Where is the American Working Class?

Paolo Bassi

April 2007


Where is the American Working Class?

If a foreign visitor with no knowledge of American society only followed the media, he may be forgiven for thinking there are no working class people or a class divide in America. Instead he will see a media-created, comfortable upper-middle class view of American society, in which even something as banal as an aspirin commercial is shot in a house the size of an airline hanger.

Our visitor will see a political class and a judiciary who portray themselves as benign and neutral, existing only to serve the public good. The mass of the heartland will be shown as patriotic, hard working, middle-class Americans. The wealthy old families and corporate elites require a little more explaining but again they will be represented as ordinary folk with a lot of money. Then of course there are the celebrities who uphold individualistic and heroic American values.

The words that our visitor will almost never hear in the corporate media or from American politicians is “working class,” and with good reason. In 2006, CNN’s Lou Dobb’s, a self-appointed warrior for the American middle class, began a TV campaign to investigate why this class was getting poorer. Dobbs was right. Middle class earnings in real terms have been sinking for over 30 years. However, Dobbs, like most American commentators, describes almost everyone who has to work to survive as middle-class.

If nearly all those who work are middle-class, then who exactly is working class? What class is the working poor whose wages barely top welfare benefits? What class are the tens of millions of hard-working and conscientious Americans working at or near the minimum wage--retail clerks, fast food workers, factory workers and agricultural workers? Almost every other country properly calls these people what they are–ordinary working class.

It is not only the contempt shown by the political class and the media for ordinary workers that makes them invisible. The dominant capitalist ideology of America requires that workers and their issues remain marginalized. For over a century, America’s elites have perpetuated the myth that any American who works hard and obeys authority will improve his material condition upon the prior generation. The fact that working people who obey these myths all their lives and still die poor must therefore be ignored or blamed upon the poor themselves.

It is also a political necessity for the rulers to keep working class issues safely out of sight and mind. In a culture where the rulers have merged and blurred ideas of capitalism, democracy, freedom and the “American Way,” meaningful debate about the material and emotional well being of working people cannot be allowed.

The corporate media and Hollywood are natural allies in ensuring that issues at the core of the working class condition such as, poverty, health and housing, are kept off the national agenda. The poor must be made content with brain-rotting coverage of sports, advertisements and the lives of celebrities.

Of the thousands of guests each year on TV or radio, it is rare to find a labor representative or a union leader. Virtually all commentators are pro-business intellectuals, management, military, celebrities, safe cultural figures or government officials. Even the ever-docile and self-important NPR gushes over its establishment guests. The possibility of the mainstream media allowing the poor to discuss poverty in America is unheard of.

Working class people occasionally make an appearance, usually when there is a lottery winner or a strike. In the latter case, the coverage will ignore the real reasons underlying the strike, focusing instead on the ill-led, unreasonable workers and the inconvenience they cause the public. The hostility towards striking American workers is in stark contrast to the politically motivated support for workers abroad who oppose Washington’s enemies. For example, in the 1980s Poland’s Solidarity union were lauded as heroes in taking on their Communist rulers. If tomorrow Cuban workers demonstrated against Castro, the American media would be beside itself with joy.

Even though workers are made invisible, they cannot be completely ignored. Therefore, a non-threatening image that does not raise class issues must be created. Leave it to television and Hollywood -- masters of the make-over. In recent years the American right has taken to labeling Hollywood as liberal and a danger to traditional family values. This of course is an inside joke, since Hollywood plays a critical cultural role in maintaining the myth that America has neither a class system nor an official idealogy.

When working class people do appear in films or television they are usually shown as simpletons, clowns, illiterates, criminals, freaks or failures due to their characters. Other times they are blindly patriotic sidekicks with a heart of gold. And if their poverty gets in the way, it’s usually a temporary condition that is fixed by the end of the movie.

The poor are generally not shown as complete human beings who are poor, not because of their character or indiscipline, but because of their work. They are depicted as having chosen their poverty as if it was an option. According to American popular culture, if only these people could dress better, lose weight, speak differently, get a different hairstyle and read a few self-help books, they would surely be transformed.

Sometimes the poor even provide great entertainment through grotesque, almost medieval, characterization. “Entertainers” such as Jerry Springer and Maury Povich have shamelessly made careers from insulting the poor or at least distorted perceptions of them.

There are many theories of why working class consciousness has never become a political reality in America. One thing is clear though. Mainstream corporate American media is destructive for American workers and until it is abandoned a true class-consciousness can never develop nor will change be possible.