Decline of support for democratic norms

The signs of authoritarian and extremist assaults on the US constitutional democracy are ominous and increasing. The former president's explicit lawlessness and alignment with white supremacism; the governor of Florida's unrelenting assault on freedom of speech, academic freedom, the freedom of students to learn about their history, and even the freedom of major companies like Disney to express values of diversity and inclusion in their business activities; the evidence of conspiracy to commit acts of violent insurrection emerging from the trial of leaders of the Proud Boys (link) -- these are all developments that feel like the tremors that precede a volcano. Far right extremists are pressing their agenda, from paramilitary groups to high elected officials.

So where does the US public stand? What are the current attitudes of the citizens of our democracy? Researchers at the Allegheny College Center for Political Participation have disturbing news on that front as well, based on a national representative survey conducted in 2018 (link). Andrew Bloeser, Tarah Williams, Candaisy Crawford, and Brian Harward report the results of public opinion research on attitudes toward several related topics relating to disaffection from democratic norms. They published their primary results in "Are Stealth Democrats Really Committed to Democracy? Process Preferences Revisited" (link). They describe stealth democrats in these terms: "When it comes to governance, many Americans prefer uncompromising political leaders who take decisive action, rather than those who debate issues and are open to finding common ground" (1). Here is the abstract to the paper:

Scholarship on “stealth democracy” finds that many citizens want to avoid the debate and conflict that often come with democratic governance. This scholarship has argued that citizens adopt this posture because they are uncomfortable with disagreement and desire a more expedient political process that enables leaders to make decisions without discussion or compromise. We revisit this argument in light of recent political developments that suggest another reason why citizens may desire a more expedient political process. We examine the possibility that some citizens are not merely uncomfortable with disagreement but also want leaders who will aggressively protect them and champion their interests. Using a nationally representative survey, we ask citizens about their preferences for stealth democracy. We also ask questions that tap into their willingness to support leaders who would “bend the rules for supporters” and take aggressive action against political opponents. We find that a substantial component of the electorate continues to prefer a stealth version of democracy. However, we also find that many “stealth democrats” are willing to support leadership practices that would threaten or even undermine democratic norms. We argue that this evidence indicates that, in recent years, many citizens who appear to desire “stealth democracy” pose a threat to democracy itself. 

In a more recent article in The Conversation (link) these researchers use the same data set to suggest that a disturbing fraction of the US population favor measures clearly associated with authoritarian rule. Consider responses to the statement, "The only way our country can solve its current problems is by supporting tough leaders who will crack down on those who undermine American values." 92% of "Strong Republicans" agree with this statement; 62% of Independents agree with the statement; and 59% of Strong Democrats in the sample agree with the statement. Consider another key statement: "To protect the interests of people like you, political leaders must sometimes bend the rules to get things done." 49% of Strong Republicans agree; 28% of Independents agree; and 36% of Strong Democrats agree. And what does this statement involve? It involves the rule of law.

These findings suggest a significant erosion of support for constitutional democracy in favor of strongman government like that of Viktor Orbán in Hungary. 

Why would US citizens develop a set of political values that favor the restriction or elimination of limits on the use of executive power -- by governors or presidents -- that very well could lead to harm to themselves and their families? A constitution exists to ensure equal treatment to all citizens and to establish equal liberties for all citizens; so why would some citizens favor authoritarian rule over constitutional protections? One possible motivation is the misplaced confidence that the strongman who emerges will naturally protect the interests of one's own group. But logic and history both suggest that all citizens benefit from constitutional and legal protections, and surrendering those for shortterm anxieties is a horrible mistake.

Seeing the behavior of the preponderance of GOP elected officials and the opinion research data offered by the Allegheny group raises major concerns about the future of US democracy -- as Levitsky and Ziblatt argued in How Democracies Die. Similar processes have already advanced even further in other countries, including Hungary and India. Compare the 2018 Allegheny College survey of US voters with a survey of Hungarian voters conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2022 (link). The Pew survey of Hungarian voters suggests a decline in Hungarian democracy under Orbán's rule since about 2012. (Similar results show up in a 2017 public opinion survey conducted in Hungary by the Center for Insights in Survey Research; link.)

What will it take to reinvigorate broad public allegiance to the institutions of a constitutional democracy? We would like to imagine that reactionary developments like overturning Roe v. Wade would have the effect of mobilizing vast numbers of voters in support of the rule of law and the voice of the people, and indeed the 2022 elections showed that effect (link). But how will a weary public and "stealth democrats" deal with continuing efforts to restrict voting rights, create gerrymandered districts, and assault basic constitutional rights like freedom of speech and learning in public schools? Will we gain the commitment and courage to speak and act in support of our democracy?

And what will it take to struggle against the anti-democratic efforts of politicians like Kari Lake in Arizona? (The very idea, now the subject of speculation in Arizona, that Lake might be a strong contender in the 2024 Senate race in Arizona is almost beyond belief. What voter could ever support a person running for elected office who has already demonstrated that she will only accept the outcome of the election if it goes in her favor?) When will the reputation for rejecting the laws and norms of a democracy become a political liability for these unscrupulous politicians?

Sherwood Eddy’s treatment of Marx

Sherwood Eddy was an American Protestant activist and missionary in the early twentieth century. (Here is a brief biography and bibliography of Eddy; link.) He was educated in elite American institutions but acquired a deep empathy for the less-well-off members of society, both in the US and Asia. He was drawn to Communism, though never a member of the CP. Eddy explicitly identified himself as a Christian socialist. In 1926 he engaged in a debate in Moscow on the subject, "wherein lies the essence of the present religion and is it compatible with communism?". In 1934 he was invited to participate in an important symposium, “The meaning of Marx”, with Bertrand Russell, John Dewey, Morris Raphael Cohen, and Sidney Hook (link). In 1936 he co-founded a cooperative-based reform of farming for sharecroppers in the US south, with strong commitment to racial equality. 

What is striking in Eddy's contribution to the Marx symposium is the depth and detail of his knowledge of Marx’s economic theories. Eddy summarizes Marx's substantive social and economic theories under three topics: his dialectical method of analysis of history; his labor theory of value and surplus-value; and his theory of class conflict as the fundamental driver of historical change (6). Under exposition of the second point Eddy offers a reasonable summary of Marx's main ideas of accumulation and exploitation. He ends this section with a denunciation of capitalism, and he writes favorably of revolution and the "dictatorship of the proletariat". 

Eddy's interpretation of social change remains "religious" in a sense; he understands Communism as a unifying belief system capable of motivating the masses of the population.

Russia has achieved what has hitherto been known only at rare periods in history, the experience of almost a whole people living under a unified philosophy of life. All life is focused in a central purpose. It is directed to a single high end and energized by such powerful and glowing motivation that life seems to have supreme significance. It releases a flood of joyous and strenuous activity. The new philosophy has the advantage of seeming to be simple, clear, understandable, all-embracing and practical. (2)

Further, he contrasts the ideological unity and purity of Soviet society with the degeneration of values in western capitalist society:

As surely as Soviet Russia has become united, we of the West have witnessed a philosophic decadence and disintegration. Where feudalism once united the world, capitalism has divided it by the competitive anarchy of a loose individualism. Not organized society but the insecure individual is now the unit where every man is for himself. The economics of profit conflict with the aims of culture. The gain of the few is pitted against the welfare of the many. This whole laissez-faire philosophy of life breeds competitive strife between individuals, classes, races and nations. (4)

Also striking is Eddy’s own inclination towards the need for thorough-going class revolution. In 1934 Eddy’s intellectual support for Communism was evident.

