IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/reorpe/v45y2013i4p525-532.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Intolerance Multiplier

Author

Listed:
  • Alan Day Haight

    (Department of Economics, SUNY-Cortland, Cortland, NY, USA)

Abstract

If prejudice divides and weakens the working class, then capital owners can impose more inequality without fearing unified resistance. Frustrated workers turn on each other as scapegoats, blaming their economic hardship on diversity (in terms of race, religion, ethnicity, immigration status, age, gender, education, sexual preference, and so on). If a demagogue shifts the intolerance curve upward, a multiplier process ensues: intolerance causes inequality, and inequality causes intolerance. Religious nationalism, right-wing control of the media, or a facade of democracy will shift the resistance curve rightward. Under fascism, hate speech is reinforced by police power, so both curves shift. Liberal arts education and exposure to cultural diversity may counter these shifts.

Suggested Citation

  • Alan Day Haight, 2013. "The Intolerance Multiplier," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 45(4), pages 525-532, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:reorpe:v:45:y:2013:i:4:p:525-532
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://rrp.sagepub.com/content/45/4/525.abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    inequality; immigration; riots; racism; Arab Spring; Marx; class compromise;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B50 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Current Heterodox Approaches - - - General
    • E11 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models - - - Marxian; Sraffian; Kaleckian
    • J70 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:reorpe:v:45:y:2013:i:4:p:525-532. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.urpe.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.