The U.S. as a Socially-Stratified Capitalist Society

The United States has become the classic case of a socially-stratified capitalist society of the type that Marx's analysis of the problems of income inequality, wealth distribution, and the hardening of class differences predicted would be subject to socialist revolution. While revolution seems unlikely, the rest of his critique was predictive and there is no reason the present state of affairs might not lead, at least, to widespread social unrest. As income distribution continues to reach new heights of inequity, however, the dominant class has at its disposal forms of mass communication that go far beyond what Marx saw in nineteenth century Britain. The construction of false consciousness among the American people, especially in such an ethnically and racially diversified nation of immigrants (new and old), has been so effective as to make the real problems of the society nearly disappear in a cloud of distractions. When combined, the prevailing American myth of equal opportunity and freedom, the power of elite-owned mass communications, and the inherent corruption of the political system have caused the enormous growth of the country's underclass and the increasing desperation of working- and middle-class citizens to become a non-topic in America.

Yet income inequity in the United States has grown so rapidly since 1970 that "it threatens, as it did in the Great Depression, the social stability of the country" and, for the first time since the 1930s, has begun to "und

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ocial and economic factors that supposedly threaten their way of life the overclass distracts their attention from the fact that this way of life no longer exists--if it ever did. A truly free society would have truly representative government and equality of opportunity but, since the rigid stratification of American society works against such things, it is necessary that people believe that they live in a classless society in which some people fail merely because they are, somehow, intrinsically inferior. Yet the facts of social stratification in the United States are very plain. Over 36 million people live in poverty, yet there are also millions of millionaires. And, although there has always been a gap between rich and poor, that gap has widened enormously and at growing speed. In the 1980s and 1990s pre-tax income of the poorest fifth of Americans declined by 5 percent while that of the highest fifth increased by 31 percent. For the richest 5 percent of the nation, however, incomes "rose by 58 percent" at the same time--resulting in a gap that is "the largest since the U. S. Census first reported the distribution of income" 30 years earlier (Shepard 189). The facts on the inequitable ownership of wealth make the stra

Category: Economics - T