As the full scope of our current disaster washes over us day
after day, it seems clear to me that things will not be the same as we emerge
from an economic crash equaling the Great Depression of ninety years ago. I am no better able than anyone else to
forecast the shape of the decade which we have just entered, but I think I see
possibilities to be struggled for, and it is not too soon to start thinking
about them.
Let me begin by reminding you that not everyone’s life was
turned upside down by the Great Depression.
My father was a New York City high school Biology teacher when the
Depression began, and he still was when it ended. My mother was a secretary at the New York Herald Tribune when it started,
and had she not chosen to leave her job to travel to Europe with a writer and
his wife as a paid secretary, she would probably have continued in that job. After my sister and I were born in 1930 and
1933, she got another job as an office worker which she held until a heart
attack forced her to leave the work world in 1950. We were not affluent, but we were, by any
measure, middle class, with food on the table, clothes on our back, and money
for someone who looked after my sister and me while my mother was at work. Some version of this domestic story was
characteristic of most Americans in the 1930s, but of course “most” left a
great deal of room for poverty, hunger, homelessness, and despair. The same is going to be true for the 2020’s
unless all of us on the left work together for a fundamental change in the way
America conducts its affairs.
There are so many things wrong with America that it would be
pointless for me to make a list. Let me
concentrate my attention on two big things wrong with America that this pandemic
moment may make it possible to address.
The first is America’s grotesque inequality of income, and even more of
wealth. The second is the complete lack
of solidarity, even of connection, between the well off and the rest. Income and wealth inequality has been the
subject of some considerable attention, as exemplified by the Occupy Wall
Street movement and also by the attention paid to the work of Thomas Piketty
and his associates. A wealth tax on the superrich
has even made its way into the mainstream of Democratic Party debates, much to
my pleasure and surprise. But the lack of any solidarity between the better off one third [roughly, the college graduates]
and the poorer two-thirds [white non-college graduates] has until now simply
not been on anyone’s radar with the exception perhaps of Bernie.
The abrupt shutdown of the economy necessitated by the
pandemic has concentrated everyone’s attention on the essentiality of the work
done by low-wage, non-unionized, previously invisible men and women without
whom we would not have food or transport or other genuine necessities.
There is here at least the possibility for a new mobilization
of scores of millions of working men and women whose commonality of interest
has been revealed for the first time in almost a century. The present leaders of the Democratic Party
quite obviously are not going to embrace this idea, but there are enough
professional politicians who will, and who can provide a public face for an
insurgency from below.
Will that insurgency gain any momentum? I do not know. But this is the first time in half a century
that I have thought it was possible.
8 comments:
I find it difficult to comprehend the scale and depth of the economic collapse this country is facing.
McConnell, as we all know, recently suggested that, rather than bailing out the states, we should just let them declare bankruptcy. If that were actually to be adopted as policy, then I daresay that all fifty states would eventually declare bankruptcy. Between declining revenues and increasing costs, states as well as towns and cities across the U.S. are facing insolvency. When the Paycheck Protection Program runs out of funds, businesses will begin laying off large numbers of employees. Entire sectors of the economy will be moribund: airlines, tourism, restaurants, department stores, sports entertainment, and so on. Colleges and universities will also face insolvency, and the idea that students will be returning to in-person classes this fall may well be overly optimistic. The same goes for public schools.
All of this doesn't even take into consideration the possibility of a financial collapse. Should the corporate debt bubble burst, we could end up with another financial panic coming at a time when the federal government is least capable of dealing with it. In short, we could be facing a near total institutional collapse by election day.
Professor Wolfe assumes that in this environment, the Democrats will run away with the election. If that turns out to be true, a Biden administration and a Democratic Congress will have the unenviable task of simply getting stuff to work again. When the FDR administration faced this task, it was not in the midst of a pandemic. Political divisions and white supremacists abounded in the 1930s, but Democrats will face challenges beyond anything that FDR faced. And thanks to McConnell, the courts will be hostile to Democrats' efforts to save the country from ruin.
Will there emerge an insurgency from below to save the country from itself? I certainly hope so.
"Will that insurgency gain any momentum?"
Probably not. It seems race and culture will always trump class in the U.S. As long as Taft-Hartley and Janus are controlling, unions are screwed and as long as the white working class continues to vote Republican because of race and culture we are stuck with Taft-Hartley and Janus.
Recall that in 1947 Republicans in the Congress along with conservative (and racist, of course) southern Democrats constituted a veto-proof majority. This allowed for the passage of Taft-Hartley over Truman's veto.
In 1972 Wallace (southern, racist, right-populist) carried Michigan in the Democratic Primary and Nixon (who voted for T-H in his first term in the House) carried it in the general.
Recent experience demonstrates that these stresses push too many to the right. Demographics and Constitutional flaws likely guarantee a death spiral.
Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
On the point about whose interests are being represented, Amartya Sen has this very thoughtful and measured piece about democracy, the economy, and the pandemic, which I think will be of great interest to you: https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/coronavirus-india-lockdown-amartya-sen-economy-migrants-6352132/
What Sen doesn't say outright, but which is pretty clearly implied, is that when crafting the response it is important to have the interests of the most poor and financially precarious represented; whereas what we see in especially the US is that the interests of the richest and the least precarious are the ones that are being aired.
I used to be a much more regular commentor in the past, but I've continued to be part of the large mass of your readership who read through an RSS feed and as such almost never visit or comment on your blog, despite seeing every post.
Marinus, I fear I am mystified by the phrase RSS feed.
Why do you write the poorer two-thirds [white non-college graduates] [sic] (my emphasis)?
Because the political allegiances and understandings of the non-white non=college educated population are quite differfent and cannot be conflated.
Prof. Wolff,
You might already use RSS without knowing it by that name. Many Web sites, including this one, offer a "Really Simple Syndication" feature. It is a web feed that provides a list of updates in a standardized format. For example, the "Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)" link at the bottom of this page.
I am subscribed to your blog's RSS feed. I click a virtual button and see a list of your latest posts.
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