Introduction
In my blogs and in my recent article for Soundings, Class and Nation in the Age of Populism I have been suggesting that the association of the term ‘working class’ with the manual working class of the industrial economy needs to be re-thought for the post-industrial economy. In Marxist terms, the providers of surplus value (profit) for capitalists in this economy are not primarily industrial workers, but service workers, and producers of intangible goods, such as media programmes, computer software etc. In Marxist terms, the primary precondition of membership of the working class under capitalism is the production of profit as well as the production of use-values, or saleable commodities. Those working in the making of a film or of Microsoft software package fit this category.
I have suggested that the in these post-industrial economies, it could be that a new working class (NWC) is being created and particularly concentrated around the very large cities. Their social characteristics are very different from that normally associated with past industrial workers. Not only are their levels of education much higher, but perhaps their most distinguishing characteristic is the cosmopolitanism of the communities in which they live.
I have suggested that whilst their level of class consciousness may not be very apparent in the traditional way in which this is measured, their level of trade union organisation and involvement in labour struggles, it could well be that it is being displayed politically in ways that are very new. The huge influx of new members into the Labour Party that accompanied the Corbynist wave was soon followed by very high levels of support for his party in the main cities in the 2017 general election. This support held up in the 2019 election, even though it was considered a disaster for Corbyn and led to his resignation. In my Soundings article I wrote of the inner city constituencies in the main UK cities:
In these constituencies – the main and university cities – Labour achieved majorities considerably in excess of anything that the Tories had been able to get anywhere in the country. Labour had majorities of over 70 per cent in nine constituencies in London, seven in Liverpool, three in Birmingham and two in Manchester. These were only slightly smaller than those obtained in 2017, the difference being accounted for by a small proportion of the Labour remain vote in 2017 having moved to the Liberal Democrats. The highest proportion of Labour voters in London was 76 per cent, in East Ham, Walthamstow and Tottenham, constituencies considered the most deprived in London, and with substantial ethnic minority populations, all of which had voted in favour of remain by comfortable margins.
In the United States that phenomenon is even more remarkable in that the word socialism, which used to be considered a death sentence to any politician who dared use it, at least since World War II, now under certain circumstances can be considered an asset. This was the case for Bernie Sanders in the fright he gave the Democratic establishment in the 2020 democratic primary presidential elections, and in the astonishment created by the self-described democratic socialists elected to Congress since 2018 who are amongst the left wingers who became known collectively as the Squad. They are Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. They have since been joined by Jamaal Bowman of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri. Of these, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Rashid Tlaib, Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman are members of the Democratic Socialists of America.
In my Class and Nation in the Age of Populism article,I also wrote:
“Already in December 2011, in the aftermath of the Occupy movement, the Huffington Post reported that a Pew Research Centre poll had found that, whilst in general the American public still had very negative view of socialism, amongst the 18 to 29 age group 49 per cent had a positive view of socialism whilst only 43 per cent had a negative view. In its 2019 poll, 42 per cent of Americans overall had a positive view of socialism. Amongst women the proportion was 46 per cent, amongst Hispanics it was 52 per cent, and amongst blacks 65 per cent.”
The Recent Democratic Primaries for Governor of Buffalo City, New York
The latest example of this phenomenon has been displayed recently in the Democratic primary race for governor of Buffalo City, New York, a traditionally safe Democratic city. The Democratic primary election was held on June 22 and resulted in the defeat of the long-time incumbent Byron Brown, an establishment Democrat described by the New York Times as a close friend of New York mayor Andrew Cuomo, by black Democratic Socialist India Walton. Brown had won the four preceding Democratic mayoral primaries by an average margin of 26.5%, but lost this time having received 46% of the vote to India Walton’s 50%. The Guardian described the upset thus:
‘First of many’: socialist India Walton defeats four-term Buffalo mayor in primary upset
Walton is all but guaranteed to ascend to the mayoralty in solidly Democratic city…
In her lifetime, India Walton has been a 14-year-old working mother, a nurse, a union representative and a socialist community organizer.
On Wednesday, she was on the cusp of yet another career change and a series of “firsts” after defeating a four-term incumbent in the Democratic primary race to become the mayor of Buffalo, New York state’s second largest city.
With no Republican challengers in the general election later this year, Walton is all but guaranteed to ascend to the mayoralty in solidly Democratic Buffalo.
She would not only become the city’s first female mayor but also the first self-declared socialist to lead a major US city in decades.
