Election victories and the framework of social class

John Kerry ran what the Washington Post called the “biography based campaign” in which he relied heavily on the period he served in Vietnam.

Meanwhile, Bush’s first term saw the worst corporate scandals in American history and a net loss in jobs. Enron suffered the biggest collapse and was one of the companies closest to the Republican Party.

The tax cut already implemented by Bush will result in a huge redistribution of wealth to the richest households, to the tune of $330 billion dollars in ten years. Kerry failed to capitalise on such monumental benefits to the “economic elite”.

In Australia, inequality has skyrocketed in the past five years with enormous asset price growth combined with ridiculous executive pay-packets. This relative increase in poverty - noting the poor have not got poorer absolutely - was not pressed by Latham. Instead, the ALP leader actually planned to reduce welfare to some of the poorest households in a bid to get them back to work. If Latham was a class warrior, this was a case of friendly fire.

The decline in union membership in both the US and Australia is a big part of the confusion over what constitutes “class”. Surveys by the ACTU suggest union members are far more aware of their economic interest, and as a result, more likely to vote in their economic interest. The same is true in the US, where union membership has declined by about 20 per cent over the past 20 years.

The US Bureau of Labour Statistics estimated in 2003, union members earned 26 per cent more than similar workers who were not members of a union.

With the steady decline in union membership, the electorate has become less aware of what constitutes its economic interest. Thus, inexplicably, many of the lowest paid households are voting for parties that will almost certainly contribute to their relative poverty. They are voting to bring down what they perceive as the  elite or “aristocracy” by condemning same-sex marriage and abortion.

In reality, the only thing they will do to the “aristocracy” is to give them a tax cut.

The Right has successfully muddied the waters about who is really profiting from the status quo.

For the centre left parties to have any hope of regaining their heartlands, they must work to re-frame class as a product of economics and not culture.