Separate Realities: The Dream and the Iceberg - Scarecrow Press

76 Chapter 2
as the later chapters illustrate, we see privileged-class members as much more
conscious of their collective class interests, more cohesive in pursuing them,
and in possession of much greater (and more unified) organizational resources
than the working class. The net result is that, compared with the working
class, the privileged class is much more aware of, and able to effectively
pursue and realize, its common class interests.
Class War in America
The war that nobody talks about—the overwhelmingly one-sided class war—
is being waged all across America. Guess who’s winning.
—Bob Herbert, New York Times, June 6, 2005
Nowhere is the reality of conflicting class interests, privileged-class consciousness,
and the overwhelming power of superclass-dominated organizational
resources more apparent than in the story behind the transformation of
the American class system in the period from the 1970s to the present. The
trends of class polarization, downward mobility, and class secession are the direct
result of policy decisions made and sponsored by superclass-controlled
organizations over the past thirty years that collectively represent nothing less
than total class war. Although varying explanations exist for the current configuration
of the American class system, none approaches the explanatory
power of a class-war analysis. Although the details of the story are complex,
the main actors, events, and policies underlying it are stunningly simple. They
are fundamentally grounded in conflicting class interests and linked to the dynamics
of an almost totally one-sided class war sponsored and directed by the
superclass and driven by corporate resources.
The story behind today’s new class society begins in the late 1960s and
early 1970s. Several progressive political and social movements supported
by organized labor, consumer and environmental organizations, and other
reform-minded groups during this period led to an expansion of New
Deal–based national policies that effectively increased opportunities for—as
well as the economic, occupational, and physical well-being of—workingclass
Americans. Such policies included numerous Great Society programs
such as Medicare and Medicaid, as well as several new federal regulatory acts
in six major areas, including consumer products, discrimination in employment,
traffic safety, consumer finance, job safety, and the environment. 164
Among these acts were groundbreaking measures such as the 1966 Coal
Mine Safety Act, the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act, and the 1970
Occupational Health and Safety Act. For workers, the net effect of the progressive
legislation enacted in the 1960s and early 1970s was a welcome expansion
of the U.S. welfare state.
Members of the superclass viewed pro-worker policy developments with
fear and loathing: “The expansion of the welfare state in the 1960s and 1970s