Category Archives: revitalizing the left

class inversion as an alternative to the polarization thesis

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One deep story that’s being told about our current political crisis invokes polarization: two “poles” or ends of the spectrum are seen as moving apart and growing mutually hostile. That is a symmetrical metaphor. A different deep story emphasizes the anti-democratic and anti-constitutional turn of MAGA-style Republicans. I would add a third model that involves both parties, but not in a symmetrical way. It is also less about ideas and policies than interests and identities. It’s a story of inverted partisanship.

Envision a democracy with two main parties or coalitions. The left party favors more taxing, spending, and regulation and draws most of its votes from the lower half of the economic scale. The right party opposes government economic intervention and draws its support from the upper half.

This kind of system can be frustrating, since the median voter (who probably comes from the middle of the economic scale) often wields the deciding vote. Both socialist and libertarian principles are somewhat disfavored. However, if you are a socialist or a libertarian, you should believe that you can convince the median voter of your ideas. Meanwhile, the debate is a good one, because citizens can determine the role of government. And both sides are constrained. The left may want lots of government, but as taxes and regulation rise, so will resistance. The right may love markets, but cutting government deeply also creates opposition. The whole system is pretty stable–for better and worse–and it tends to reward ideas that benefit most people.

Now switch the demographics of the parties, so that the rich vote for the left and the poor vote for the right. In that situation, the left will not really do anything substantial to promote equity, because that would cost its affluent voters. You will see lots of virtue-signaling; superficial policies, hypocritically applied; and odd priorities, such as forgiving college debt but not medical debt. Meanwhile, the right will not get far by cutting taxes, since low-income people pay little or no income tax. The right will look for other ways to benefit its constituency, probably including appeals to racial, national, and/or religious identity.

In this situation, the path to ambitious progressive policies is blocked by the left party itself, while the right party is prone to dangerous escalation. You’ll see statements like John Daniel Davidson’s “We Need To Stop Calling Ourselves Conservatives” in The Federalist (Oct 22). Davidson floats adopting a “pro-worker, even pro-union political agenda that once belonged to the left” and displaying “a willingness to embrace government power.” But to what end? “Drag Queen Story Hour should be outlawed,” “parents who take their kids to drag shows should be arrested and charged with child abuse” and “teachers who expose their students to sexually explicit material should not just be fired but be criminally prosecuted.”

Davidson is not a political strategist, and many of his ideas would poll very poorly. In that sense, his own agenda would be constrained by voters. However, partisan political entrepreneurs on the right can develop cannier agendas that win Republican primary elections and legislative majorities in selected states and give them substantial power. They will not arrest parents for attending constitutionally protected public events, but they will arrest Black men for registering to vote in good faith or transport asylum-seekers to Martha’s Vineyard.

I think a model of a class inversion is more informative than one of “polarization,” which assumes that two durable coalitions have moved apart. In contrast, the inversion model presumes that some people have changed their parties–like the Obama-Trump voters of Luzerne County, PA.

There are signs of this class inversion in many democracies today. However, the picture in the USA is mixed, because wealth, race, and education don’t push in the same directions. Right now, according to the Washington Post-ABC poll, household income does not predict people’s opinion of the 2022 election very well. Democrats perform just a touch better among households earning less than $50,000 per year, and Republicans do better above that threshold, but the whole graph (see above) is pretty flat. That’s because income and being white correlate with support for Republicans, whereas education and being black correlate with Democratic support. The result is our somewhat mixed situation, in which the parties fumble between their traditional roles and inverted ones.

I am fully aware that race is at the heart of the issue in the United States–as it has been all along in this country. However, that observation should be the beginning of the conversation, not the conclusion. If the parties invert their class positions because of white racism, then the whole system is in trouble. Socialists, moderates, libertarians, and constitutionalists should all be alarmed. Again, this is not a new threat today; the end of Reconstruction offers a frightening precedent. But it will be a tough trap for our republic to escape.

