The Egalitarians and the Meritocrats – Why the two wings of the Democratic Party need to unite to beat Trump

In the aftermath of the election of Donald Trump the ‘hot takes’ came thick and fast but this one – from the British political journalist Stephen Bush on his official Facebook page – caught my eye in particular.

As a British social-democrat I naturally wished Bernie Sanders well and had not considered the possibility that a lack of support among African-American voters had turned the tide for Hillary in the primaries. The following day I put this question posed by Bush to the editor of ‘Jacobin’ magazine – which is arguably to Bernie Sanders supporters what Breitbart is to supporters of Trump – Bhaskar Sunkara had this response:-

The FB post by Bush, and its thrust: that the class reductionism of the ‘Berniecrats’ has a blind spot set off a train of thought which has reached its station in the form of this blog.

What I have always found interesting as an outside observer to American politics is that the term ‘liberal’ means something very different in the UK than it does in the USA. In the UK ‘liberal’ means ‘centrist’ or ‘centre-left’ at best. The fact that it has become synonymous with ‘left-wing’ in America suggests two things.

Americans have not been ‘class conscious’ in the way Europe once was. I would actually go further and say that Americans have not really believed in fixed social stratifications at all. No history of feudalism? no socialism one might argue.

Modern Americans have typically defined themselves politically more by cultural touchstones such as abortion and LGBT rights than they have economic concerns. The battleground in American politics has not been Keynes vs Hayek but Pat Robertson/Jerry Falwell vs Betty Friedan/Angela Davis if you like.

This is suggestive of the fact that religion has played a larger role in American life than it has done in most parts of secularised Europe in recent decades. To quote Pascal Bruckner:- ‘what is sacred to us here in Europe is desacralization.’ The times, however, they are a changing.

‘Conservatives’ have largely lost the ‘culture wars’ resulting in a younger generation of ‘right-wingers’ who are as socially ‘liberal’ as their counterparts on the left, due, in large part, one might argue, to the decline in religious observance.

What are the implications of this? economic differences are likely to come to the fore again as rival political stripes seek to differentiate themselves from their opponents. How else do the two groups make themselves distinct from one another? this is the paradox of modern American political life: at the same time that Americans have become more polarised they have become more the same. Perhaps this is what is meant by the term the ‘narcissism of small differences. Bathroom debates are arguably a hang-over from a different era, the last shot fired in a war already won/lost.

One can see this emerging phenomenon in the rise of a self-styled Socialist in Bernie Sanders as a potential Democratic presidential candidate. Unthinkable during the cold war. Supporters of Bernie Sanders wear their socialist influences on their sleeve and unapologetically focus upon economic issues/social class as opposed to an ‘intersectional’ approach.

This is in contrast to the ‘identity liberalism’ (identified by Mark Lilla in his NYT essay in the aftermath of Trump’s Presidential win) which is more concerned with cultural issues and is best summed up in the words of Alex Nicholls: ‘Contemporary progressivism has come to mean papering over material inequality with representational diversity.’ An ‘Ottomonism of the left’ in the words of Ed West.

This transformation in American left-wing politics has occurred in the context of rising economic inequality in the United States from Ronald Reagan’s Presidency onwards (read Thomas Piketty’s Capital for more details.) One does not need to be Karl Marx to envision the potential for a rise in ‘class consciousness’ – a sine qua non of socialism? – and a potential recipe for a resurgence of class-conscious left-wing politics in America.

People accept inequality when they believe they have an equal chance at success. In the UK we refer to this as a ‘meritocracy.’ Thatcher destroyed British socialism/social democracy by successfully selling this idea to the British working class, that her particular brand of conservatism offered them a better chance of prosperity than the post-war settlement had hitherto. In effect that we now lived in a ‘classless society’ like America.

In America itself this idea has been sacralized in the cultural myth of the ‘American Dream’ but the question lingers: what if people wake up and realise it is exactly that, a dream? Lets face it :- if HIllary Clinton had become President it would have meant only two families holding the highest office in the land between themselves for potentially 28 out of the 36 years between 1988–2024. What is that if not an oligarchy? hardly a meritocratic society, hardly the ‘American dream’ of Abraham Lincoln and others.

Despite what should be propitious times for the left the deep fracture in American society that stymies the development of a rise in ‘class consciousness’ and a corollary upturn in the fortunes of a class conscious left-wing in America is, of course, race.

One can see this in the election of Trump. Trump arguably ran as a reactionary FDR promising large infrastructure spending and the return of manufacturing jobs that were allegedly lost to China. A fact that clearly confused many given the fact that he ran as a Republican, traditionally the party of fiscal conservatism. Buckleyite ‘movement conservatism’ has decreed since the time of Reagan that economic libertarianism become synonymous with conservatism itself. A dubious idea but one which was swallowed with no hiccups for many years.

