wealth and upward mobility. Why then do we insist on
seeing our national political elites - who are also
generally our economic and educational elites -
throw back a shot of whiskey or lace up bowling shoes?
Classism is the systematic oppression of subordinated classes of people by the dominant class.
It includes individual attitudes and behaviors, systems of policies and practices that are set up to benefit the upper classes at the expense of the lower classes.
Classism is grounded in a hierarchy belief system that ranks people according to socioeconomic status, family lineage, and other class related divisions.
This system leads to a drastic income and wealth inequality.
Why highly educated, wealthy politicians act like an average guy.
If Americans are such huge fans of big dreams and high rolling, self-made tycoons and upward mobility, why then do we insist on seeing our national political elites -- who are also generally our economic and educational elites -- throw back a shot of whiskey or lace up bowling shoes?
Why do we need to pretend that high-flying politicians who graduated from the fanciest schools and dine at the toniest restaurants really don't live in a different world and -- dare I say it -- class than the rest of us?
The easy answer is that we want to identify with them, and we want them to identify with us. But there's also something more at play here, and that's the never-ending tension between our cherished ideologies of mobility and equality.
We don't want to think about the real shape of class in America. Who fits where in the hierarchy has always been a touchy, even embarrassing, issue, and when it is discussed, it's usually in harsh, moralistic tropes about the haves and have nots that do nothing to illuminate nuances.
It's long been an enduring quirk of American politics that the most successful politicians are the ones who best conceal the very hauteur that gives them the supreme confidence -- or is it gall? -- to think they can lead the most powerful nation on Earth.
Ironically, the pols who started at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder often feel most obliged to strike a humble pose.
As political scientist Elliot White wrote in 1971, "The greater the distance traveled, the greater the pretense of not having gone far at all."
Sure, high-ranking politicians of humble origins can lay at least some claim to being "common." But that's really a ruse.
Because the best politicians wouldn't get as far as they do if they hadn't already successfully convinced large numbers of people that they were distinct from -- read: better than -- the rest of us.
And therein lies our dilemma. We hold to the belief that we are all equal, yet we yearn for distinctiveness for ourselves and those we choose to represent us.
In a nation whose form of government exalts the illusion of uniformity among its citizens, we are collectively engaged in a struggle to be recognized as unique by our peers.
Alexis de Tocqueville was one of a handful of observers who made the link between an exalted American belief in equality and a much more mundane attitude -- vanity.
Here's how it works. The ideology of equality, which teaches us that every man is just as good as the next, appeals to our pride. We cling to this belief even as experience in our everyday lives proves to us that it is not true.
We are quite aware of the fact that some people achieve greater success than others; some are rich and some are poor. But that only makes us adhere to our belief all the more.
As Czech scholar Petr Lom has suggested, "the dogma of equality" takes hold of the imagination and gives us hope that we really are equal to everyone.
It fuels our dreams that we can be, will be (and therefore magically that we are) just the same as those who have achieved more money, fame or status than ourselves.
Democratic strategist and political analyst Doug Schoen concurs.
Having worked with such billionaire candidates as Jon Corzine (New Jersey governor) and Michael Bloomberg (New York mayor), Schoen believes Americans want to perceive even the most successful people as Everyman.
"We want wealthy and famous people to be different from us," he said. "But we also want them to be the same."
He advises wealthy candidates to buy "bio spots to tell their story" and demonstrate that story's connection to ordinary peoples' life experiences. "Voters need to see that they are accessible," he said. "That they're not disconnected."
This "connection" evidently elicits a sense of aspiration among voters, whereas a disconnect can create envy.
A person steeped in democratic values who cannot aspire to be equal to his social superior is likely to seek equality in another way, by bringing the mighty down to his own level -- another great American tradition.
So the next time you see a presidential candidate make a fool of himself or herself by pretending to be Mr. or Mrs. Average American, remember -- he or she isn't simply trying to curry favor or empathize with us commoners.
The gutter balls and the whiskey shots are less about persuading the voters of the candidates' genuine humility (the moments are so awkward, does anyone really find them authentic?) than they are about self-defense.
What these elite politicians are really doing is trying to keep the American public from ever bringing them down to size.
We are witnessing far-reaching changes in the underlying structure of American society. The most significant factor is the immense growth of social inequality.
Over the past quarter century, a vast redistribution of wealth has occurred—fostered by the policies of Democratic and Republican administrations alike—from the working people to the richest 10 percent of the population.
