Labor Degradation

A Butterfly Flaps Its Wings: From the Powell Memo to the Eastman Memo and January 6th

Published on by Brynne VanHettinga

Part 9 of a 10-part Series:

The Pitchfork Politics of Conspiracy and Hate

“The road to fascism and dictatorship is paved with failures of economic policy to serve the needs of the general public.”

 Tim Wu in The Curse of Bigness:  Antitrust in the New Gilded Age (2018)

On January 6th, it was mostly White men—members of the most privileged group in American society—who were now the ones threatening the “system.” Yet, these were not the billionaires and oligarchs—the “masters of the universe”—whose primary objective is the protection of obscene wealth. This was a protest against a government that is viewed as being unresponsive to the People. If we are completely honest, we might admit to some sympathy for this sentiment, if not for the action. How many of us have argued that our elected representatives know nothing about the struggles of our daily lives and care even less. How many of us have participated in peaceful protests or rallies at the Capitol (as this writer has), which (even if unlikely and not caused by any of us) could have turned violent?

Moreover, imagine what any one of us might do if we genuinely believed the election was stolen. Indeed, there was a small-but-non-zero probability that Trump may have simply declared himself the winner (regardless of actual results) and barricaded himself in the White House behind a force of military loyalists and armed MAGA vigilantes. What would we have done in such a situation? Certainly, the Capitol would not have been a target, nor would January 6th have been a day of any particular significance. There likely would have been mass protests, and some of these likely would have turned violent. Although the riot at the Capitol on January 6th was the inflection point that climaxed a slow but insidious threat to American democracy, we know that this could have taken any number of alternative paths. Former Vice-President Mike Pence should take serious note of possible alternate outcomes.

 

Michael Cohen predicts Trump will not leave White House if he loses on 2/27/2019

January 6th is a unique event in more ways than the obvious. Post-January 6th analysis has focused on criminal prosecutions and reforms to the Electoral Count Act, with the goal of insuring that such a thing does not happen again. As necessary as these legalistic remedies are, they do not address the extreme level of delusion and hate that has infected a sizeable minority of the population. As attorneys who participated in the coup plot are now being charged with “weaponizing their law licenses” by bar disciplinary authorities, harder to address has been the weaponization of the First Amendment. 

At what point should free speech rights yield to public safety hazards? In the case of Covid misinformation, we can point to this as creating a threat to public health, and even human life. We can point to “hate speech,” that results in “hate crimes” and acts of stochastic terrorism where people are killed. In some cases, the public harm is less acute and even harder to establish causation. For decades, we have been subjected to a corporate media that, at first, focused on manufacturing insatiable wants to keep us working harder. In the beginning, many of us in the (formerly robust) middle class may have been able to afford the occasional advertising-induced splurge. What was the harm in wasting money buying things we didn’t need? As the middle class was hollowed out and most of us found ourselves working harder for less, the corporate media shifted to the manufacturing of consent, a Panglossian propaganda model touting glamorous lifestyles, justifying the infallibility of “markets,” and blaming everyone who isn’t already rich for their own shortcomings.

This strategy enabled the oligarchs to maintain a hold on power for decades. But people will continue to work harder for less only so long. At some point, most folks were no longer willing to vote on single moral/cultural issues like abortion, even when the opposition was labeled as baby-killers. New and more heinous bogeymen had to be created. It started with pedophilia—which, unfortunately there are plenty of real-life examples. But—oops—some of the pedophiles are doing “our” bidding, so even more loathsome (and patently incredible) stories were made up about deep state pedophile rings drinking the blood of children in the back of a pizza restaurant in New Jersey. The Q-conspiracy took on a life of its own.

The Q-Anon movement appeared after decades of right-wing disparagement of government. Government is portrayed as an impediment to freedom, but this version of “freedom” is about allowing the privileged to do whatever they want unimpeded by obligations to society at large. Freedom for the rest of us means the “freedom” to work harder, with the remote chance that we too, might become obscenely wealthy. The purpose of “public” schools was to provide a training ground for technocratic job skills useful to the corporatocracy. High level positions in academia, government and law are reserved for those educated at elite institutions—and who are carefully screened to insure they subscribe to elite values. The hoi polloi are not privy to learning the history and mechanics of government, a philosophical ethos of public service, or the critical thinking skills necessary to challenge the status quo.

