The economic side of American leftism kinda sucks. There are a couple of reasons for this, but the one I want to discuss right now is the focus on the uber-rich. As Bernie Sanders loves to remind us, the top 1% of earners in the United States have the bulk of the wealth. Viral videos and images provide descriptions of the massive gap between $1,000,000 and $1,000,000,000. Back-of-the-envelope calculations shared widely on social media demonstrate that while you might make $600 a week working full time at $15/hr, Bezos is compensated that much in about three hours. All of this is to evoke a sense of unfairness, that the world would be better if we just took more money from the rich people and gave it to everyone else.
And maybe that’s true. I certainly like the idea of higher taxes on top earners. But this myopic focus on blatant inequality misses the structural forest for the individual trees. It misses all of the things which made some kinds of leftism have an unique perspective worth grappling with and leaves it hollow. It’s certainly more interesting to talk about structural conditions (at least to me) because talking about how to distribute the tax burden is like arguing over where the slider should be set, when I’m more interested in hearing about which sliders should exist in the first place.
The basic leftist analysis championed by Marx and friends goes as follows: There are the capitalists who own the capital, which is stuff used to make other stuff, and then there are the laborers who use the stuff to make other stuff which is then sold for a profit. Because the capitalists own the capital, they get the profit, which is then in part paid out to the laborers. The argument is that this is unjust because it is unclear why they have any true claim to own the capital. They aren’t actually doing anything with it, and if they are, it’s certainly not in proportion to the profit they’re making. It’s the laborers who make use of the capital; the capitalists merely use the state to enforce their claim to ownership and subsequent claim to the profit.
There are a many consequences of this structure. The most widely known one is wealth inequality. Capitalists have a tendency to be better off than laborers. But even as people began to focus more and more on wealth inequality, the connection became weaker. One can now be a capital owner and make a living but have a significantly lower net worth than a blue-collar worker. In fact, most American adults are now technically capitalists, with 58% reporting that they own stocks. Stocks are a great example of capitalism because you aren’t actually doing anything with your stake in the company. Your return on investment relies on the laborers employed by the company taking the capital and turning it into a profit.
This has been capitalism’s great victory and silent triumph. Even self-declared, strident, militant “anti-capitalists” never tout the ills of a 401k. The slow shift from the proletariat — the laborers with no substantial capital — to the precariat — those who are in economically precarious positions — has meant that the structure of capitalism has all-but become cemented in the American mind. Yes, even the minds of most self-described democratic socialists.
To a degree, this is unfortunate because buried in the dense tomes and dry treatises of leftist theory are a few interesting ideas that remain relevant today and yet remain underdiscussed. The problem which I see most often on a day-to-day basis is the lack of self-determination. As one moves up the capital chain from pure proletariat to pure capitalist, one’s ability to determine the course of their own life tends to increase. I’ve felt this myself. As I moved from “proletariat” to “professional managerial class,” I’ve seen my ability to make decisions at work increase, and with that comes a sense of dignity and self-fulfillment that I didn’t have before. I’ve seen this dynamic impact others, and it seems to me to be worthy of discussion. What is the moral and psychological impact of feeling that one has no say in their work life? How can we increase the feeling of empowerment? Right now the culture is leaning into a strict work-life separation, with minimal empowerment at work and maximal empowerment in the rest of their life. I’m not sure that’s really healthy or sustainable. I’d like American leftists to talk more about that.