When progressives point to the structural inequality of the American economy — between the super-rich and the rest of us — right-wing commentators reflexively dismiss such questions with claims that critics are resorting to the loaded, divisive rhetoric of “class war.”

I’d suggest this response is simplistic at best, and self-serving and ahistorical at worst.

Over the past century and a half, the U.S. has seen an abundance of class struggle, much of it through unionization: Pacific Northwest loggers, Pullman railway workers in Chicago, West Coast longshoremen, gold and silver miners in the Rockies, copper and zinc miners in the Southwest and Midwestern steel and autoworkers. In some of these cases, bosses have resorted to violence against unarmed strikers, with gun-toting public and private enforcers.

More recent union drives — some successful, some not — have been largely peaceful: UPS drivers, auto workers, editorial employees, Amazon warehouse workers, Uber drivers, graduate student teachers and Starbucks servers. Unlike previous generations, these workers are likely seeking unionization to maintain their precarious middle-class status, rather than to elevate their economic class.

However, class struggle is one thing; class war — when workers shoot back at the bosses — is of an entirely different magnitude. While rare, literal class war is not unknown in America.

What brings this history to mind is Taylor Brown’s searing new novel “Rednecks,” about........

© The Hill