-- / Gore and Bush in a class of their own / Gore and Bush in a class of their own Presidential campaigns illustrate the poverty of US politics, says Larry Elliott Al Gore and George W Bush are the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of American politics. Two spoiled little rich boys, they are the antithesis of the log-cabin-to-White House ethos that has underpinned America's meritocratic democracy since the days of Abe Lincoln. Both are using the power of privilege and big corporate money to compensate for their mediocrity. Both stand for precisely the same inconsequential things. If Gore imagined that he could surf to power on the back of the strength of the United States economy, he has been rudely awakened. For him, this is crunch time; he needs this week's Democratic convention to put some oomph into his dreary campaign. There is broad agreement that Gore's priority is to beat back Bush's invasion of the middle ground of American politics, where the Republicans have made a beach-head with their appeal to a "caring conservatism". It is now the accepted norm that this strategy is the only way to win elections, not just in the US but in Britain as well. According to this theory, the death of class as an economic force means that class politics are also dead. The days when politicians such as Roosevelt or Truman could appeal to a natural working-class constituency are gone. We are all middle-class now, and that requires parties to hug the centre ground and pay as much attention to lifestyle as to economics. This is a beguiling notion, particularly for those who have done splendidly well out of the status quo of the past two decades, because it means that nothing really changes, or needs to change. Yes, of course, there is a bit of tinkering around at the edge when a Democrat is in the White House, but nothing that would put the wind up Wall Street. As the American economist Robert Pollin said in a recent New Left Review: "The core of Clinton's programme has been global economic integration, with minimum interventions to promote equity in labour markets or stability in financial markets. Gestures to the least well-off have been slight and back-handed, while wages for the majority have either stagnated or declined. Wealth at the top, meanwhile, has exploded." Clinton, according to Pollin, has presided over a country that has experienced greater poverty and lower real wages than under the leadership of Richard Nixon, which may explain why Gore is having so much trouble enthusing his party. Under Democrats and Republicans the centre of gravity of politics has moved steadily to the right. But the political strategy only really makes sense if the basic premise - that class no longer matters - is correct. The London-based Industrial Society recently published an example of the new thinking when it claimed that Britain was now teeming with free workers. "Three transformations - the waves of white collar downsizing in the 80s and 90s, the rise in the proportion of value added by skilled workers and the explosion of IT - have combined to create a fertile breeding ground for a new kind of worker. Hearts hardened by the decline of corporate job protection, these workers are demanding, mobile and self-reliant. They are high on human capital and low on loyalty." Now, banish from your mind any unworthy thought that the author of this breathless prose has to be a) male, b) white, c) university educated, and d) part of the metropolitan in-crowd. Ask the question: is it really true that the working class no longer exists? For all the talk, America actually remains a country in which the clear majority of people are working-class. When asked, 55% of Americans said that they were working-class, which pretty much tallies with an occupational breakdown of the US jobs market. The US department of labour's projection for the 10 occupations that would offer the most new jobs in the first years of the millennium were cashiers, janitors and cleaners, retail salespersons, waiters and waitresses, registered nurses, general managers and top executives, systems analysts, home health aides, guards, and nurses aides, orderlies, and attendants. Not much sign of the end of the working class there. The picture is much the same in Britain. While there has been a modest increase in the number of managers and professionals, the Government's own figures show that Britain is a nation of tradesmen, secretaries, machine operatives and care workers rather than a nation of "free workers". Class only ceases to matter in the workplace if it is assumed that class is linked to whether you are employed in a blue collar or white collar job. But in reality class is not about whether you can wear what you like to the office, or whether your boss lets you dress down on Fridays. It is about power. Michael Zweig says in his new book The Working Class Majority*: "Our society's growing inequality of income and wealth is a reflection of the increased power of capitalists and the reduced power of workers. In the last two decades the working class has experienced lower real incomes, longer hours at work, fewer protections by unions or government regulations, and inferior schools." Zweig's argument is that the political power of the economic elite is at least as great as it was in the 1920s, and perhaps even greater since it is no longer effectively challenged by other class interests. His view is that the Third Way does not amount to an effective defence of working-class interests. The elite likes Clinton because he poses no real threat. But isn't it the case that the standards of living of working people have increased dramatically in the past 50 or 100 years? Isn't it true that capitalism has delivered not just for the capitalists but for everybody? This is a reasonable point, and it is true that the spread of home and car ownership, the increase in overseas travel, and the blanket coverage of many consumer durables mean that the sort of lifestyle that was only available to a small minority in the middle of the last century is now enjoyed by large chunks of the working class. Zweig's first point is that everybody has seen their living standards rise over the past 50 or 100 years, and that there is scant evidence that the working class has caught up with the middle class, let alone the capitalist class. Secondly, working-class families have improved their lot when they have been able to take home in higher pay (or shorter working hours) a share of the increased wealth they have created through their higher productivity. As the graph shows, in the postwar period up to 1972, real wages rose in line with productivity. After 1972 productivity and output carried on rising, but real wages fell for a quarter of a century until they started to rise again in 1997 as America returned to full employment. Instead of being captured by workers, America's productivity gains were captured by capital. Nor is this picture likely to change much. It is in the interests of the Republicans and the Democrats, reliant as they are on big business funding, to give the impression that everybody is now on the same side. So while Clinton has nudged up the level of the minimum wage and raised the earned income tax credit, he has done nothing to change the power dynamics of the American economy. None of this means that Gore is doomed. Given that Bush appears to be a couple of spare ribs short of a barbecue, the Democrats still have a good chance of victory. But apathy will be the real winner. Gore might argue that America's working people simply do not grasp what their leaders are doing. The reality is that America's working class seems to understand only too well. *Michael Zweig: The Working Class Majority is published by ILR/ Cornell University Press The Guardian Weekly 17-8-2000, page 14