Is the system just? Must it continue? No! Marx shows the masses a way out. It is a way, he tells them, grounded in science and in natural law. It is bound to win, for the very stars in their courses are fighting for them. By some mystic and incomprehensible "dialectic process," by a supposedly scientific theory of value and of surplus value it is all being worked out for them. They do not need to understand it. They must believe that they are being exploited and join in the crusade for their own emancipation. (12)

Revolutions are almost inevitably destructive. They occur only when evolutionary progress to justice is blocked by the class in possession and power, when the hard crust of the status quo restrains the molten lava of discontent until the volcano of revolution bursts into eruption. Nearly always the possessing class is blinded by its own self-interest and class ethics of property "rights," so that it cannot see in time the injustice of the system which seems hallowed by custom and tradition. (16)

According to the Marxian formula, as the advance guard of the working class, a Communist Party must be organized with centralized power, under iron discipline, with a single mind and will. The sole purpose of this party must be to prepare for and direct the coming revolution which Marx sees as the only solution of the class struggle. No class has ever been known to surrender its special privileges and share them equally with the dispossessed, unless it was forced to do so.... Once the state has been seized the workers are bidden to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat under the direction of the vanguard of the Communist Party. The party then seeks to make the revolution permanent and continuing until all the members of the ruling and possessing classes are deprived of power. (17)

At the end of the essay Eddy summarizes points of agreement and disagreement with Marx. Most important is this point:

I. I do not believe that violent revolution is inevitable, nor do I believe that it is desirable in itself as Marx almost makes it. When once violence is adopted as a method in an inevitable and "continuing revolution," when to Marx's philosophy is added Lenin's false dictum that "great problems in the lives of nations are solved only by force," most serious consequences follow wherever communism is installed under a dictatorship or prepared for by violent methods. This shuts the gates of mercy on mankind. In Soviet Russia all prosperous farmers are counted kulaks, and the kulak becomes the personal devil or scapegoat of the system, as does the Jew in Nazi Germany. Intellectuals and engineers are all too easily accused of deliberate sabotage, of being "wreckers," class enemies, etc. When this philosophy--that great problems are solved "only by violence"--is applied, then trials, shootings and imprisonment follow in rapid succession. Hatred and violence mean wide destructive and incalculable human suffering. (27)

Thus, though I acknowledge my real debt to Marx, I do not count myself a Marxist. I have stated elsewhere: the reasons which would make impossible my acceptance of the system as practised in Soviet Russia under the dictatorship: Its denial of political liberty, the violence and compulsion of a continuing revolution, and the dogmatic atheism and anti-religious zeal required of every member of the Communist Party. (29)

Here he draws out precisely the implication of totalitarianism contained in Stalin's version of the "dictatorship of the proletariat". The war on the kulaks -- the Holodomor -- was going on as this symposium took place (1933-34) (link).

It is useful to distinguish between  the content of Marx's political economy and his sociology of capitalism, on the one hand, and the political manifestos, slogans, and party politics of Marxism and communism, on the other. Marx's theory of capitalism as a class-based system of exploitation is compatible with multiple possible remedies, including democratic socialism. Both sets of issues come up in the 1934 symposium. Eddy's essay here makes plain the urgency with which intellectuals committed to social justice were searching for answers, and Marx (and Lenin) represented persuasive and compelling ideas about a blueprint for comprehensive change. But strikingly, Eddy — unlike his contemporaries in the English democratic socialist movement — had not yet moved as far as his English contemporaries in attempting to imagine a democratic socialist solution (link).

(George Novack's lecture on American radical intellectuals in the 1930s, delivered in 1967, provides some context for Eddy's political orientation, though Eddy's name does not appear in Novack's lecture; link. Novack was a longtime leader of the Socialist Workers Party, the Trotskyist alternative to the American Communist Party.)

Election Day 2022

image: Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny

Here we are in November 2022, and the House, Senate, governors, and state houses are all up for grabs. An appalling number of GOP candidates have continued to spread lies about voter fraud in 2020 and have refused to commit to accepting the results of today’s election. (Remember that Donald Trump took exactly that position in a presidential debate with Hillary Clinton in 2016.) An untethered Christian Nationalist Supreme Court is in the middle of rewriting “settled law” in many key areas of our rights, including reproductive rights. And a visibly immature and narcissistic “richest man in the world” has taken ownership of one important piece of the public square and overnight imposed his loony conspiracy musings on the rest of us, as well as dismantling the moderation and verification tools the forum has used until now. It is not hyperbole to fear that our democracy is at terrible risk today and in the coming years.

It is worth reflecting on Timothy Snyder’s prescient and alarming 2017 book, On Tyranny, and its 2021 revised graphic edition. Snyder structures his book around twenty pieces of advice to us as citizens in an imperiled democracy — a kind of “what to do when catastrophe comes” for all of us. And many of the items are highly relevant in today’s United States. The illustration provided above is taken from the graphic edition. 

Take the first three items together. “Defend institutions” is hugely important for us today, and it is hard. So many signs of erosion of democratic institutions are now visible — determined efforts at voter exclusion, subversion of the offices of secretary of state in numerous states, data-science weaponized gerrymandering, and deliberate discrediting of elections. And one-party rule is a growing risk, in large part because of these assaults on democratic institutions and practices. “Illiberal democracy” with a strongman,  a lapdog dominant party, and pro-forma elections seem like very real possibilities on our horizon (link). So "Do not obey in advance" seems like a good note of caution. But so does item #6 -- "Be wary of paramilitaries".

Now think about several other items on the list that are relevant to our situation today -- #10, #11, and #13. "Believing in truth" is all the more important today after years of lies about election fraud, "stolen elections", idiotic conspiracy theories (e.g. Paul Pelosi), and crazy stuff about Democrats broadcast by wholly unscrupulous demagogues on Fox and other outlets. Respecting the truth and investigating the facts about various important events -- for example, the January 6 insurrection -- are all the more important today than ever. And "corporeal politics" -- what is that? It is a willingness to stand out for one's political convictions, to show up at rallies in support of reproductive rights, and to call out anti-democratic politicians and activists in visible ways. We have a model -- the Civil Rights movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King, jr., and other civil rights leaders.

And what about the final four items -- "dangerous words", "calm in the face of the unthinkable", "patriotism", and "courage"? These are the most reflective of Snyder's snippets of advice. Dangerous words are "weak signals" for dangerous deeds -- threats of violence, neo-Nazi slogans, racist and anti-Semitic memes. So it is crucial for us as citizens to hear those words and resist them. Being calm in the face of the unthinkable -- this is crucial advice, because effective collective action requires good thinking and a calm willingness to work together in the face of adversity. Moreover, it is pretty clear that there is great power in collective action and solidarity, if we can achieve it. And "patriotism" is clearly a part of this picture, if by that we mean a strong commitment to the institutions and values of our constitutional democracy and a multi-cultural society of mutually accepting communities. That is patriotism -- not the flag-waving of the MAGA movement (with an assault rifle over the shoulder), but a reflective commitment to the institutions that ensure liberty, equality, and wellbeing for all of us together.

The final point is humane and crucial: have as much courage as you are able. Defending our democracy does not demand Spartan heroism. Rather, each of us must muster our moral resources and do what we can. Our democracy is worth struggling for.

So let's hope for the best today, and let's hope that the leaders we elect will reflect deeply about their moral and political values and the good of our democracy, rather than the short-term opportunism that is evident on the right. Be a descendant of Lincoln rather than Father Coughlin!

Democratic socialism in the 1930s

Is it still possible to think big in western democracies about social and economic change in a way that substantially improves the lives and freedoms of most of society? We see the deprivation and indifference of the economic system that has governed most industrialized countries for the past century and a half, leading to gross inequalities, inequities of human wellbeing, and poverty. And we have seen the terrible nightmares created by Leninist-Stalinist Communism. We value freedom, human equality, and human flourishing, and we value democracy. Is it possible to effect a transition to a different economic structure that complies with the values of democracy, individual freedom, and human flourishing?

This was the ambition shared by the socialist movements of the English socialist groups and parties of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. And many of those men and women had a sophisticated and nuanced understanding of the complicated tensions that exist between the values of democracy and freedom, on the one side, and fairness and equality, on the side of economic life.

What might we want from a reformed progressive economy -- whether it is called social democracy or democratic socialism? Most generally, we would want a set of economic and political institutions that ensure that all members of society are in a position to develop their talents and aspirations, exercise their freedoms, and function as full citizens within a robust democracy. We would want secure protections of the rights of all persons, within a robust system of law. And we would want a public sector that actively works to address failures of the economic system to deliver the prerequisites of these values.

Several key issues stand out as highest priority.

