piece of legislation which protected the interests of working class people was the Wagner Act of 1935, which guaranteed several rights for working class peoples surrounding union activities in the work place. The language of the bill allowed for unions to engage in collective bargaining with the U.S. Department of Labor serving as an arbitrator in disputes between labor unions and businesses. However, after a wave of strikes in the late 1940s, after the end of World War II, a growing anti-union sentiment resulted in the introduction of the Taft-Hartley Act in congress. The bill outlined several restrictions on union activities including bringing an end to mandatory union membership in certain industries, the ability of unions to facilitate secondary strikes and boycotts designed to prevent other businesses from working with a business they were striking against or boycotting, and restricted unions from donating to political campaigns.
Taft-Hartley was initially vetoed by President Truman, who characterized the bill as needlessly cruel to the working classes, but Congress voted to override the veto and the bill became law. It is still the law of the land today, and has been extrapolated on under successive administrations to further restrict union activity and thus make it easier for corporations to engage in union busting activities. Notably, the provision that allowed unions to charge dues to workers who would benefit from their activities but who were not themselves members of those unions, called Agency Shops, was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2018. This legislation also served as the template for Right to Work bills on the state level.
Anti-union policy combined with cases and bills designed to uphold business's interests over workers' rights is nothing new; however, with the decision in Citizens United, conditions for workers have become substantially worse. Briefly, what Citizens United did, contrary to the popular sentiment that it identified corporations as people, was remove restrictions on campaign donations which were, until then restricted to $5,000 as a maximum threshold. This introduced money into politics like hadn't been seen since the late 1800s, something you might take note of in this quote from an Ohio State Origins article:
In the campaign of 1896, McKinley defeated Bryan with two tactics that will sound familiar. Republicans raised and spent an unprecedented $4 million—more than 10 times the amount Democrats spent and roughly $100 million today—primarily donated by wealthy industrialists such as Cornelius Vanderbilt and John Rockefeller. And McKinley's handlers played on popular fears about Bryan by connecting him to socialist and anarchist movements. [2]
Injecting money into politics inevitably leads to worse conditions for workers, as it incentivizes bad behavior from government officials, themselves tasked with keeping big business in check. After the decision came down in Citizens United, campaign donations skyrocketed, contributing substantially to a culture in which dark money flourishes and campaigns are able to amass more than a billion dollars in contributions for their presidential runs, as seen by both the Harris and Trump campaigns in this most recent cycle.
The Carrot and the Stick
Its in our nature as humans to seek acceptance from others. In fact, this is a critical means by which we are capable of surviving. But what happens when those relationships influence our opinions, when those we trust present wrong information as iron clad fact, and stubbornly refuse to listen to reason? We are met with the possibility of entering into a cult mentality, in which the institutions we regard as right and just are treated with an undue level of reverence, their morals and agendas cease to be questioned, and we are yanked along with their narratives into a world of fantasy. A Post Truth World, if you will.
According to psychologist Noam Shpancer, it is in our nature to seek acceptance from the groups we are in even if those groups are made up of complete strangers. We are programmed to negotiate and cooperate with our peers as a means to improve our odds of survival, and through this mechanism, we are made susceptible to ideas that do not necessarily reflect reality.
Human beings are herd animals. We survive only in highly coordinated groups. Individually, we are designed to pick up social cues and coordinate and align our behavior with those around us. Recent research has shown that social disapproval provokes the brain's danger circuits. Conformity soothes.
In practice, this instinctual behavior can lead us to accept narratives over facts, something that we have seen play out time and again as corporate owned media floats narrative spin as if it were unbiased fact and expects us all to go along with it. Dangle the carrot, the idea that we are all capable of becoming rich if we work hard enough, if we are smart enough, if we make the right decisions. Then beat us with the stick, the reality that these narratives often serve the best interests of those who do not want to share their wealth with us, who do not want to see us succeed, because our success means less money to go around in the upper echelons of society, less power and influence for them. This ideology feeds into our need for confirmation of our own biases, and ultimately serves to our detriment as we are led to vote against our best interests.
