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Katherine Dolan's avatar

Great stuff!

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Feral Finster's avatar

"Class is not a useful framework for understanding the two party system in the US. This is not intended as a jab at Marx, class consciousness, or anything of the sort, just a remark on its relevance. The Democrats and Republicans were not founded on a class basis, do not operate on a class basis, and their political ideology isn’t class based."

I disagree. Team D is the political manifestation of the class consciousness of the Prfessional Manager Class, with various grievance groups as junior partners. Lanyard people. Email jobs.

Team R plays a similar role with regard to Local Gentry, with white evanglicals as their sidekicks. That guy who inherited or bought his dad's muffler shop and parlayed that into a regional chain of muffler shops. Patrick Wyman describes the type well.

In this, their historical antecedents were the Whigs and Tories in the UK.

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