1. tax policies that constrain wealth and income inequalities to some reasonable level
2. economic policies by government that work to ensure high employment rates at decent wages
3. a robust system for universal provision of the prerequisites of productive life in an advanced democracy -- education, healthcare, adequate nutrition
4. robust social arrangements for preventing and addressing poverty in children and adults
5. strong assurances that the least-well-off members of society are fully enabled to live decent lives, based on a reasonable income floor and provision of public services
6. strong assurances of equal opportunity for all members of society in employment, housing, healthcare, and access to social services
7. provisions for disability, unemployment, and retirement security
8. assurance of effective political equality, including constraints on the power of wealthy individuals, corporations, and foundations to determine the outcomes of policy-making and legislation

(It is striking how many of these issues find a place in Rawls's theory of justice, including his account of a property owning democracy; link.)

Elizabeth Durbin's New Jerusalems: The Labour Party and the Economics of Democratic Socialism is an excellent and detailed examination of the economic thinking of British socialists in the 1930s and 1940s, including that of her father, Evan Durbin. And it is important reading for our own generation, when a major reshuffling of the economic relations of capitalism currently seems to be off the table. Two intellectual influences were especially important: a tradition of English trade union activism challenging the power and position of the owners of wealth, and the Keynesian revolution that suggested, among other things, that economic institutions could be modified and managed. Whereas neoclassical economics essentially maintained that only complete freedom of action by economic actors ("laissez-faire") would give rise to "efficient" economic outcomes, these two traditions suggested that regulation of economic activity could be both successful and beneficial for society as a whole -- including the working classes (31-32).

The advantage of this analysis was that it opened up the possibility of redistributing a much wider range of 'unearned' incomes (not just that from land as Henry George had suggested) without reducing the supply of the factors which received such 'rental' payments. The approach also stressed the importance of transferring to the state all those means of production which earned the 'surplus', so that it would benefit society as a whole, not just individual owners. (33)

The financial and unemployment crisis of the Great Depression posed intractable problems for Labour Party leaders. What policies could be designed that would both damp down the fiscal crisis facing the British state and reduce unemployment and provide meaningful unemployment insurance for workers? 

The continued and intensifying unemployment problem in Britain precipitated major policy controversies across a broad spectrum of political views. The contradictions between traditional market explanations of unemployment and daily reality were already spurring the exploration of new theoretical constructs to explain the apparent failure of the market system. (70)

The combination of economic depression and political crisis had a profound effect on the Labour party in the early 1930s. The experience stirred deep emotions among Labour supporters, which left no one unmarked. It also raised fundamental questions about the role of the Labour party, for it seemed as though the only choice was between capitulation to the market forces of capitalism or preparation for a drastic take-over of the economic system. (73)

The drastic choices included either communism along the Russian model or massive nationalization of banks and industry (73), combined with extensive economic planning conducted by government ministries. Piecemeal reform and adjustment of the political economy of Britain seemed impossible. The democratic socialist movement and Labour party engaged in substantial study and consultation through 1933, and in 1934 the Labour party endorsed a new plan for reform.

The new programme called for the central planning of key industries, to include the immediate nationalization of the banking system, transport, coal and power, water supply, iron and steel and land and the drastic reorganization of electricity, gas, agriculture, shipping, shipbuilding, engineering, textiles, chemicals and insurance. Plans were also promised to extend social services, to provide medical care, to clear slums, to raise the school-leaving age, to abolish the means test and to give adequate maintenance for the unemployed. (87)

In other words -- a fairly detailed plan for a social-democratic welfare state with central economic planning in key industries. Much of this programme formed the core of the Labour party manifesto, For Socialism and Peace.

The question of redistribution within Britain's contemporary capitalist economy in the 1930s was a central topic for socialist debate.

Cole's original research design addressed redistributional issues by posing the question 'How far is it an essential part of socialist policy to promote more equal distribution of incomes (a) by raising real wages, (b) by development of the social services?' (125)

What Elizabeth Durbin documents in New Jerusalems is essentially an unresolved struggle, conducted by economists and politicians on the left in Britain, to design institutions that might succeed in fundamentally altering the tendencies of a functioning capitalist system to create extensive inequalities, crises of unemployment, and chronically low standards of living and wellbeing for the majority of working class people. And they were adamant in seeking institutional reforms that were feasible within the constraints of a democratic polity -- with the implication that their policy recommendations needed to find support from durable electoral majorities. As she puts the point late in the book, "Concern with immediate practicality has always been a trade-mark of British democratic socialism" (186). And in the following paragraph, she reiterates the democratic principle: "Their belief in democratic methods is fundamental to understanding the kind of socialist economic policy which emerged from this process.... They repudiated all Marxist policies and systems which depended upon the dictatorship of the proletariat and were considered by definition undemocratic" (186). What distinguished this tradition from other reformers, she writes, is their ongoing allegiance to the idea of public ownership of major economic assets and subsequent redistribution of income and wellbeing towards the least-well-off. And she believes that by the mid-1930s, British socialist and Labour leaders had accomplished a great deal:

By 1935 the Labour party was far better prepared than ever before to manage the country's economic affairs, to take control of financial policy and to begin serious planning efforts. Legislation had been drafted to nationalize the banking system; important leaders such as Dalton, but also other NEC members, were well briefed on banking options and policy operations; a loyal group of trained young professionals were eager to make their contributions. (222)

And yet -- this program failed during the 1930s. Only after the end of World War II did significant nationalization of industry and banking take place; and these economic changes were not durable. Thatcher's government of the 1980s reversed almost all the gains of post-war Labour governments.

 

A valuable resource on the nature and effectiveness of social democracy is the 1992 review article by Gosta Esping-Andersen and Kees van Kersbergen, "Contemporary Research on Social Democracy" (link). The purpose of this paper is to review efforts to evaluate the performance of a range of social-democratic countries in terms of their goals of equity and efficiency, and to try to identify some of the factors that seem to be conducive to successful implementation of the policies of a social democracy. Here is an observation about the centrality of a strong working-class movement in support of social-democratic reforms that seems very relevant to our current time:

Using a variety of different measures of both social democratic strength, and of policy outcomes (from social spending and redistribution to various institutional characteristics), most of these studies had in common a theory of working class mobilization of political power, that is, the social democratization of capitalist societies depends on the degree to which the balance of political power favors labor; in most cases, the political parties were identified as the chief causal agents. (191)

The literature seems to be converging around a common model. Simply put, social democratic parties are more capable of altering the distribution system and maintaining growth with full employment when they are linked to powerful and centralized trade union movement. (202)

This observation is concerning for the prospects of significant progressive reform towards policies leading to greater equity and efficiency in the United States, because the labor movement is at a low point of power and influence, and the mainstream Democratic Party is preoccupied with other issues. The authors pose this problem directly:

Since social democracy's strength lay in its mobilization of the industrial working class masses, it is an open question whether it will have any capacity for power in a postindustrial society. (203)

(Here are several earlier discussions of the political economy of democratic socialism; link, link, link.)

Sliding towards "semi-fascism"

President Biden's September 1 speech on the political threats posed to our democracy by the language and actions of far-right GOP leaders and elected officials was entirely on the mark. As scholars of the history of fascism have noted, many of the characteristics of fascism are indeed currently present in GOP language and goals. The cries of outrage demanding apology from these very same politicians are entirely mendacious.

New School historian Federico Finchelstein has written extensively on the history and social reality of fascism. Especially interesting in our contemporary context is his Brief History of Fascist Lies. Here is how Finchelstein formulated the concept of fascism in the Washington Post following Biden's speech:

What is fascism? In historical terms, it was an ultranationalist, anti-liberal and anti-Marxist politics. Its primary aim was to destroy democracy from within to create a modern dictatorship from above. The state silenced the basic tenets of civil society, while eliminating the distinctions between the public and the private — or between the state and its citizens. Fascist regimes shut down the independent press and destroyed the rule of law.

