An Oligarchy Like No Other | 3 of 4

This is the third of four posts relating to American oligarchy. The first examines the recurring threat of oligarchy and its political economy. The second considers the scaffolding of our oligarchy, tracing it to the neoliberal revision of the postwar settlement. The third focuses on the strip mining of our middle class foundations following the successful resolution of the Cold War. The final installment focuses on the political turbulence ensuing from the 2016 Brexit referendum in the UK and the generally unanticipated election of Donald Trump as US president. This series diagnoses challenges; recommendations for reform will be presented in future series.

Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. —Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto

The United States is a middle-class nation. American colonials who demanded their rights as British citizens are our spiritual ancestors.

The American mass middle class of the postwar era is a historic achievement. Millions of families and individuals have achieved unprecedented material abundance. Our value creation vaulted the nation to unmatched world power.