Author: Alan Z.

I highly recommend this article from Jacobin breaking down the political-economic nightmare we are living in. It is lengthy but if you have the time and interest in strategic thinking it is worth it. I agree with most of it, and would quibble with just a few of the policy proposals. Below the link I will copy a few passages from it. –Alan

Reforming Capitalism is Not Enough

“…it’s worth thinking about the particular set of conditions in the 1950s and ’60s that produced postwar social democracy. High economic growth and rapid productivity gains alongside it. Strong, dense labor unions fighting for higher wages at the point of production and delivering votes for labor parties electorally. Relatively closed national economies and limited capital mobility. Expanding industrial employment, which meant the working class was being concentrated in large workplaces where it was easy to organize, rather than scattered. And a favorable demographic structure — lots of working-age people and relatively few retirees, so the emerging welfare state was cheaper to fund.”

“And then the conditions changed dramatically. In advanced capitalist economies today, production is organized in globalized networks that are harder for national governments to control. Financial capital is extraordinarily powerful and mobile; and it disciplines any government that frightens it, as it disciplined François Mitterrand’s France in 1983, and as the bond markets remind every finance minister to this day. Not to mention, there are enormous technology sectors that will continue to rapidly change economies in ways that are hard to anticipate.”

“A government that walks into office today with a traditional social democratic program faces constraints that were much looser in the postwar period. I’m convinced at the political level that a “1970 playbook” can still be used to win elections in 2026, but I’m equally convinced that it’s doomed to fail as a governing program.”

“So that’s the bind. The Left is still able to summon electoral victories through social democratic rhetoric, but the social depth of our winning coalitions is far thinner, and the scope for governance within capitalism is even more narrow than before. Simply willing ourselves back to 1970 is not a viable strategy.”

“Our socialist parties must win reforms that materially improve people’s lives, because if we can’t do that, it’s safe to say no one will trust in our ability to accomplish anything else. But we should prioritize reforms partly by a second criterion: Do they expand the democratic capacities of working people, and do they connect to the more radical socialist transformations we hope to see in the future?”

“A twenty-first-century socialism has to do two things at once that sound contradictory. It has to abolish market dependence — the condition where your very survival hinges on succeeding in the market — while preserving markets as a tool for coordinating a complex economy. We need some markets, but we don’t need any capitalists. And we want to harness those markets without being mastered by them.”