Walton would be the first socialist mayor of a major American city since 1960, when Frank Zeidler stepped down as Milwaukee’s mayor, the New York Times reported.
Some facts about Buffalo
Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York, with a 2020 census population of 278,349. It is part of the Buffalo–Niagara Falls Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). The MSA had an estimated population of 1.1 million in 2020.
It was an industrial city, its main industries being steel making and automotive parts. The city and its immediate environment were home to twelve major automobile companies, seven major steel corporations and a host of metal working plants. As late as 1970, over 42% of the labour force were employed in manufacturing.
It was the victim of deindustrialisation and lost population. Deindustrialisation of Buffalo started in earnest in the 1970s. The following quotes from an academic article describing the process entitled The Aftermath of Deindustrialization: The Meaning of “Economic Restructuring” in Buffalo, New York Restructuring” (1991) give a good picture of the process.
“The 1970s were perhaps the most overstated years of industrial retrenchment with the closing of steel, auto and chemical plants including Bethlehem and Republic Steel and major component plants at Ford and General Motors. These plant closings cost the region nearly half of the jobs in these durable good sectors, or almost 25,000 jobs…
Where in 1950, four of the top five employment categories of the Buffalo CMSA were in manufacturing and construction sectors, by 1980, four of the top five regional economic sectors were service-related: education, retail trade, financial services and health services. In 1970, manufacturing firms still employed 172,034 workers or 42.1% of the region’s total work force. By 1981, the manufacturing sector employed 122,805 workers or 30% of the total labor force…
In the 1980s the City of Buffalo lost over 33,000 people and the metropolitan area almost 58,000.
“By the early 1980s, the relationship of Buffalo to the rest of the state, national and world economies was no longer definitive and powerful as it had been during the mercantile and industrial epochs. The term that best characterized the regional economy was “decline”, and the region’s relation to the larger national and global economy was one of essential powerlessness. “The region, as the victim of global change and a limited participant in the new order, [became] increasingly dependent on outside market and state forces for its economic and social renewal. While Buffalo had not moved geographically, it certainly had been “relocated” in the world economic system of cities. The city was no longer situated at the core of the world economy as an “independent” center of manufacturing and commerce. It had been “moved” to the periphery of the economic order. Rather than controlling its own means of production, it was dependent on outside capital and state resources to practice its declining role in the manufacturing and service sectors of the late twentieth century.
In the 1980s, the trends set in motion in the previous decade accelerated. Buffalo, long regarded as a production center characterized by a high concentration of routine manufacturing, was virtually stripped of a sizeable portion of its remaining “blue collar” base. By the close of the decade, only 94,500 workers, less than one fifth of the total regional work force, remained in manufacturing jobs.”
However, during that period, overall
“(e)mployment in the region mushroomed to 533,000 by January 1990. At the beginning of the last quarter of 1990, employment had grown even further to over 550,000.”
Since the financial crash in 2008, Buffalo’s economy and employment market has recovered better than the national average.
Chart 1: Employment trend of Buffalo compared
In attempting to recover from deindustrialisation, Buffalo presented itself as a city welcoming immigrants and refugees. Here is a quote from a study entitled ‘Analyzing the multilingual landscape of Buffalo’ (2015):
‘In recent years, Buffalo, New York has become home to thousands of immigrants and refugees from across the globe. These people have brought with them diverse cultures, desires for the future, and their home languages. As a designated refugee resettlement city, Buffalo is an incredibly diverse city that welcomes thousands of refugees from all over the world each year;’
Over the years the ethnic composition of the city has greatly changed.
In 1940, when nearly 90% of the population was white, manufacturing employed 47% of the working population.
Analysing the voting pattern in the 2021 Democratic primaries for the election for City Mayor.
I have tried to analyse the socioeconomic characteristics of the districts of Buffalo1 and relate these to their voting pattern in the 2021 Democratic mayoral primaries. Here is how the various districts voted:
https://elections.erie.gov/Files/Election%20Results/2021/2021%20Democratic%20Primary%20Canvass%20Book.xlsx
In analysing this table, consideration should be given to the fact that all Buffalo districts have similar populations of around 30,000 each, so the total number of votes cast relative to each other can be considered a reasonable relative measure of the degree of voter engagement with Democratic politics of the district population.
