Massive Inequality Is a “Concerted Elite Class Project,” Says Heather Gautney https://truthout.org/articles/massive-inequality-is-a-concerted-elite-class-project-says-heather-gautney By Derek Seidman , TRUTHOUT. February 4, 2023
It’s no accident that inequalities have widened under entrenched corporate power, says sociologist Heather Gautney.
In this exclusive interview with Truthout, Gautney discusses how both Democrats and Republicans allied with corporate elites to create today’s neoliberal order and its concerted project of elite class rule, the dangers of ignoring the working class, and how we might organize toward a more egalitarian order.
I try to show that the Republican and Democratic parties basically operate as a political establishment based on a general consensus around the neoliberal economic order — divesting from public institutions and privatizing them, giving corporations the freest hand possible, disabling working-class institutions like unions, and so on. I try to demonstrate that Democrats have participated in creating and sustaining this order as much as the Republicans have.
Republicans obviously swing much further to the right and are not afraid to be autocratic. Democrats are more technocratic. It wasn’t that long ago that Joe Biden was on the Senate floor talking about how we have to reduce Social Security and Medicare because we can’t increase the deficit.