Do We Need An Aristocracy In America? White Privilege Has Noble Roots, Blue Collar Does Not

Bernie Sanders is an old fashioned liberal, a direct descendant of LaFollette, Debs, and Samuel Gompers, early Twentieth Century progressives who drew their inspiration from the Russian Revolution and the emergence of worker-based socialism.  These men were not only working for workers rights, but had invested heart and soul into the Labor Movement just as the Communists has done in the Soviet Union after 1917.  There was something noble about labor, laboring, and the working man - a nobility which should provide the foundation of  post-capitalist American society. 

The battle lines were drawn in those early years - factory workers laboring over lathes, drills, presses and tool dies while the Robber Barons exploited millions from them, subjecting them to cruel conditions, low pay, and brutal work.  

A revolution was in the making, if not as violent as the Russian one, at least as bold, courageous, and demanding.  Gompers, Debs, and LaFollette were tireless about the nobility and the ironic plight of the working man, consigned to ignominy when he was above all, the pride of the species. 

Of course capitalists didn't see it that way.  They were the captains or industry making goods, services, and employment possible.  They were the creators, the first movers, and the working man was only a follower.

In the early capitalist era the country grew as never before.  Thanks to Rockefellers, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, and Morgan every sector of the economy became strong and vital.  If the Industrial Revolution had begun in Europe, it gained momentum and would finish in America. 

Meanwhile the working man, soon a tool of ambitious union bosses, turned out into the streets, demanding their share or the wealth. Morgan and Rockefeller laughed.  What share? they asked.  Owners and managers were responsible for all the wealth created, for without their risk, investment, skill, and enterprise, the working man would still be tilling the fields.

And so it was until the socialist fantasy disappeared, the unions were dismantled and a free enterprise system of supply and demand replaced them.  Factories were again open shop. 

As the industrial age faded and employment was transformed from the factory floor to the downtown office, the secretary was the most important employee of any office. Without her, work would stop. Interoffice memos would pile up. Communications with clients would amass into a giant backlog. Middle managers would never be able to find critical files. 

No matter how much creative vision, enterprise, jawboning, and negotiation on the part of senior management, the real work got done in the trenches.  Blue collars became white in a matter of a generation.  Unskilled labor done by non-English-speaking workers became a thing of the past.  By the end of the 20th century old industrial towns were struggling to survive.  Without the industry on which it had depended for 200 years, the economic base collapsed. Poles no longer immigrated to the industrial Northeast and poor and often dysfunctional Puerto Rican, black, and Dominican families took over their former enclaves.



The Twenty-First Century will be the first without labor. Intelligent machines, robots, drones, and online commerce have already replaced the pipe-fitter; and steam pressers and lathe operator will soon be things of the past.  Most heavy industry, the locus of the American labor movement, has moved overseas, and the economy is quickly becoming a technology- and information-driven one.

This transformation is a good thing, for it has raised the productivity bar. Those who work will eventually work at better-paying, more productive jobs more consistent with talent and education.

The break up of big labor has been instrumental in the growth of entrepreneurship, both in the high-tech industries of Silicon Valley but also in small business.  Although these small enterprises still labor under the yoke of government regulation, at least they have more control over their labor force.

And yet Bernie Sanders and his unreconstructed progressive allies cry foul.  With the accession of Donald Trump to the White House, the Robber Baron era will be ushered back.  The working man will once again be marginalized, left behind, and forgotten. 

Paul Krugman, a liberal economist and intellectual soulmate of Sanders talks of the dignity of labor.  Conservative Republicans, he says, have no respect for work as an intrinsic value – ennobling and essential for mind and spirit – but only as a functional means to an end necessary for free enterprise, individual liberty and freedom from government intervention. 

Krugman feels that the conservative attitude is arrogant, insular, and immoral.  Work is an absolute value and public resources should be found to guarantee it for all.  Human dignity is dependent on work (intrinsic, absolute value) and on living a comfortable if not prosperous life.

Nonsense of course.  Economics since cowrie beads has been a private enterprise with supply and demand, labor and capital sorting themselves out with no outside interference; and there is no more  dignity in working a lathe than any other occupation high or low.

 

It has been the upper class, the well-to-do, the privileged who have been responsible for the creation of wealth - a sense or noblesse oblige combined with talent, intelligence, and ambition.  This class of Americans and Europeans has been the seat of these foundational values since the first empire and remains their repository.  It is understandable that Sanders would not only attack capitalism but capitalists, those who protect, promote, and preserve them. It is class war all over again, and this time the socialist reformers will fail in their misplaced ideological dream just as political idealists have failed before them. 

Socialism, the discredited system of the past never seems to go away.  Such is the nature of idealism - hopeful ideas, no matter how unrealistic they are and how unproven stay around for the good of the soul. 

It is a mistake to reject or remake history in this image.  Empires, kings, queens, shahs, emperors, and shoguns have ruled for millennia and while so doing have created civilization, and American aristocrats in actuality or philosophy have done the same. 

Talent, ability, intelligence, promise, are fundamental traits passed on through the generations no different from the principles of Cato Elder in the Roman era - strength, courage, honor, respect, fidelity- the sine qua non of leadership. 

Throwing out our European aristocratic heritage in the name of inclusivity is foolhardy.  We do not need Africa in our past, nor did Rockefeller, Carnegie, or Morgan.  Lineage, heritage, tradition, values are all we need. 

Bernie Sanders will keep barking and baying, but fewer and fewer people will be listening.  Once again we are in primal, independent era, and we will prosper.