The Economics of Conflict

Crop failures in Europe and discontent among the working class that led to the European Revolutions of 1848 failed to overthrow the ruling monarchs and aristocracies, resulting in massive migrations to the United States. Stepping on American soil, they found themselves faced with anti-immigration politics and anti-Catholic bigotry. Anger at the new arrivals conflicted with the accelerating Industrial Revolution’s need for cheap labor and the nativists’ desire to maintain the status quo. The Industrial Revolution in America had created a class structure not dependent on birth, and many workers achieved — or strived to achieve — a place in the affluent middle class. Immigrants willing to work for a fraction of working-class wages presented a threat to the “American Dream.”

Now, a century and three-quarters later, the country again faces a tide of impoverished immigrants and a reaction by the working class and middle class. Again, industry and commerce welcome the tide of cheap labor. The three-sided conflict shows all the signs of the coming of a new Gilded Age, complete with the poisoning of the food supply, unconcern for workplace safety, and the concentration of the nation’s wealth by the ruling class. If the economic climate in the country today shows history repeating itself, the working class might find comfort in knowing that the Gilded Age preceded a Progressive Era, in which the crimes of the social and economic elite were exposed and reforms initiated that permitted a freer flow of wealth and protections for workers.

The economic history of the United States is not one of an evolutionary process, but of periodic conflict and revolutionary change. The Progressive Era led to a resurgence of political power by industrialists, and then to the collapse of the economy into the Great Depression. Each change in the economic climate comes out of cycles of social unrest over injustices and the purchase of power by the ruling elite. Americans find themselves in a class war, and the immigrant finds himself caught in the crossfire; an ironic pawn in a nation of immigrants.

The involved parties — politicians, workers, immigrants, and the power elite — cannot resolve the problems of class warfare. Conflict will continue to shape the country’s social-cultural-political-economic system. The solution to problems of the conflict will find resolution only in the application of the principles of anthropology and sociology. A close examination of the history of culture and class will reveal that there are no “bad guys” in this fight, only cultural differences and self-interests. The bad guys show up when we conceive of ourselves as ideological entities. Those histories also show us that structural-functionalist theories have no footing here; the anthropologists must develop conflict theories that the public can understand, and those theories must focus on compromise and negotiation and illustrate that wealth, affluence, and power are not zero-sum issues. Such education makes possible the development of our economic system through evolution and functionalist theories, and marks an end to conflict and its roller-coaster ride as the sole means of economic development.

As long as we continue to allow conflict to shape our economic policies, we face the possibility of the rise of a despotic ruler such as infect the world beyond our borders from time to time. The issues that face our society are rooted in ethnocentricity and conflicts of interests. Failed economics, corrupted politics, and social unrest are bound in a Gordian knot. The “soft sciences” — anthropology, sociology, philosophy, and psychology — possess the potential to investigate, define, and explain the implications of ethnocentric and egocentric worldviews. The anthropological perspective cannot transform our country into a shining city on a hill or a shared-wealth utopia, but through the anthropological perspective, we might come to see ourselves not as ideological entities but as cultural beings. Once we have accepted that, we might have begun to move toward our evolutionary destiny: homo reciprocans.