Twelfth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

In Marxian terms, the working class has been labeled as the most revolutionary class in any society. Seemingly, working class America has quite a different political agenda. For the past few years a significant portion of the American working class has shown remarkable interest in conservative politics questioning the old Marxian notion of revolutionary. In this paper the author has examined a brief history of the trajectory of the American working class movement during twentieth and twenty-first century after World War II. More specifically the recent shift toward conservatism has been examined. American working class has vacillated and wavered from left to right often and for different sociopolitical and socioeconomic reasons. For the past few years the existential attitude of the working class in the US has accommodated conservative values and beliefs. These beliefs and political views are: anti-immigrant, anti-gay, anti-woman, anti-black, anti-Latino, anti-abortion, anti-Muslim, and opposition to a slew of many other populations in American society. The author has found that such turn to the right side of the political spectrum has deep roots in two basic socioeconomic and sociopolitical structural changes. These are embedded in globalization and the aftermath of outsourcing in terms of capital and production (jobs), privatization, and stagnation or decrease in wages. In addition, the marginalization of a white Christian portion of American society whose social and political values were undermined during the civil right movement of the 1960s.