Contemporary American politics at this stage in the 21st century has become increasingly differentiated from what came before in the past two, three or four decades. No longer is the political-economic discourse rigidly defined by an “American Left” pivoted toward “Socially Liberal, Economically Nationalist” standpoints and an “American Right” fixated on “Socially Conservative, Economically Liberal” ones. That was the old consensus, which emerged post-1945 during the Cold War, and later became solidified in the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s. Everything depended on some mutual points of agreement within the broader Democratic-Republican Party, whose Factions were dispersed across two political parties and whose leadership relied on a technocratic bureaucracy within Corporate America and the Federal Government. The old post-1945 order began to become unraveled in the 2000s and is continuing to be disintegrated, even as it threatens the integrity of the Empire of Liberty, that international world order which gave birth to that consensus through two World Wars.
What follows now is an ongoing existential crisis within both the American Right and the American Left that is commensurate with the signs of a political realignment. On the American Right, the abandonment of the Reagan Revolution and the values which it stood for. The contemptible hesitance, if not outright refusal, of deploying Federal power for its own aims is now off the table in today’s American Right. This coincides with a newfound interest in an “Economically Nationalist, Socially Conservative” outlook that has yet to consolidate into something coherent, let alone widespread in everyday discourse. Conversely, the American Left is struggling to differentiate itself from disaffected Liberals who find themselves and the world order which they had created in the last century besieged. It has yet to overcome the issues of identity politics in order to create a genuine working-class politics. If enough of the American Left and the American Right are in favor of establishing an alternative political-economic order that reverses whatever transpired in the past century, then that has yet to be made a reality.
These are no longer questions of ‘who’, ‘when’ and ‘where’ insofar as the desire for genuine, lasting change in America is continuing to manifest itself in nearly every facet of everyday life, from how the Federal Government views America and its geopolitical position relative to the rest of the world to how individual Americans interact with each other. Decades-old discontentment and dissatisfaction, which found themselves relegated to distant, obscure corners of the World Wide Web, have been boiling over into the Real World offline for years now. Today, the questions of the day are now matters of ‘what’, ‘how’ and ‘why’.
What sort of new political-economic order deserves to be created for an America that must prioritize the interests of the American people as a Totality, an America that must exist as one among many great powers? How would that new political-economic order come about? And why should this new political-economic order assume the forms described?
The questions which I had raised were brought to my attention after reading two articles on Substack: Erike Torenberg’s “What is left? What is right?” and Thomas Zimmer’s “Rightwing Dreams of American Reconquista.” The authors of both Substack articles have very different perspectives on the emerging trends in US politics. Although I may not necessarily agree with everything posited by Torenberg and Zimmer, I still feel that they are valid ones that deserve mention here.
Torenberg’s piece continues a discussion begun in another article he wrote from 2022, “Class Divides and Political Realignments.” In a post-1945 America where the US National Educational System has grown up alongside the US Military-Industrial Complex, the old class distinctions of “wealthy Bourgeoisie” and “downtrodden Proletariat” have taken on technocratic and credentialist dimensions, fitting neatly with my suspicions regarding US manufacturing and the Death of Bretton Woods. Today’s Bourgeoisie is not only wealthy, but also possessing contradictory sentiments from the 1960s Counterculture, and reaped the most benefits from having a technocratic background by 1980s and 1990s. Since the Death of Bretton Woods in the 1970s, so much of America’s economic growth is not coming from the usual Natural (mining, harvesting and mineral refining), Manufacturing, and Services Sectors. Rather, it has come from developments in technologies that were of immense significance to the Fractional-Reserve Banking System, the Financial Markets, and the Real Estate Market. Here, the Bourgeois power of “STEM” (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) becomes apparent, even though so much of the developments at play involved the “T” and “E” to the exclusion of “S” and “M” in STEM.
The result of those trends has led to the well-intended emergence of a new Proletariat, who either lacked the interest and aptitude in STEM or lacked the required backgrounds to enter Professions which benefited the most from STEM-related advancements since the Death of Bretton Woods. This includes people who apprenticed in one of the various trades, older Americans who did not attend university between the 1970s and 1990s, and others who studied in the social sciences and the humanities.