Fascists defended a divine, messianic and charismatic form of leadership supported by big lies and propaganda. They had an extreme, xenophobic conception of what they deemed the enemy, regarding it as an existential threat to the nation and to its people that had to be first persecuted and then deported or eliminated. Fascism aimed to create a new and epochal world order through the militarization of politics.(link)

The similarities between these descriptions and the behavior and language of the MAGA crowd are unmistakeable. The charge of "semi-fascism" is not based on the fact that the right-wing GOP believes there is a hidden liberal elite that runs the country. Rather, it is that they are threatening mass violence against the state, elected officials, other citizens, and the groups they don't like. Like Mussolini, they will use whatever rhetorical dodges come to hand to gain support. But violent anti-democratic change is their program. That's what makes Biden's statements that the GOP is becoming a party of what he called "semi-fascism" so accurate.

The far right has manufactured faceless and fictional enemies to wage war against -- government officials in particular -- which is really a rejection of the idea that government has an entirely appropriate function in regulating industry and securing the common good. And under cover of that set of fictions, they are actually working aggressively to intimidate voters, librarians, teachers, health-care workers, election officials, public health administrators, and advocates for anti-racism and police reform.

Here is how Finchelstein encapsulates the Trumpian version of fascist aspiration:

Indeed, well before Jan. 6, 2021, Trump had already established key pillars of fascism: militarization of politics, xenophobia, totalitarian propaganda techniques and demonstrable falsehoods, and the demonization of his antagonists. Trumpism was only missing dictatorship. And then the insurrection happened, as Trump supporters attempted to overturn the 2020 election results because he lost. (link)

Critics of the American system from the left are certainly correct in saying that wealthy individuals and corporations wield vast power in our system -- witness the entirely one-sided tax policy changes that have occurred in the past decades, the weakening of regulatory regimes (FAA, NRC, OSHA, EPA), and the impunity with which billionaires move their wealth (and their yachts) to island enclaves beyond scrutiny of US taxes.

It's pretty laughable to assert that "socialists" and the radical-liberal left have created all kinds of new laws and policies oppressing other people; the left has been defeated on almost every issue (reduction of inequalities, gun safety legislation, strong and effective industrial regulation, taxes on the rich, reproductive rights, ...).

There are indeed dark forces pulling a lot of strings in our democracy: the NRA, the extremist anti-abortion movement, the effective power of corporations to secure their financial interests over the public good, the role of big money in elections (e.g. Barry Seide and the Marble Freedom Trust), and the increasingly strident voices of racism, anti-Semitism, and anti-muslim bigotry among GOP politicians. Progressive critics refer primarily to the third and fourth items on this list; and these factors remain potent today. But the "populist" extremists have gained an enormous amount of power that they are wielding against the clear majority of the US population.

It's a gloomy picture!

Resisting authoritarian populism

The rise of an organized effort to create an authoritarian right-wing government in the United States is palpable. Unhinged Republican elected officials call for political violence and "civil war"; an ideological and Christian-nationalist Supreme Court moves forward unhesitatingly in attacking long-established and fundamental rights, including rights of reproductive freedom; Republican-controlled state houses enact ever-more restrictive legislation and gerrymandered electoral maps restricting voting rights. What recourse do Americans who care about their democratic institutions, rights, and liberties have in face of this rise of populist authoritarianism?

Political sociologists David Meyer and Sidney Tarrow addressed this set of crises in an intriguing volume, The Resistance: The Dawn of the Anti-Trump Opposition Movement. Regrettably, the book was written too early. It was prepared for publication in 2018, and the political threats to democracy are much, much worse today. Writing in 2018, the editors summarize the situation in these terms:

Importantly, the election of Donald Trump represents an attack not only on the Democratic Party, or the Left more generally, but also presents a clear threat to well-established bipartisan policies, the independence of institutions in the American Constitutional order, and America's place in the world. In this context, it is not surprising that a diverse and volatile opposition quickly emerged. (3)

This is a clear statement, but in hindsight it understates the magnitude of the threat, and unfortunately it seems to exaggerate the strength of the "diverse and volatile opposition" that has emerged. Meyer and Tarrow are social-movement scholars, and they focus on several important examples of social movements and protests that occurred in 2016 and 2017 -- the Women's March (January 2017), demonstrations in support of immigrant and Latino rights, residual Occupy Wall Street activism, activism around climate change, and the mobilization and demonstrations associated with the Black Lives Matter movement.

But notice -- with the exception of the Women's March, these moments of activism rarely succeeded in gathering a broad cross-section of the American public. Black Lives Matter generated greater public knowledge and concern about misuse of force by police officers, and climate activists perhaps marginally extended the range of concerned citizens actively concerned about climate inaction by our government. But these causes and organizations did not succeed in engaging a significant percentage of the attention or concern of ordinary citizens across the country. 

So a crucial question demands answering: do these examples constitute a "movement", or do they point to something less focused -- a readiness of many Americans to answer the call to mobilize around specific issues and specific moments of demonstration, rather than a broad-based commitment in support of our democracy? The question is important, because "resistance" ultimately requires widespread, committed, organized, and persistent readiness of large numbers of diverse people to come together in opposition to an ongoing seizure of power.

The assault on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 was the most striking instance of attempted violent insurrection in our country in over a century and a half. So why was there not a massive response from the American public reaffirming the integrity of the election, the fundamental importance of our democratic institutions, and a repudiation of the "Stop the Steal!" lies? Where was the resistance on January 7? Why did corporate advertisers continue to support Fox News with advertising revenue? Where is the American "democracy movement" when we need it?

Effective resistance to rising authoritarianism will require the development of a set of demands that can engage millions of Americans across class, race, religion, and region in a persistent and committed way. Alliances with existing activist groups are valuable, but we need a broader basis for consensus that can give rise to a genuinely broad-based movement of resistance. Perhaps the broad platform for a democratic resistance movement can be as simple as this:

• "No to all politicians and parties who undermine the legitimacy of our political institutions!"
• "No to all politicians and activists who call for political violence!"
• "Yes to full and equal voting rights for all Americans!"
• "Yes to reproductive freedom!"
• "Yes to greater equity for the bottom 75% of Americans!"

And the actions that can give force to these demands? Massive, persistent non-violent demonstrations in many cities; boycotts against companies that continue to support anti-democratic parties and candidates; lawsuits against unconstitutional gerrymandering by state legislatures; and effective communications campaigns aimed at broadening the base of opposition. Mass collective action can be immensely powerful.

Or, as composer Frederic Rzewski put it in 1975, "The people united will never be defeated!". The historical moment was the violent overthrow and murder of Salvadore Allende in Chile and the seizure of power by dictator Augusto Pinochet. Where is the next Martin Luther King, Jr., when we need him or her?

Can we avoid catastrophe?

The three greatest threats we face today seem almost insurmountable. They include global climate change, whose consequences are potentially catastrophic for the whole planet, from Bangladesh to California and Florida; the rise of anti-democratic right-wing extremism in the United States and other liberal democracies, whose consequences threaten the viability of liberal democracy; and the resurgence of aggressive war.

Further, these threats are interconnected. Climate change will produce vast numbers of "climate refugees" and will deepen international conflicts over water and agriculture. Economic insecurity has the potential for worsening the trend toward right-wing extremism. Illiberal dictatorships are less constrained against the use force against their neighbors, and they are less likely to extend assistance to other countries in times when they are subject to powerful aggression by other dictators. And conservative ideologies have shown themselves to be indifferent to sober scientific studies of the dynamics of climate change. Climate scepticism is part of the canon for the far right.

Each of these challenges involves horrendously difficult problems of mobilization and coordination. Addressing climate change is perhaps the most difficult because of its global scope and long time duration. The root cause of global warming is the rapid rise of atmospheric CO2 and other greenhouse gases, largely the result of burning fossil fuels, along with massive deforestation (reducing the earth's capacity to remove CO2 from the atmosphere).

source: J. G. Speth, The Bridge at the End of the World

As the graphs indicate, CO2 concentration and rainforest depletion have increased exponentially since 1800, the beginning of the industrial age. But for many poor and middle-income countries, the urgent problems of poverty and low standard-of-living for much of their population demand solutions, and expansion of industrialization, manufacturing, and transportation all require growth in carbon production. ("Require" is probably too strong a word here, since we know that there are alternative low-emission energy sources; but those sources involve higher costs of infrastructure and operations.) So poor countries are unlikely to successfully support commitments to genuine carbon reduction. Further, about 50% of CO2 emissions are created by three countries, China, the United States, and India (link):

If these three countries fail to substantially reduce their CO2 emissions by 2060, it is hard to see how global goals can be met in time to avoid climate disaster. In the United States, there is an astounding level of resistance by the conservative right to the goal of reducing CO2 emissions (link). Here is the European Union plan for carbon neutrality by 2050 (link), and here are reviews of China's commitments (link) and India's commitments (link) to containment of carbon emissions.

