America’s Common Man exists no more – gone and forgotten. Once he was lauded as the salt of the earth - our country’s embodiment of what made us special, of what made the great democratic experiment successful, of what made of the United States the magnetic pole for the world’s masses. Politicians paid their rhetorical respects, poets exalted him in paeans of praise, Aaron Copeland composed a “Fanfare to the Common Man” suite.

It was an honorable term, an affective shorthand for the Working Man, the Artisan and the Shopkeeper, the Clerk, the tiller of the soil. All now passed from our language and from our consciousness. Instead, we are offered the “middle-class people who pay their taxes, obey the law and worry about their children’s future.” The linguistic dross of the hackneyed stump speech. 

“Middle” supposes an “upper’ and a “lower.” The “rich,’ though, have also disappeared – replaced by ‘billionaires’ in a terminology that can convey multiple connotations. So, we talk nonsensically about raising up the “middle class” without doing any financial harm to the ‘1%.’ At the other end, the poor no longer are ‘poor’ – they are “low income’ or ‘underprivileged.’ The “Working Man” is nowhere to be seen. Yet, “Working Man” was long an honorable term, near synonymous with the ‘Common Man,” at a time when laboring in a blue collar or overalls was not widely seen as visible signs that you didn’t have “the right stuff” to make it in America’s land of opportunity. 

By tainting society’s image of the Working Man, we have seeded the minds of workers with an aversion to anything that so designates them. Especially unions. To join a union these days is felt as an admission that one is of diminished worth and status – in the eyes of others, of your children, of yourself. That intangible is coupled with a low income and a steadily declining standard of living. That condition, in turn, is caused in good part by labor’s lack of organization. 50 years ago, a Pittsburgh steelworker earned 50% more than an Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh.

Today, his counterpart in another, analogous line of work earns about half of the Assistant Professor’s salary (whose own pay has lagged considerably in relative purchasing power over the years). That is the process that has undercut the social standing of the Common Man, lowered his material well-being, and taken workers out of the political equation. Furthermore, it fosters the state of mind wherein many workers can be seduced into voting for officials who are dedicated to keeping them down while denying them public services.

Before too long, perhaps we’ll see a renaming of Labor Day as Money Management Day punctuated by serried rows of derivative traders marching down Pennsylvania Avenue.

The fading of the “working man’ from the collective consciousness – as well as vocabulary - is facilitated by two demographic factors. First, a disproportionate, growing percentage of those who do blue collar or white apron jobs are Latinos (legal and illegal) or black. As “people of color,” they constitute a separate category that no longer is totally overlooked but lies outside the standard political lexicon.  Second, we find it convenient to ignore that a worker can wear a blouse or sport shirt, sit at a computer monitor, and still earn a wage that is only a few thousands above the official poverty line income.

So, we implicitly pronounce them “middle class” even though their two-job families can barely get by. Even though tens of millions are ‘gig’ workers – who are part-timers &/or who hold 2 or 3 jobs - with neither decent pay, nor benefits nor secure employment. That devolution owes much to the suppression of the union movement. Finally, these days most women work. The household income of 2-worker families is what permits a tolerably comfortable – and secure - lifestyle, albeit still substantially lower than that of the 1975 steelworker’s $170,000 in today’s dollars. Admittedly, that earlier $28,000 may have included some overtime - not sure. Anyway, white collar staffers in big organizations nowadays routinely put in unpaid overtime. So, the overtime factor in the equation is neutralized.

[The $28,000 per annum translates into roughly $170,000 in purchasing power today]

Some workers deemed “essential” were widely celebrated as front-line fighters in the war on COVID-19. However, promise of tangible rewards for them or their surviving dependents, as well as those legions of anonymous ‘non-essential’ workers who keep the country running but were taken for granted, never materialized as the national economy tanked and inflation soared. A few million public employees at the state and municipal levels already were dumped onto the unemployment lines; moreover, the 2009 experience foretold correctly that a considerable fraction never would be rehired or replaced.

Even more educated Americans are caught in the grip of long-term stagnation than ever before, they have less likelihood of social mobility than ever before, more have every reasonable expectation that their children will be worse off than they are, more are politically marginalized by a party system that serves up a restricted menu of options which effectively disenfranchises 20% or so of voters.

