Or do they?

 Thomas Edsall recently had a piece that began by asking "Why do millions of Americans on both the right and the left ignore their own economic self-interest when they choose which political party to support?"  His answer was that "Partisan prioritization of cultural and racial issues has, to a notable extent, superseded the economic conflicts that once characterized the nation’s politics..."  This led to a change in the social bases of the parties: "millions of working- and middle-class whites have shifted their focus away from the goal of income redistribution ...to support the Republican preference for traditional, even reactionary, sociocultural values. At the same time, college-educated white voters have come to support tax and spending initiatives that subordinate their own financial self-interest in favor of redistribution and liberal social values."  He went on to say that this shift was the result of economic growth:  as people become more affluent, they can afford the "luxury" of voting on the basis of values rather than self-interest.  

As Edsall noted, this general analysis has been around for a long time.  In 1960, Seymour Martin Lipset said that the working class tended to support parties of the left because of "simple economic self-interest.   The leftist parties represent themselves as instruments of social change in the direction of equality; the lower-income groups support them in order to become economically better off, while the higher-income groups oppose them in order to maintain their economic advantages."  But Lipset also observed that working-class people tended to be more conservative on what we would now call "social issues" like civil liberties and ethnic tolerance.  So the relationship between class and party support would shift depending on the relative importance of economic and social issues.  The overall support for left and right would also change:  the left had an advantage on economic issues because there are more relatively poor people than right ones; the right had an advantage on social issues because it was associated with patriotism and "traditional values."  In the 1970s, Ronald Inglehart added the idea that as their standard of living increased, people would give lower priority to material interests and higher priority to values. Putting those together, you get a model of political change that seems to explain a number of important developments--the gradual shift in the class bases of left and right parties, the rise of a new "woke" left and "populist" right, and the decline of the traditional class-based left.  Edsall suggests that it also helps to explain the growth of inequality (less pressure from the working class to do something about it) and the rise of political polarization--"the displacement of economically based partisan conflict by racial and cultural issue-based conflict has escalated political and social animosity."

I've discussed aspects of this account in some of my academic work and some previous posts.  In this post, I will discuss the its general logic.  Although it certainly contains an element of truth, it goes wrong in treating four things as roughly equivalent:  self-interest, redistribution, economic issues, and class (income) politics.   First, there is a straightforward connection between redistribution and self-interest in the short term, but in the long term, self-interest also involves economic growth, and redistribution may affect growth. The poor person who opposes redistribution and the rich person who favors it can both make a case that they are following their self-interest.  Moreover, those cases don't depend on sophisticated economic analysis--you can put either one in common-sense terms.  Also, the long term doesn't have to be that long--a few years of recession versus strong economic growth can make a big difference.    Second, views of economic issues aren't just a matter of self-interest--they also involve values.  Of course, there is some tendency for ideas of fairness to align with self-interest, but they do matter, both in support for redistribution ("we can't just let people starve") and opposition ("I don't want a handout").  Third, redistribution can occur along many different lines, not just rich to poor.   Redistribution from rich to poor is the most efficient, in the sense that it raises the most revenue while antagonizing the smallest number of people, and that will give it some appeal to vote-seeking politicians.  But other kinds of redistribution are more likely to coincide with existing identities (e. g., ethnicity) or beliefs about fairness (e. g., helping veterans or old people).  So voting in favor of redistribution to yourself may not mean voting on class lines.  

I agree that increasing affluence means that self-interested redistribution becomes less important.  But that doesn't mean that economic issues or the general issue of inequality become less important, and doesn't directly imply anything about class alignments.  What it does mean is that the old style of patronage politics (get something for my constituents) declines at the expense of ideological politics (act on the basis of some principle or theory).  

Lipset's idea that the left does better when economic issues are primary remains popular today.  Moderate Democrats say that the party would do better if it stepped back the "culture wars" and emphasized "kitchen table" issues.  Progressives say that the party would benefit from taking a stand for the working class against the rich and corporations.  I don't think that this is true either--some parts of the traditional program of the left are popular (e. g., minimum wage laws), some are unpopular (e. g. aid to working-age people who aren't working), and some are mixed (e. g., support for unions).  So I don't think that a focus on economics has clear advantages or disadvantages for either side.