The new class war and the virus

Michael Lind writes,

The present system serves the credentialed elite in the large private, public, and nonprofit bureaucracies of the managerial elite quite well. In contrast, the members of the professional bourgeoisie and the small business bourgeoisie live in terror of proletarianization. Many professionals fear they will not be able to secure high-status jobs with their educational credentials, and the small proprietors fear they will lose their businesses and be compelled to work for others.

Lind sees a class war between the credentialed professionals and small business owners, with the managerial elite positioned more securely. Now, let us think about the virus situation. Many (but not all) of the credentialed professionals are able to telework. Note that many small businesses are vulnerable. Note that the managerial elite are almost all able to telework.

The managerial elite, who were already ahead, are winning during the virus crisis. You can see that in the fortunes of the S&P 4. The small business owners are losing heavily. The credentialed professionals fall somewhere in the middle. But you can see who has an interest in maximizing fears of the virus and who has an interest in minimizing those fears.

Turning to the George Floyd protests, Lind writes,

I am not the first to observe that what were initially legitimate protests against the use of excess force and racism by particular police departments have turned into a campaign for greater funding for social-services jobs and diversity officer jobs for members of the professional bourgeoisie

Lind’s point is that, not so coincidentally, economic interest tends to align with political tribalism on these issues.

20 thoughts on “The new class war and the virus

  1. I’m going point out as someone who hangs out among the dredges of society regularly from homeless to drug dealers / addicts to sex workers to permanently disabled to poverty households none them care a damn thing about this pandemic anymore that it affects their ability to make an income it drive up costs. In places like Hawaii these folk are the primary spreaders but nobody wants to talk about that.

    Businesses going under, the plight the working class, fines for masks, and society shaming irrelevant. Until we want to address THAT class issue, virus going continue to spread one meth addict to another, one street walker to a John and their middle class family.

  2. Capital owners are probably the biggest beneficiaries. As long as the average American is struggling, the Fed resolves to ensure that no asset can fall in value.

  3. Random thoughts:

    * Had not encountered The Bellows before, shame on me. Will be occupied for a long while reading through that site. Their take on labor populism seems fresh, well reasoned, and insightful.
    * The double horseshoe model with its 6 classes that split the interests and constituencies of the Democrat and Republican parties . This offers a useful explanation for the plurality of USA citizens who claim to be politically independent and who split tickets, vote third party, or don’t vote at all. Note too that that only two of the 6 groups would appear aligned with an ideology. There is much more to politics and the citizenry than ideologies have to offer.
    * The 6 groups do not seem to track The Three Languages of Politics. A more accurate title for the book might be Three Languages of Political ideologues.
    * The 6 classes don’t really translate to particular political parties in democratic countries, but looking at the political parties on offer in an authentic democracy like Germany, ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_Germany )one gets the impression that individuals in each of the 6 classes have a party that sincerely is interested in addressing their interests and needs. Individuals in Germany enjoy a great deal more personal autonomy than the do in the USA and this has preserved authentic federalism in education, health care, and law enforcement, producing better outcomes in each.
    * The “takers vs producers” dichotomy seems as if it will become relevant at some point. Even if super high marginal tax rates are imposed on “the rich,” there is not going to be sufficient revenue to subsidize the extant over-classes.
    * When the governors have successfully concluded their campaign to exterminate legitimate, above-the-board small business, the human detritus remaining will not necessarily all become employees. The informal economy will likely grow by leaps and bounds. More offline barter.
    * Tax reform is a necessary first step to preserve the USA. The “credentialed elite in the large private, public, and nonprofit bureaucracies of the managerial elite” are largely distortions produced by the corporate income tax and its exclusions. Replacing the income tax with a consumption tax, perhaps a Singapore-style goods and services tax, is essential to correct the downward political trajectory of the USA.

  4. I think that if most teachers and government workers had been furloughed without pay near the start of the virus crisis, our society would see far more unity about how to deal with it, reopening, etc.

    • USCIS furloughs of around 15k people are set to begin in a month, but after the usual circus performances, they will probably be bailed out with more debt, which is about all Congress does these days.

    • Fair point. Including Congress and Senate too – ultimately they are being paid by taxpayers money? What about judges? I mean anybody that is on taxpayer paid salaries/remunerations.

