What is Trumpism? Part 2- The Old, the New Working Class and National Identity
In my previous post What is Trumpism? Part 1- The Root of the Problem, I developed the idea that Trumpism was a result of a crisis of Western imperialism induced by the shift of the centres of growth of the global economy from the West to the East, particularly to China.
The resulting deindustrialisation of the West, in this case of its leading nation, the United Sates, and its declining global influence has provoked a real earthquake in the internal cohesion of its society and a crisis of a national identity. The remnants of the white industrial working class are feeling left behind by their own economic and status decline and by the decay of the areas where they once lived and worked. The centres of whatever economic growth existed has migrated to the main metropolitan areas, and those contributing to that growth were well educated cosmopolitan elites and recent migrants. This challenges their acquired sense of American national identity built out of imperial success and they rally in large numbers to the myth created by Trump that the kingdom of heaven awaited them when he makes America Great Again.
I argued that we now have to reconsider our concept of working class and apply it to those who are the main contributors to the economy. To differentiate them from the traditional meaning given to the term which is associated with an industrial economy, I call them the New Working Class. They now constitute the basis of any progressive politics, need to be made aware that they constitute a class, and rallied to the cause of fighting fascism.
In this post, I seek to show where the social basis of a fight back is by locating where Kamala Harris had the highest vote and characterising its social composition as far as possible from available sources. This is not because I believe that the election of Kamala Harris would have arrested the growth of the forces of fascism, but because the vote indicates a strong antifascist consciousness. By and large they are the main current economic providers whose labour is supplying the profits to US capital. In the subsequent post I will try outline the social basis of Trump’s support by examining a few case studies of counties where he had a particularly high vote. This is far from an exhaustive analysis which would need at least a book length study and resources far beyond those I possess. It relies on the use of selected examples, which I realise are open to the charge that they have been selected deliberately to support my views. My only counterargument is that I also looked for examples contradicting my main thesis and I have found a few which I will discuss.
The 2024 US presidential election results analysis
The considerations set out above predict that support for Harris will be found mainly in the large cities which have continued to experience growth and in areas where there are significant populations of ethnic minorities. These areas will be largely working class in the economic sense that most of their population live mainly from their wages or salaries, not from profits and investments.
I have started from an analysis of results in the 50 main metropolitan statistical areas ranked by population size, with New York at the top. These contain also the capitals of the Rust Belt states.
My previous discussion would predict that the main anti-Trump vote will be found here. This has been largely confirmed. Kamala Harris won in every one of them, except in 5.
A few examples taken from Red States will illustrate the discrepancy between the vote in the metropolitan areas of those states and the state as a whole:
Of the 5 metropolitan areas Kamala Harris lost, narrowly, 2 were in Florida and none were in the top 10 metropolitan areas. The highest ranking of these was Miami, the 12th. most populated metropolitan district. In Miami-Dade Kamala Harris obtained 45% to Trump’s 55%. The population of Miami-Dade county is classed as 65% Hispanic and 14% as white. Its median household income is $44,200, well below the nation’s median household income. It is therefore mostly working class on my definition, and this would appear to contradict my main thesis. However, 60% of the county population is of Cuban origin. This seems to provide an explanation for the vote. I haven’t investigated the others in detail, as the explanation appears to be complex. A more thorough analysis would be required than is possible in the time available.
Initially, I had in mind using a number of case studies, but to confirm my hypotheses would require a detailed analysis of each. This is inappropriate in the context of a blog post. So, here I will only analyse the case of New York, the most populous metropolitan area of the United States which contributes 9.3% of its GDP.
I argue that
- the social basis for a fight back against the rise of neofascism exists,
- it should be identified as the new working class in the main metropolitan areas.
- the reasons they are the fight-back base are
- they are culturally diverse and have complex national identities and
- do not identify with the American identity that has been created by US imperialism.
To substantiate the argument, I will need to use statistical evidence and economic arguments that may not be familiar to many readers. In the last few sections, similar points are made, possibly much more forcefully, through images.
Methodology
I have used the median household income as an indicator of whether the local population might be considered working class in the case of low-income households. But this is a poor indicator overall as anti-Trumpism is also present in some metropolitan high-income areas. This has been characterised by political commentators as the educated middle-class elites, but I will show that they coincide with the centres of economic activity, and this might provide support for my argument about class. They make a particularly large contribution to the GDP of the metropolitan area and of the nation.