What about the second challenge, the rise of right-wing extremist and nationalist political movements that explicitly threaten democratic institutions? Here the problem is twofold. First, rightwing Republican majorities in Red states have already succeeded in gerrymandering their populations in such a way as to make their electoral majorities essentially immune from future threats; and second, there is a well-orchestrated mobilization of rightwing extremist ideologies among a significant percentage of the public that has made "true believers" of these anti-democratic advocates. Therefore the political challenge of winning back a durable majority of the population in support of democratic institutions and a legislative and political agenda that enhances freedom and wellbeing of the whole population is difficult from the start. The politics of conspiracy theories, lies, and aggressive resistance to government action have created a high level of resistance to democratic change on the part of large portions of the US electorate. At the moment the organized politics of authoritarianism seem to have the advantage (link).

Finally, war. Vladimir Putin made it evident in 2014 that he was an opportunistic power-seeking autocrat, through his invasion and annexation of Crimea. His aggressive and atrocious war against Ukraine since February simply demonstrates how far he -- and the Russian state that he commands -- is willing to go to impose his will on his neighbors. Along with the courage and tenacity of the Ukrainian people, it is the surprisingly strong political will of the NATO alliance in supporting Ukraine that has frustrated Putin's war aims to date. Imagine the world situation if Donald Trump had succeeded in gutting NATO during his presidency. Trump, Orban, and other right-wing rulers have shown that they are only too willing to see the world through Putin's eyes. And that leads to a very worrisome implication: if the extremist GOP wins majorities in the Congress in 2022 and 2024, and possibly wins the presidency in 2024, then the United States could no longer be regarded as a staunch opponent and ally against the aggression of countries like Russia against their neighbors.

We have our tasks in front of us. Most immediately, we must prevail in defending the institutions of our liberal democracy, we must support the US government in establishment of effective climate change goals, and we must understand that military aggression must be confronted effectively, swiftly, and with courage. These tasks begin with electoral politics. We need a Democratic Party that can formulate and articulate an agenda that can inspire voters of every stripe, and we need candidates who can communicate our values effectively and show the mendacity of their Republican opponents. We need a presidential candidate with the brains and values of an Elizabeth Warren, the quick wit of a Jon Stewart, and the courage of an Abraham Lincoln.

The growing risk of authoritarian rule in the US

Thomas Edsell's piece in the August 3, 2022 New York Times offers a truly chilling view of the plans currently underway by Donald Trump and his supporters for creating an authoritarian one-party state in the United States (link). Edsell draws primarily from Trump's own words at the America First Policy Institute in late July 2022. 

As he contemplates a third straight run for the presidency, Donald Trump has a multimillion-dollar political machine and a network of tax-exempt advocacy groups at his disposal. He also has a plan. The plan is to wrest control of the federal government from what he sees as a policy apparatus dominated by “radical left-wing Democrats.”

Key to this plan is the goal of transforming Civil Service law to permit the appointment of Trump loyalists at every level of the Federal government:

The architects of one of the most radical of Trump’s proposals have described it as “the constitutional option.” It would provide for the wholesale politicization of the elite levels of the civil service through the creation of a new “Schedule F” classification, allowing the president to hire and fire at will thousands of government employees “in positions of a confidential, policy-determining, policymaking, or policy-advocating character.”

Quoting from an extensive piece in Axios by Jonathan Swan (link), Edsell describes an extensive plan for transforming government power in a way that is genuinely fascist:

Swan described the creation of the Schedule F classification, which would eliminate civil service protection for top-level government workers as “the centerpiece” of Trump’s plans for his second term in the White House, writing that “sources close to the former president said that he will — as a matter of top priority — go after the national security apparatus, ‘clean house’ in the intelligence community and the State Department, target the ‘woke generals’ at the Defense Department, and remove the top layers of the Justice Department and F.B.I.”

This is a genuinely chilling piece of analysis by Edsell, because it describes a very methodical and well-funded process for transforming the independence of key agencies (like the Department of Justice) into an integrated and subordinate arm of the supreme leader, the president. That is a political design very familiar to Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin.

So what are the options available to citizens who love their freedoms and their democracy -- for themselves, their children, and their fellow citizens?

Lynette Ong's The Street and the Ballot Box: Interactions Between Social Movements and Electoral Politics in Authoritarian Contexts is a very welcome contribution to the problem we all face. The title encapsulates the content of the book. Ong draws upon the literatures of contentious politics, social movements, and electoral politics, on the one hand, and the experience of several countries in which authoritarian rulers have usurped democratic norms and institutions, on the other. The problem she poses is an inherently difficult one: how can a widely extended and often divided population effectively marshal strength for opposing dictatorial and violent rulers? She argues, on both theoretical and historical grounds, that social movements (informal) and electoral politics (formal) interact much more extensively than most observers think. And she underlines that concerted protest through the mechanisms of social movements do in fact have the capacity to topple dictators:

By parsing the causal mechanisms through which “stolen elections” lead to mass uprisings and the toppling of autocratic rulers, I argue that movement–election interactions are critical to understanding regime change in authoritarian contexts. A fraudulent election is a political opportunity that produces powerful emotions of moral outrage that spurs people to take to the streets, and changes their cost–benefit calculation of protest participation in high-risk authoritarian settings. Once it reaches a critical scale, mass uprisings may change the elites’ calculations, prompting some close allies of the rulers to defect, which in turn precipitates regime downfall. I survey a range of country cases across Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia to analyze how different conditions produce successful and unsuccessful revolutionary outcomes. These conditions include widespread regime grievances, availability of mobilizing structures, the movement‘s critical mass, strategic choice of violent versus nonviolent resistance, elite defection, and Western intervention. (2)

(It is of course ironic that in the same month that Ong's book was published, the far right used wholly fictitious claims of "stolen elections" to stimulate mass collective action against the legally elected new president, Joe Biden.) 

There is a great deal of theory conveyed in this short paragraph. First, it raises the question of mass mobilization: what does it take to motivate large numbers of people to come out into the street to protest an authoritarian seizure of power? She refers to "emotions of moral outrage". She also refers to a follow-on mechanism: the discouragement of some elite supporters of the dictator. (A question worth asking in the current moment is whether either factor is present in Russia today with respect to Putin's atrocious war against Ukraine. The factor of moral outrage in the public seems to be largely absent; whereas a degree of elite defection seems to have occurred.) 

Finally, Ong provides a list of prominent causal factors that influence the outcome of struggle between protesters and rulers: the depth of grievances against the regime, the presence of "mobilizing structures" (labor organizations, religious authorities, newspapers, ...); the concept of critical mass (if enough people show up in the streets, this encourages others, leading to a positive feedback loop and greater mobilization over time); the question of the choice of violence or nonviolent resistance (a key choice for Solidarity leaders and activists in Poland in 1980, who wisely chose nonviolence); elite defection; and (in the cases she considers) the possibility of external intervention. (It is dubious whether the Royal Canadian Mounted Police will come to the assistance of protesters in the United States.) To this list one might add the cultural and ideational factors that Doug McAdam and other scholars of contentious politics have come to give more attention to -- e.g. the strength of conviction that a harmonious democracy is worth fighting for. Elsewhere in the book she emphasizes the critical role of coalitions in opposition -- bringing together different organizations and constituencies that can be brought to see that they have an important shared interest in defeating the authoritarian ruler.

What is particularly evocative about Ong's treatment is her focus on these issues of protest against government in the context of authoritarian political environments. Her account proceeds through careful analysis of several important case studies, most extensively the case of Malaysia, but also the Philippines and the "color revolutions" of eastern Europe (Serbia, Ukraine, Georgia). (Ong frequently uses the term "revolution", but most often it is "regime change" rather than social revolution that she describes.) 

