There are no classes in our society, conservatives argue
Eric Levitz writes at Intelligencer: “Progressives have long held that the right’s economic theories are just elaborate rationalizations for funneling money to the elite.”
John Kenneth Galbraith put it more elegantly: “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”
Ed Kilgore remarks on House Republicans renaming the House Committee on Education and Labor the House Committee on Education & the Workforce. The change, Kilgore writes:
reflects a tradition of Republican labor hostility that has grown more remarkable as the GOP has come to think of itself as the party of working people with white non-college-educated folk at the core of its electoral coalition. The GOP’s self-identification with the horny-handed sons and daughters of toil is central to its claim that the Democratic Party is now a vassal of woke coastal elitists with Ph.D.’s, whose ground troops are Big Government leeches and the immigrants who want to join them at the welfare trough.
Can’t have the plebs competing for trough space alongside the moneyed elite now, can we?
The committee’s new website attended by chair Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) helpfully explains why Labor has been retired:
“Labor” is an antiquated term that excludes individuals who contribute to the American workforce but aren’t classified as conventional employees. “Labor” also carries a negative connotation that ignores the dignity of work; the term is something out of a Marxist textbook that fails to capture the accomplishments of the full spectrum of the American workforce.
Which is another way of insisting that there are no differences of interest between “minimum-wage employees, billionaires, or smaller employers who believe they must keep wages, benefits, and working conditions for their own hirelings as meager as possible.” What, us classes?
The committee’s disquisition on Labor continues (caveat: swallow coffee before reading):
The Left prefers the term labor because it creates a sense of enmity between employees and employers which union bosses and left-wing activists seek to stoke for political gain. This word also fails to capture how deeply intertwined workers and job creators are in their contributions to our economy. Though the Left likes to treat employers like predators, we know that most job creators have their employees’ best interests in mind.
Kilgore concludes:
Indeed, their hostility to the very word labor represents the sort of truth in packaging that the GOP, with its Orwellian language of racism-as-anti-racism and Christian-conformity-as-liberty, usually eschews.
Getting back to Levitz, he’s commenting on the blowback from business over a proposed FTC rule that would ban noncompete clauses in employment contracts. The ones by which employers enforce employees’ “earnest cooperation” in the employees’ best interests:
Noncompete clauses are antithetical to many of the conservative movement’s purported values. The right has traditionally celebrated the virtues of open and competitive labor markets. “One important economic dimension of individual liberty is the right to sell one’s labor services without attenuation,” the economist Richard Vedder argued for the Cato Institute in 2010.
Conservatives have specifically argued that, as long as that right is protected, workers don’t need heavy-handed government policies to secure fair wages: If laborers accrue coveted skills and experience, then a competitive market will give them the necessary leverage to earn a wage commensurate with their productivity. Meanwhile, Republicans have long insisted that the rigors of free-market competition are uniquely conducive to innovation, which increases our society’s collective prosperity.
Could their arguments be mere justifications? Levitz continues:
If one assumes that the conservative movement is earnestly committed to safeguarding workers’ economic liberty, promoting competitive labor markets, and encouraging innovation, then you’d expect it to oppose noncompete agreements and, thus, support the FTC’s proposed ban.
On the other hand, if one stipulates that the right’s avowed love of free markets is purely instrumental and that its real economic commitment is to capitalist class domination, then you’d expect it to support noncompetes and oppose the FTC’s rule.
Many conservatives have taken the latter position.
That they’ve continued to maintain that argument over the last four decades in which worker productivity rose 61.8% while worker pay rose only 17.5% (after adjusting for inflation) supports progressives’ thesis about “elaborate rationalizations.” A London School of Economics paper in 2020 found that 50 years of tax cuts for the rich that would allegedly trickle down to workers “have only helped one group — the rich.”
That’s a more delicate way of saying conservatives are high on their own supply.
A 2020 paper by Carter C. Price and Kathryn Edwards of the RAND Corporation found:
that the cumulative tab for our four-decade-long experiment in radical inequality had grown to over $47 trillion from 1975 through 2018. At a recent pace of about $2.5 trillion a year, that number we estimate crossed the $50 trillion mark by early 2020. That’s $50 trillion that would have gone into the paychecks of working Americans had inequality held constant—$50 trillion that would have built a far larger and more prosperous economy—$50 trillion that would have enabled the vast majority of Americans to enter this pandemic far more healthy, resilient, and financially secure.
“The Top 1% of Americans Have Taken $50 Trillion From the Bottom 90%” read the Time headline.
Why every person not among the moneyed elite is not doing a spit-take every time conservatives argue that a “classless” nirvana exists in which workers and “job creators” coexist in economic peace and harmony is beyond me.
Update: Yes, it’s supposed to be bale. Homonyms are a bitch. (h/t RK)