I have been using the US Statistical Atlas as statistical source. The dates of the statistics shown is the most recent available. According to it, the median household income of the United States is $55,300 and its distribution by ethnicity is as follows1:
The median income of Americans on food stamps is $20,200. This shows that, as I assumed, the median ethnic minority population household income is significantly below the median household income of $55,000 for the entire US population. The Black population median household income is two thirds that for the whole population. The table displays graphically the racial injustices of US society. The high income of the Asian population probably reflects that they are mostly a mix of recent immigrants allowed in to feed the “knowledge economy” and expatriate entrepreneurs. The current CEOs of Google (Sundar Pichai), Microsoft (Satya Nadella), Adobe (Shantanu Narayen), IBM (Arvind Krishna), are Indian-born, the CEO of Zoom (Eric Yuan), was born in China and the CEO of Nvidia (Jensen Huang) was born in Taiwan. They are not considered illegal immigrants.
The heart of the US New Working Class: New York
New York is the most populous metropolitan area in the US. New York city has 5 counties/boroughs. The vote for the main candidates and the social characteristics of each are displayed in Table 1:
Table 1: New York City 2024 Presidential election results by borough and socioeconomic composition of their inhabitants
To do a class analysis of the vote and of its relation to economic activity, it is necessary to point out that GDP is a measure of the economic activity in the borough, but many of those who work in it might come from elsewhere. Also, many voters in a borough might work elsewhere. Thus, the voters in the borough do not correspond necessarily to workers in it.
The class basis of the vote is clear in relation to the very poor unskilled working class, population of the Bronx overwhelmingly ethnic minority. The Bronx is effectively an ethnic minority ghetto. The low contribution that the borough makes to the New York economy (4.3%) implies that most Bronx voters who work are likely to work elsewhere, as there is low economic activity in the borough. Many are likely to work in Manhattan. But the voters are undoubtedly working class as their livelihood will depend on wages.
The most remarkable fact, however, is that the two most prosperous districts by income, Manhattan and Staten Island, voted in radically different directions. Manhattan has one of the highest Kamala Harris votes in the US. It is highly cosmopolitan, and ethnic minorities constitute still the majority of the population. It contains Wall Street and 5th Avenue. It also contains Harlem. In 2023, the GDP of New York City was around $1.286 trillion of which $939 billion, or 73%, was produced in Manhattan, although not necessarily exclusively by its inhabitants, as many will live elsewhere. More than 880,000 New York City residents commute from the other four boroughs into Manhattan, where they join 628,000 workers who reside in Manhattan and another 540,000 from outside the city. The 628,000 resident workers are Manhattan voters and their labour contributes 31% of the labour that goes into creating the Manhattan GDP of $939 billion. Very few Manhattan residents commute out of the borough to work. 58% of them are ethnic minority.Together with a sizeable proportion of their white fellow workers, they will have contributed the bulk of the 81% of anti-Trump vote. They are part of the new working class and their vote expresses, I would suggest, some degree of class consciousness, even though they may not be aware of it. This is what Marx called “class in itself”.
Their sociological profile is also unusual and interesting. 68% were US born, 32% were born elsewhere. 47% live in one-person households, compared with the national average of 30%, which itself is more than triple what it was in 1950. 64% have a higher degree, compared with 35% for the country as a whole.
Staten Island’s thumping majority for Trump is an interesting enigma for me because it doesn’t obviously fit my hypothesis. It is a low population borough with a long history of voting Republican. Initially, I thought it might be a dormitory borough having a relationship to Manhattan akin to the Stockbroker Belt’s relation to the City of London but, for the vast majority, this isn’t the case. 72% of the working population work within the borough, much higher than any other borough except Manhattan. But it could also house some stockbrokers, as 22% work in Manhattan. A quick Google search only turned up this as the best explanation.
This is the whitest borough in NYC and is home to a large if not most of the city’s firefighters, police, and upper middle-class yuppies with families. Has large communities of Irish and Italian americans who tend to be socially conservative. Also the large distance from the other boroughs means that the city feels disconnected from the other boroughs, therefore the liberal government and politics of the others.
https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalDiscussion/comments/1akbozq/why_is_staten_island_so_republican/
I don’t find it totally convincing. But it is interesting that the professions that are organised in an authoritarian and quasi-military fashion and which have been found to harbour a considerable amount of racism and misogyny seem to congregate there.
I also find the statement that “the city feels disconnected” interesting. It chimes with Tom Nairn’s suggestion in his seminal essay on nationalism that the growth of fascism the 1930s occurred primarily in second division countries who feared they were in danger of being relegated to the third division and were slipping in their struggle for a “place in the sun”:
“For all of them this implied relegation: permanent confinement to the secondary, semi-peripheric status, exclusion from the core-area’s ‘place in the sun’ ” .
Tom Nairn, ‘The Modern Janus’, New Left Review, November-December 1975, p.14
This fear of being “left behind” seems to be a crucial feeling that feeds the mass psychology of fascism and I shall return to it when discussing the demography, social profile and psychology of the places where Trump had a particularly large majority.
