This is of great concern to the capitalist class: the threat of a good example.

One of the things that helped workers win concessions was “the threat of communism.” The pressure of being in competition with socialist nations for the allegiance of peoples at home and abroad helped to set limits on how thoroughly Western leaders dared to mistreat their own working populations. A social contract of a sort was put in place, and despite many bitter struggles and setbacks, working people made historic gains in wages, benefits, and public services.

In the late 1940s and 1950s the U.S. ruling class took great pains to demonstrate that workers under U.S. capitalism enjoyed a higher living standard than their opposite numbers chafing under the “yoke of communism.” Statistics were rolled out showing that Soviet proletarians had to toil many more hours than our workers to buy various durable-use consumer goods. Comparisons were never made in regard to medical care, rent, housing, education, transportation, and other services that are relatively expensive in capitalist countries but heavily subsidized in socialist ones. The point is, the gains made by working people in the West should be seen in the context of capitalism’s world competition with communism.

That competition also helped the civil rights struggle. During the 1950s and 1960s, when US leaders were said to be competing with Moscow for the hearts and minds of nonwhites in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, it was considered imperative that we rid ourselves of Jim Crow and grant equality to people of color in the US. Many of the arguments made against segregation were couched in just that opportunistic rhetoric: not racial equality for justice’s sake but because it would improve America’s image in the Cold War.

With the overthrow of socialism in 1989-91, transnational corporate capitalism now seemed to have its grip on the entire globe. Yet an impatient plaint soon could be detected in conservative publications. It went something like this: “If everywhere socialism is being rolled back by the free market, why is there no rollback here in the United States? Why do we have to continue tolerating all sorts of collectivist regulations and services?” By 1992, it became clear to many conservatives that now was the time to cast off all restraint and sock it to the employee class. The competition for their hearts and minds was over. Having scored a total victory, Big Capital would be able to write its own reactionary ticket at home and abroad. There would be no more accommodation, not with blue-collar workers, nor even white-collar professionals or middle management.

Throughout history there has been only one thing that ruling classes have ever wanted – and that is everything: all the choice lands, forests, game, herds, harvests, mineral deposits and precious metals of the earth; all the wealth, riches, and profitable returns; all the productive facilities, gainful inventiveness, and technologies; all the surplus value produced by human labor; all the control positions of the state and other major institutions; all public supports and subsidies, privileges and immunities; all the protections of the law with none of its constraints; all the services, comforts, luxuries, and advantages of civil society with none of the taxes and costs. Every ruling class has wanted only this: all the rewards and none of the burdens.

Instead of worrying about lowering unemployment, as during the Cold War, the plutocrats who preside over this country now seek to sustain a sufficiently high level of joblessness in order to weaken unions, curb workers, and maximize profits. What we are witnessing is the Third Worldization of the United States, the downgrading of a relatively prosperous population. Corporate circles see no reason why millions of working people should enjoy a middle-class living standard, with home ownership, surplus income, and secure long-term employment. They also see no reason why the middle class itself should be as large as it is.

As the haves would have it, people must work harder (“maximize productivity”) and lower their expectations. The more they get, the more they will demand, until we will end up with a social democracy-or worse. It’s time to return to nineteenth-century standards, the kind that currently obtain throughout the Third World, the kind that characterized America itself in 1900-specifically, an unorganized working populace that toils for a bare subsistence without benefits, protections, or entitlements; a mass of underemployed, desperate poor who help to depress wages and serve as a target for the misplaced resentment of those just above them; a small, shrinking middle class that hangs on by its bleeding fingers; and a tiny, obscenely rich, tax-free owning class that has it all. For the haves, deregulation, privatization, and rollback are the order of the day. “Capitalism with a human face” has become capitalism in your face. While commentators announce “the end of class struggle” and even “the end of history,” in fact, U.S. politico-economic elites are waging class war more determinedly than ever.