Close to Home: Modern puritans ignore labor realities at their peril

Some of the original English colonists in America wanted to keep their culture pure. They did not want their children to be tainted by Dutch culture, where they had fled to escape religious persecution in England. So after a decade in the Netherlands, they moved to Plymouth in America where they wanted to have their own Puritan society.

At first they did not realize that in order to survive economically they needed to include the labor of people from outside their Puritan culture. In other words, then as today, there were many people who ignore the fact of symbiotic, interdependent relationships among all sentient beings on this planet.

Eventually, in order to survive, these English colonists were forced to allow people who were different from them in terms of nationality and religion but mostly of European descent. As the economy changed in some of the colonies (i.e. from farming and light manufacturing to plantations) and there were different labor needs, then other different people were brought to the colonies: people from Africa. But they were not included in the same way as the previous ones.

With the establishment of the United States and Manifest Destiny, Northern Mexico, its people and land were invaded and occupied. The land was incorporated, but the people were kept and still remain as a class apart. Subsequently, immigrants from all over the world became an integral part of the U.S. workforce, though not all of them were immediately or have ever been fully embraced by U.S. society. Clearly, in a period of economic growth, the labor from people from all over the world is always welcomed in the United States.

However, we have now entered a period where 21st century Puritans want to turn the clock back and have a United States free of immigrants, feminists, LGBTQ+, people of color and non-Christians. Their idea of making America great is to get rid of anyone who is different from “those who call themselves white” (to borrow Ta-Nehisi Coates’ phrase). Yet, to paraphrase John Donne, No people are an island.

But we can’t just blame them for the present political chaos. We, the ideologically and ethnically diverse people of the United States - and that includes European-descent people - apparently fell under the illusion that history equals progress, equals a moving forward. That is not a fact. History, as we are witnessing, can also move backward - or sideways. In effect, a cadre of right-wing radicals has strategized for decades on how to undo the New Deal. Inspired by the philosophy of Ayn Rand, the masters, that is the business and ruling class, consider selfishness as a virtue and charity as a fault. Consequently, they want to undo all social safety nets and limit the functions of the federal government to its 19th century version.

Hopefully, the recent massive demonstrations mean that this illusion of progress has been broken and that we, the diverse people of the United States, will reassert a working democracy. If not, eventually the economic realities of labor needs will impose themselves on the modern Puritans when they find out that the economic engine of the United States has always depended on its immigrant labor force. And since, historically, abundance has been the glue that keeps this country together, this opens the possibility of a vicious cycle of economic and social instability. Cutting off your nose to spite your face has never been a good strategy.

Francisco H. Vázquez is a professor of history in the Hutchins School of Liberal Studies at Sonoma State University.