Middleclassness

Op-Ed Columnist - How McCain Wins - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com

The core case against Obama is pretty simple: he’s too liberal...the only Democrats to win the presidency in the past 40 years — Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton — distanced themselves from liberal orthodoxy. Obama is, by contrast, a garden-variety liberal. He also has radical associates in his past...Obama quotes from the brochure of Reverend Wright’s church — a passage entitled “A Disavowal of the Pursuit of Middleclassness.” So when Biden goes on about the middle class on Thursday, Palin might ask Biden when Obama flip-flopped on Middleclassness.

That's strange: I thought that the whole point of liberalism, in particular the orthodox garden-variety, was precisely to promote middleclassness by seeing to it that more people could achieve it. I did take a quick look at some sites to get a better idea of what it was that Rev. Wright meant to repudiate under the rubric of "middleclassness." The National Review site, much as I gag to quote it, was actually illuminating:

Vallmer Jordan, a church member who helped draft the precepts, said..."The big question mark was racism"...He acknowledged that the principle on "middleclassness" was a hard sell, even then. "There was a hunk of resistance to that principle," Jordan said. But eventually committee members came to understand its intention: "Any black person who identifies himself as middle-class psychologically withdraws from the group and becomes a proponent of strengthening and sustaining the system," he said. Harris-Lacewell, the Princeton professor, said the "disavowal of the pursuit of middleclassness" is simply an argument against materialism and the pursuit of the American standard of wealth. Many white Christian churches also preach against materialism.

Seems pretty innocuous--indeed, edifying: exactly what one expects to hear in church, and thoroughly uncontroversial. It's in the Bible too. After the Israelites get out of Egypt, Moses tells them never to forget that they were sojourners in Egypt, where they were treated harshly, and so that they should remember to treat resident aliens amongst them well and to maintain solidarity with those who were less well off. That to me is one of the most remarkable passages in the Old Testament because it would have been easier to make quite a different inference in defense of the hazing principle: "You got beat up on. Now you're in power and can beat up on other people. Have fun!"

What's puzzling is why Rev. Wright identified materialism and indifference to plight of those who were less well-off as "middleclassness." But it's not all that puzzling if we remember that Wright was formed during his seminary days in the late '60s. At that time, when Marxism was still a viable ideology, "bourgeois" was bad and the rich brats who shaped the New Left of the period, were contemptuous of middleclassness because they'd never seen the alternative, lowerclassness, close up. They believed that the proletariat was populated by gonzo journalists, folk singers who composed rousing union songs, and working class intellectuals, ready to be organized into "circles" for the study of Marcuse and ripe for Revolution.

This was pure adolescent fantasy, but became institutionalized in the New Left. At puberty, my peers, like most other children, discovered that their parents were imperfect and inferred that they were positively evil. By mid-adolescence they had concluded that it was not only their parents but their parents' friends and all adults like them, middle class adults, who were thoroughly wicked and that the source of all this evil was "middleclassness"--because they hadn't seen the alternative, and because they didn't understand that even though middleclassness was not sufficient for basic human decency, it was necessary.

Beyond that, critics of middleclassness also had an extremely simplistic view of the springs of human action and assumed that it was a universal truth that people would only be motivated to work for the benefit of others if they thought well of them and liked them. So political activists who were committed to promoting social justice refused to recognize that the individuals who they recognized were treated unjustly and whose situation they wanted to improve were hateful, despicable, thoroughly sickening, disgusting human beings who detested them and rejected their most fundamental values. Given this assumption, these good liberals had to practice self-deception and virtuoso-level double-think to avoid recognizing that the alternative to middleclassness, lowerclassness, was a compound of bigotry, violence, ignorance, stupidity, brutality, sexism, and unreflective dogmatism.