The Common Man has lost the attention as well as the concern of the country’s elites. (S)he has been shunted aside in every respect but one – he is sovereign audience for a pop culture that provides a heady brew of distractions for all. In that realm he reigns supreme while the serious action which shapes his life takes place elsewhere. 

Today, to call a person a ‘working man/woman’ is disparaging. The connotations are heavily pejorative – they’re failures, they’re losers, they had the American Dream within reach but lacked the will and the spirit to grab it. It is natural, and just, that they should live out their lives on scant rations. It’s their own fault. This Victorian ethic grounded in Social Darwinism has now been restored as part of the national creed.

Fitted out in the post-modern fancy dress of market fundamentalist economics, Ayn Randish homilies of narcissistic egomania, and a parade of revivalist Christian sects that mix New Age Salvation with balm for anxious egos, this beggar-thy-neighbor philosophy dominates our public discourse. It has put on the back foot those who still adhere to the enlightened humanism which propelled progressive thinking and policy for a century.  

All this is no accident. Powerful interests have orchestrated a relentless campaign for more than forty years to reconfigure American life in accord with their reactionary aims and principles. This is now obvious to anyone who cares to look. The key questions are: why have so few cared to look, and why the ease with which the crusade has won converts, fellow travelers and the acquiescence of the country’s elites?  

The distressing truth of our times is that the Common Man has been abandoned by those elites – in politics, in government, in journalism, in professional associations, in academia. The most cursory monitoring of what they do and say – and, equally, what they don’t do and say - makes that manifestly clear. Personal acquaintance with those elites confirms it. It is a fair generalization that they care little, are preoccupied with their own careers and pastimes, possess only a feeble sense of social obligation, and are smugly complacent.

Money is the common denominator in all of this. But why? These are the people whose material well-being is best protected from the vicissitudes of a globalized economy, from the predations of big finance and big business. Yes, it is true that they are concerned about preserving their commodious houses, sending their children to the top schools, having substantial nest eggs, and enjoying generous health care. Yes, avarice and moral courage are not compatible human traits.

However, none of their comforts are threatened by public policies that conform to the New Deal consensus which most of them at one time shared (or their parents shared). In objective terms, the greatest potential threat to their well-being lurks in the plutocratic structures that control our public affairs, the baneful effects of gross and growing income mal-distribution, and the lurch toward mindless Rightest nostrums – now reaching its logical endpoint in Trumpite Fascism. 

We should look elsewhere to explain the wholesale flight from responsibility by America’s elites. Social anthropology offers more insight than does a crude political-economic calculus. At the heart of the matter is status anxiety. All layers of society struggle with status deprivation or status insecurity. It is most acute among those whose education and ambition have made them ultra-sensitive to insignia of rank and marks of achievement. They can’t live happily without tangible signs of their having a place that honors their efforts and satisfies their pride.

Money is that tangible sign. It always has been in America where inherited class position never was wholly secure and easily uprooted by the winds of a constant social shuffling. Americans always have been consumed by an endless, open ended status competition. That generates anxiety since there is never enough positive status to go around. Status is a finite commodity as most are destined to find out to their surprise and frustration. The quantity of status in a society cannot increase to meet the expectations of those whose individual accomplishments lead them to believe that they deserve it. So, nowadays, people who desperately want to see themselves as uncommon winners can’t be bothered by the plight of the Common Man. 

Status apprehension has been heightened markedly for both workers on the lower rungs and those keen on putting as much distance as possible between themselves and ‘workers’ by the mass media. For they depict vividly - and pervasively - contrasts in lifestyle while conveying the current ethos as to what success and ‘winning’ are.

That has changed to make contemporary American so anxiously self-absorbed when placed in historical context. Above all, there is the deepening of our narcissistic culture. We are now a society where growing numbers recognize no external communal standard to measure and appraise their conduct – or their worth. The collective superego is shriveled. The self is the only valid pole of reference. That self directs its attention with near exclusivity to its own wants and expectations. It is almost as if the new categorical imperative is to think of oneself alone whenever and wherever possible.

