perfidy

Buckethead wrote that, "Considering the vast expansion of the investor class, ironically one of Marx' dearest hope - that the proletariat would own the means of production, has kind of happened." 

Even though this was an off-hand remark, I'm still going to comment. As I've argued before, the world has changed a great deal since the mid-late nineteenth century. At this point, in the United States, there are very few urban industrial workers involved in manufacturing thanks to globalization, environmental restrictions, the shortsightedness of unions in the 1950s and 1960s, and other factors. Workers, and members of the working class, are now overwhelmingly people involved in the service sector. They are waiters, busboys, pizza deliverers, janitors, auto mechanics, grocery store personnel, etc. They, and educated, therefore technically middle class people, who nonetheless have a low income such as archivists, adjunct professors, and the like, do not have excess capital for investment.

Investors, on the other hand, are overwhelmingly middle and upper income middle and upper class people who, while they work, are involved in white-collar office, financial, business, and other professions. Workers are wage-workers. They don't have salaries. They have no capital for investment, they are not investors, therefore, the workers, overall, do not kind of own the means of production. 

There are and have been manufacturing plants, and some other businesses, that are employee owned, but they are few and far between. They also have a tendency to go under since the white-collar types would sooner buy cheaper goods made in other countries where operating costs are lower due to a lack of minimum wage, fewer, if any, environmental restrictions, etc. Hence, globalization rears its ugly head to defeat employee owned businesses in the United States. But back to the aforementioned workers in the first paragraph, janitors do not own the businesses they clean. Busboys and waitstaff do not own the restaurant. Auto mechanics do not usually own the shop, but are rather employed by it. Therefore, it is not fair to say that the workers even kind of own the means of production. The vast majority of wealth and the means of production that exist, in whatever form, are largely concentrated at the top of the pyramid. Besides, Marx prophesied total worker ownership of the means of production, and society is very far away from that. 

Anti-Irish-Americanism in the Ivory Tower 

In case anyone is interested, I'll explain the presence of anti-Irish-Americanism within American ethnic history. Since the 1960s, with the birth of new social history, American ethnic history became a heavily studied field. As such, Irish Americans have historically been the whipping boy of American ethnic history. For example, Oscar Handlin in Boston's Immigrants painted the Irish as racist, mean-spirited, and money-grubbing. Hasia Diner in "Erin's Daughters in America" painted Irish immigrant women as insane, perpetually drunk, and morally bankrupt. Irish men were painted as drunken wife beaters who often abandoned their families. Noel Ignatiev in "How the Irish Became White," argued that Irish-Americans, get this, entirely and consciously made an effort to become white by hating and mistreating African-Americans. The notion of an entire ethnic group consciously and totally making an effort to do anything is absurd. Did all the Irish in America get together at a caucus and unanimously vote to become white? I'd like to see the minutes of that meeting. The whole whiteness concept is equally absurd, but perhaps that's a post for another time. 

Other historians not even dealing with Irish-American topics nevertheless can't resist taking a swipe at American ethnic history's favorite target. Deborah Dash Moore, in "To the Golden Cities," chronicling primarily Jewish migration from New York to Miami Beach and from Chicago to California, quoted several people who felt they just had to get out of Boston because of Father Coughlin. He lived in Detroit. How was he a threat in Boston? According to Moore, each and every Irish-American in Boston was a raging anti-Semite who worshipped Father Coughlin. Robert Orsi, in "The Madonna of 115th Street," claimed that Irish Americans dominated the Catholic Church and virulently hated Italian Americans for being such bad Catholics. Hence, Irish Americans are evil. By the way, Irish Americans were always virulently conservative in their political views according to many ethnic historians, who argue that conservatism makes them evil. I'm sure Buckethead will enjoy that. But, these historians say, you'll never find, say, a socialist or even an MADL Irish American. They're like Santa Claus. 

But, Mike, you might ask, why aren't the WASPs hated and reviled by American ethnic historians? Simple. When the parents or grandparents of many historians arrived in the United States, they never saw any WASPs. The Irish, however, as previous arrivals, occupied many foreman and floor management positions in industry, and therefore created closer quarters and opportunities for conflict. Many Irish-Americans not of the middle class were also in very close quarters with the new immigrants of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 

But there's something deeper here. New social historians have glorified and lauded the actions of reformist WASPs, such as Jane Adams, while failing to recognize that those reformists were attempting to forcibly assimilate their grandparents. But the new social historians still just can't get enough of those temperance/abstinence advocating, evangelizing, criticizing progressives. No, no. The progressives were great. Irish Americans, according to the aforementioned and other historians, were more evil than Satan himself. 

Is all this criticism fair? No. Particularly because the strokes are so broad. Of course there are Irish Americans who are racist. But what American ethnic group is utterly devoid of racism right down to every member? Are other groups entirely devoid of anti-Semitism? My mother used to tell me there's good and bad in all kinds. Apparently, other American ethnic historians weren't paying attention when their mother told them that.