Is the Class Struggle Over?

What if they gave a war and nobody came?

During the Crimean War, Marshal Bosquet famously said of the suicidal charge by British light cavalry against entrenched Russian positions, “the Charge of the Light Brigade” “C’est Magnifique, m’ais ce n’est pas la guerre. C’est de la folie.”

It is magnificent, but it is not war. It is madness.

Same, now, with our politics.

What if the clash by night of our ignorant political armies is an atavism, and, to paraphrase Marx, now appears not as tragedy but as farce?

Our current political acrimony is rooted in an obsolete idea, a derelict vestige of a previous era. Let's scuttle that.

A defining geopolitical characteristic of the 20^th century (and its aftermath) was “class struggle.” Per the Britannica:

“In Marx’s view, the dialectical nature of history is expressed in class struggle. With the development of capitalism, the class struggle takes an acute form. Two basic classes, around which other less important classes are grouped, oppose each other in the capitalist system: the owners of the means of production, or bourgeoisie, and the workers, or proletariat. ‘The bourgeoisie produces its own grave-diggers. The fall of the bourgeoisie and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable’ (The Communist Manifesto). ...”

To achieve its romantic goal of “a socialist workers paradise” the workers of the world were urged to unite, having nothing to lose but their chains. This worked … nowhere.

Meanwhile good old capitalist social democracy has worked beautifully everywhere tried. Straight up free markets worked wonders.

Repeatedly.

For well over a century the left waged a pitched battle to establish a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” That struggle is over.

The communists lost. We capitalists won.

Delusive echoes linger. Let’s dispel them.

Class struggle, ever so quietly, has vanished from the American scene.  With a few flamboyant, politically dubious outliers — Jacobins on the left, MAGAs on the right — class struggle is over.

The Democrats have embraced, in the words of Joe Biden, center left “democratic capitalism,” leaning toward somewhat privileging labor over capital. The Republicans are largely “republican capitalists,” leaning center right toward somewhat privileging capital over labor.

Biden’s ethos is clearly embraced by Kamala Harris. She immediately upon Biden’s endorsement declared that building up the middle class would be a defining goal.

That’s antithetical to “class struggle.”

America, quietly, has reached a consensus that, per that great supply-side maestro and supreme leader of the Chinese Communist Party Deng Xiaoping, “To get rich is glorious.”

By celebrating that the Cold War is over, and that we capitalists won … perhaps we can wake up America. We can see through the rockets’ red glare and (political) bombs bursting in air, our politicians have become quaint “Cold War Reenactors.”

LARPers. (Live Action Role Players.)

See it and behold a major vibe changer. Possibly, a game changer.

Emerging from our shared trance of crazed mutual hostility would free us from this benighted culture of political menace. It would free us to focus on the many, needlessly thwarted, ways to advance our common interests.

Entranced, behold a quasi-hallucinatory version of the zanryū nipponhei, those Japanese soldiers on Pacific islands who continued to remain “at war” for decades after VJ-Day?

How to snap us out of this trance?

Carl Sandburg presented a story about a little girl whose question was paraphrased to ‘What if they gave a war and no one came?,’ an anecdote retold in a 1966 essay by Charlotte Keys in McCall’s magazine.”

It was a haunting phrase, transcending the then Hippies-vs-Squares wrangle over the Vietnam War. It became a bumper sticker and helped people understand that that fighting that war was ill-considered. Not existential.

This simple "what if" question likely contributed to Lyndon Johnson’s decision to retire, thrusting Richard Nixon into the presidency wherein he ended the draft and the War in Vietnam.

What if they gave a class struggle and nobody came?

Now, Republican activists generally consider Democrats a bunch of pinko commie pukes. Preposterous!

The Dow leaped up 45% during the Biden administration. While I have ample disagreements with Biden, such prosperity is antithetical to the genocide of 45 million who died under Mao’s communist “great leap forward.”

Democratic activists generally consider Republicans quasi-delusional fascist scum. I admit to being quasi-delusional (being a conservative postmodernist. “Isn’t everybody?”).

That said, I, a crunchycon, dispute the “fascist” and “scum” parts.

For what it’s worth, to quote Steven Stills, “There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.”

Let’s be clear. Class Struggle is Over.

Grasp the fact we can mostly agree that the meaningful game, between right and left, is in competing and cooperating to move more working families into the (upper) middle-class.

We can argue about how to do it.

Merrily.

Ferociously.

Constructively.

But Class Struggle?

Over.

What if they gave a class struggle and nobody came?