American Working Class In The 1950's

The American working class has continually been subjected to change and displacement. Now more than ever before, Americans live in a global world where the old restrictive barriers to trade and labor such as tariffs are replaced with neo-liberal capitalism ideas of trade agreements which lead to a global division of labor and global exchanges of financial and commercial capital guided by the Bretton Woods system of institutions. These practices, which are done with the American working class in mind, are often what hurt the working class so much. Globalization was something that was bound to happen as capitalists needed new markets to expand to and because technology made communication around the world quicker and easier than ever. However, …show more content…
This causes friction and frustration because the world wants to move forward, but the working class wants to hold it back as it tries to cling the old practices and capitalist standards of the 1950s. The role of the working class in electing Donald Trump can be explained by the globalization of capitalism and the awareness of the working class that they have false class consciousness. The current state of the American working class is that of confusion and a tendency to become reactionary from this confusion. The American working class is confused because as the world becomes ever more globalized and technology-oriented, the working class gets lost in the shuffle as their reluctancy to change causes them to not be seen or heard. It could be said that Donald Trump was elected in the past election as a reaction by the working class. This certainly is a possibility, but there is more to it than one can see in a glance. The reactionary movement by the working class has deep roots which take it back to the rise of globalization. Throughout the 20th century, the working class in not just the US, but also the working classes in Africa, Latin America, and Asia …show more content…
IT could be said that the American working class has been shrinking and losing its position has a bringer of change and instead has tried to go back to the status quo of how manufacturing was back in the 1950s. The working class has become marginalized and it has become increasingly difficult for someone in the working class to escape and find work in today’s service economy. An individual who has lost his manufacturing job at the age of 50 who is too young to retire, but is too old to go back to school for job-training say in the field of computers, has become radicalized and his/her fears are realized by what Trump talks about. The appeal for Trump is that Trump wants to return the accountability back to the corporation rather than how it is now where the corporation is no longer responsible for the workers or for the community where its headquarters or plants are located. Trump wants to return the responsibility to the corporations which can ultimately help the working class. However, with the way in which the world operates now, on an entirely global level, manufacturing in America will not return, rather corporations can offer on the job training and allow moving up the corporate ladder