Real constitutionalist conservatives have critical work to do on their side of the aisle. Meanwhile, Democrats need to win the votes of more low-income whites, whether that means taking Heather McGee’s advice to explain how racial injustice also harms whites, or taking Ruy Teixeira’s advice to reclaim patriotism and certain traditional values, or running campaigns like Tim Ryan’s in Ohio, or simply doing more to benefit low-income communities that include a lot of white voters.

See also the social class inversion as a threat to democracy; social class in the French election; why the white working class must organize etc.

Four perspectives on student debt forgiveness

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  1. Radical: Debt is the linchpin of a predatory global political-economic system (Graeber 2011). Canceling a portion of one form of debt strikes a blow at this whole structure. It demonstrates that victories can be won—particularly because the president was reluctant to take this step and did so under pressure. The victory will encourage people to think of themselves as debtors with political power, which is a potent identity. If canceling debt weakens the existing economic system (for instance, by encouraging individuals to borrow in the hope of having their loans canceled), that is a feature, not a bug. Another blow will be struck when other groups demand the cancellation of their debts as a matter of fairness. (“Biden helped the college kids—what about those of us with medical bills?”) This policy will look successful in retrospect if it turns out to be merely the first of many cancellations.
  2. Social democratic: The measure of a policy is how much it helps the least advantaged. However, it is wise to design programs to benefit relatively large and empowered populations as well as the neediest, so that such policies are enacted and survive. For instance, European welfare states rely heavily on value-added taxes, which are regressive, and they provide cheap or free college for all (including those who could have afforded college by themselves). Such policies have proven durable. Similarly, in the USA, Medicare and Social Security have been sustained, while means-tested welfare programs have been cut because they have poor constituencies. Forgiving student debt has the same kind of structure. According to a Penn Wharton analysis, people between age 25 and 35 who are in the bottom income quintile will get 13.5% of the benefits of the forgiveness, while people in the top 40% of income will get about 24% of it. The Penn Wharton analysis does not consider race, but NCES reports that Black people with any college debt owe a median $1,810, which is almost three times as high as White people’s median debt ($630). Thus the Biden policy should have progressive effects with respect to race (while also benefiting many White people and omitting Black people who didn’t attend college). This doesn’t sound impressively equitable; boosting financial aid would be a better policy. However, the constituency for financial aid consists of current or prospective college students who demonstrate need, and that group is too politically weak. Besides, the White House decided that Biden could forgive debt by executive order, while Congress would have to pass other reforms; but Congress hardly ever passes a controversial bill.
  3. Interest-group pluralist (Lowi 1979): Biden was elected with a coalition that included a disproportionate number of younger people with college degrees, and he performed best in the $50,000-$100,000 income range. Biden voters have diverse interests, but college graduates (and their parents) are more concentrated, better led, and more culturally and economically potent than other Democratic interest groups. As part of the governing coalition, they successfully demanded a benefit. Biden complied. Interest-group pluralism predicts that they will next seek other benefits for themselves, without supporting a radical economic restructuring or any serious attention to other groups, such as older people with medical debt or farmworkers. If colleges and universities capture some of the benefits of the debt-cancellation (by raising tuition in the expectation of another cancellation later), so be it: their faculty and staff are core to the Democratic coalition. This is what interest-group pluralism predicts. As Lowi notes, it does not judge, because it considers judgment unscientific. Politics is nothing but the clash of interests. Last week, people with college debt won a round.
  4. Market-utilitarian: Markets produce wealth; governments may use taxes and regulations to encourage, discourage, or subsidize behaviors when necessary for the aggregate good. Forgiving debt after it has been incurred cannot incentivize education, but it can create moral hazard, which distorts markets. Colleges will grab most of the benefits. We know, for example, that when the stock market boosts college endowments, those institutions spend the money to increase their own selectivity and do not offer more financial aid (Bulman 2022). Debt-cancellation may be inflationary, yet the biggest problem facing the economy right now is inflation. For these reasons, the policy is foolish.

