This book analyzes growing inequality within the context of American society and resistance to neoliberal economic restructuring. It begins by providing us with a basic primer on transformations in the U.S. and global political economy post–World War II. Sanford Schram rightly points out that after the war and until 1973, there was an unprecedented compression in the U.S. economy, and that this process built the middle class as we know or imagine it. Like Ira Katzenlson in When Affirmative Action was White (2005), Schram shows here that contrary to the myth that white children of early twentieth-century immigrants made it to the middle class by dint of their hard work alone, public policy during the New Deal and post–World War II periods helped create the success of the middle class. He then demonstrates how economic restructuring based upon the logic of neoliberalism reversed that trend and has since produced an economy that has led to greater and greater inequality.
Schram argues that neoliberal economic restructuring has hit a middle and working class in the United States that are entranced by the myth of self-sufficiency as a product of the pre-1973 period. Economic life for the vast majority of Americans has been rendered precarious as most of the income and wealth are captured by the upper 1%. Neoliberal ideology has remade institutions, ideologies, and general life far beyond the simply economic, as the discipline of the market affects most Americans extremely harshly. The individual pieces of Schram’s argument are not entirely new, but The Return of Ordinary Capitalism represents a successful synthesis of arguments in both the fields of political economy and social movements. Schram captures a moment that is politically timely but that also contains a depth of analysis and theorization that is rare for such a timely book.
In response to the displacement of neoliberalism and the decoupling of economic growth from wage growth that even President Obama has commented on in press conferences about job growth, working people have turned to movements like Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter in order to counteract these trends. Schram’s account is refreshing in a variety of ways. The country’s persistent racial divides are formulated as a central problem rather than a sideshow in an otherwise “clean” analysis of class conflict. Also, it is encouraging that Schram avoids the tendency by some on the left to see reforms only as pacifications that prevent real change. Rather, these movements and things like Occupy and Black Lives Matter offer a naming of the problem, language about inequality and organizational capacity and symbols for subsequent mobilization.
The author argues that in spite of some nascent activism around the precarious existence of the middle and working classes, the middle class today is beset by melancholia produced by the distance between the ideal of self-sufficiency and the reality of individual lives . According to Schram, this melancholia undermines the will to fight back, and is bolstered by the strength of the ideology of neoliberalism.
The middle chapters on social work, education, and the deserving and undeserving poor make up core parts of the book. Like Lester Spence’s Knocking the Hustle (2015), which argues that neoliberal ideology is so pervasive that it has reconstituted the way African Americans understand their lives, Schram’s book shows how services like education and social work have been converted by neoliberal reforms into merely case management and the imposition of the harsh discipline of the marketplace, rather than “helping professions” with respect for professional staff versus things like performance metrics. Schram uses the analysis of discourse in order to capture the semiotic structure of welfare recipients as undeserving. This was the underlying discourse that supported the move to Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF), away from the more generous and consistent Aid for Families with Dependent Children (AFDC).
Schram moves seamlessly between American political development, path dependence, political economy, social-movement analysis, and discourse analysis to develop a powerful argument about our current political and economic moment. He offers us a balanced view of the nature of the current problem of income inequality that avoids reductionism, and he is both prescriptive and dutifully humble in his offerings.
Schram avoids some of the pathologies of left thinkers who are too enamored with revolution to act. He argues that the working and middle classes—the “precariat”—are fragmented. Thus, the precariat cannot wait for large-scale international mobilization. Instead, people must engage in multilevel mobilizing on manageable issues. He rejects all-or-nothing revolutionary change and argues for “radical incrementalism” that operates “rhizomatically” rather than vertically. One of the very best lines in the book is that “[a]ctivism must be more humble.” As Schram calls for his brand of radical incrementalism, he suggests that activism must not make claims beyond what it can deliver.
The Return of Ordinary Capitalism is an illuminating book that ought to be read by all those interested in the Left, the politics of inequality, and indeed contemporary politics in general.
