Why Corporations Have Become Woke
The Democratic Party long ago abandoned working-class blacks and whites in favor of identity politics, corporatism, and cultural leftism.
The last few months have brought rioting, targeted violence toward police officers and conservatives, flag burning, and wanton destruction in U.S. cities. American society is also in turmoil. Ordinary Americans fear being “canceled” for saying the wrong thing or having the wrong ideas.
Two New York Times editors have been ousted, and reporters all over the country feel increased pressure to conform to a specific narrative. A Chicago Federal Reserve economist was fired for politely criticizing the policy positions of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) organization. These are but a few examples.
Some of America’s largest multinational corporations are not just captive to the new trend of wokeness — they are pushing it ...
A host of...corporations have contributed millions of dollars to groups such as BLM in the name of fighting racism, encouraging their customers to do the same. Keep in mind there is a difference between the phrase “black lives matter” and the group BLM, which has controversial policy positions, including calls for abolishing the nuclear family and local police departments. None of these corporations have even remotely explained how their donations will actually fight racism or inequalities...
There’s a simple explanation for corporate wokeness, aside from the left’s relative intolerance, and it has everything to do with economics. Currently capital is taking a historically large chunk of the American economic pie versus labor. Keeping the conversation about race, white privilege, gender, and sexual minorities, all of which are amorphous and hard to resolve, moves the conversation away from class and economic privilege...
Can’t income to labor and corporate profits both go up? No. As financial writer Jesse Felder shows in a chart (in an article well worth reading), the two measures are extremely inversely correlated. Maybe corporate profits getting about a 10 percent cut from national income doesn’t seem high, but capital’s overall share of national income is much higher — corporate profits are just one part of capital’s overall share...
Corporations push wokeness, higher education institutions love launching “sensitivity trainings,” and CEOs love the book “White Fragility” precisely because it moves the conversation away from economic privilege, the extreme cartelization of parts of the economy, the lack of American social mobility, and the collapse of working-class American families and civil society.
Focusing instead on the amorphous boogeyman of racism shields the economic system from direct or thoughtful scrutiny...
even left-wing Democrats don’t plan to fundamentally change anything about the working class, globalization, or the economic assumptions we have made in the last 50 years...
The focus of this corporatist Marxism is exclusively on issues of sex and race, to the point that anyone talking about inequalities in terms of economics is guilty of wrongthink. The left’s pushback against Bernie Sanders, who initially talked exclusively about class rather than race or sex, is instructive...
The antidote to this growing virus is for a major political movement in America to actually take up working- and middle-class values — cultural conservatism and targeted economic interventionism — values that the vast majority of the American people still hold...
Republican politicians and party leaders have practiced buffet-line libertarianism. They are perfectly happy to lower taxes and deregulate the economy, but they fail to acknowledge that existing government interventions regarding trade, fiscal deficits, bailouts, and monetary policy have uniquely harmed the working class.
Instead, in the 21st century, the GOP should pursue a policy platform of Middle Class Capitalism and American Families First, with the explicit goal of raising labor’s share of GDP and restoring America’s culture.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/07/31/how-to-keep-corporate-wokeness-from-destroying-america/
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I disagree with the author of this article that the Republican Party would be more inclined to advance the economic interests of working and middle class Americans. I agree that the Democratic Party has abandoned working and middle class Americans, especially if they are whites. Democrats have done this because the Democrat Party has come to be dominated by well educated, well paid bi coastal professionals. These lack the public enthusiasm the Republican Donor Class has for tax cuts for the rich. Nevertheless, they do not really mind, because they benefit from those tax cuts themselves.
Identity politics do not cost rich Democrats anything. Contributions to Black Lives Matter are less expensive than the tax increases most Americans would like to impose on them.
Efforts to defund the police do not bother rich Democrats and newly woke corporate moguls because they live in rich enclaves far from black ghetto rioters. If things get worse, they can build walls around their mansions and hire private security. The rest of us will have to pay for their ideals.
The Democrat Party used to be led by rich men like Franklin Roosevelt, Adlai Stevenson, John Kennedy, and Robert Kennedy. These were motivated by noblesse oblige. Currently the Democrat Party is led by people like Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi. These consider the fact of their wealth to be its justification. The policies they recommend indicate that they care more about poor ghetto black men with several felony convictions and several illegitimate children they do nothing to support than they care about poorly paid white men who work hard at jobs they dislike in order to support their wives and their legitimate children.
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