Ong's central view is that "broad-based social movements" have the capacity to force regime-change against authoritarian rulers. 

What qualifies as a broad-based movement? It is one that advocates for a cause shared across large swaths of society and identified by elites and nonelites alike. Such movement rallies are capable of mobilizing society beyond what NGOs and other typical mobilizing structures are able to do.... A cohesive coalition unites opposition parties to compete under the same banner, instead of against each other, and sustains the alliance after it has won power. (24, 26)

So here is the critical question: does the United States have the potential for creating a broad-based social movement to resist right-wing authoritarian seizure of power? Can we build effective coalitions that can agree about that goal -- even if other goals remain separate? We have seen a few national protest movements in the past ten years -- Black Lives Matter protests, protests to protect reproductive rights, and even Occupy Wall Street protests. But none of these protest movements has so far reached the "critical mass" stage, and none have proven to be sufficiently durable to present serious pressure against an authoritarian regime. Can we do better?

(Another invaluable resource for thinking about how to stand up to a fascist seizure of power in the United States is the edited volume by David Meyer and Sidney Tarrow, The Resistance: The Dawn of the Anti-Trump Opposition Movement. The book was published in 2018, and regrettably, today's situation is even worse than the various authors imagined. This volume will be discussed in a later post.)

Is there a working class in the US?

There is certainly a working class in the United States, and it is a majority of the population (persons who earn their livelihood through wage-paying employment). But it is highly fragmented, mostly in the service sector, unorganized, and often disinclined to believe in the possibility of serious social change. A recent Brookings research report by Martha Ross and Nicole Bateman on low-wage workers provides a clear analysis of the current situation (link). Their report is based on US Census data (American Community Survey 2012-2016). Low-wage workers make up 44% of the US workforce (53 million workers). Median annual earnings of low-wage workers was $17,950 in 2016. 

Once Ross and Bateman have defined the criteria for "low-wage workers", they are able to perform a great deal of useful analysis on the resulting population. Where do low-wage workers find jobs? These are the jobs that represent about half of low-wage workers: retail sales workers, information and records clerks, cooks and food preparation workers, building cleaning workers, material moving workers, food and beverage serving workers, construction trades workers, material recording, scheduling, dispatching, and distributing workers, motor vehicle operators, and personal care and service workers (such as child care workers and patient care assistants (Table 3, 11). The authors partition the data into nine clusters, distinguished by age and educational attainment. The largest cluster (cluster 4) is the age group 25-50, high school or less, with 27.8% of the low-wage population. This is also the largest age group overall, with 56.5% of the low-wage population.)

This map provides information about the absolute number of low-wage workers in US metropolitan areas and the share of low-wage workers in each metro area. The larger the circle the greater the absolute number, and the deeper the shade of orange, the higher the share of how-wage workers in that metro. Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach Metro has the highest absolute number of low-wage workers (1.206 million, representing 55% of the wage workforce).

How much economic mobility exists for low-wage workers? Very little, the authors report; only 5% of low-wage workers found a better-paying job within a 12-month period:

Research on whether low-wage jobs are springboards or sinkholes is not encouraging. The economic mobility of low-wage workers is limited—many remain in low-wage jobs over time, even as they rely on their earnings to support themselves or their families. Women, people of color, and those with low levels of education are the most likely to stay in low-wage jobs. One study found that, within a 12-month period, 70% of low-wage workers stayed in the same job, 6% switched to a different low-wage job, and just 5% found a better job. (39)

The authors offer a handful of policy recommendations to address the human hardships associated with low-wage jobs. First concerns education and skill-development. "There is a considerable body of evidence and practical knowledge on establishing and operating workforce programs that prepare workers—primarily those without college degrees—for in-demand jobs. That is not to say it is easy, however, or adequately funded, or that the knowledge is always implemented" (40). Programs for skill development can be funded by by public and private organizations, including Federal and local government and supported by industry and non-profit foundations. Second, they note the ongoing significance of discrimination and bias in the labor market, and the need for effective steps to counter these obstacles to economic mobility. "People of color and women are both overrepresented among low-wage workers. Echoing well-established trends, we found that much higher shares of Black and Latino or Hispanic workers are low-wage compared to white workers" (42). And third, they emphasize the need for regional strategies for economic and workforce development. They note: "A multitude of recent papers, speeches, and initiatives have highlighted structural problems in the labor market, and noted that too many workers will continue to be left behind absent dramatic policy change. Dani Rodrik and Charles Sabel formulate the issue in perhaps the starkest terms: "'Where will the good jobs come from?’ is perhaps the defining question of our contemporary political economy.'"" (43).

What is missing from this analysis of low-wage jobs? Unions, for one thing. The ten industries that represent about half of all low-wage workers have a low level of union representation. Retail sales workers and restaurant workers represent about 6.9 million low-wage workers, and collective bargaining is scarce in both sectors. If these workers -- and the other sectors on the list -- were unionized, it is unavoidable that wages would go up for these workers. But likewise, in line with the ongoing discussion of the prerequisites of significant economic reform, a strengthening of unions is also likely to lead to greater influence for political candidates and parties who support meaningful economic reforms. 

Workers in the gig economy -- Uber and Lyft drivers and food delivery drivers, for example -- appear to fall in the low-wage category, though there are various estimates of Uber driver wages in the press. One careful report from 2018 by the Economic Policy Institute estimates after-expense hourly rates for Uber drivers at $11.77 per hour in 2018 (EPI, Lawrence Mishel, link). This amounts to a fulltime annual wage of about $24,000 -- without health benefits. ZipRecruiter reports wages for Amazon warehouse workers for every state, and hourly rates range from $11.56 (North Carolina) to $18.28 (Washington) (link). The threshold that Ross and Bateman define for low-wage status is adjusted by regional cost-of-living, but ranges from $12.54 (Beckley, WV) to $20.02 (San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA), with a national average of $16.03. By these criteria both gig workers and Amazon warehouse workers fall into the category of low-wage fulltime workers.

That provides some information about the low-wage workers. But the next segment of American working people are only a little better off. Here is a Bureau of Labor Statistics report on weekly earnings of fulltime workers in second quarter 2022 (link). The table illustrates the disparities in wages by race and gender that are mentioned by Ross and Bateman. Here are the data for median weekly wages (top of second quartile) for white men ($1,161), white women ($956), black or African American men ($953), and black or African American women ($840). These are data for individual wage-earners. Household income by decile can be found here, where median household income (CPI adjusted) is reported as $69,202. In 2020 the Federal poverty guideline for a family of four was $26,200, which means that the median household makes out its existence at an income level about 2.6x the poverty line. As noted in the previous post, the economic lives of people in households at or below the median income are likely to be precarious, anxious, and paycheck to paycheck. 

So, again -- does the US have a working class, or are we overwhelmingly "middle class", suburban, and secure? The answer is evident: the majority of the US working population is involved in the wage-labor market, resulting in household incomes that barely suffice for the ordinary expenses of family living, and without significant possibility of accumulating savings or property. Further, 31.2 million people (11.5% of people under 65; link) lack health insurance -- another source of precarity, poor quality of life, and poor health. 

So there is a very large population of working people in the US whose interests are not well served by the current system of employment and social services (including education and healthcare).

But here is the much harder question: does the American political system provide avenues of coordination, mobilization, and power that would permit this majority of the population to express its interests and needs in our electoral democracy? These tens of millions of workers in the low-wage and low-middle wage range -- are they in a position to develop political identities that could underlie effective demands for meaningful change in our economic arrangements? Or are we as a national population so dispersed, divided, and mutually antagonistic that political solidarity is inconceivable?

Gross economic inequalities in the US

An earlier post (link) highlighted the growing severity of inequalities of wealth and income in the United States, as well as Elizabeth Warren's very sensible "billionaire" tax proposal. According to a 2020 article in Forbes, "According to the latest Fed data, the top 1% of Americans have a combined net worth of $34.2 trillion (or 30.4% of all household wealth in the U.S.), while the bottom 50% of the population holds just $2.1 trillion combined (or 1.9% of all wealth)" (Forbes, link). That bears repeating: 1% of Americans own 30.45% of wealth in the United States, while the bottom 50% owns under 2% of wealth. Those disparities in wealth have worsened during the past two years of pandemic. The Forbes story notes that Elon Musk's wealth increased from $100 million to $240 million in the first eight months of 2020, and Jeff Bezos' wealth increased by $65 billion in 2020.

