Scoring the U.S. Working Class
At FocaalBlog, Don Nonini considers the pandemic as a turning point for the U.S. working class in the context of digitalization, which is increasingly converging with expropriation:
Working-class people in the United States are now at a turning point – whether to compliantly return to the pre-Covid conditions capital set for them, or to shift toward a new militancy toward capitalism. Now, two years into the pandemic, they have suffered severe personal hardships due to Covid-related illness, hospitalizations and deaths, and sudden loss of employment. These traumas have occurred even as they have experienced an historically unprecedented hiatus of relative economic security, given the Covid-related payments and protections they received from the US state, while many have been praised as "essential workers."