I must admit I don’t foresee radical results following from Biden’s debt cancellation (per #1). David Graeber endorsed forgiving student loans (p. 544), but he expected a global movement against debt to take centuries. On that time scale, I am confident that our current system will change. But between now and 2024 or 2050–I don’t think the conditions are in place.

I am not equipped to assess mainstream economists’ arguments against the new policy (#4), and I doubt that we will know—even in hindsight—whether debt forgiveness increased inflation or tuition prices or created moral hazard (for good or ill). For one thing, the policy is relatively modest compared to other recent interventions.

I think the difference between #2 or #3 is important. A lot depends on how people—a wide array of people—describe and interpret the new policy.

If many Americans decide that the Democrats now represent college kids (#3), that interpretation will reinforce a class inversion that is one of the most serious threats to democracy. When the center-left party that is willing to employ government as an instrument for social welfare looks elitist, the right wing will offer chauvinistic nationalism to pick up workers’ votes. Meanwhile, a center-left party that depends on the votes of more educated people will drift toward elitist policies.

I know that many people with college debt are not “elite” by any measure. Nevertheless, favoring college education looks elitist when about 55% of adults do not hold a BA, and 38% never enrolled in college, yet almost all of the nation’s leaders all hold college degrees.

On the other hand, if Americans conclude from this experiment that their government can help people, and therefore it should do something for those without any college experience (#2), that would be a positive step. Americans will be more likely to reach this conclusion if, indeed, the government next does something tangible for working-class people without college debt.

The Fall of Robespierre changed history because of how French people reinterpreted it about a year after he met the guillotine. So too, Biden’s debt cancellation will matter because of the story that American tell themselves about it in 2024 and later.

Sources: David Graeber, Debt: The first five thousand years (New York: Melville House, 2011); Theodore J. Lowi, The End of Liberalism: The Second Republic of the United States (Norton 1979); Bulman, George, The Effect of College and University Endowments on Financial Aid, Admissions, and Student Composition, NBER working paper 30404. See also: the social class inversion as a threat to democracy; a conversation with Farah Stockman about American Made: What Happens to People When Work Disappears; the weirdness of the higher ed marketplace; the new elite is like the old elite; etc..

social class in the French election

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The left should represent the lower-income half of the population; the right should represent the top half. When that happens, the left will generally advocate government spending and regulation. Such policies may or may not be wise, but they can be changed if they fail and prove unpopular. Meanwhile, the right will advocate less government, which (again) may or may not be desirable but will not destroy the constitutional order. After all, limited government is a self-limiting political objective.

When the class-distribution turns upside down, the left will no longer advocate impressive social reforms, because its base will be privileged. And the right will no longer favor limited government, because tax cuts don’t help the poor much. The right will instead embrace government activism in the interests of traditional national, racial or religious hierarchies. The left will frustrate change, while the right–now eager to use the government for its objectives–will become genuinely dangerous.

This class inversion is evident in many wealthy democracies, although usually with exceptions and complexities. For instance, in the USA, Democrats now represent the 17 richest congressional districts and most of the richest 50. Put together, Democratic districts are wealthier than Republican ones, although Democratic candidates often win a bit more of the vote below $50,000/year than above that income level. It’s in this context that we now see Republicans eager to use state power against private companies on cultural issues.

A similar inversion was evident in France this week. The class called “cadres” could be translated as executives, although I understand that it is a larger category than that English word implies. Among the cadres, Macron (a centrist technocrat) won and Melenchon* (from the left) came in second, with Le Pen (right-wing) drawing only about 12%.

The “intermediate professions” split their votes about evenly. This is a large and diverse group (26% of all employees), ranging from teachers to technicians. I would guess that sub-groups within this 26% voted quite differently from each other.

At the bottom of the scale–the ordinary employees and workers–Le Pen won by pretty substantial margins. Melenchon edged out Macron among these two categories, but he ran far behind Le Pen. If we look instead at wages, Macron performed better at the higher end, while Le Pen and Melenchon split the lower end about evenly. Macron won the most retirees and came in third amongst the young.