I vividly remember one episode: I'm not sure when it happened--it may have been on a slumming expedition in Chicago in which I participated as an undergraduate. I was walking through a white ethnic slum with a group of fellow students who were exuding admiration for the life and color of the neighborhood, and the virtues of the local residents who, they marveled, were "real"--not dull, uptight puritans or hypocrites like their parents, their parents' friends, or middle class people like their parents and parents' friends. A man appeared, dragging a boy by the collar, yelling incomprehensible obscenities at him and beating him over the head. "There you have it," I said, "the proletariat"--but I don't think anyone paid any attention because they didn't dare.

I grew up with this and watched my childhood playmates' fathers treat them this way. The men, in sleeveless undershirts sat in beach chairs on the sidewalk during long summer evenings and expounded their views on politics, family values and a variety of other issues. "All deese kids unnerstand is de strap." And if there was a kid around on which to demonstrate, they would: BAM! "Shut up yer mouth and don't give yer mudder no lip." BAM, BAM, BAM! The women for their part were whining drudges who dragged around in housedresses, watched soap operas, and for light entertainment discussed obstetrical problems. This is the alternative to middleclassness.

I suppose one might wonder why, given that I hate people like this, I would have any interest in improving their lot. Several reasons, I suppose, the most important one being that I don't want people like this to exist. I want them fixed, made middle class, and I believe that that is feasible. I also recognize that it is nothing more than a matter of pure dumb luck that I am not one of them--and that this is grossly unfair. The pretense that they are decent people, that their way of life is worthy, does them no favors: they want out, if not for themselves, for their children--they want middleclassness but don't have the resources or the knowledge to achieve it.

Of course Rev. Wright didn't mean what I mean by "middleclassness" having been schooled in the Black Liberation Theology that was popular during his seminary days. And it is the ambiguity of "middleclassness" that conservatives like Kristol play to their advantage. When Wright preaches against middleclassness he is using the rhetoric that was in fashion 40 years ago to repudiate selfishness and promote solidarity with those who are less well off, re-packaging Moses' agenda. But, when the majority of Americans, who desperately want middleclassness, hear Wright they imagine that he is repudiating everything to which they aspire: a decent standard of living, an orderly, secure life, a comfortable house in a safe neighborhood and a good education for their kids. And people I came up with did repudiate this, though I can't imagine why. What on earth was their problem? What did they imagine the alternative to middleclassness was?

Of course there were features of this life I didn't want--in particular, the obligation to dress up and take care of my appearance but that is peripheral and it wasn't just this that my peers didn't want. I can't understand what the problem was or what it was that they didn't want. But whatever it was, liberals have got to understand, and not only understand, but empathize with the aspirations of most Americans. People want middleclassness because they know what the alternative is and Democrats have got to make it clear that middleclassness is that they will deliver--and stop despising people for wanting it.

Paleo-Liberalism

The Newer Deal: The path to a Democratic supermajority | Salon

What happened beginning in 1968 was that one two-party system -- let us call it the Roosevelt Party versus the Hoover Party -- gave way to the present two-party system, which pits the Nixon Party versus the McGovern Party...The Roosevelt Party ran on economic issues, and didn't care whether voters were in favor of sex or against it on principle as long as they supported the New Deal. The McGovern Party, by contrast, has made social issues its litmus test. Economic conservatives have had a home in the McGovern Party, as long as they support abortion rights and affirmative action, but social democrats and populists who are pro-life or anti-affirmative action are not made nearly as welcome...

Unfortunately the upper-middle-class left, with its unerring instinct for political suicide, is probably incapable of seizing the moment and bringing more Baptists and Catholics into the Democratic Party, because it has developed an almost superstitious distaste for religious conservatives. This might make sense if the religious right were still a menace, as it was a generation ago. But with the exception of state referenda and constitutional amendments banning gay marriage, religious conservatives have lost one battle after another, from failed attempts to promote creationism on school boards to the doomed effort to repeal Roe v. Wade...

Social conservatives, having lost the culture war, should be offered not only a truce but also an opportunity to join a broad economic campaign for a middle-class America, as many of them did between 1932 and 1968. When pro-choicers and pro-lifers unite in cheering the public investment and living wage planks at the convention of the neo-Roosevelt party, we will know that the political era that began in 1968 is truly and finally over.

