Economist Richard Wolff made an excellent animation of a lecture on the origins of “class” as a concept. He explains that, as an economic precept, capitalism lasted a whole lot longer in America that it did elsewhere. Capitalism is built on growth and, as large swaps of fertile land were open for development across the continent, growth was unlimited in comparison with anywhere else for most of the country’s history.
Wages grew with the country, up until roughly the 1970s. Growth was what the economy was structurally built on, however, and so Americans were encouraged to use credit to buy the things that felt entitled to for the American dream to fulfill its promise. This lead to massive debt, massive overinvestment and eventually, a credit crunch.
The immediate result of the economic crunch was for Americans simply to demand change. That was the election of Barack Obama, who, by being black, charismatic and fairly liberal by American standards, was a sharp turn away from George W. Bush.
The long term change, however, is a change in how Americans view themselves, their economy and their society. This is the return of “class.” As a concept, most Americans like to pretend they live in a classless society, in which anyone, with the right gumption and tenacity, can become a billionaire. Wolff says that the change is already occurring and could very well come back “with a vengeance.”
The long term change is what explains Bernie Sanders. I wrote an article for Global Comment about Bernie Sanders entitled “Bernie Sanders: The Serious Socialist Candidate,” where I talked about the crowds he got in red states like Arizona and his stance on various hot issues.
Since that article, Sanders’ campaign has only heated up in intensity. An early August appearance in Los Angeles brought in an audience of 70,000 people. He drew 28,000 while appearing in Portland, Oregon. A Vermont senator who was long on the fringes of American politics, not even part of the two party system with an independent affiliation as a “socialist,” was now close to being the Democratic frontrunner, drawing crowds that should certainly have Hillary Clinton very nervous.
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Income inequality and its harmful impact on Americans across the board is one of the chief points being made by Bernie Sanders as he campaigns around this country. Income inequality in the United States is so bad and so grotesque that even conservative Republicans are acknowledging it on some level, albeit in a very selfish sense. In the Republican race, for example, it is readily apparent. “We all have a responsibility here I think to say, you know, has he earned his way on this stage?” Chuck Todd asked of Donald Trump, adding that it was “unfair” for him to have such leverage and cloud in a Republican field of over a dozen strong candidates.
Todd may not have recognized it but he was recognizing the problem of late capitalism. Trump has huckstered money out of people for a very long time, earning a personal income of $4 billion in the process. Some of his various money grabbing schemes, such as a fake “university” (titled “Trump University”) that promised a meeting with “The Donald” that actually led to them meeting a cardboard cutout of him, have actually been shut down by the government.
That extreme wealth gave him leverage that few other politicians could dream of competing with. He has kept on past hostility from the Republican establishment and Fox News and still maintains a healthy lead in polls among potential Republican voters.
Trump’s politics are weird – they seem strangely close to that of southern Democrats from the segregation era, while his personality seems like an equally strange mix of Silvio Berlusconi and Don King. Trump is rife with racism and misogyny in his politics – from demanding Barack Obama’s earthquake to whipping up hostility against Mexican immigrants to joking about Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly menstruation cycle, theatrical bigotry is Trump’s M.O. When it comes to actual policy, Trump isn’t really in typical Republican territory – he talked about supporting some sort of single payer system during the first Republican debate and “helping those who cannot help themselves,” a statement that dang near made Kentucky Senator and principled libertarian Rand Paul’s head explode, leading him to accuse him of being on the “wrong side.”
As strange as it may seem, Trump may actually be a genius. Trump certainly didn’t get his wealth through honesty but he did get it by knowing how to manipulate people to his benefit. The success of Sanders is the same success Trump enjoys – they both tap in to the same frustration in very different ways. Most people don’t feel like America is working for them anymore – a candidate like Sanders lays the blame at the feet of financial elites while Trump lays it squarely at the feet of minorities, women and political elites. Both talk favorably of entitlements and social programs because they know the free market rhetoric of old just isn’t going to sell anymore. It’s not a sharp break from tradition – before the Reagan era, most politicians, liberal or conservative, favored social programs.
Talk of a “billionaire class” is a big part of Bernie Sander’s rhetoric. Even if Trump plays the populist, it won’t be difficult, in a Trump vs. Sanders race, for Sanders to point at Trump as an example of exactly what is wrong with America – a man who revels in racism and misogyny and who benefited from the inflated housing boom that cratered the American economy and who openly paid off politicians (he even bragged about paying off Hillary Clinton during the first GOP debate).
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Sanders’ campaign is unapologetic on the issues that motivated it. In the midst of accusations that Planned Parenthood staff sold fetal tissue for medical research, Sanders stood in Portland and demanded the right of women to be able to control their own bodies. In another stump speech, he said that “a job should lift workers out of poverty, not keep them in it.” In another he decried Republicans talk of family values, adding that there were little family values in this country when a mother must work long hours just to feed her children. And in an interview with Joe Scarborough, Scarborough joked, “I can see the Republican ads – Bernie Sanders wants America to be like Scandinavia,” to which he replied, “Yes, what’s wrong with that?”
Rhetoric like this is a very sharp break from any of his predecessors. Many comparisons have been made to Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont, the same state Sanders is from, who ran a populist but ultimately botched campaign for president in 2003 and 2004.
Dean’s campaign was built on opposition to the war in Iraq and support for universal health care. Both eventually did occur, although quite imperfectly, with Barack Obama’s presidency. Sanders’ phenomenon is something else entirely – he is injecting a call for a full democratic socialist overhaul in to the American discourse and drawing record crowds while doing so. He already has possibly single handedly taken the toxicity out of the word “socialist” (a term that Barack Obama often tried to deflect from) by openly using it as a selling point of his campaign. Once bringing such ideas out of the realm of left wing journals and academia and in to the front of political discourse, they may be hard to get out. Such ideas are a response to the times and an answer to the burgeoning class consciousness that is reawakening in response to difficult economic times.
Reporting for The Hill, Jonathan Easley noted that “the crowds he’s attracting on the campaign trail are staggering in size for an underdog in an off year.” After campaigning through the West Coast, the Boston Herald reported August 11 that Sanders was surging in poll numbers in New Hampshire, a critical primary state, at 44 to Clinton’s 37 percent. Clinton has already responded to many of Sanders’ proposals by proposing her own plan for college affordability. Sanders’ success is critical and is a mirror image of Trump’s unstoppable presence in the Republican primaries. Voters are looking for real alternatives to the norm.