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When the proles work cheap [1]
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Date: 2025-06-03
“I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.”
Jay Gould
One of the Trump phenomenon’s many unsettling quirks is the bizarre alliance between the owner class and millions of average working stiffs. After centuries of feuding, the two classes seem to have buried the hatchet, apparently because of Donald Trump’s engaging personality. The deal seems to be a bit uneven, though. America’s proletarians are allowing Trump and his billionaire supporters to rule the country, in return for almost nothing, except vague promises of a ravaged environment and destroyed unions, which supposedly will create abundant jobs and inexpensive gasoline. Throw in a promised cheaper egg, and millions of proles have signed up. But the rich are keeping their hatchets unburied, and sharp enough to behead uncooperative workers. As the news demonstrates constantly, now that the oligarchs have full power, the laborers who ceded power to them will have to settle for whatever leavings the oligarchs are too lazy to grab. Those leftovers will be scarce, because greed is never satisfied.
In the plutocratic religion of laissez faire economics, a favorite holy mantra is “every man for himself.” In this world of celestial fantasy, we are all liberated from law, and therefore theoretically empowered to grab whatever we can. In reality, rich people are free to work their rigged system to get more from the rest of us, who are set free to pursue absolute selfishness, or perish. In the process, America is predicted to somehow regain its legendary, lost greatness. According to the capitalist creed, total freedom for everyone, accompanied by no responsibility toward anyone, will result in universal progress and prosperity. Enough voters to elect Trump apparently believed the prophecy in 2024. Now, are we going to find out if it is true? Probably not. As Americans begin life under authoritarianism, we need to remember that dictators allow only one set of alternative facts. We will be repeatedly told, and expected to believe, that all is well.
Despite our democratic myths, the United States began as a plutocracy. Our Founding Fathers were rich White men who believed they could govern themselves better than the British nobility had. Some founders thought that under the right conditions, self-government could be slowly extended to White male commoners, and began working toward that goal. Other founding elites never had any intentions of extending government participation beyond their own class. This struggle continues. Democracy has made some progress over time. Women, poor men, and Americans of non-European descent can now participate in self-government. Even so, the plutocrats have clearly been victorious in the Twenty-first Century; they could never have won without support from many working class voters, who inherited, then rejected, democracy.
Working class Americans began renouncing their Twentieth Century political, social, and economic gains in the 1960’s, when African-Americans started making strong demands for full inclusion in American society. The civil rights movement was closely allied with opposition to the war in Vietnam. Millions of working class Euro-Americans, while satisfied with the improvements in their own lives, hesitated to extend them to minorities. Meanwhile, two opposing conceptions of freedom and patriotism had arisen regarding the Vietnam War. War resisters challenged unflinching loyalty to the government, which had been needed to win World War II. In that national confusion, millions of workers sought perceived security from insisting that everyone continue to blindly follow directions from above.
Instinctively, upper classes have always strengthened their power behind war, knowing that people generally suspend their internal disagreements, and line up behind their rulers against foreign threats. In the Vietnam era, Republicans quickly purged their anti-war members, and supported the militancy of Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan. The working class divided into two hostile camps. Since the Republicans also favored states’ rights (which meant going slow on extending civil rights to Afro-Americans) Southern Dixiecrats joined the Republican Party. Aggressive nationalism and White supremacy teamed with old-time religion to form the rightwing base. In the 2020’s, many workers still support racism and nationalism, even to the extent of sacrificing their own economic and social interests.
In the 1960’s and 70’s, most Americans who favored peace and racial equality supported Democrats Bobby Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy, and George McGovern. A majority of workers who wanted to win decisively in Vietnam (as we had in WWII) and institute civil rights for minorities slowly (if at all) switched their loyalties and voted for Republicans. The electoral majority shifted quickly. In 1964, Goldwater—defender of plutocracy, war hawk, and advocate for foot dragging on civil rights—lost to Lyndon Johnson in a landslide. Only eight years later, Nixon trounced McGovern, who pledged to leave Vietnam, help workers and poor people, and protect minorities’ civil rights. Over the following half-century, millions in the working class have stayed loyal to the party of plutocracy. Nationwide, the plutocrats no longer win in landslides, but in 2024, a plurality of Americans who must sell their labor to survive delivered another strong victory for corporate politicians who will keep workers overworked and underpaid.
The elements of corporate government—fascism’s infrastructure—have been around for decades, and Trump is a savvy enough conman to recognize and seize the opportunity. He has put together the pieces of an already established imperial presidency, and intends to rule as an emperor to the full extent, constantly testing the limits in an endless quest for more power. Half the voters in the working class will let him. What do they get in return? Theories abound, attempting to explain why so many working class Americans surrendered their freedom and economic well-being to the corporate moneyed class. Studies seeking to answer this perplexing question will proliferate—or so I hope; it depends on truth being actually valued somewhere on the planet. But clearly, the wealthy elites will never willingly share the wealth.
Desperately impoverished people are too overwhelmed with daily survival to make much trouble for their bosses. “Arbeit Macht Frie”—translated into the Orwellian “Freedom is Slavery”—adorned the gate to Dachau. Could the laborers who voted to return Trump (and his insanely crooked, ridiculously rich cronies) to power be looking for the “true freedom” that comes with overwork and destitution—liberation from the rational thought and social responsibility necessary for self-government? We who support democracy think the MAGA proles paid a high price when they overthrew their own democracy. But maybe, people in the cult believe they got off cheap.
Americans’ choice of dictatorship, beyond “Day One,” presents problems for some of us, since dictators demand the forceful silencing of opposition, and we who can think critically probably cannot avoid committing thoughtcrime. How shall we go forward? We did not ask for this choice, but here it is. Do we surrender to despair, or do we fight to regain social, economic, and political democracy? Are the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness truly—as the Declaration of Independence claims—inalienable? Some people in this country are already finding their rights under attack. We dare not forget that if some people lose their rights, eventually we all lose them. Millions of Americans chose to give up their rights—sadly, they also gave them up for the rest of us. How can we get them back? The society we were born into, the society we have long cherished, is now seriously threatened. We are proles too. We have the right, and duty, to oppose our oppressors.
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