How the American Public Lost its Power
Written by Jim Allen | Edited by Ari, Blue, and Maggot
Published July 18th, 2025
Our Lost Power
Do you have power? Does your community? Do you, your neighbors, or your efforts combined have any ability to sway what any government imposes on you?
You don’t. Not under the current system.
Two political science professors, Gilens & Page, performed a study on the average citizen’s power and found that “when a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose”. We live in an era of unprecedented economic inequality and political disillusionment among the majority in the United States. The top 10% of earners own 70% of the nation’s wealth while the bottom 50% own only 2.5%, yet the prominent thought among the majority is that economics is entirely detached from politics and political participation appears to have no benefit to anyone’s livelihood or financial status.
Our economic and political weakness is not a product of a single recession or market trend; it is a historical inevitability of capitalism. One easily translatable manifestation of this idea is the 1980s presidency of Ronald Reagan. Reagan cut deep, leaving a sizable scar on the economic livelihood of the American people. In doing so, he made substantial progress in manufacturing consent to further cut down the economy, a common mindset that deteriorates working class power and proves to be as dangerous an adversary as the policies themselves.
This article is not just some desperate grasp at the past in an attempt to figure out how we ended up here. I’m calling for you to join me against the forces, the leaders, the damage, and the mindset that has stayed strong and evolves into something all the more deadly under Trump, whose administration is a not-too-distant cousin of the actions and ideas of Reagan. Through this study, we begin to understand the political and economic origins of an ideology that many have unknowingly consented to. As you read, ask yourself this question: how much further down the rabbit hole can we go before it’s too late?
I - How Did We End Up Here? Hegemonic Neoliberalism.
What is hegemonic neoliberalism? Hegemony is a theory developed by Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist who was imprisoned by Benito Mussolini during his early fascist reign of terror, and spent most his life in prison studying, writing, and developing social theory. Hegemony, as defined in Anthony DiMaggio’s article on class-consciousness, “refers to the power of [elites] to exercise ‘leadership’ over the public via the construction of public support for capitalism”. Gramsci’s theory of hegemony claims that most struggle has been neutered as the oppressive ruling elite has achieved the consent of the mass working populace, thus disabling them from engaging in conflict. This replaces the need to obtain consent by way of violence or coercion. We often like to think that the violence and oppression of the past is gone. Instead, it’s worse–we’ve begun to accept it so blindly that we don’t even need to be threatened to be held captive.
Neoliberalism, defined here by David Harvey in his A Brief History of Neoliberalism, is “a theory of political economic practices that proposes…liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms…characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade”. It is an ideology exalting the free-market, corporate bailouts, and little-to-no regulation, offering up support and tax cuts to the rich while paying for it with whatever the poor had to lose. Neoliberalism is one aspect of the abstract beast we call capitalism, so the definition may feel familiar. Neoliberalism is the economic hand of capitalism that writhes its way into every nook and cranny of society.
We currently see the outcome of a politically complacent and consenting people where inciting change and working towards a better society becomes an insurmountable obstacle. In order to secure the rights, power, and economic stability of the majority, we must sever the people’s connection to hegemonic neoliberalism.
II - The Beast Manifested
Our focus here is on getting better at noticing how neoliberalism and neoliberal policies produce hegemony in the American public. We see this in our collective depoliticization: politics ignored, avoided, and considered pointless. Neoliberal policy, mainly consisting of screwing over the poor, uplifting the rich, and tearing down any structures capable of reversing it, leaves us defenseless, powerless, and docile, accepting all the suffering that comes our way. Looking at Reagan's presidency allows us to see this in action.
Reagan said, “Either you will control your government, or government will control you.” This rhetoric used during Reagan’s campaign or administration served to invoke a feeling of power within the American people. By consenting to Reagan’s anti-government rhetoric, and thus his ideology (hegemony), one could achieve true freedom and liberation via the parallel liberation of markets and corporations (neoliberalism). People, often privileged or thinking they could be, admired this sentiment, as we often see today with Trump supporters. And they, all the while, ironically consent to the epitome of government–the President–who quite willingly used that power to bail out corporations, spitting in the face of anybody who thought they might be allowed in on this ‘freedom’.
In Reagan’s first few months in office he laid off over 11,000 striking air traffic controllers. By the end of his administration, union recognition elections had gone down from 1700 elections to 750, and union recognition victories from 750 victories to 250; all this at a point where unions were showing face as an essential tool of working class power. Josiah Mayberry’s article on Reagan and Reaganomics explains, at length, the necessity of Unions. Unions “were and are instrumental for giving workers bargaining power against corporate interests”.
As Mayberry posits, when unions were stronger prior to the 1980s, productivity post World War II increased 118.4% and compensation increased 107.5%. However, from Reagan’s administration till now, productivity has only risen 64.6% while compensation has risen a meager 17.3% over practically the same time interval. Before his administration, the top bracket income tax rate (tax for the rich) was at 73%, peaking at 90% a few years before–this being the golden age many old-timers harken back to. After his administration, the top bracket income tax rate dropped to around 30%.
Reagan’s reign was immensely harmful to both working class power and the basic livelihoods of the average American. This damage, combined with Reagan’s rhetoric and policy, proved to be almost inescapable in the following decades. Jacinda Swanson highlights this inescapability in her article on the depoliticization of the economy stating that although we “believe that the political system is captured by big economic interests”, we still think that capitalism is the best economic system in the world.
Through Reagan’s neoliberal policies of cutting taxes, destroying unions, mass privatization, de-regulation, and monopolization, the American working class suffered major losses to its political power, most of all the manufacture of consent to the very policies robbing them of their power. They lost their democratic workers' power present in unions, lost control over once public spaces and services replaced by rampant and unregulated privatization, and became consumed by an economic game of survival where threatening the status quo meant threatening what little they had. Anthony DiMaggio adds that “As more Americans are left behind economically, their interest in politics may be depressed due to perceptions that the system does not represent their needs”. Politics is not a game worth playing for the average worker. You are one of those people being consumed by an economic game of survival. You are the worker being trampled on. All of this has created a complacent majority, and understandably so.
Rather than a struggle from people who are genuinely engaged and combatting oppressors, there is complacency, political apathy, or apoliticism, and thus no mass mobilization against the oppressing ruling elite.
III - Out of the Rabbit Hole
We now understand how Reagan’s neoliberal policies disempowered the American working class and manufactured consent to neoliberalism as the prevailing hegemonic ideology, thus digging a deep grave from which workers’ power can’t climb out of. However, hegemonic neoliberalism and Reagan are not specific demons we’re fighting. Understanding them helps us understand the much more terrifying beast we’re fighting: capitalism.
While I have provided no reassurance, there is a way out of the rabbit hole. I ask that you take a look at the figureheads and organizations that pretend to fight for you and a better future. Nothing in the service of capitalism can save you from capitalism. There is a force stronger than money, campaigns, and corporations. It is you, the oppressed. It is the majority, the millions suffering day in and day out while believing there’s no other way, no brighter future. The organizers of a new society are everywhere, some still sleeping or learning and some active and fighting. I don’t know what local organizing is around you, but if you find that you want to fight, you will fight to find out how.
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Written by Jim Allen
Edited by Ari, Blue, and Maggot
Published July 18th, 2025