The working class is not only kept ignorant of how government functions, but is programmed to view government as the enemy—a “deep state” which is comprised of elites who are completely disconnected and disinterested in their daily lives and welfare. Which, unfortunately, contains some element of truth, but they are unable to discern the whole picture. Success is determined in a hypercompetitive environment of Darwinian survival of the fittest and everyone for himself. This prevents development of solidarity among the working rabble, which also prevents them from forming or joining labor unions—which have also been demonized. This creeping degradation of working and civic life erodes hope in the future.

Since the civil rights era of the 1960s, previously marginalized groups—BIPOC, women and LGBTQ—were able to make some visible gains in socio-economic advancement.  Although still in the minority, women are now CEOs of major companies.  There is a record number of women in Congress, and four women now sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. Income of Blacks and other minorities has also improved, but inequality remains high. Although income and status for women and minorities has improved over the past several decades, they have nonetheless not caught up with the income and wealth levels of white men. From the vantage point of rural and working-class white males—whose incomes have stagnated or declined—what they observe is that some “others” are gaining while they are losing—which creates resentment and polarization.

The economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton describe a heretofore unacknowledged epidemic they term Deaths of Despair. They trace a rising death rate from suicide, drug overdose and alcoholic liver disease (a slower form of suicide)—particularly among middle aged white men without college degrees—to declining real wages, insecurity, deprivation, alienation, and loss of hope for the future. For the first time in a century, American life expectancies fell in 2019 (pre-Covid) and 2020. Although the drop in life expectancies was larger for most minority groups, it fell 2.4% for whites. Even when life expectancies were increasing, Americans had lower life expectancies and poorer health than citizens in other high-income countries. Moreover, beginning in the 1990s, life expectancies in the United States began to diverge across geographic regions, and these have been correlated with political party domination. Between 2001 and 2019, the absolute difference in mortality rates between Republican leaning and Democratic leaning counties jumped by 541%.

The acknowledgement (and discussion) of extreme and growing inequality is found primarily among academics or non-mainstream media sources. Government and academic centers that collect data typically focus on datasets and formats designed to be useful to businesses or “economic development” planners. Other than occasional, fragmented stories or articles, popular culture and mainstream media has developed no language or discourse to address how and why the “system” is not working for so many people. Most Americans know (or more likely, “feel” on a gut level) that they are working harder for less, and that life has become more precariatized and harsher. Because they have no way to even articulate the angst—let along avail themselves of systems and institutions to help figure out why and what to do—they look for someone to blame.

This alienated angst is juxtaposed against a media saturated in relentless optimism, Wall Street boosterism, jingoistic hubris, and celebration of wealth. The message is if your own life doesn’t measure up to the roaring success that is all around you, it is because you either need to work harder, “market” yourself more aggressively, or are simply a loser. This is more than a disorienting cognitive dissonance, but amounts to a subtle assault on the core of one’s own human dignity. A combination of material, social, and psychological degradation primes a significant subset of the affected population to devolve into scapegoating and conspiracy theories—which can lead eventually to disconnection from reality. Or, what Dr. Lobaszewsky would term a hysteroidal high point.

There is a spiteful attitude among the alienated white working class that goes above and beyond mere selfishness and greed we usually associate with plutocrats. This perversion of (perhaps justified) grievance is expressed in the sentiment that if my own life is miserable and my job sucks then no one else (especially if they are BIPOC, LGBTQ, or a different religion) should have a decent life or job either. So…,we will vote against minimum wage increases, employee rights, job safety, expanded health care, environmental protection or anything else designed to make the lives of the “least of these” better. We would rather deny these things to “the other”—which also serves to deny them to ourselves—because the only way we can feel good about ourselves is to ensure that someone (or everyone) else is miserable.  

The words of Katherine Stewart (The Power Worshippers at page 277) emphasize many of the same things that Lobaszewsky observed in Nazi and Soviet-occupied Poland:

“Reactionary authoritarianism doesn’t come out of nowhere. It draws much of its destructive energy from social and economic injustices that leave a few with too much power and many others with too little hope. Rising economic inequality and insecurity has created a large mass of people, on all ends of the economic spectrum, who are anxious for their future and predisposed to favor calls for unity around an identity that targets others for vilification and degradation, [thus elevating] to power a small group of people with the means and desire to control the social order for their own benefit.”

