Wylie Greer takes issue with Nicholas Powers’ use of the parable of the Prodigal Son in an editorial for Democratic Left. 

In the Summer issue of the Democratic Socialists of America’s official organ, Democratic Left, an image caught my eye. The illustration accompanying “Lost in the Wilderness: Can the White Working Class Return Home?” by Nicholas Powers uses the Medieval marginalia style to show a modern retelling of the Parable of the Prodigal Son. The illustrator depicts said Prodigal Son, who has removed his MAGA hat in repentance, being embraced by his father. The article itself stood out no less than the art that accompanies it. The author argues for a controversial attitude towards Trump supporters: forgiveness. “We’re inheritors of a powerful empathy that can rescue others who are being trapped as we were” Powers’ writes, urging for socialists to welcome the Prodigal Son—the white working class—back with open arms.

As with any metaphor, Powers’ use of the Prodigal Son in this instance is not perfect. Thanks to my background, Biblical allusions are (somewhat unfortunately) well known to me. Because of this, something about this article became stuck in my craw. I agree with the instinct behind Powers’ argument, but feel that he does his own point of view a disservice by providing an analysis that lacks a proper understanding of the nature of the white working class, the nature of Trumpism, and the usefulness of the Parable of the Prodigal Son politically. I also have serious doubts about Powers’ use of the work of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. I will attempt to counter some commonly held myths that Powers accepts uncritically, and use the reality behind these myths to make an argument for a similar orientation, but with different tactics.

What is the White Working Class?

First off, a confession: I am white and Powers is not. For this reason, I do not intend to speak more authoritatively on race than Powers. In any event, I do not feel a need to do so. The section “Dividing the Inheritance” accurately and succinctly describes the origins and history of whiteness as follows: Whiteness, as a social construct, did not exist before the colonization of the Americas. Medieval Europeans were obviously not progressive antiracists, but their racism was often tied up in religion: a “black” Christian potentially had more rights than a “white” Jew. People of all skin colors could buy land and people of all skin colors could be indentured, although only non-Christians could be enslaved. Powers cites Nathaniel Bacon’s relatively interracial rebellion against the Governor of Virginia in 1675 as proof of this lack of strict racial division. But after this point, slavery and segregation become more and more institutionalized. Powers recounts how successive waves of European immigrants, Irish, Italian, Jewish, etc, endured a time of exclusion from whiteness before being inducted into the Prodigal fold. The post-WW2 boom and subsequent suburbanization allowed white American workers a degree of comfortable isolation from their black and brown fellow proletarians. But this honeymoon period is ending, and the combination of mechanization and globalization has left the white working-class staring down the barrel of further and further immiseration. As Powers puts it, “the Prodigal Son has no future.”

This is a relatively uncontroversial overview of the history of the white proletariat in America. I doubt many socialists would disagree with Powers’ “rise and fall of the white middle class” theory, which is the crux of this section. This understanding of the white working-class—white European/Jewish laborers who got the most out of the post-WW2 New Deal state—is an accurate one, and will be used in this article going forward. This, I should note, excludes white Hispanic working-class people but I will leave arguments about the relationship of race and ethnicity with regards to Latinx individuals aside for now, as this is not a group Powers is primarily focused on. I must also note that Bacon’s Rebellion, while generally plebeian in outlook, was stridently anti-Native American. My assessment of this section is in the main, so far, so good. It is not until the next section, “The Moral See-Saw,” that I truly begin to worry about Powers’ analysis.

White Politics vs Working-Class Politics

Powers combines the history laid out above with two strong claims to support his orientation. First, that “Many white voters cling to the grievance politics he [Trump] stoked” and second, that “In the 2020 election, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won just enough of the white working class to tilt the scales.” These claims require some exploration. 

The second claim is mostly correct. It is true that Biden did noticeably better than Hillary with white, non-college-educated male voters, while still losing overall to Trump. However, Biden did worse with non-college-educated white women.¹ Still, as I believe Powers would agree based on his analysis of the New Deal and Great Society projects, one’s level of college education neither absolutely confers nor precludes proletarian status. Biden outperformed Trump with voters from a family making less than $100,000 per year (74% of voters) and with voters who felt that their economic situation was worse/the same since 2016 (59% of voters).² Trump won the white vote in almost every category, yes, but Biden easily beat Trump overall among working-class people who voted.