      What about the TARP of 2008 and all other sundry initiatives that props up the investment banks, bond traders and sundry finance maket professionals. Why not have imposed a one time pain similar to letting the Lehman collapse back then, and time again?

    • Our private school teacher friend has been told that she needs to show up for five day a week class. She grumbles, but will do it. At the end of the day what does a 35 year old with no health conditions really have to fear from the virus. Their contract now states that if they don’t get enough enrollments the teachers don’t get paid.

      By contrast, all of the counties I know of in Maryland are going all virtual. Even the super trump nearly all white Carroll County that I’m constantly told is a KKK bastion despite having BLM protests in even minor towns and everyone I know from there being a saint.

      Public school could come back in a day if teachers weren’t getting paid.

  5. A critical moment will be what is done to address the huge shortfalls in state and municipal revenues. That moment is coming, and not more than 6 months off now.

  6. It appears to me the 0.1% is trying to get the 80% to turn on the 19.9% and it’s working.

  7. Lind seems to project as-is to be a permanent to-be. See quote below.

    [quote]
    The slogan “Defund the police” is interpreted by the bourgeois professional left to mean transferring tax revenues from police officers, who are mostly unionized but not college-educated, to social service and nonprofit professionals, who are mostly college-educated but not unionized. The enactment of proposals for free college education and college debt forgiveness would disproportionately benefit the professional bourgeoisie, not the working-class majority whose education ends with high school. Likewise, public funding for universal day-care allows both parties in a two-earner professional couple to maximize their individual incomes and individual career achievements by outsourcing the care of their children to a mostly-female, less well-paid workforce at taxpayer expense
    [/quote]

    The free college education would (should atleast in theory) bring the the lower horseshoe’s descendants into the educated/credentialed class.

    That I don’t necessarily agree that 4 year college courses and credentialing are unalloyed net positives, and that there is no free lunch overall so the free education is being paid up by some unwitting 3rd party, doesn’t mean that the left bourgeois is looking at betterment of themselves only. Unless one wants to be particularly uncharitable to them.

    • About one third (30.2 percent) of police officers in the United States have a four-year college degree. A little more than half (51.8 percent) have a two-year degree, while 5.4 percent have a graduate degree.
      National Police Foundation

    • Of all things, the inability to pay stay at home moms, especially of young children, is a sad. If you pay for free daycare but leave them out its a crime.

  8. Lind has been an astute and non-dogmatic observer of America for the last 15-20 years. I was pleased to see him again.

    I had a casual conversation recently with an attorney who works for state government in Californai He told me how pleased he was that the current shutdowns were protecting the environment.

    Not a millisecond of compassion for the millions who have been employed in cooking bad food, delivering shoddy goods, driving trucks that pollute the air, etc. etc.

    Actually I give some credit to the Green Party types, who at least make an effort to protect all workers at the same time they are promoting ecology. This is not easy to do.

  9. Lind’s observation that our politics is entirely made up of debates among the three components of the overclass “upper horseshoe” of American society – the managerial elite, the professional bourgeoisie, and the small business bourgeoisie – explains why immigration restrictionism has not gone anywhere: restricting immigration would not serve the self-interest of any of these three groups. Lind hopes that the interests of the working class can be brought back into the political equation by reviving working class social organizations, but it is hard to see how that happens. Labor union leadership was long ago captured by the professional bourgeoisie, and any one in the working class with leadership talent is quickly absorbed into the overclass and adopts its outlook. The underclass “lower horseshoe” (which according to Lind constitutes 70% of the population) has shown zero ability to organize to pursue its own political interests.

  10. “Lind sees a class war between the credentialed professionals and small business owners”

    Part of the endless, many-hundred years class war between the bourgeois ‘tradesman’ and the clerisy & aristocracy. Plus ca change and all that.

    However, teleworking really doesn’t cut cleanly between those two classes. Teleworking is easy for private-sector professional office workers (including tech workers) but difficult for public-sector K12 teachers and impossible for public-sector healthcare workers. I’ve been teleworking for decades. My two 20-something kids are in (private-sector) office jobs where permanent teleworking was an option before Covid. My wife, however, is in medicine (at a public-sector hospital) and has no alternative to donning the mask, going in, and seeing the patients. My own business has been doing well, my kids employers likewise, but my wife’s hospital is staring at a huge deficit (due to the months long absence of elective procedures) and there have been layoffs and pay cuts (no more 401K match) in her department.

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