The reason why it is a dubious idea is because the two central tenets of William F Buckley’s ‘conservatism’ – which has served as a template for American conservatism ever since – namely (A) economic libertarianism (B) moral traditionalism – exist in tension with one another. The first undermines the second. As Marx said, in regards to capitalism: ‘all that is solid melts into air.’ Free market/laissez-faire capitalism and its intellectual hand-maidens of economic liberalism/libertarianism feed upon ‘creative destruction,’ that is its life-blood, whereas moral traditionalism depends upon order/stability. You can have one or the other but not both.

One could argue that the essence of conservatism is NOT classical liberalism or economic libertarianism (in the form of ‘small government’) it is the human longing for nostalgia. Conservatives of all stripes are ‘declinists,’ positing a ‘golden age’ that has been lost but which we need to return, ‘make America great again’ anyone? perhaps this best explains why it was that Margaret Thatcher, who extolled Victorian values, and sought to re-create the world of her father (a staunch Methodist and self reliant small businessman,) via the dynamism of the free market, ended up contributing to the birth of (to many moral conservatives) the amoral modern world of her son in which we all now inhabit.

Precisely because Trump has no fixed political principles or loyalties he was able to rip up the Buckleyite template and hit the ‘sweet spot’ in appealing to those who wanted ‘economic protectionism’ – traditionally a province of the left – AND ‘cultural protectionism’ – traditionally a province of the right.

Republicans voted for him because, well, thats what Republicans do but many voters who arguably *should* be Dems (not least the putative white working class,) if they were voting purely in the manner socialists predict they *should* vote – i.e in alignment with their own economic ‘interests’ – also voted for him.

The white working class in America (especially in the South of course) were always a solid Democratic constituency before the civil rights act 1964. LBJ said when he signed the civil rights act that he feared he had lost the south for at least two generations. He was right, this unfortunately remains the case and this is where the type of socialism espoused by ‘Berniecrats’ is exposed as hopelessly naive.

The potential for Trumpian conservatism to split the Dems down the middle at a time when left-wing politics should be thriving is obvious. ‘Berniecrat’ socialism emphasises social class and considers race to be of secondary importance, this is naive in a country like America with such a deeply embedded societal fracture along the lines of race.

Likewise, Clintonite ‘identity liberalism’ and the associated idea of a putative electoral coalition to be harnessed dubbed ‘demography is destiny’ – i.e that Democrats can safely ignore issues of social class/economic inequality and still win –which does give race/ethinicity its due but does not consider the issues of economic inequality/social class to be of the same level of importance as the ‘Berniecrats’ do – because it clashes with a core tenet of the centre-left that Americans live in a meritocratic society? - is unwise, not to mention tin-eared, at a time when widening inequality and associated social problems are becoming increasingly obvious and harder to ignore.

The truth is BOTH factors – race/ethnicity and class – need to be recognised as important variables in the electoral equation otherwise a return to the losses of the period 1968–92 when the Dems only held the Presidency for four years out of 24 may unfold.

What the 2016 Presidential election demonstrates is that class-conscious politics is back. Fundamentally thats what populism is (albeit of a heterodox kind.) There is a world of difference between Sanders and Trump but they were both populists. In the words of Jebediah Purdy:- ‘Left-wing populism punches upward at the ruling class. Right-wing populism often punches both up and down.’ In Trump’s case a class-conscious politics seeking to represent Nixon’s ‘silent majority’ and Farage’s ‘ordinary, decent people’ fractured along the lines of race and religion rather than socio-economic status.

Trump’s success shows that GOP voters are not necessarily economic libertarians but it also demonstrates unfortunately that Alberto Alesina was right; the reason Americans dont have a European-style welfare state is, to some degree, because of race.

The thesis of ‘Berniecrat’ class conscious socialism is necessary in my view but not sufficient. Likewise its antithesis; Clintonite race conscious ‘identity liberalism.’ Somehow a synthesis of the two elements needs be found.

SUMMARY:-

• A rise in inequality + a decline in social mobility = likely to lead to a rise in class consciousness.
• This should be a propitious time for the left.
• Instead the right have taken advantage by abandoning economic libertarianism and embracing ‘statism’ and a form of thinly camouflaged white identity politics out of which Trumpian conservatism is constituted.
• The puzzle the left needs to solve requires a synthesis between the class consciousness of the ‘Berniecrats’ and the race consciousness of Clintonite identity liberalism.
• Berniecrat socialism without Clintonite identity liberalism is blind. Clintonite identity liberalism without Berniecrat socialism is deaf