Labor Day Reflections on “The Working Hypothesis”
The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown the precariousness of the American worker into stark relief. Last week a survey found 43% of Americans are concerned about job security and 44% are worried about being able to pay their bills. Congressional renewal of the $600 per week in emergency unemployment benefits that expired on July 31 would certainly help ease the strain while the economy recovers. But emergency relief and a return to economic normalcy, assuming it comes sooner or later, will not alleviate the fundamental problems facing American workers. So long as we let these underlying problems fester, we are jeopardizing the health of civil society and, in turn, our democracy.
Oren Cass, a conservative political economist, has thrown a harsh spotlight on the top-heavy unsteadiness of the American economy, even before the pandemic throttled a decade of expansion. Cass served as domestic policy director for Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign. Struck by the contradictions between conservative economic orthodoxy and the well-being of workers, Cass wrote The Once and Future Worker: A Vision for the Renewal of Work in America. Earlier this year, Cass launched American Compass, an innovative virtual think tank. Its mission is “to restore an economic consensus that emphasizes the importance of family, community, and industry to the nation’s liberty and prosperity.”
The launch of American Compass was a noteworthy event for two reasons. First, Cass and his colleagues reject the free-market fundamentalism, celebration of GDP growth, and trickle-down theories that have long dominated right-of-center thinking on the economy and labor market. Second, American Compass has become a hub for a wide range of public figures holding permutations of these heterodox views, not least U.S. Senators Marco Rubio and Josh Hawley.
At the heart of the alternative vision for the economy is what Cass has termed the working hypothesis: “that a labor market in which workers can support strong families and communities is the central determinant of long-term prosperity and should be the central focus of public policy.”
The hypothesis points to the need for substantial shifts and different trade-offs in multiple policy domains, e.g., environmental regulation, education, immigration, collective bargaining, taxes, and social services. I won’t delve into the specifics of Cass’s proposed remedies now but encourage you to read his book so you can reckon with their comprehensive sweep.
What I do want to reflect on here, given our focus at The Art of Association, are the connections between pro-labor market policies, civil society, and democracy. As Cass goes on to note right after he introduces his hypothesis,
“Alongside stable political institutions that protect basic freedoms, family and community provide the social structures necessary to a thriving society and growing economy. Those institutions in turn rely on a foundation of productive work through which people find purpose and satisfaction in providing for themselves and helping others. The durable growth that produces long-term prosperity is the emergent property of a virtuous cycle in which people who are able to support their families and communities improve their own productivity and raise a subsequent generation able to accomplish even more. Conversely, without access to work that can support them, families struggle to remain intact or to form in the first place; and communities cannot help but dissolve; without stable families and communities, economic opportunity vanishes.”
This perspective raises four points those of us concerned with the state of civil society and democracy can often forget. First, the working hypothesis restores stable families and healthy communities to their rightful place as the essential foundations for the generation of social capital and a vibrant civil society. Programs and services funded by government or philanthropy and delivered by nonprofit organizations can complement and support but never replace the building blocks of family and community. The presumption we can prosper as a society in the absence of these basic units amounts to trickle-down sociology as off-base as its economic counterpart. And as Cass notes, productive work supports and, in turn, is supported by families and communities. We need all three legs of the stool.
Second, the working hypothesis reminds us that we are not merely consumers. To flourish as human beings, we need to be – and be recognized as – producers capable of performing work that benefits others, our families, and communities. And the exercise of our human agency as economic producers leads to the development of leadership skills, social networks, community ties, and future-oriented perspectives that make for better citizens. We are prone to think too narrowly of citizenship as something learned in civics class and practiced through voting and perhaps by volunteering or joining the occasional protest. As Harry Boyte has pointed out, we also learn how to exercise our human agency and have the need and opportunity to be good citizens in our productive capacities at work.
Third, on a related note, the working hypothesis shows we must reimagine the role that organizations serving the interests of workers can and should play in civil society. The highly adversarial and heavily regulated model of union organizing and collective bargaining established during the labor strife of the 1930s is increasingly obsolete. Cass and his colleagues at American Compass have just launched a new initiative to make the conservative case for giving workers a better seat at the table with managers, owners, and political leaders. They envision new types of labor organizations—cooperatives and works councils—to help bring this about. And they note the potential payoffs for civil society and democracy: “well-functioning private-sector worker organizations are vital mediating institutions for establishing stronger bonds among workers, facilitating mutual aid, and affording meaningful participation in the public square.”
Finally, while the working hypothesis highlights the need for a concerted effort to secure the economic well-being of the nation’s laborers, it also underscores we are all in this together. Professionals who shower before work and workers who shower when they come home all hold the same important office, on an equal footing – that of Citizen. As such, we all have a claim to share in the nation’s prosperity and shape its future. We have a corresponding claim to government that respects and responds to the needs of our productive capacities, families, and communities, be they in Manhattan, Menlo Park, Flint, or Paducah. We lose sight of this truth, as I would argue both political parties have in recent decades, at our peril.
