Reversing the Proletarianization of American Workers and Its Negative Political and Cultural Consequences

Jon Wisman

No 2026-01, Working Papers from American University, Department of Economics

Abstract: It is commonplace for contemporary American politicians to characterize as ideal the values prevalent during the early US Republic, ignoring that many critical socio-economic conditions that undergirded those values longer ago ceased to exist. Those conditions were radically altered during post-Civil War industrialization as increasing members of American society lacked independent status as owners in control of the resources and tools with which they worked. They were forced to work for others, suffer the humiliation of being bossed about, and the threat of unemployment. This degrading of work weakened democratic values, eroded community, transformed the household, and gave rise to the consumer culture that so irked Thorstein Veblen. This article, after examining the nature of work in pre-industrial America, addresses the subsequent process of proletarianization. It then details how the debasement of work transformed political values, weakened communities, altered the household, and steered worker families to increasingly seek status through consumption rather than through work and community, thereby eventually threatening environmental devastation. The final section addresses how two reforms – guaranteeing employment at living wages with reskilling where necessary and implementing measures to extend freedom and democracy into the workplace – could enable the U.S. to recapture the security, worker freedom, and community that pre-dated industrialization. These reforms are necessary for preserving democracy and avoiding ecological Armageddon. The political feasibility of these two reforms is that they would preserve capitalism, retaining its two most fundamental social institutions of private property and markets, albeit without exploitation and degraded work.

Keywords: Debased labor; political values; guaranteed employment; workplace democracy. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E21 E44 G01 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-hme, nep-pke and nep-pol
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