The median voter does think of himself as upwardly mobile. A post on the list a few days ago cited a survey showing that an extraordinary number of Americans think that they are already in the top 1% of the income distribution, or soon will be. When I teach my Marx seminar to first year students at DePaul - many of whom are working class, first-generation college students - I often conduct a survey to find out what they think their incomes will be by the time they reach the ripe old age of thirty. The mean is usually in the high hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, the median in the low hundreds of thousands. (The difference is accounted for by a few students who think they will be in the millions). At the same time, they're very aware that middle-class incomes are stagnant, and most of them believe that capitalism is exploitative. It's just that each thinks that s/he, individually, will end up 2-3 standard deviations from the mean. This leaves us in a nasty vicious circle. These students quite rationally believe that collective movements for better conditions for all are unlikely to have much success. Rather than accept the grim reality, that this means that they face a future of stagnant salaries, increasingly unaffordable health care, declining public goods, etc., they choose to believe that they will be the ones to escape to the valhalla of upper-class life. Thus identifying upward, they have less reason than ever to engage in collective movements for better conditions for all. And so the cycle continues.
[WS:] Right on the target! The problem with the counter-culturalist, guilt tripping cults in the US is that they think that most of the population is like them - wallowing in guilt and misery. In reality, most people dream of happiness and bright future, and will go to great lengths to maintain those dreams (or delusions). The traditional Marxist left understood that trait of the human nature and catered to it by creating a distinct Marxist eschatology - or a vision of the bright and happy socialist future that was about to emerge from the capitalist nightmare of today.
This was the main selling point of the traditional Marxism. Unlike counterculturalist intellectuals, most people hate misery, let alone wallowing in it, they already have more than enough of it in their everyday lives. What they want is the promise of a better future. Peddling such promises is usually the domain of religion. The Marxist innovation was that the socialist nirvana that they promised was to be attained not in the afterlife, but in this life, and by people's own efforts. That was the irresistible attraction of Marxist ideology, even - or perhaps especially - for those (the majority) who otherwise had little understanding of Marxist theory. BTW, this was also the main attraction of MLK's "dream."
Today, the same applies to neo-liberal ideology of free market - it offers a promise of personal "salvation" in this life for countless grunts who otherwise have zero understanding of how economic and political institutions really work. The story that you just told is a typical example of grunts looking to the markets to be delivered from poverty and misery. IIRC, Joanna once posted a similar story of someone living in a slum, but refusing to give up his faith in capitalism.
This is precisely why the politics of grievances, peddled since the 1960s by disgruntled counter-culturalist intellectuals, have zero chance of political success. Unfortunately, no one on the left offers any alternatives that would rival the appeal of the traditional Marxist ideology and provide effective counterweight to the lure of the neo-liberal ideology of free market or, for that matter, religious cults that infest this country. I think Europeans are doing a little bit better in this respect by advancing the vision of socially responsible and environmentally sustainable social economy - but in the US, free market and religion are the only shows in town. Neither the Democrats nor the pitifully microscopic left are able to offer an alternative. Instead, Democrats chase the tail of Republicans in their race toward the center, while the left wallows in the cult of kvetching.
Wojtek
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