As for people who are Trump supporters, one thing is clear: they are overwhelmingly not working-class. According to the New York Times, Trump won 72% of voters whose economic situation has improved (41% of voters) and 78% of people who thought that the economy was doing well (49% of voters).³ Considering how badly the COVID pandemic affected the US economy, putting thousands upon thousands out of a job or on the street, I doubt it was mainly working-class people who, no matter their race, thought that the economy was working for them. 

The petty bourgeoisie, not disaffected coal miners or ex-factory workers, made up Trump’s political base. 40% of small business owners consider themselves Republicans while only 29% consider themselves Democrats. Over 50% of small business owners consider themselves to be conservative overall, with 67% considering themselves conservative on economic issues, according to one survey by the National Small Business Association.⁴ Among Republican small business owners, it should not be surprising to hear that fidelity to Trump is a given, with 90% believing that he understands and supports small businesses. The opinions of small business owners also have an outsized impact on politics at the local, state, and national level. 79% of small business owners have been in personal, direct contact with their representatives, with 35% confident that their representative knows who they are. No less than 60% of small business owners have contacted representatives at a local, state, and national level, on both political and non-political matters.⁵ This group, which is overwhelmingly though not exclusively white, is the Trump base.

But if Trump’s base is petty bourgeois and overall less white than 2016, and the Democrats are of course a mixed bag of workers and bosses, what are the politics of the working class at the moment? The truth lies in the most damning statistic of the entire 2020 election: families making less than $100,000 a year made up 85% of non-voters in 2020.⁶ This is down from 91% in 2016, but overall political apathy, rather than grievance politics, seems to be the prevailing force in the working class. Most white working-class people are not Trump supporters, they are apolitical.

So the demographic that we are meant to be specifically targeting for forgiveness is something only approaching 15% of the adult population. Not a small number to be sure, but it is overwhelmed by the apolitical working class and the Democratic working class. I feel that perhaps Powers’ opinion would have been better served by the Parable of the Lost Sheep, just a few verses earlier in the Gospel of Luke. In it, Jesus says:

“Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulder and rejoices… Just so, I tell you there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who need no repentance.” Luke, 15:4-7 N.R.S.V.

This is a very Christlike approach to personal affairs, but perhaps not one very applicable in politics. 

The Repentant Son

This leads us to a further problem with the use of the Parable of the Prodigal Son as a metaphor for contemporary American politics. As quoted at the beginning of this piece, the Prodigal Son, before returning, realizes his mistakes on his own, repents his actions, and is ready to make amends. Afterward, as the story goes, he returns to his father, who then accepts him with open arms and does not punish his wayward child. Again, this is all very Christlike, but is it useful politically? Two implications of the Parable of the Prodigal Son make it particularly ill-suited to the socialist movement. 

The first and most obvious implication is that we must be willing to accept ex-reactionaries into our movement openly, without necessarily requiring any change in beliefs or motivations. This can lead to a sort of workerism/economism, where because the working class is our constituency, its goals and beliefs (or perceived goals and beliefs) are necessarily our own, regardless of if they are actually socialist. This is not what Powers wants or expects from the DSA. Some degree of ideological commitment to social justice and socialism are expected of ex-Trump converts, as is expressed by his insistence that the Prodigal Son must apologize. But the point of the Parable is that he didn’t actually have to apologize, nor did he have to make such amends, which leaves the door open for reformism, class reductionism, and even “socially right, economically left” nonsense politics. This in turn will alienate LGBTQ+ workers and workers of color, leaving our movement as stunted and impotent as it was when it fell victim to the neoliberal turn in the 1970s-80s.

