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| A gang of white rioters seeking African-Americans to attack during the 1919 Chicago Race Riots. Modern day GOP propaganda employs race-baiting similar to that used by Chicago meat-packing plant owners to try to prevent the creation of a multi-racial labor union |
The Republican Party's recent break with some large American businesses over attitudes towards voter suppression laws in former Confederate states is emblematic of the Republican Party's adherence to reactionary ideologies, and their failure to comprehend changes in the American business climate. Although modern day Republicans claim that they are becoming a "party of the working class", their ideology is one that discounts workers they claim to represent as disposable commodities, and seeks to employ them at wages that leave them subject to homelessness and poverty in their later years. Ultimately, the "anti-woke" ideology of modern day Republicanism, and the spread of authoritarian and nativist appeals among the GOP base, represents an attempt to distract working class Americans from the fact that the Republican party uses agitative propaganda as a tool to help keep working class Americans poor. In that regard, today's GOP is employing the same "Confederate Model of Propaganda" that led to ignorant Southern whites choosing to take up arms so as to preserve the practice of slavery.
The break between some American companies and the GOP may be characterized as a split between "aggressive innovators" and "the leisure class". Aggressive innovators are companies that are involved in highly competitive fields where their survival is contingent upon the constant development of new products or services, the acquisition of high quality sales, engineering and management talent, and the creation of smart new advertising campaigns to appeal to consumers. The phrase "Leisure class" companies (a term borrowed from economist Thorstein Veblen's classic textbook - the term "leisure class" is due to the fact that many of these firms appear to be owned by investment groups backed by "old money" families, where centuries of multi-generational wealth have promoted very conservative views of investing and economics) is used here to describe firms that occupy industries where there is little interest in innovation, and maximizing profitability is primarily achieved through maintaining existing markets, regulatory capture and minimization of input costs. Examples of "leisure class" industries include the mining and extraction industries, and exploitative pursuits such as payday lending and rent to own stores. Examples of ways that companies seek to minimize input costs is by opposing unionization, reducing or flat-lining wages, and the elimination of federally mandated benefit programs like Obamacare. The fast food industry, interestingly, appears to be split between different ideological camps, with some firms falling into the aggressive innovator category, and others demonstrating characteristics of "leisure class" companies. Ultimately, these two types of firms represent alternate views of classical economist David Ricardo's "iron law of wages". A quick and simplified version of Ricardo's iron law of wages states that "the cost of adding employees should always be limited to the lowest level necessary to maintain the subsistence of an employee and his family, and any premium paid above that amount will lead to inflation and economic ruin. That "lowest level necessary" value is referred to by Ricardian economists as the "natural wage" of labor. When there is competition for labor, and business owners must bid at a higher rate for workers time, then those business owners are paying the higher "market rate of wages".
Firms that fall into the aggressive innovators category often have to bid for high quality talent, and exist in fields where high levels of automation have already replaced the entry level employees to whom Ricardo's Iron law of wages was traditionally considered to apply. The need to compete for high value executive talent means that these firms cannot afford to maintain a stodgy, antiquated view of what business leaders are supposed to look like, and must either learn to welcome a more diverse group of employees and customers, or perish economically. Leisure class firms hold on to Ricardo's "iron law" ideology, demonstrated by their hostility towards unionization, and their contributions to right-wing political PACs which promote propaganda describing health-care as a "privilege" rather than a right. Many of these firms principles have also adopted far-right libertarian views of state regulation, choosing to view issues such as environmental preservation and public education as "out of control authoritarian socialism". The Republican Party of today, is very clearly aligned with "leisure class" corporations, and is violently opposed to the greater openness towards diversity of employees and customers demonstrated by aggressive innovator firms. Republic opposition to the management style of aggressive innovator firms is demonstrated by public comments from Republican politicians such as "get woke, go broke".
While the Republican Party claims that it's becoming a "party of the working class", it fails to represent the interests of working class people, and must be recognized as a party that exploits the lower level of education and general gullibility of many working class people to promote agitative propaganda that ultimately relegates working class Americans to the status of disposable commodities. The Declaration of Independence states that "all men are created equal". If we consider that the term "subsistence" should be meant to include the ability to avail oneself of the benefits of modern medicine, then the high cost of health-care in America means that many Americans are working at a rate of pay that is ultimately below the "natural rate" that Ricardo described. To say that workers don't necessarily deserve health-care is to relegate them to the status of a disposal commodity, like a motor vehicle that is used for as long as it's useful, then deemed "totaled" once its damaged to a point where the cost of repairs exceeds its assumed value. To try to claim that's not the case because we have programs like disability and Medicare is to admit that American corporations aren't paying their fair share, as they openly rely on government programs to take care of workers when they no longer want them. You cannot make an honest claim to be representing the interest of working class voters, when your party is devoted to a business model that treats your voters as disposable commodities who have no value as human beings, and are simply commodities that should be compensated at a rate below Ricardo's "natural rate", and then turned over to the public dole once GOP Donors have no more interest in hiring them. This position is especially problematic as many of the GOPs largest donors have openly advocated for eliminating program's like workman's comp and social security, which would leave working class Republicans who suffer illness or injury to die in abject poverty, or entirely reliant upon charity from friends and family.
In my book "The Perpetual Hamster Wheel of Stupidity", I devote an entire chapter to "The Confederate Model of Propaganda". During the Reconstruction era, the "Confederate Model" employed pamphlets, local leaders and the church to promote notions of white supremacy as a means of preventing poor Southern whites from recognizing that they shared a common economic plight with African-Americans who had recently been freed from slavery. Slavery was an economic system that allowed the wealthy to maintain their workforce at Ricardo's "natural wage" in perpetuity. Modern GOP propaganda employs a similar kind of nativism to appeal to the latent racism, authoritarian tendencies, and social and economic frustrations of modern whites. During reconstruction, failure to recognize a common economic plight with recently freed African-Americans, and a culture that divided different types of work into a caste system of "white jobs" and "black jobs" meant that manual laborers in the Southern states continued to pay an economic price for their nativism and ignorance. In the same way, modern day Republicans who respond to GOP rhetoric like "get woke, go broke", are ultimately no different than Southern whites who responded to racist dog-whistles by forming groups such as the Klu Klux Klan.
The Republican Party's hostility towards corporations that are entering into politics is a manifestation of their devotion to antiquated economic ideals. The split between the Republican Party and corporate America may be characterized as a break between "aggressive innvators", that the GOP opposes, and "leisure class corporations" that the GOP still supports. The differences between these two types of firms is primarily a difference between whether they must bid for high value managerial talent to facilitate the development of new goods, services and marketing campaigns, or whether they are in a mature industry, and wish to try to pursue profitability by minimizing input costs. Ultimately, the Republican Party's claim that they are a "party of the working class" is nonsense, and highlights the fact that the Republican Party of today survives on dishonest propaganda appeals, that appear to be modeled on the same Confederate Model of Propaganda that led to decades of poverty and racial division in the American South.
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