The idea that here in America we are engaged in a class war is very unpopular. We deny that American society is divided into classes at all. So that being the case how could there be a class war?

Sure, in some general way we recognize that people are different, but the difference is between “the rich and famous” on the one hand, and some vaguely all-encompassing category called “the middle class,” on the other.

The notion of a “working class” (and with it of the notion of class solidarity) has faded away to be replaced by divisions based on ethnic, cultural, and regional difference. We are African-Americans, or Hispanics, or Gays; Southerners or Westerners; immigrants, illegals, or native-born. And rather than identifying the common interest that connects us all we push for our private interests.

We have lost sight of what connects most of us: We are all members of the working class. We work for an hourly wage in businesses, workshops and factories; on construction sites and in cubicles. For the most part we work without union representation, and without the protections of collective bargaining. We may work in “at-will” states where, in the absence of contracts (for instance union agreements,) we can be fired without explanation.

Our jobs can be shipped overseas, unless we are willing to work for overseas wages…which we are frequently forced to do.

Just because we don’t recognize that we have common interests as working class men and women doesn’t mean we don’t have them… and when you deny the notion of the working class you can’t see the class war you’re in…or the fact that you’re losing it.

What we do recognize is that our lives are stressed, under increasing economic pressures, and changing in ways that we can’t understand. Many of us are afraid and angry, but of what exactly we can’t say. (This, I think, is at the root of the growing Tea Party movements.)

In an article posted at AlterNet,  Joe Bageant  argues that thanks to economic globalization “American, European and Australian promises of middle class prosperity are on their way to extinction.”

Class solidarity? Fuhgedaboutit. Bageant’s opening gun sets the tone for a raging article in the spirit of Hunter Thompson, H.L. Mencken or Charles Erskine Scott Wood

“Class solidarity was such a good idea. It really was. Obviously, most of the people who need solidarity are in the world’s laboring classes. After all, the rich have more than enough solidarity already, as was recently demonstrated by their successful execution of the greatest global financial heist in history. Oh sure, we’ll see some state sponsored mock show trials of a few of them — they always throw a few of their own out of the sleigh to the wolves during their escapes. The big heist was big news.”

Economic globalization has slowly reduced the condition of our working class to a condition of equality with workers in China, Haiti, or India.

“Thanks to globalization, the American, Australian and European working classes are on their way to extinction, in terms of their traditional rights, and quality of life. Just like the workers being poisoned to death by circuit board toxins in Guiyu, China, their fates will be determined by global capital, either by default or by bitter struggle against it. We are not seeing much of the latter and are not likely to, until it is too late, which it may already be. After all, you cannot put up much of a struggle against global capital when you worship it (as) a creed and are addicted to commodities too.”

Read Bageant’s AlterNet piece here:

Stories that have appeared in AlterNet here:

And I thought no one could replace Dr. Thompson!

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