Program for Change

...Even at their best, minimum-wage laws, redistributive taxes, and business-oriented unionism were modern forms of noblesse oblige that left most citizens with little real power over their communities or workplaces...

...Such a program must start with the grim fact that the very constituencies which are necessary to build a renewed progressive politics—working-class whites, minorities, and women—are now badly divided by the crude racism and sexism that have become so prevalent...

...Along the way, she provides a sophisticated understanding of the social and ideological roots of the current political crisis, and she offers a compelling approach to our political renewal...

...Sklar is, however, far from being a nostalgic advocate of New Deal liberalism...

...Increasing job security and expanding opportunities for self-development on and off the job will make working-class whites less susceptible to the scapegoaters, she contends...

...While employees of many large corporations in the 1950s and 1960s were granted a somewhat more generous share of corporate income, liberalism has always left unchallenged most aspects of management's control of the production process...

...Racism has always been a part of our culture, but an ever more tepid liberalism has given conservatives and business leaders an opening to portray welfare and affirmative action as the cause of working-class anxiety and disgust—especially in the absence of clearly articulated and well-organized radical alternatives...

...Factory workers feel increasingly insecure, powerless, poorly paid—and betrayed...

...Factories and offices became more hierarchical and bureaucratic, jobs were made more narrow, employees were treated as expendable cogs in a machine, and working hours were stretched...

...Holly Sklar's provocative new book goes well beyond a narrow analysis of economic inequality in America...

...She argues that liberals must maintain their traditional commitment to affirmative action...

...Sklar points out that contemporary liberal trade policy assumes that "the role of national and international government is to regulate the movement of labor, not capital...

...She also points out that the poverty line itself is based on outdated assumptions about the cost of housing and other necessities...

...Some have responded to this balkanization of the spirit by proposing an agenda that emphasizes class rather than race or gender...

...Corporate willingness to export jobs to cheap labor havens both increased poverty at home and made domestic programs to stimulate new job growth less effective...

...These gaps have come back to haunt liberals...

...Sklar effectively exposes this scapegoat-ing, but she also understands that conventional liberalism's inadequacies leave workers vulnerable to such stereotypes...

...Sklar writes that "the false charge of 'reverse discrimination' provides scapegoats, rather than solutions, for the economic distress being felt by more men and women of all races...

...For instance, the corporate and governmental assault on unions has removed one of the most effective tools for increasing working-class wages...

...And if they are getting their fair share, working-class whites will not feel burdened by the cost of remedying patterns of racial and gender exclusion...

...But she also knows that for these programs to be both effective and politically viable, they must be part of a broad democratic reconstruction of the corporate economy in the interests of all citizens...

...Such a response must include broadening employment opportunities for all through community-investment strategies, shortening of the work week, a higher minimum-wage standard both domestically and internationally, greater employee control over their own pension assets, more effective protections of labor's right to organize, and programs to give workers more voice in job redesign and corporate priorities...

...Sklar has made a thoughtful effort to fill the serious void the collapse of an overly modest liberalism has left...

...Finding welfare and affirmative-action policies under attack, many liberals are now, unfortunately, beating as hasty a retreat on these themes as they did on class and corporate issues...

...She not only marshals the numbers...

...Thus Sklar makes clear that an adequate response to the triumph of conservatism must move beyond traditional liberalism...

...In such a context, liberal support for even modest affirmative-action and welfare policies for the poor and minorities becomes suspect...

...John Buell (John Buell, a political economist in Southwest Harbor, Maine, is the author of "Democracy by Other Means: The Politics of Work, Leisure, and Environment, " just published by the University of Illinois Press...

...Corporations have increasingly taken advantage of this freedom by relocating some plants in nonunion, low-wage havens and asserting ever more control over the day-to-day operations of the domestic workplace...

...Short-term profits soared, but at the expense of a work force that became increasingly disgusted with its treatment...

...And she notes that the minimum wage has shrunk by 25 percent in real terms since 1975...

...With this as backdrop, conservatives have made scapegoats of social spending, racial minorities, the welfare poor, immigrants, and foreign governments—anything to distract attention away from the corporations and the trade policies that have created the economic turmoil in the first place...

...Contemporary liberalism can too often be seen by working-class whites as treating their frustrations and grievances as undeserved while addressing everyone else's problems...

...she also dismantles the conservative apologies for this sorry state of affairs...

...Elites don't want men and women to come together across racial lines to change a system that is redistributing wealth upward...

...These burgeoning inequalities are one consequence of the retreat from traditional New Deal liberalism, she says...

...While her analysis could be strengthened by a discussion of the kinds of political organizing it would take to promote and attain such an agenda, Sklar has given us an accessible and compelling defense of democracy's role in community renewal...

...Such works have never been more necessary...

...she estimates that the poor now amount to nearly 25 percent of the population, far above the official rate of 15 percent...

...Most Democrats, in the thrall of the new international economy and indebted to corporate benefactors, have ditched their token New Deal liberalism and joined the call for worker give-backs and cuts in government spending in the interests of "competitiveness...

...Sklar, however, recognizes that stereotypes of race and gender are deeply ingrained and must be directly confronted if we are to secure economic justice for all...

...Sklar begins with a familiar, albeit disturbing, recapitulation of data on inequality, noting that the top 1 percent of the social pyramid now controls wealth equal to that of the bottom 95 percent...