The Plight of the U.S. Working Class

Modern capitalism, sociologist Max Weber famously observed early in the twentieth century, is based on the rational capitalistic organization of free labor. This was in accordance with the argument advanced in Karl Marx's Capital. Since the vast majority of individuals in the capitalist system are divorced from the means of production they have no other way to survive but to sell their labor power to those who own these means, that is, the members of the capitalist class. The unemployed, the underemployed, and those with only tenuous holds on their jobs, constitute the reserve army of labor, necessary to the functioning of capitalism. The decline in circumstances of workers in the US goes back to long before the Great Recession -- to capital's concern over the upsurge of labor militancy following the Second World War, specifically a wave of strikes in 1946. In the aftermath of the Great Financial Crisis, and the rise of the Tea Party as a right-wing adjunct to the Republican Parry, the assault on workers intensified still further. Adapted from the source document.