New York and the New Working Class
The Bronx is a straightforward and uncontroversial example of of one component of the new working class. Very poor, overwhelmingly made up of ethnic minorities living in effectively a ghetto and having to travel elsewhere to contribute their labour to the economy. A derisory proportion (4.3%) of New York’s GDP is produced there.
In Manhattan, on the other hand, a highly educated, ethnic diverse and well-paid workforce who contribute to the generation of 73% of New York’s GDP, collectively display a considerable amount of antipathy to what Trump represents. In my definition, they are at the very core of the US working class. They are part of the new working class, even if they are not aware of it. Their vote possibly displays some degree of class consciousness insofar as they do not line up behind the billionaires that have rallied to Trump.
The vote also demonstrates that they do not identify with Trump’s waving of the of the US flag and the message it sends. They cannot do this because they are culturally and ethnically diverse, have divided national identities, and sense that the hidden meaning that Trump is trying to give to the flag is that it represents White America.
Trump has made this most clear recently by instructing government officials to prioritise refugees status for Afrikaners from South Africa, presumably at the instigation of Elon Musk who grew up in the country and is giving every indication of espousing a white supremacist ideology.
At the moment, the zeitgeist left over society by the Black Lives Matter movement doesn’t permit them yet to articulate their real message explicitly, and they are operating still through dog whistle politics. But their movement is working hard on changing permanently the mood music through their anti-woke campaign. They seem to be succeeding as capital is rushing to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion policies .
I now turn to try to a different method of analysis.
The New Working Class in action- a pictorial representation
Protestors as a part of the occupy wall street movement, 16 March 2012
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Occupy_Wall_St.jpg
Occupy Wall Street 30 September 2011
BLM protest on the Brooklyn Bridge, New York City on June 9, 2020
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BLM_protest_in_New_York_City_on_June_9,_2020.jpg
Slogans include “American Democracy is a Hypocrisy”, “Fund Our Schools” (in contrast to “Defund the Police”), “Make Amerikkka Great”.
“Make Amerikkka Great” is an article by Porche Bennett that discusses Black Lives Matter activist Cori Bush. The article describes how Bush was harassed and mistreated by students, teachers, and administrators.
Actions at News Corp Headquarters at 6 Ave and 47 St and Federal Hall
at 26 Wall St, 2 January 2015
Strike May Day 2017 in New York City
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Strike_May_Day_2017_in_New_York_City%2834299341071%29.jpg
Hollywood Writers Guild of America Strike 21 June 2023
Strike of Los Angeles municipal workers 8 August 2023
UAW Local 51 members Jason Bastien and Kizzy Snyder talk during a rally and practice picket outside the Stellantis Detroit Assembly Complex on Aug. 23, 2023.
The old working class in action
Demonstrating the racial (and gender) segregation of the labour force and of struggles
Shirtwaist strike to demand an end to abuse by police . Dec. 3, 1909
New York street cleaners and garbage workers strike on November 8, 1911
Source:https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_large_crowd_gathers_-at_Madison_Square_Garden%3F-during_the_1933_New_York_Dressmakers_Strike._A_sign_in_the_background_reads%22…Makers_Union_ILGWU.%22_%285279081507%29.jpg
A strike by the Laundry Workers Industrial Union in 1912
A ten-week strike to defend the wages of largely young women and immigrant workers was one of the most intense and inspiring battles in US history.
Garment workers on strike in New York City, circa 1913
Rent Strike in Harlem September 1919
Source: New York Times Photo Archive Public domain
Female employees of Woolworth’s striking for a 40-hour work week, 1937
On Jan. 8, 1937, workers voting for a sit-down strike at the Fleetwood plant in Detroit, which made bodies for Cadillac.
1982 New York City Chinatown Garment Workers Strike
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Old working-class relation to the Stars and Stripes
Friday, May 8, (1970) marks the 50th anniversary of one of the uglier incidents in New York’s history, in a year that was one of the most tumultuous in recent US history. In front of Federal Hall and under the statue of George Washington, construction workers stormed a student protest against the Vietnam War and chased both students and bystanders through the streets, beating and kicking them. Known as the Hard Hat Riots, it sparked two weeks of protests, counter protests and marches. Historians and journalists have debated the meaning of the incident ever since.
The small group of construction workers arrived to confiscate American flags that they said were being desecrated.