 

Why More Workforce Training Will Not Solve the Jobs Problem

Published on by Brynne VanHettinga

Today’s Austin-American Statesman touts the benefits of new rounds of U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) workforce development grants.  Six states have been awarded nearly $15 million to increase employment opportunities for people with disabilities by connecting them with job training programs.  In Texas, $48.5 million has been made available over the next two years for the Skills Development Fund and job training programs.  According to the Texas Workforce Commission Chairman, this grant funding will “allow Texas workers to obtain customized job training that meets the needs of employers.”

Money to help workers on the lowest end of the job market is certainly good news.   The DOL and state workforce development agencies consistently frame the unemployment problem as one of a skills deficit, and so solutions are focused on skills remediation.  Moreover, the workers who are most likely to benefit from these programs are also most likely to receive services from the state in the form of income maintenance.  Because these workers are costing the state money, they are given priority by state unemployment programs.  However, workforce development agencies would do well to broaden their perspective on the population that constitutes un- and under-employed workers, as well as a way to monitor job quality.

The objective of workforce development agencies is to get people into jobs, and their performance metrics are focused on job placement success rates.  Thus, at least on the surface, the objectives of workforce development agencies and job seekers are aligned.  However, merely getting someone into a job does not necessarily guarantee either short-term subsistence or long-term economic security.  What is lost in the equation is any examination of job quality, either in terms of suitability for the worker or even the needs of society as a whole.

The problem is that the agenda driving workforce development policy is driven almost entirely by the demands of employers.  While this may be the fastest way to get people into a narrowly defined “job”, it may be neglecting other, more long-term and complex policy and social implications.  For example, this practice permits businesses to externalize the cost of training onto the taxpayer, while at the same time reap the benefits of increased profits from a trained workforce.  Additionally, the jobs themselves may pay so little that the worker needs continuing subsidization from the state for subsistence, e.g., food stamps, housing, day care and health care subsidies.  In essence, taxpayers (all of us) are subsidizing the gains of a few on both the front and back ends.

In addition to issues of economic fairness (that is, who pays the cost versus who reaps the benefits), there is the issue of the jobs themselves.  Are they designed for the worker to learn and grow, or are they discrete fungible positions constructed to support a rationalized process designed solely to maximize profits?  This is indeed the foundation of labor process theory, or what Harry Braverman termed the degradation of work. In essence, a job is deliberately designed to consist of a narrow range of discrete technical functions so that the jobholder is easily controlled and easily replaced.  While there are counter-arguments to Braverman’s theory that point out increases in the average technical content of jobs, the foundation of Braverman’s theory proposes that modern job processes have destroyed most avenues to upward mobility and personal fulfillment.  Moreover, in a rapidly changing economy, the workers’ narrow, technical skills may become obsolete quickly, at which point they will be laid off until they can be retrained again (at taxpayer expense), or replaced by more recently trained workers.

While the foregoing discussion has revolved around jobs on the lower end of the occupational hierarchy, what the so-called “skills shortage” and job training proponents miss is the army of un- and under-employed older workers, most who have been subject to some form of layoff or downsizing.  Unlike the lower skilled and less educated workers at the bottom of the hierarchy, these workers have skills, work experience (sometimes decades of it), and often have college or post-graduate degrees.  However, because they have some resources (either from a working spouse or savings from prior employment), they often do not receive public assistance, and so are not “priority” placements for workforce development agencies.

So, although providing state-supported training for workers lower in the hierarchy has the potential to benefit these workers by giving them a toehold in the labor market, it will not ipso facto solve the problem of un- and under-employment.  Academic researchers who study the labor market (whose findings are almost never quoted in the mainstream media unless they support corporate objectives) suggest that “the skills…for which [workers] are rewarded are partly a function of the jobs employers offer, rather than the intrinsic capacities of individuals acting as a kind of hard constraint,” and that policymakers should spend less time concerning themselves over purported skills deficiencies in the workforce because “the lack of decent jobs is the obvious basic problem.”