In the first round, French voters had numerous choices, and three candidates finished pretty close to even. That makes the outcome somewhat difficult to compare to a two-party contest between left and right, as in the USA. But one could envision Biden as a kind of hybrid of Macron and Melenchon (we can debate which one he is closer to), and Le Pen as Trump. Then the class inversion is clear.

This pattern is by no means exclusive to France, but it presents dangers wherever it appears.

I do perceive France as combining relatively egalitarian economic policies with a particularly sharp gradient of prestige and power. As the figure below shows, France uses taxation and spending to transfer far more cash than the US does (albeit mostly to pensioners), yet an extraordinary proportion of French business, cultural, and political elites attend a few Parisian schools. This means that a welfare state that redistributes a great deal from rich to poor has a culturally elite look. That may be a refined version of an international problem.

Joumard, Pisu & Bloch 2012

*This blog isn’t letting me use accent marks, unfortunately. See also: the social class inversion as a threat to democracy; what does the European Green surge mean?; and why the white working class must organize

the social class inversion as a threat to democracy

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It is important for left and center-left political parties to rely on lower-income voters, who–nowadays–are also people with less educational attainment. Then the left’s political leadership will be accountable to disadvantaged people. Since they identify with the left, they will try to serve their core voters by promising more funds and more regulation. I generally favor such policies, but even if you do not, you should acknowledge that taxing, spending, and regulating are compatible with a constitutional democracy. If you want to oppose the left, you can vote for the right.

It is equally important for center-right parties to depend on people with higher incomes (which generally means more education), because then they will have incentives to advocate lower taxes and less regulation. I tend to oppose such policies, but I would acknowledge–and urge others on the left to accept–that trying to shrink the size of government is compatible with constitutional democracy. People who have reasons to shrink government need a political outlet. Again, the way to oppose their position is to vote for the other side. This debate is a good one.

As long as the parties split the electorate this way, they will have incentives to act reasonably on matters outside their core interests. A pro-business party rooted in the upper stratum of society can easily support civil liberties and a safety net. A left party dependent on working class voters will want to protect economic growth. Both should defend the basic constitutional order.

Unfortunately, this neat arrangement has been scrambled in many developed, democratic countries. Considerable numbers of highly educated people vote left, even forming the base of the center-left parties, while many working-class people have shifted to the right. Democrats now represent the 17 richest congressional districts and most of the richest 50. In the aggregate, Democratic districts are wealthier than Republican ones. (Race is certainly relevant in the USA, and I will say more about that later.)

Mark Muro and Jacob Whiton, Brookings

This situation is dangerous because of the incentives it creates. A center-left party that relies on highly educated people will want to preserve the society’s most advantaged institutions: its most dynamic industries, thriving communities, and elite universities. Since it’s on the left, it won’t explicitly defend inequality, but it won’t really undermine it, either. It will prefer symbolic gestures of inclusion and equity that don’t shake the social foundations. Basically, advantaged individuals will assume that they can retain their own nice neighborhoods, good schools, and satisfying jobs while allowing some newcomers to join them. If such voters represent the main force on the left, social transformation becomes impossible.

Nevertheless, the center-left party will offer the least-bad option for people of color, since diversity and inclusion are better than outright exclusion. Thus Biden drew 70% of voters of color along with a majority of college-educated white voters.

National Exit Polls 2020 (CNN)

For their part, right parties that are based in working-class, low-income communities will have incentives to turn ethno-nationalist, xenophobic, and authoritarian. Being on the right, they cannot embrace social democracy. They could offer libertarian alternatives: getting the state off people’s backs. Unlike authoritarianism, libertarianism is compatible with constitutional democracy. However, surveys never show much support for truly libertarian policies–and less so today, after the neoliberal revolution has played out. Ethno-nationalism has much wider support.

