Class without production, history without materialism, and US politics without racism: the American Jeremiad of Paul Durrenberger and Dimitra Doukas

Abstract

Corporations and the dominant political parties in the USA have produced ideologies that foster the belief that class is not significant. Nationalist rhetoric heralds “America” as a middle-class nation that provides opportunities that transcend the class politics of “old” Europe. Anthropologists, in recent years, have contributed to these mythologies by developing an idealized view of the New Deal in ways that further mystify class relations and conflict. By criticizing the contemporary rise in economic disparities as “neoliberal,” they glorify the structures that underwrote the Cold War and US imperial might. An analytical approach to class in the USA must take a more critical view of capitalism rather than wish for the good old days of the welfare state. Moreover, a conceptual understanding of class politics in the USA must take into account the role of settler colonialism—genocide and plantation agriculture—in class formation. After slavery, racism continued to play a prominent role in shaping the labor movement and organized labor. Racism and nativism interacted with anti-communism and the rise of the domestic security state following the Bolshevik Revolution. The New Deal and Keynesianism systematized repression of racism and anticommunism with reforms and economic policies that focused on effective demand and full employment.