The core of the arguments made in favor of big business are seldom rooted in economic principles, but rather in the construction and dissemination of carefully curated ideas about the other, that boogeyman over there, who is responsible for your plight, your suffering, and your family's struggles. This othering is not new either.
During Ronald Reagan's two terms as president, he famously tar and feathered black people as Welfare Queens and drug addicts who were draining the system's precious resources and contributing to the economic hardships of well meaning, if not well off, whites. The same rhetoric was shifted to the latino and muslim populations during George W. Bush's tenure, and then extrapolated on further during both Trump campaigns. This rhetoric has proven extremely successful in getting lower class people to vote against their best interests, because it provides a digestible distraction for them against the reality that it is those politicians and the billionaire class who supports them, who have created the conditions for their hardships both historically and presently.
In the last election cycle, we saw narratives spun around how immigration was placing an undue burden on the economic institutions designed to help American citizens when in need. But this is rooted in a logical fallacy. Even undocumented immigrants pay taxes. In fact, they contribute around $97 billion to local, state and federal government each year, which largely contributes to programs they cannot access because of their immigration status. Equalized across the total population of undocumented immigrants, this amounts to an approximately 26% income tax paid per individual, which is reflective of what the average citizen pays into the system, barring the wealthy elites who pay nothing. Out of fear their undocumented status may get them deported, many of them do not collect tax refunds even when they are eligible, meaning on an individual basis they may in fact be contributing more than an average citizen in taxes to the government. These simple facts undermine the narrative that undocumented immigrants are a drain on public resources, and in fact inverts that narrative to suggest we as citizens may well be a drain on them.
What is more, welfare recipients tend to skew heavily white. While the idea of the black Welfare Queen is a common trope even to this day in rural and conservative areas, the statistics do not reflect these ideas. According to Pew Research:
Non-Hispanic White people accounted for 44.6% of adult SNAP recipients and 31.5% of child recipients in 2020. About 27% of both adult and child recipients were Black. Hispanic people, who can be of any race, accounted for 21.9% of adult recipients and 35.8% of child recipients.
The vast majority of both adult and child recipients were born in the United States – 82.3% and 97.1%, respectively.
Narratives surrounding the other's role in making life hard for the individual are rooted in deep and complex systems of ignorance and prejudice which extend back centuries and are not likely to go anywhere, any time soon. But in regard to our current plight, it is important to understand that these narratives are both intentional and nefarious, in that they seek only to distract people from what is painfully obvious. Other struggling people are not the source of your problems. Other poor people do not have the influence or the power to make your life harder.
When minimum wage has not gone up in two decades and inflation continues to increase, when businesses capitalize on deregulation and a refusal to set terms in the bailouts they receive when they over extend their investments and make risky gambles with your money, it is not other poor people who are responsible for your poverty. It is not other middle class people who are responsible for your inability to afford child care, or who force you to consider stepping back from work because of the expenses incurred by putting your kids in daycare. Your healthcare is not expensive because someone else is covered by Medicaid.
The Leopards are lurking behind those narratives. The plutocrats and the oligarchs and the corporate elites refusal to help you, their active disenfranchisement of you through unfettered lobbying in politics, making backroom deals among themselves, and feeding you narratives to justify their love of auto felatio against the prospect of your future, is not something you can pit on anyone but them. For all that our society is fraught with issues surrounding prejudice and the other, it is a war between classes, fought in ballots and capitol chambers, that has guided us steadily to this place. In which the poor continue to get poorer, housing prices skyrocket, groceries are harder to come by without undue hardship, the bills are harder to pay, medical insurance and retirement savings are made into luxury goods most cannot afford, and we are all left worse off.
It is them, and not us, who are the problem. And as they are the problem, you cannot hope to find an amenable solution in placing your faith in them.
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