The second implication is that even if we do expect the white working class to come around to socialism and social justice, it is something they must do on their own, without outside interference. Again, the parallels to economism and workerism are strong, as the influence of socialists on the working class is presented as subversive rather than educational. Such skepticism of open socialist agitation and organizing within the movement today is a serious threat. Those that want DSA to remain a mere pressure group that rides the coattails of the popular liberal movement of the day would wholeheartedly endorse this opposition to worker agitation. As has been noted by many since the rise of economism, there is “something absurd about the position… that ‘a socialist must not talk to the worker mass about socialism’.”⁷

Of course, that is probably not Powers’ intent. He may very well believe that a degree of outreach is necessary, but workerism and a kind of anti-intellectualism are still present in the article. He claims that a “fetishizing of elite political jargon” has brought about disgust with the white working-class that “saturates colleges and bookstores.” There have always been those paradoxical critics, typically academic, who charge socialists with not being truly of the working class. The idea that there are no-no words that immediately turn off a worker’s brain is far more elitist than using terms like ‘proletarian’ or ‘means of production’. While there are of course academic Marxists who only interpret the world in different ways and who forget that the point is to change it, to throw the baby out with the bathwater would condemn our movement to a Sisyphean repetition of failed tactics. 

The Shadow of Liberalism

Powers’ deference to the present consciousness of the unorganized working class makes sense when paired with his repeated use of the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. Haidt used to identify as a “partisan liberal” but since 2009 he has set himself up in opposition to the smug liberal intelligentsia who, let’s be honest, we all love to hate. This does not mean he is a socialist, however, but instead an ‘enlightened,’ non-partisan centrist, who “sees the left and right as yin and yang, each contributing insights to which the other should listen.” Haidt’s ideology assumes that conservative appeals to authority and morality need to be compromised with, if not outright courted by liberals, because they come from ‘natural’ impulses. Haidt doesn’t expect liberals to become Southern Baptists, but he does expect them to make “more than symbolic” concessions in the fields of “family and assimilation.” These are dog whistles that should ring loudly in any socialist’s ear. 

Haidt is the perfect figure for the Prodigal Son approach to working-class politics. It requires white workers to change nothing about themselves except to switch their allegiance, while we socialists must compromise our own beliefs and feel ashamed of our righteous anger at the capitalist system. Haidt encourages us to feel love, not disgust, but according to his own beliefs this is a paradoxical request, as love and disgust look different to different people. To take the advice of this vapid centrist would be to reject the most basic foundations of our movement. The solution to the admittedly real problem of liberal moralizing cannot be a different form of moralizing that centers the supposed natural opinions of a section of the proletariat. Rather, we must develop Marxist answers to the many complex questions of contemporary capitalist society that are in accord with the long-term interests of the proletariat as a whole. 

Conclusion

Forgiveness has never been easy for the polemic-loving socialist movement, and we come by it honestly. Some of Marx and Engels’ more “problematic” comments come from their polemics, and the Marxists of later generations have carried on that legacy, from Second International through to Twitter. We must appreciate Powers’ insistence on forgiveness as introducing a vital and missing quality, both in comradely debate, and the movement as a whole. If we are to build a mass movement in the coming years, as we must to overthrow the capitalist and imperialist order, we will need to have a good deal of grace for those who do not match up one-to-one with our ideas. But this grace must be an internal one for committed socialists dedicated to making the world a better place. If we extend that grace to reactionaries, business owners, or liberals, we risk losing everything for someone who will have no such forgiveness for us. 

Much of this discussion is admittedly moot. The Trump supporters in the white working-class are not running into the arms of DSA. Ultimately, we know that history is on our side, we know that the working class of all countries can unite. When eventually, “all that is solid melts into air, all that is sacred is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind” that little minority of white workers who supported Trump may very well ask to join us, and then a powerful empathy may come in handy. But until that day comes, we cannot leave the other ninety-nine sheep in the wilderness to find the one, we cannot keep waiting for the Prodigal Son to come home, we need clear ideas and orientations now.

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1. “Behind Biden’s 2020 Victory.” Pew Research Center – U.S. Politics & Policy. June 30, 2021. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/06/30/behind-bidens-2020-victory
2. “National Exit Polls: How Different Groups Voted.” The New York Times. November 03, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/exit-polls-president.html.
3. Ibid.
4. National Small Business Association. (2020). 2020 Politics of Small Business Survey [Data set]. National Small Business Association. https://nsba.biz/research/.
5. Ibid.
6. Pew Research Center.
7. Lih, Lars T., and V. I. Lenin. Lenin Rediscovered: What Is to Be Done? in Context. Haymarket Books, 2008, 287.