What is the “working class” defined as nowadays? Everyone strives for a roof over their head, money in the bank, food on the table, and some sort of financial security but as cost of living rises wages have stagnated since the “Great Recession” 10 years ago and it’s becoming harder to secure when debts mount – PB/TK
Has “Working Class” Lost Its Meaning? – By David Rosen / June 30 2017
Late on the evening of November 8, 2016, Donald Trump made a last-minute campaign stop at the Grand Rapids, MI, convention center to a cheering crowd of over 4,000 supporters. “The corrupt politicians and their special interests have ruled over this country for a very long time,” he shouted to his enthusiastic supporters. “Today is our Independence Day. Today the American working class is going to strike back, finally.”
In the wake of Trump’s November 9th electoral victory, Bernie Sanders noted that the insurgent Republican had “very effectively” tapped into “the anger and angst and pain that many working-class people are feeling.” Pointing an accusing finger of Hillary Clinton and the neoliberal Democratic Party, he lamented, “I think that there needs to be a profound change in the way the Democratic Party does business.” He insisted, “It is not good enough to have a liberal elite. I come from the white working class, and I am deeply humiliated that the Democratic Party cannot talk to where I came from.”
The working-class has become a galvanizing issue for both Republicans and Democrats. Since the end of WW-II, the notion of class has been transformed; the working-class superseded by the middle-class. Today, the working class is back, at least rhetorically.
But what does working class mean in an era of deepening inequality, when the American dream can no longer be made great again? Has class been exposed as a social fiction? Perhaps it’s time to reinvent the proletariat.
Continue to counterpunch.org article: https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/30/has-working-class-lost-its-meaning/