A recent story in the New Yorker on mega-yachts underlines the obscene imbalance that exists between the super rich and the rest of us. Evan Osnos' "The Floating World" offers a glimpse into the mega-luxury and consumption associated with super-yachts (link). Much of the world's attention to super-yachts has gravitated to the Russian oligarchs and the economic sanctions that have resulted in seizure of a number of multiple-hundred-million dollar ships around the world. But of course, it is not only Russian oligarchs who have captured their nations' wealth. Oligarchs and billionaires from the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Central America are part of the same bleak picture.

The level of consumption on luxury involved in the world of super-yachts in the article is obscene in the original sense of the word; it is a conspicuous display of wealth that makes one sick. The idea that a single individual or family would have the financial ability to purchase a 500-million dollar ship (limited by maritime law to carrying only 12 guests and unlimited crew) is grotesque. (Osnos quotes a luxury yacht industry estimate that the annual cost of maintaining a mega-yacht is 10% of its purchase cost. So a half-billion dollar ship requires $50 million in annual maintenance.) And this grotesquerie is especially stark in a world where global and national poverty are persistent obstacles to free human development for the world's population and climate change imperils everyone. (Osnos notes that experts estimate that "one well-stocked diesel yacht is estimated to produce as much greenhouse gas as fifteen hundred passenger cars".)

It is impossible to describe the situation of wealth inequality in the United States as anything other than a "laissez-faire robber baron regime" of wealth creation and consumption. We functionally have no effective tax policy that constrains the accumulation of hundreds of billions of dollars by a small number of individuals and families.

Here is a very interesting video panel organized by the Brookings Institution on the current status of wealth-tax proposals (link). Especially interesting in the discussion is the emphasis on wider positive effects of a wealth tax, including a shift in political power and an enhancement of racial and gender equity.

So what about the rest of us -- the population falling below the 90th-percentile of income? Here is a graph of recent income-distribution data by select percentiles (link):

Several things are apparent from this graph of income distribution. (It is important to recall that the distribution of wealth is much more extreme than the distribution of income.) First, the median household income (50th percentile of households) is $67,463. This is just under 2.5 times the Federal poverty level for a household of four individuals. This income is pre-tax; so the monthly budget of the median household is roughly $4,000 per month. This is a very tight budget that must cover all expenses: housing, food, transportation, clothing, healthcare, and so on. It is clear that households at the 50th percentile are financially struggling, and are unlikely to be able to afford a mortgage on a house. These Americans are also likely to be unable to save significantly, including savings for future educational costs for their children. Second, the 99th-percentile household income is about 7.5 times the median household income. A family with over $500,000 household income has no month-to-month financial constraints; it is not difficult to save significant resources over time; and owning property for this household is entirely feasible. 

What would a more equitable world look like? Robert Lynch attempts to construct a rough estimate of the economic benefits of achieving economic equity across racial, ethnic, and gender lines in "The economic benefits of equal opportunity in the United States by ending racial, ethnic, and gender disparities" (Equitable Growth, link). Here are the reforms that Lynch believes are crucial for substantive progress on equality of opportunity without regard to race, ethnicity, or gender:

To achieve an equal-opportunity society where there are no barriers to economic success that are the consequence of race, ethnicity, or gender disparities would obviously require tackling overt racism and sexism.

But true equal opportunity requires more than that. It involves addressing many other disparities that undermine worker productivity, such as unequal access to jobs, education, credit in the form of home mortgages and business loans, affordable child care, high-quality pre-Kindergarten, and senior care; inconsistencies in family leave and workplace policies and in treatment in the justice system; imbalances in access to healthcare and insurance; unequal exposure to damaging levels of environmental pollutants; and inadequate and unequal access to high-quality physical infrastructure, which is essential to maximizing economic efficiency.

Here is his conclusion:

The U.S. economic consequences of eliminating racial, ethnic, and gender inequalities are large, particularly for individuals of color and women. The total earnings in the nation would swell well beyond what they currently are, and the incomes of Black, Hispanic, and Asian workers would be substantially higher. The largest earnings gains would be experienced by non-Hispanic White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian women.

Whose wealth is it anyway? The libertarian laissez-faire ideology is that the "creators" of wealth are solely responsible for this wealth, and it morally and legally belongs to them. But a much more credible view is that a national economy is a vast and extended system of economic cooperation, with a substantial "social product" that should not be captured by a small number of strategically located actors. The term "rent-seeking" appears to apply perfectly here. There is also the familiar but spurious argument that vast inequalities are needed in order to generate incentives for productivity and innovation. This argument is spurious: first, much innovation comes forward from ordinary participants in economic activity who rarely see financial benefits from their innovations; and second, it is laughable to imagine that only the prospect of a $200-billion windfall would motivate an "entrepreneur" to his or her wild and crazy new ideas. Would the prospect of a billion-dollar windfall not work as an incentive? Would $100 million not work? Ha! The idea of the moral or economic inevitability of unlimited wealth accumulation is simply self-serving ideology.

In large strokes the Warren wealth tax proposal represents a moderate tax on the super-rich; and it could have a very large impact on a range of issues of political stability, economic equity, and equality of opportunity that are crucial for the future of our democracy.

English socialism

What were the social conditions that led many English intellectuals in the 1930s to engage in fundamental critique of the society in which they lived? Why was social criticism so profound and sustained in Britain from the time of Carlyle and Engels to the surge of English socialism in the 1930s?

The answer, of course, is the harshness and cruelty of capitalism and the rapid industrialization and slummification of cities like Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, and London in the 1840s and the century that followed. It was the perfectly visible immiseration of British working people, and the growing conviction that this was a systemic consequence of the new economic order, that inspired observers as politically diverse as Carlyle and Engels to write their descriptions and denunciations of the emerging economic system (link, link). And it was this perception of systemic exploitation and ruin that led critics to try to imagine a social and economic system that would make those evils impossible.

These critiques were not primarily driven by ideology; they were not driven by an antecedent political program. Instead, many of these social critics were conducting what we might today call "micro-sociology", investigating and documenting the modes of life found in particular communities. The programs for radical change came next. Radicalism did not create the conditions of poverty, bad health, and demoralization that Carlyle, Engels, or Orwell described; rather, the range of socialist visions that appeared were responses to the social dysfunctions that were entirely visible in 19th- and 20th-century capitalism.

If one witnesses the debris and death of a plane crash, one is saddened for the loss of life, but it is possible to think of the crash as a tragic accident. But when one reads of the extraordinary rates of fatal and maiming accidents in the coal-mining industry, the "unfortunate accident" view is not tenable. The high rate of accidents observed is systemic, deriving from the management's failure to invest in appropriate safety equipment and processes as a means of propping up profits as well as the utter lack of effective state regulation of mine safety.

Likewise, a single impoverished family is a sad event; whereas a whole impoverished class is systemic and must be treated as such. A social order that consigns 40% of its population to extreme poverty, illiteracy, and poor health is an unacceptable social order. It must be changed. This was the conviction that was shared by a broad swath of observers of English society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But what form might that change take? That was the question that faced social critics at the end of the nineteenth century. And the question continued through the Great Depression into the 1930s. For many critics, the answer was some form of socialism.