Exactly so. Or rather almost exactly so. The Roosevelt Party's issues were money and work, the issues that have the most bearing on quality of life. However affirmative action is precisely about money and work. Without affirmative action I might be scanning groceries or, more likely, doing boring, routine clerical work that would drive me nuts.

Still, with that qualification, this article is dead on. Money and work are important and organizing things to that people can avoid poverty and drudgery is difficult, costly and a hard political sell. "Lifestyle issues" are issues are trivial and tractable, or maybe to give neo-liberal McGovernites credit, they occupy a more elevated position on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. If you're financially secure and have a decent job, then you can worry about relationships and lifestyles.

It should be obvious to Democrats why the old base, the white working class, has deserted. Since the McGovernites have come to dominate the party, the message has been "Let them eat cake." Let them eat whole foods, solar panels and relationships.

Adding insult to injury, elite neo-liberals, who can afford to eat whole foods, solar panels and relationships, construe working class resentment as a manifestation of ignorance and bigotry. They worry about the stability of families and clamor for "family values"--we know what that means: fathers brutalizing their children and women barefoot and pregnant. They worry about the crime--of course that's just plain racism. They want their kids to get a "back to basics" education, with lots of discipline and drill--obviously because they don't understand the importance of critical thinking and creativity.

It's appalling that the latte-drinking elite are so provincial and have so little imagination that they don't get it. Working class people have to worry about family stability because their families are less stable. They have to be concerned about discipline because they've seen kids run amok, and because if their kids don't perform they haven't got the means to bail them out. They worry about crime because they live in or near bad neighborhoods, or because they've fled to remote exurbs but remember what the alternative was like. We don't see crime, social disintegration or failure as real and present dangers for ourselves or our families. We don't press for discipline and drill in the 3 Rs because we take it as a given that our kids will of course learn them, go to good colleges and get good jobs; they don't. We can afford what they see as frills and distractions; they can't.

Would accommodating social conservatives be selling out? Most people I know think it would. 1984 was our parents' nightmare--the nightmare vision of an authoritarian Stalinist super-state. The Handmaid's Tale is ours. They imagine that any compromise on "wedge issues" will enable Fundamentalists to take over and establish a puritanical theocracy. The first Cold War is over (though another may be brewing) but the Cold War template is still firmly in place: we've just substituted religious fundamentalism for Communism. The worry is the same: fanatic ideologues out to establish a puritanical, authoritarian regime. In the old days anti-communist books sold and there was a whole genre describing the activities of spies and double-agents. Now New Atheist books are best sellers and the media pumps out scare stories about a Fundamentalist fifth column pushing Creationism and Abstinence-only sex education, collaborating with right-wing politicians to take away our freedom, undermine our way of life and ruin our fun.

I'm not worried. Social conservatives have in fact lost the culture war, as the article notes. But even more importantly, calling a truce and working with social conservatives to promote paleo-liberal policies seems to me the most effective way to insure that what's left of social conservativism will wither away. Strong religion and social conservatism are bi-products of poverty, insecurity and social disorder because they serve the interests of the poor. If you're a working class striver and want to improve your life the best you can do for yourself is to join a conservative church or join the military. If you're on the edge, hanging on by your fingernails, you need puritanism and iron discipline to keep from falling off.

If you live in a social democratic welfare state where you're financially secure, have access to decent public education and other social services, and can avoid poverty and drudgery, you don't need puritanism and iron discipline, you won't sign on with the Fundamentalist agenda and you will be able to afford the finer things higher up on Maslow's scale. This seems to be borne out by empirical facts: Euro-socialism secularized Old Europe and established the lifestyle McGovernites want.

Progressives by and large don't seem to have figured this out, but Conservatives have. Want to promote God, guns and guts, and keep the masses scared so that they'll keep voting for you? Keep them financially insecure, keep them in debt, perpetuate the existence of a criminal underclass to threaten them, and make sure that they're brain-dead by locking them into boring, mind-numbing work so that they will keep voting for you.