By the time of the 2000 election, the concentration of wealth in the hands of an oligarchic elite had reached unprecedented proportions.
To cite a few statistics: since the mid-1970s, the top 1 percent of US households has doubled its share of the national wealth, from less than 20 percent to 38.9 percent.
In 1999, the wealthiest 1 percent of the population, 2.7 million people, received as much after-tax income as the 100 million Americans with the lowest incomes. Between 1977 and 1999, the average after-tax income of the top 1 percent soared by 370 percent, from $234,700 to $868,000.
During the 1990s, in particular, a virtual mania for unearned income gripped the ruling class, which felt itself freed of any restraint on the accumulation of personal wealth.
During the Clinton-Gore years, CEO compensation rose 535 percent, with the result that a typical corporate boss in 2000 made 475 times the income of the average worker.
The opening years of the twenty-first century have seen a continuation of this process.
As the historical experience of humanity has demonstrated, such rampant social inequality is, in the end, incompatible with democratic forms of rule.
There comes a point at which the social tensions generated by such extraordinary levels of social polarization cannot be contained within traditional democratic forms. American society has reached that point.
The widening chasm between the financial oligarchy and the masses of working people has been accompanied by other, related processes that undermine the foundations of democracy.
The traditional social base for parliamentary democracy is the middle-class layers that serve as a buffer between the two main contending classes—the capitalist elite and the working class.
But the vast changes in economic life linked to the globalization of production and the rise of giant transnational corporations have dissipated middle-class America and sharply reduced its social and political weight.
A small section has benefited from the orgy of profit-making and stock market speculation and risen to become a part of the privileged elite.
The vast majority of those previously considered to be part of the middle class—professionals, shopkeepers, farmers, white collar employees—have been propelled into the ranks of wage earners, making the working class the overwhelming majority of the population.
The dramatic increase in wealth from speculation in stocks and bonds and other forms of self-enrichment largely separated from the production of useful products, as well as the ascendancy of new industries related to computer technology and telecommunications, has had an enormous impact on the social and political dynamics within the ruling elite itself.
A layer of fabulously wealthy nouveau riche, who owe their fortunes far less to the erection of industrial empires than to profit windfalls from booming stocks, market manipulation, leveraged buyouts, and sheer luck, has risen to the top of the corporate world.
From their ranks have largely come the most parasitic and short-sighted elements, whose political counterparts are to be found in the leadership of the Republican Party.
The agenda of this increasingly dominant element within the ruling elite is the removal of all legal, political and moral restraints on the accumulation of corporate profit and personal wealth—whether in the form of environmental regulations, health and safety codes, anti-trust laws, union rights, minimum wage standards, or limitations on the work day and child labor.
These forces demand a vast retrogression in the social conditions and democratic rights of the working class—a return to the policies of laissez-faire, but on a more brutal scale than that which prevailed even in the heyday of the robber barons.
Such an agenda cannot be realized by democratic methods. Its implementation inevitably requires the use of brute force and state violence.
As for the so-called “Fourth Estate” of the media, it has lost whatever margin of independence it once retained and become, quite literally, a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate behemoths such as General Electric, Viacom, Disney and the Murdoch empire.
What passes for “news” is dictated more directly and completely by the economic interests and political outlook of CEOs and big investors than ever before.
A system in crisis
The growth of social inequality is a reflection not of the health and vibrancy of the capitalist system, but rather of its crisis and degeneration.
The corporate scandals of the past several years are not mere aberrations. They are symptoms of a diseased social system, which has produced a ruling elite steeped in corruption and criminality.
Whether in the media, where ignorant toadies are paid millions to parrot government lies, or in the corporate world, where CEOs loot their own companies to enhance their personal fortunes and manufacture profits by cooking the books, one is confronted with a spectacle of intellectual, political and moral decay.
This rise of a criminal element finds its consummate political expression in the Bush administration, where naked greed commingles with brutality and contempt for the democratic rights of the people. It is a government of, by and for the American oligarchy.
The defense of democratic rights cannot therefore be entrusted to any section of the ruling elite—liberal or conservative—or to any political force that upholds the existing social order.
Democratic rights can be preserved only on the basis of a mass, social and political struggle against the economic foundations of the oligarchy’s rule.
It entails a vast redistribution of wealth and far-reaching changes in the economic structure of society to shift control of resources from a parasitic elite to the broad mass of working people.
The basic principle of economic life must become the satisfaction of human needs, not the accumulation of personal wealth and corporate profit.