America's New Working Class : Race, Gender, and Ethnicity in a Biopolitical Age

Today’s political controversy over immigration highlights the plight of the working class in this country as perhaps no other issue has recently done. The political status of immigrants exposes the power dynamics of the “new working class,” which includes the former labor aristocracy, women, and people of color. This new working class suffers exploitation in advanced industrial countries as the social cost of capitalism’s success in a neoliberal and globalized political economy. Paradoxically, as borders become more open, they are also increasingly fortified, subjecting many workers to the suspension of law. In this book, Kathleen Arnold analyzes the role of the state’s “prerogative power” in creating and sustaining this condition of severe inequality for the most marginalized sectors of our population in the United States. Drawing on a wide range of theoretical literature from Locke to Marx and Agamben (whose notion of “bare life” features prominently in her construal of this as a “biopolitical” era), she focuses attention especially on the values of asceticism derived from the Protestant work ethic to explain how they function as ideological justification for the exercise of prerogative power by the state. As a counter to this repressive set of values, she develops the notion of “authentic love” borrowed from Simone de Beauvoir as a possible approach for dealing with the complex issues of exploitation in liberal democracy today.

Today's political controversy over immigration highlights theplight of the working class in this country as perhaps no otherissue has recently done. The political status of immigrants exposesthe power dynamics of the "new working class," which includes theformer labor aristocracy, women, and people of color. This newworking class suffers exploitation in advanced industrial countriesas the social cost of capitalism's success in a neoliberal andglobalized political economy. Paradoxically, as borders become moreopen, they are also increasingly fortified, subjecting many workersto the suspension of law.

In this book, Kathleen Arnold analyzes the role of the state's"prerogative power" in creating and sustaining this condition ofsevere inequality for the most marginalized sectors of ourpopulation in the United States. Drawing on a wide range oftheoretical literature from Locke to Marx and Agamben (whose notionof "bare life" features prominently in her construal of this as a"biopolitical" era), she focuses attention especially on the valuesof asceticism derived from the Protestant work ethic to explain howthey function as ideological justification for the exercise ofprerogative power by the state.

As a counter to this repressive set of values, she develops thenotion of "authentic love" borrowed from Simone de Beauvoir as apossible approach for dealing with the complex issues ofexploitation in liberal democracy today.

Today's political controversy over immigration highlights the plight of the working class in this country as perhaps no other issue has recently done. The political status of immigrants exposes the power dynamics of the "new working class," which includes the former labor aristocracy, women, and people of color. This new working class suffers exploitation in many ways in this and other advanced industrial countries as the social cost of capitalism's success in a neoliberal and globalized political economy. Paradoxically, as borders become more open, they are also increasingly fortified, subjecting many workers to the suspension of law. It is Kathleen Arnold's purpose in this book to analyze the role of the state's "prerogative power" in creating and sustaining this condition of severe inequality for the most marginalized sectors of our population in the United States Introduction: globalization, prerogative power, and the new working class Asceticism, biopower, and the poor Domestic war: Locke's concept of prerogative Exploitation and the new working class Antagonism and exploitation: the importance of biopower War and "love".