This new Bourgeoisie is the “Third Estate of the 21st century,” the new Proletariat the “Fourth Estate of the 21st century.” Because of their backgrounds, the new Third Estate became compelled to concentrate themselves in specific parts of the US, their gentrification driving out the new Fourth Estate who could never keep up with them. Class status is now defined by whether somebody is either part of the technocratic bureaucracy that permeates both Public and Private Sectors or whether they are a beneficiary of that same technocratic bureaucracy. Beyond the obvious disparities in terms of the possession of Kapital, less obvious is the cultural and social disparities that come with two Americas living in one Union as US citizens. It has gotten to the point where one could argue that the new Bourgeoisie and the new Proletariat are engaged in a genuine Class Struggle under the cover of a perpetual “Culture War” that had less to do with issues like “Abortion” or “Gay Marriage.” Rather, it has everything to do with America’s increasingly strained relationships with Technology and Nature.
It is significant that the new Third Estate had succeeded in reconciling the Socially Liberal and Economically Liberal tendencies of the 1960s Counterculture, which culminated in the Political Liberal consensus that began under the Reagan Presidency. Here, all of the manifestations of Neoliberalism are plain to see for anyone who never adhered to the political, economic and socio-cultural aspects of it from the perspectives of any Ideology at odds with Neoliberalism. It then follows that whoever opposes that consensus cannot be in favor of either one of that Fusionist trinity. Thus, the new Fourth Estate has found itself adopting Socially Conservative and Economically Nationalist or Economically Socialist perspectives. The political aspect of what will come after Neoliberalism, what continues to perplex after all these years, has yet to be determined.
The fact that the political aspect remains indeterminate can account for why there has been persistent anxieties about America descending into some kind of Authoritarianism. For Zimmer, the fear is that either another Trump Presidency or another Republican-controlled Presidency will lay the groundwork for an American Authoritarianism that may or may not be unprecedented. Given the American Right’s ongoing interest in gradually adopting working class positions, people like Zimmer cannot help but wonder if the outcome will lead to a kind of “Social Fascism,” where something like “Social-Democracy” gets imbued with Reactionary features. Of course, “Social Fascism” was about as rhetorical as “Red Fascism” or “Brown Communism.” It was never meant to be taken literally as an actual Ideology.
But even then, I still feel that Zimmer may be correct in being concerned about the recent trends on the American Right. If people like him are correct that there is growing interest in Authoritarianism on the American Right, then such interest cannot be allowed to devolve into an excuse to hold onto the old political-economic order. The old political-economic order, given its history throughout the 20th century, was predicated on the idea that the Political Liberalism was understood embody a Parliamentary or Representative Democracy. Unfortunately, as Zimmer pointed out in his own article, there are still too many on the American Right who do not care about the Fourth Estate and would prefer exploiting their genuine resentments and grievances for their own self-interests.
As long as there are elements of the American Right still open to the adoption of working-class political discourse, any hope of seeking common cause with supportive elements of the American Left will be opposed by others from their respective milieus. Not everyone on the American Right is going to openly condone an Economically Socialist pivot nor will everyone on the American Left likewise tolerate a Socially Conservative pivot. There are still plenty of Economic Liberals on the American Right and plenty of Social Liberals on the American Left.
Therefore, it stands to reason whatever form the new political-economic order might assume, these “Economically Socialist and Socially Conservative” elements of the American Right and American Left must eventually realize that they are part of a much older political tradition. They shall not fall back on the old order, nor shall they let their Economically and Socially Liberal colleagues from the Third Estate manipulate and exploit them. Instead, they must work together as the new Fourth Estate in the interests of establishing a new political-economic order for America (and perhaps the rest of the Western world, assuming this Empire of Liberty continues to hold out).
The future, as it stands, remains bright for those particular elements of the American Right and American Left. Having spent ten years of my life watching them grow up in the 2010s and enter the early stages of maturity in the 2020s, I am confident they are bound to achieve something meaningful in the next ten to thirty years, if not more. While I cannot predict exactly what the future holds, let alone what will be the Political to the Economically Socialist and Socially Conservative, I remain steadfast that it will be neither Left nor Right as well as neither Authoritarian nor Parliamentary.
Categories: Philosophy
The Fourth Estate 
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