Source: https://www.archives.nyc/blog/2020/5/8/the-hard-hat-riots
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“Calumet was an ethnically diverse community. In 1900, fully 90 percent of the population was of foreign descent. For fifty years Croatians, Finns, Swedes, Italians, Cornish, Hungarians, Poles, Austrians, and Germans flocked to the area to work the deep ground mines. There were eight daily foreign-language newspapers, and old-timers recall walking down the crowded streets on a Saturday night and never hearing English…
… the immigrant miners in the wilds of upper Michigan were inspired by the accounts of the Eastern strikes. And although the Western Federation of Miners and the IWW had parted company, that former affiliation, coupled with the union’s tough image, appealed to the increasingly independent copper miners of Calumet. In February 1913, there were five federation locals and 9000 card-carrying members in the copper country, and more were joining every day. By the summer, with the institution of the one-man drill, the new union was ready to move. The miners asked for a meeting with the mine-owners, sending along requests for a pay raise to $3.50 a day, a shorter workday, and a return to the two-man drill. But the owners, refusing to recognize the union, would not even agree to a meeting…
On July 23,1913, the miners struck…
Although the federation sent in its top officers to coordinate the strike, the figure that came to symbolize the miners’ resistance wasn’t even a miner. She was Annie Clemenec, the 25-year-old wife of a miner. Every day of the strike, she took to the streets of Calumet, leading massive protest marches, or “parades” as they called them. At times, the leading figures of the labor movement joined her… cultural
Sometimes as many as 2000 people marched behind her. Once, finding herself confronted by a group of National Guardsmen and deputies armed with swords, guns, and clubs, she walked head on into the troops. A soldier on horseback unsheathed his saber and knocked the flag from her hands. When a marcher went to help her pick up the banner, a cavalryman pushed him to the ground, and another soldier slashed at the flag with his sword, ripping the silk fabric. The hooves of the horses stamped it into the mud. Annie fell to the ground and hugged the flag tightly to her chest as deputies and soldiers tried to wrest it from her.
“Kill me,” she shouted. “Run your bayonets and sabres through this flag and kill me, but I won’t move. If this flag will not protect me, then I will die with it.” Other marchers jumped between her and the soldiers, and she escaped unharmed…”
https://www.americanheritage.com/calumet-tragedy
A New Working Class representation of the Stars and Stripes
Discussion
I am fully aware that the selection of images I displayed above can be criticized for being biased to support my arguments. There are also a very large number of images that could be selected to make a different case. But together they constitute at least circumstantial evidence that the United States national identity created by the ruling class was shared by the white working class, even when it was highly class conscious and involved in militant class struggle. That class had been constituted from European migration. I could find no evidence that it ever put in doubt the meaning that the rulers wished to ascribe to the flag.
It is not that the old working class was inherently racist, but that it contained essentially a European identity that was carried to the United States and incorporated into the symbolic meaning that the Stars and Stripes acquired. There are few, if any, examples, to my knowledge, of spontaneous or trade union organised activities that challenged the meaning of that flag on behalf of Afro-americans descendants of slaves or of non-European immigrants. The working class was geographically segregated in their place of residence and in their work, and so was class struggle. This quote from a historical study by the Labor Commission on Racial and Economic Justice explains how what Marx and Engels call the “aristocracy of labour” created the US trade union movement on the basis of a hierarchy of European immigrants.
The new industries, larger factories and denser population centers created fertile ground for rapid union growth. A greater concentration of skilled workers in one place allowed traditional craft unions to grow, and large factories put multiple trades under one roof, enhancing the potential for federated structures like the one that would become the American Federation of Labor. The skilled trades still were overwhelmingly native-born white Protestant males in the 19th century; and because they earned relatively higher wages, they were able to pay dues for strike funds, sick pay, unemployment assistance and burial insurance. They were reluctant to organize unskilled Irish and Italian Catholic immigrants.
Source: Labor Commission on Racial and Economic Justice
The flag is a highly potent symbol of national identity and its meaning is systematically and constantly reinforced by the rulers. Revolutions nearly always change the flag2.
But, emotional demonstrations of allegiance to the flag on the part of workers imply acceptance of the symbolic content that the rulers wish to give it, and this, in turn, implies that there is a common interest across all classes that identify with it. That common interest derives from the benefits resulting from imperialism. The white workers of European origin that migrated to the US were culturally a product of imperial Europe and carried with them its European identity, including European internal national hierarchies.
The new working class is challenging the imperialist meaning of the Stars and Stripes through the Black Lives Matter movement, but it is not yet fully aware of itself as a class. As the pictures of the recent labour struggles show, which unfortunately are still relatively rare, they are inherently multicultural and internationalist in character.
As far as I can see, it constitutes the only hope in the struggle for a better world in the troubled times we are living in, for they are capable of undermining imperialism and its ethos from within. Equality must be conceived of as an international concept, not a national one.
In the next post I will examine the nature of Trump’s social base through an analysis of case studies of the areas where he had the highest votes.
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.
Different sources seem to give different statistics. I have tried, as far as possible, to be consistent by using this single source. ↩
An exception was the Cuban revolution of 1959 which kept the flag that had been created in 1909 to symbolise independence from Spain with which they identified. They widened its meaning to include now independence from the United States ↩