
The Vexed Meaning of Equality in Gilded Age America - samclemens
https://www.thenation.com/article/charles-postel-gilded-age-equality/
======
jdkee
Jack Balkin has a fantastic (!) lecture on the Second Gilded Age in America.
Highly worth viewing.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4daIk8PCPIc&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4daIk8PCPIc&feature=youtu.be)

~~~
appleflaxen
the main speaker takes the stage several minutes into the clip:

[https://youtu.be/4daIk8PCPIc?t=850](https://youtu.be/4daIk8PCPIc?t=850)

------
taiwanboy
I would propose The most fundamental issue US needs to solve for inequality in
the US is....whether US can continue to allow corporations to reap the
benefits of a strong democracy coupled with the most vibrant economy, while at
the same time, bankrupt the communities by continuing to ship jobs overseas
and avoid paying any sort of taxes back to the communities where they make a
profit.

There are only two parties in the US right now. And one is for globalization.
And the other is for stronger US labor unions, as mentioned in the article.

~~~
sacrificedcapon
Neither party is for stronger US labor unions. Both parties are pro-globalism
and pro-free trade.

It was under a democratic president that China attained Most Favored Trading
Nation status. It was Clinton, in the 90s, who did most of the legwork to get
China into the WTO - though they officially entered under Bush's term in 2001.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Neither party is for stronger US labor unions.

 _The Democratic Party believes that when workers are strong, America is
strong. Democrats will make it easier for workers, public and private, to
exercise their right to organize and join unions. We will fight to pass laws
that direct the National Labor Relations Board to certify a union if a simple
majority of eligible workers sign valid authorization cards, as well as laws
that bring companies to the negotiating table. We support binding arbitration
to help workers who have voted to join a union reach a first contract._

[https://democrats.org/where-we-stand/party-platform/raise-
in...](https://democrats.org/where-we-stand/party-platform/raise-incomes-and-
restore-economic-security-for-the-middle-classas)

> It was under a democratic president [...]. It was Clinton, in the 90s,
> [...].

Yeah, it _was_ both those things. But _was_ is about the past, not the
present. The Democratic Party— and the Republican Party, too—has shifted since
then (and particularly since the Great Recession). The Democrats have seen the
pro-labor progressive faction that had been marginalized since Clinton (and
somewhat even earlier) by the neoliberal faction resurgent, while the
Republicans have xenophobic mercantilist protectionists come to the forefront.
The neoliberal consensus that peaked around the 1990s is well and truly dead;
it may have supporters in bot parties, but they aren't dominant in either. No
one is campaigning on free trade any more, and candidates are more likely to
be disavowing their past support for free trade deals than endorsing current
efforts.

------
Cogito
This is a review of the book "Equality: An American Dilemma, 1866–1896" by
Charles Postel.

The 'Gilded Age' of America mentioned in the submission title is this period
of 1886-1896.

The whole review is a bit belaboured, or perhaps bogged down in detail, but
tries to show how an analysis of this period can be used to understand the
concept of equality today. The book apparently examines a number of different
organisations that were founded in this time, such as the Grange, Women’s
Christian Temperance Union, and the Knights of Labor. The claim is that these
organisations were, at least in part, founded to try remove inequality but
ended up leading to greater inequality.

> _the national orientation of [these groups] led them to embrace a “white
> nationalist framework of sectional reconciliation.” The struggle against
> slavery cast a long shadow over the Gilded Age. The era’s radicals often
> viewed it as a model for their own activism. Yet because of their desire to
> organize nationally and to recruit members regardless of their Civil War
> loyalties, these groups played an important role in disseminating a view of
> that conflict in which slavery played only a minor part and Reconstruction
> was considered a disastrous mistake. This had dire consequences for black
> Americans and for an ideal of equality that transcended racial difference._

Their summary probably gets their point across most succinctly:

> _Thanks to Occupy Wall Street, the presidential campaigns of Vermont Senator
> Bernie Sanders, the work of the French economist Thomas Piketty, and more
> generally the dysfunctionality of contemporary capitalism, equality—or the
> widespread lack thereof—again occupies a prominent place in political
> debate. Beyond the fate of the individual organizations it covers, Equality
> reminds us of a homegrown radical heritage that critics of today’s deeply
> unequal America can be inspired by and must improve upon. The ideal of
> equality remains as radical as it was in Jefferson’s day. But equality
> limited to some is not equality._

~~~
_iyig
I'm perplexed by writers who prioritize the social equality of a minority over
economic equality among the majority.

Don't get me wrong - I think both are important, but if we're honest, doesn't
the general peace and well-being of society (from which better conditions for
the minority tend to spring) depend more on the latter? You can't solve these
problems easily in reverse order; the disgruntled majority will get tired of
hearing about minority issues while they struggle to put food on the table.

This is a bit of a false dichotomy, but as a continuous balance of focus
between the two issues, I think the point stands.

~~~
sanderjd
> _general peace and well-being of society (from which better conditions for
> the minority tend to spring)_

This parenthetical is doing a lot of the work in your argument, and alas, it
is not always (or even usually) how things work.

~~~
_iyig
It’s harder to scapegoat minorities when nobody’s all that mad about anything.
Conversely, it’s easier to be charitable when you have more to give. Finally,
there’s Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: self and family survival comes before
everything else.

If you have counterexamples to this theorizing of mine, I’d love to see them!

~~~
sanderjd
Well, you could a look at the antebellum south of the US, to start. Don't
think much more needs to be said about that...

Or you could look at the contemporary US. We have basically no unemployment,
enormous wealth, no war on our land in over a century and a half, we're
probably the most prosperous and least attacked people in history, and yet we
see quite a lot of majority-minority strife.

You could also look at the article or the book it's talking about, which is
also talking about a period where your theorizing didn't hold up.

Maybe let's flip it, do you have examples of peaceful high-well-being
societies where people who were different from most people in the society were
equivalent participants in that well being?

~~~
_iyig
>Well, you could a look at the antebellum south of the US, to start. Don't
think much more needs to be said about that...

The abolitionist movement was huge in the North, where economic equality was
better [0]. The antebellum South was a great example of a deeply unequal
society, where poor whites were easily pitted against blacks. (Still haven't
solved this problem)

>Or you could look at the contemporary US. We have basically no unemployment,
enormous wealth, no war on our land

Huge wealth inequality. Student debt crisis. Opioid crisis. Healthcare. Good
jobs gone, replaced with bad jobs. Labor participation rate hasn’t recovered
since the Great Recession.

>Maybe let's flip it, do you have examples of peaceful high-well-being
societies where people who were different from most people in the society were
equivalent participants in that well being?

Sure, though I did only say better, not "equivalent": we can look at Jews who
prospered in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth [1][2], or Jews in England during
the Victorian Era [3]. As contrasted with Jews in Western Europe during the
Dark Ages -- _lots_ of pogroms and expulsions -- or Jews in Weimar Germany, or
Jews in Tsarist Russia.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antebellum_South#Wealth_inequa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antebellum_South#Wealth_inequality)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Poland_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Poland_before_the_18th_century#Prosperity_in_a_reunited_Poland:_1320–1385)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Poland#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Poland#The_Polish-
Lithuanian_Commonwealth:_1572–1795)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_England...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_England#Emancipation_and_prosperity,_1800s)

~~~
sanderjd
I'm ... no longer sure what your point is, but just one reply to note that you
can't put responsibility for slaves on plantations onto "poor whites" who
"were easily pitted against blacks". They were rich people who enslaved others
just because they thought they were superior and could get away with it. No
economic solution was going to solve that.