When the parties invert in this way, the left tends to become moderate–excessively so, in my view–but it also generates a critical flank. Right now, the Democrats’ critical flank is led by younger politicians of color who represent urban communities with many lower-income voters of color. They have incentives, as well as genuine commitments, that anchor them on the left. But they are outnumbered within their own party by politicians who represent and reflect high-income communities. If we had a multi-party system, these factions would split and then negotiate about whether to form a coalition in Congress. In our duopoly, the strife occurs within the party and is constrained by difficult calculations.

Meanwhile, the Republicans have strong and palpable incentives to move in a racist and authoritarian direction, jettisoning their libertarian impulses. Debate is less evident on their side of the aisle, since Trump supporters truly dominate the GOP’s elected ranks. Only a significant electoral defeat can re-empower the traditional conservatives, and that seems unlikely.

A similar inversion has been evident in several other countries, including Germany, where the Social Democrats (SPD) now attract highly educated knowledge-workers, while many blue-collar workers have moved right. (I graphed some historical trends here.) One election does not make a trend, but the results from the recent German election are somewhat encouraging. The SPD performed best among people with lower education: the working class. That is how a social-democratic party should perform. The Greens drew almost entirely from the top educational stratum. A red/green coalition would combine working class voters with the liberal intelligentsia, but with the working class in control because of their larger numbers. That coalition would resemble the Democrats if the Progressive Caucus were three times as big.

From DW.com

On the other hand, the hard right (AfD) is disproportionately working class, as is the center right (CDU). Although I do not expect the CDU and AfD to form a coalition in the near future, the temptation is real.

It will not be easy to get out of this situation. The Democrats could offer more tangible benefits to working class people of all races and ethnicities. One problem: policies that I would regard as beneficial are not always seen as such, for a variety of reasons. Besides, there is always a loose connection between policy and public opinion, given the genuine difficulty of discerning the effects of policies plus the low level of attention that most people give to public affairs.

To make matters even harder, Democrats are a loose group of entrepreneurial politicians who have their own constituencies–disproportionately wealthy ones. This means that Democratic leaders are not the best group to reach out to working-class voters, nor are their core supporters likely to support really bold policies. That is why I have been interested in tactics like investing in the Appalachian cities, whose mayors are Democrats.

See also: what does the European Green surge mean?; and why the white working class must organize

who wants less government?

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The General Social Survey asks respondents whether the government should do more or whether it already does too much. Here are the responses over time for representative samples of Americans (omitting those who place themselves halfway between those two views):

The balance of opinion swings back and forth. Sometimes, more people want to expand government; sometimes, more people think it already does too much. Obama saw a rise in government skepticism; Trump saw the opposite trend, culminating in the strong Democratic year of 2018.

And here are the results for two groups that are much debated right now.

First, white members of the working class, here defined as white people with family incomes in the bottom quintile.

These are the people who, according to progressives, would benefit from more government but don’t see things that way. Maybe progressives are wrong about the advantages of government; maybe white working-class people are wrong about the drawbacks of government; but either way, it is hard to build a party of the left if the largest racial group in the lowest income stratum wants less government.

Note, however, that the anti-government stance of this group is not hard-wired. In several years, a plurality of them have wanted more government. That was clearly true in 1975, and the next year, Jimmy Carter won the whole of Appalachia and the whole Gulf Coast. Instead of (only) complaining about the tilted electoral map, Democrats should be asking–as some are–why they aren’t the majority party in the country’s poorest states.

And here is the trend for African Americans. Combining all the years together would suggest that Blacks are more favorable than other Americans to government. But note their rising level of support for “government does too much.” I wouldn’t read much into the zigzag pattern; given the number of African American respondents, the margin of error for each year is +/- 8 points. But pretty clearly, African Americans were more favorable to government until ca. 1992 than since.

Finally, I should acknowledge that the question is very simplistic. The government should do more of what? Banning abortions? Stopping-and-frisking? Sending me checks? Covering the cost of seeing private-sector physicians? Curing cancer? I’m treating the results as proxy measures of support for social welfare, but that is not necessarily accurate.

See also: white working class alienation from government; what do the Democrats offer the working class?