To give priority to any other claim on us is taken as unnatural, i.e. something that has to be justified rather than instinctive or ingrained. The Godfather’s self-serving plaint that “I did it for my family” is widely adopted as the all-purpose excuse for selfish acts of malfeasance or non-commission which, in an earlier time, would be felt by many to be irresponsible – if not downright shameful. The axial precept “Let humanity be the ultimate measure of all that we do” was the gyroscope for the enlightened social humanism fostered during the second half of the twentieth century. It no longer balances and orients us. 

Why then not betray a public trust when doing so (seemingly) advances my political ambitions? Why level about the necessity of coming to terms with China as a global superpower that is here to stay when “America will always be Number One!” strikes such a sonorous upbeat note? Why not avoid critical columns that expose a naked untruth when the entire political class in going along with the convenient myth that Social Security is part of the Treasury’s budget and the cause of the deficit? Why not trade in my senior government post for a lavish corporate lifestyle since notions of the collective good and of the public trust are subversive of the individual enterprise that makes this country great?; besides, there’s my family’s financial security to think about.

Why irritate campaign donors when pulling your punches supposedly means that your well-intentioned self can be kept in office for another 6 or 2 years? Why not conceal from readers the knowledge of systematic civil liberties violations when not printing the truth may give you access to other truths more fit to print? Why call attention to yourself by teaching the untutored and uninformed of how twisted their nation’s public discourse has become? Why not be accomplice to torture when doing so opens a spot at the Pentagon trough for the American Psychological Association?

Why not violate your solemn oath by using your position as head of the CDC or FDA to skew judgments on questions of life-and-death under pressure from the deranged man in the White House if it ensures a smooth path into retirement? Why risk alienating congregants of the mainline church you head by militating against worker exploitation and financial predation when denouncing racism and promoting LBGTQ rights is much the safer way to burnish your halo?

Why not hide your head in the sand to avoid the discomfort of resisting the assault on the law if you are an officer of a Bar Association?  Why should a law school Dean or senior faculty stick his neck out when the Koch Bros are offering lush funding to establish Law & Economics programs that just happen to promote market fundamentalist principles? Why deny yourself 3 hours of golf on 333 occasions while President (Obama) even if there are serious, unresolved issues requiring your attention and reflection? 

If I have good reason to sublimate all this, why would I feel an instinct to empathize with the Common Man – the ordinary citizen? My status, my rank, do not depend on it. My financial well-being does not dictate it. To pose the question this way is to anticipate the convenient answer. 

These are the persons who should be stood up before the bar of History – because they knew better, should have known better, were expected to know better. 

We do know one thing for certain: When the “common man” dies, the America that the world marveled at for 250 years dies with him.

ADDENDUM

The disappearance of the Common Man from our public discourse is closely correlated with the autocratic trend visible in all our institutions. For when the ordinary person cum citizen becomes less and less salient in the mind’s eye of those who exercise power they are stripped of an honored place in the country’s imagery of itself. Disregard for a significant slice of the population ineluctably leads to a wider devaluing of the citizenship in general – thereby, paving the way for ruthless autocrats to seize and abuse power. These intertwined phenomena have facilitated the growing power of predatory finance, the denigration of government as the custodial agent of the collective good, the celebration of the billionaire class – and, ultimately, passivity in the face of the Trump assault on American constitutional democracy. 

The abuse of executive powers has become so pervasive as to be accepted as the norm. We experience it in organizations public and private – ranging from the Oval Office to elite universities* to charitable NGOs and foundations, and of course across the business world where the MBA mindset reigns. In this era of impunity, autocratic behavior is taken as a perquisite of office, if not indeed part of the job description.

A general condition of social nihilism entices and emboldens the willful who crave arbitrary power for its own sake. In short, when in America – the quintessential democratic society – power-seeking for its own sake becomes the prominent ethic, there is no space for either political egalitarianism or due respect for the lower ranks. In this setting, the ‘Common Man’ is not only invisible – but unwanted. 

Notes

* [The petty techno-authoritarians who preside over our universities exposed their hollow core in their abject, cringing surrender when the bigger bullies – mega-donors, trustees, the Trump gang – put the arm on them].