And here are their geographical locations:
The population of Niagara district, where India Walton obtained 73% of the vote, is the most diverse of Buffalo: 50% identify as white (including Latinx white), approximately 20% black or African American, 12.2% as Asian and 12.2% as belonging to a race different from those mentioned in the survey. It has the highest Latinx population of any district at 21.6%. It has a large number of recent immigrants and refugees. A quarter of the residents were born outside the U.S. and 40% speak a language other than English at home.
The district has a high level of poverty, 35.4% living below the poverty line, but it also has a significant proportion of the population with high incomes: 21.6% have a household income of more than US$75,000. The educational level of the population is high, with 55.9% having been in higher education and 15.5% a post-graduate qualification.
Thus, Niagara district population would fit well my concept of the New Working Class, even though much more knowledge about employment patterns would be required for a proper understanding of class characteristics.
Somewhat surprising, however, are the characteristics of the district where Walton obtained the next highest vote at 63%, Delaware.
Delaware is the wealthiest district of the city. 42.4% of the population are in households with incomes of more than $75,000 and 29.2% of more than $100,000. Its population is 80% white, 10% black or African American and 7% Hispanic. Its poverty level is the lowest in the city, and so is its unemployment level at 3.5%. Over three quarters of residents have pursued higher education (78.2%). Over one quarter of the population has an advanced degree (27.3%).
These are highly intriguing figures and I have been unable to find any explanation for the high Walton vote here, other than possibly that the district contains Allentown, an area described as having a high concentration of artists and bohemians. The fact that Buffalo is home to the prestigious University at Buffalo- State University of New York might have something to do with it. The university was the site of major student protests against the Vietnam war in 1969. It would mirror some Southern England University towns and cities voting for Corbyn. Any suggestions by anyone who knows Buffalo would be most welcome.
The other district that Walton won, albeit with only 49% of the vote is Ellicott. This is the district that contains Downtown Buffalo and has the highest concentration of black and African American population at 59%. Downtown Buffalo experienced an exodus of a large proportion of its white population to the suburbs, particularly to the affluent neighbouring town of Amherst. The district contains the highest proportion of senior citizens in the city at 16.7%. Older African Americans have been identified largely as conservative Democrats and were considered largely responsible for the defeat of Bernie Sanders to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential primaries. Ellicott has a large Hispanic community (15.1%). It is a poor district with more than a third (33.1%) of its population living below the poverty line.
The South district, where Walton had her lowest vote, is 87% white. It has 31.8% of its population living in households with incomes over $75,000 and a low level of poverty. It would probably fit the traditional concept of the middle classes.
Conclusion
The results of the 2021 Mayoral Democratic primary are consistent with my hypothesis of the development of New Working Class in post-industrial imperialist countries. Its main characteristic is its ethnic diversity, location in large cities, working in service industries, also in the production of intangible goods and cultural artefacts. Some of the highly educated and highly skilled in these industries have very good incomes. Many more work in low paid, low skill service jobs. Some of these, however, are educated well beyond what the job they are performing requires. It is not uncommon to find graduate immigrants, or even locals, serving in bars and restaurants. The population of the Niagara district of Buffalo appears to fit well this description.
Why so many of the relatively well-off, probably white people, as they make up 80% of the population, in the wealthy Delaware district appear to have been induced to vote for someone who self-describes as a socialist in the country where this word is has long been considered a blasphemy is a puzzle. Are they too, members of the New Working Class? It would be great if some academic institution were willing to take up the hypothesis and do some serious research around it. I would hope that my largely experientially-based musings would provide sufficient circumstantial evidence to illicit some serious study.
More challenging, but probably even more important, is the question of why the word “socialism” appears to appeal significantly simultaneously to the peasants of the remote Andean Puno region of Peru where Pedro Castillo won 89.3% of the vote (see my previous blogpost Reflections on the recent presidential elections in Peru) and to the urban inhabitants of the Niagara district of Buffalo, New York, where India Walton took 71% of vote in the Democratic mayoral primary.
Alvaro de Miranda
Alvaro de Miranda is retired from the University of East London where he co-founded a Department of Innovation Studies. He came to the UK in 1958 aged 15 to join his parents who were exiles from the Salazar regime in Portugal. Having experienced fascism, he is particularly alarmed with the recent worldwide electoral rise of the far-right and has been following it comparatively in this blog.
20 August 2021
The facts and figures I quote come from a set of fact sheets dated August 2020 on each district produced by Buffalo Commons ↩