Consider George Orwell and his work of documentary journalism, The Road to Wigan Pier (1937). The book was commissioned by the Left Book Club, organized by Victor Gollancz, Harold Laski, and John Strachey, to investigate unemployment in the Midland industrial regions. The first half of the book is based on careful and exact observation of the conditions of life and work of the coal miners and their families in industrial northern England. (Wigan is roughly midway between Manchester and Liverpool.) The conditions of work and living that Orwell describes are horrible and dehumanizing. The work of coal mining was highly dangerous, with high rates of injury and death; the pay was poor, with many deductions; the work was physically taxing in the extreme (Orwell describes the harrowing trudge from the "cage" to the coal face in terms that are almost Promethean in their physical demands); and the working day involved manually moving tons of coal from the coal face to the conveyer belt by miners crouched on their knees. Living conditions were awful as well, both in the central slums and in the scarce and shoddy new housing slowly being built by the municipalities. Sanitation was primitive, living spaces were damp and bug-infested, and every lodging was severely over-crowded. And work was scarce, with high rates of unemployment in every family. Orwell conveys great respect for the men and women whom he meets during his time in the industrial north, but he is also clear-eyed about the dehumanization created by poverty, malnutrition, and precarious and squalid housing.

The critique of the systemic immiseration created by capitalism raised the urgent question of change. But it doesn't determine the answer. Can the worst features of capitalism be reformed? Can the effective political power of working people be increased and brought to bear in support of measures like unemployment insurance, retirement security, and access to education and healthcare? Can extreme economic inequalities be managed through tax policies? That is, are there possible adjustments to capitalist ownership that retain the main features of capitalism but ensure the fundamental interests of working people? We might describe this as reform of laissez-faire capitalism in the direction of "capitalism with a human face", welfare capitalism, or social democracy. Roosevelt's New Deal represented ambitious efforts along these lines, including programs to address mass unemployment (the Works Progress Administration) and old-age poverty (the Social Security Administration). Marx and his followers in the serial Internationals argued that piecemeal reform of capitalism was not possible -- "capitalist ownership implies capitalist dictatorship" -- but that is simple dogma. Perhaps strong labor unions and a progressive political party can institute and preserve social-democratic reforms within the broad confines of a market economy.

Second, if the critic is persuaded that private ownership and management of industrial firms is itself the cause of immiseration -- because owners are under constant profit imperatives of cost reduction, leading to negative pressure on wages and strong resistance to taxation for social programs -- then a second broad avenue for reform is democratic socialism. If private ownership of industry leads to immiseration, then reformers are led to consider social ownership of some kind. Here the slogan might be: democratic institutions govern the state, and a system of social ownership owns and manages productive wealth. Here again there are multiple scenarios to imagine. One possible arrangement of social ownership might involve municipal ownership, much as utility companies were once owned by public authorities. Another possible arrangement is workers' cooperatives (link, link), in which the employees of a firm are also the owners. Again, this is not an unknown arrangement even within an advanced capitalist economy. These alternative systems of social ownership can be described as varieties of democratic socialism, with distributed ownership of the means of production.

Yet another arrangement that might capture the purposes of democratic social control of the economy and decent outcomes for all members of society is the system that John Rawls describes as a property-owning democracy (link). On this view, political institutions embody democratic values of maximal equal liberties and democratic decision-making. And economic institutions are essentially arranged around "mutual funds" owned by all citizens that own enterprises and are subject to democratic oversight by their shareholders (citizens). Rawls writes:

Both a property-owning democracy and a liberal socialist regime set up a constitutional framework for democratic politics, guarantee the basic liberties with the fair value of the political liberties and fair equality of opportunity, and regulate economic and social inequalities by a principle of mutuality, if not by the difference principle. (Justice as Fairness, 138)

Paradoxically, the worst conception of change, though also the most appealing to critics who demanded radical change quickly, was Lenin's: revolution rather than reform, dictatorship of the proletariat rather than broad democratic equality. We can now see that the Leninist program was wrong from the start, because it presupposed the establishment of a totalitarian state through which the "bourgeois dictatorship" of property would be abolished and the dictatorship of the vanguard party would be installed. The NKVD, the Gulag, and the Holodomor were the consequences of that vision.

So what did progressive, independent English observers want when it came to social reform? What did Orwell want? Orwell declared himself in favor of socialism and against Soviet Communism, and he was consistent in both views from the 1930s through the end of his life. But what did he mean by socialism?

One place where Orwell stated his ideas about the future fairly clearly was his 1941 essay "The Lion and the Unicorn" (link). Here is a passage where he addresses the meaning of socialism directly:

Socialism is usually defined as “common ownership of the means of production”. Crudely: the State, representing the whole nation, owns everything, and everyone is a State employee. This does not mean that people are stripped of private possessions such as clothes and furniture, but it does mean that all productive goods, such as land, mines, ships and machinery, are the property of the State. The State is the sole large-scale producer. It is not certain that Socialism is in all ways superior to capitalism, but it is certain that, unlike capitalism, it can solve the problems of production and consumption. At normal times a capitalist economy can never consume all that it produces, so that there is always a wasted surplus (wheat burned in furnaces, herrings dumped back into the sea, etc., etc.) and always unemployment. In time of war, on the other hand, it has difficulty in producing all that it needs, because nothing is produced unless someone sees his way to making a profit out of it. In a Socialist economy these problems do not exist. The State simply calculates what goods will be needed and does its best to produce them. Production is only limited by the amount of labour and raw materials. Money, for internal purposes, ceases to be a mysterious all-powerful thing and becomes a sort of coupon or ration-ticket, issued in sufficient quantities to buy up such consumption goods as may be available at the moment. (Part II, section i)

This paragraph demonstrates what is in hindsight a regrettable lack of nuance: Orwell moves directly from "common ownership of the means of production" to "the State ... owns everything". But as noted above, there are many ways of designing a system of social ownership of the means of production (municipal ownership, workers' cooperatives, ...) that do not involve state ownership. So Orwell slips too quickly to the conclusion that a socialist economy must involve state ownership of the means of production. And second, the paragraph is utopian in its assumption that "The State simply calculates what goods will be needed...". The experience of state-owned ministries in the Soviet Union and China demonstrates the failures that are likely in the model of centralized state planning and management of the economy to which he refers (link). So Orwell's summary definition of socialism is flawed on its face. But Orwell has the foresight to add several crucial qualifications to "state ownership" in the next paragraph:

However, it has become clear in the last few years that “common ownership of the means of production” is not in itself a sufficient definition of Socialism. One must also add the following: approximate equality of incomes (it need be no more than approximate), political democracy, and abolition of all hereditary privilege, especially in education. (Part II, section i)

This is the needed corrective. Here we have a capsule description of democratic socialism, involving some form of social ownership of the means of production; a commitment to preventing excessive inequalities (through taxation and egalitarian educational opportunity); and a commitment to political democracy and individual rights and liberties.

Towards the end of the essay Orwell proposes a six-point plan for socialism in Britain that expresses a more modest goal of "social ownership":

I. Nationalization of land, mines, railways, banks and major industries.

II. Limitation of incomes, on such a scale that the highest tax-free income in Britain does not exceed the lowest by more than ten to one.

III. Reform of the educational system along democratic lines.

IV. Immediate Dominion status for India, with power to secede when the war is over.

V. Formation of an Imperial General Council, in which the [colonized] peoples are to be represented.

VI. Declaration of formal alliance with China, Abyssinia and all other victims of the Fascist powers. (Part III, sect. ii)

Most of the elements of this program are resonant with the model of democratic socialism described above. Moreover, much of the first recommendation (nationalization of major industries) was in fact carried out by the post-war Labour government, through nationalization of the coal industry and eventually railroads, natural gas, electricity, and iron and steel. And the other points illustrate valid socialist goals as well: constraining economic inequalities; ensuring equality of opportunity in education; and divesting Britain of its colonial empire.

All of that said, Orwell was not Keynes; he was not a systematic thinker about social and economic institutions. If we want a detailed, plausible, and workable version of a democratic-socialist Britain, we will have to look elsewhere. Rather, Orwell was a social observer who was passionately committed to the value of the full human development of all members of society; secure equality of opportunity; constrained levels of economic inequality; and full embodiment of political and individual rights and liberties. What he observed in the slums and coal mines of Yorkshire and Lancashire was a human reality at a vast distance from full human development and the equal worth of all members of society. What he demanded was a social, economic, and political order that ended these inexcusable conditions for a large fraction of British society.

(Here is a post that offers a critique of contemporary conditions of work in a large American industry -- Amazon fulfillment centers (link), and the dehumanization and economic stagnation that this business model implies for its workers. One can only hope that union organizers will become increasingly successful at Amazon warehouses.)