kerkko.fi

There has not been any organized, explicitly class-based violence in the United States for generations, so what, exactly, does “class warfare” really mean? Is it just an empty political catch-phrase? [...] I recently argued that real class warfare is when those who have already achieved a good deal of prosperity pull the ladder up behind them by attacking the very things that once allowed working people to move up and join the ranks of the middle class.

But there is another way of looking at “class war”: habitually vilifying the unfortunate; claiming that their plight is a manifestation of some personal flaw or cultural deficiency. Conservatives wage this form of class warfare virtually every day, consigning millions of people who are down on their luck to some subhuman underclass. That narrative ignores two simple and indisputable truths. First, contrary to popular belief, we do not all start out with the same opportunities. The reality is that in the U.S. today, the best predictor of a newborn baby's economic future is how much money his or her parents make.

These narratives are designed to protect a status quo that is serving the interests of a rarified elite, but is obviously not working well for the working majority in this country. All are intended to distract from the structural causes of poverty and inequality, or to ignore the fact that some people will always experience genuine misfortune – the myriad surprises in life that can happen to anyone – because they would choose low taxes over caring for them.

It is also a narrative that denies the very existence of class differences in this country. As noted earlier, the United States is anything but a true meritocracy. What millions of white working-class Americans understand – intuitively, even if they cannot articulate it – is that class still matters. And by erasing the very idea of class, of structural barriers to getting ahead in this economy, they are left with a nagging sense of grievance against those they perceive to be bringing them down: foreign powers, immigrants, people of color and liberals, with their “job-killing” regulations and the like.

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/152512