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neoliberalism
The Consuming Contradictions of Trump's Iran War
It’s unclear how more temporary ceasefires in hostilities between the growing number of parties involved in the Iran-US war can solve problems such as the rise of gas prices and fall of spending on other commodities.
Jul 31, 2026
Getting a cup of complimentary coffee at my credit union recently, I glanced to the left and saw a younger woman with a mass of pennies placing them into a machine for conversion to cash. "The US Mint stopped producing pennies," I said to her. “They might be valuable.”
She quickly replied, "I need gas."
Rising gas prices are an outcome of the US war of aggression against Iran, begun five months ago. As a result, inflationary pressures are rising stateside.
One thing is plain as day. Ceasefires between Iran and the US are temporary and connect with fluctuations of oil prices, currently increasing. Rising prices of oil drive price increases at the gas pump.
The logic of military conflicts is one of unpredictable outcomes, economically and politically.
Meanwhile, this sentence in the recent Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation report stands out like a third thumb. “The index for energy increased 15.7% over the past 12 months due in large part to the index for gasoline rising 26.7% over the same period." That spike is despite presidential announcements about how well the war against Iran is going for the US to his dual audiences of MAGA voters and capitalist investors.
Apparently, repetition of a falsification has limitations. Don’t tell the president, though.
Inflation as a result of supply disruptions as we experienced with global value chains during the pandemic is a systemic contradiction. Global economic integration, e.g., the shift of US industry abroad that increases the distances of supply chains, is no risk-free strategy to increase profits and market share for corporate America.
We see in real time that the global economy which requires oil to operate feeds the imbalance between consumption, production, and distribution of commodities such as energy. The shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz and Red Sea with Yemen’s entry into the Iran-US war are driving the decrease in oil production and distribution, and therefore consumption.
Under the current phase of capitalism, or neoliberalism, the government shores up the weakening buying power of the working class with direct support of the corporations and the wealthy. In the case of the Iran-US war, despite the endless American taxpayer outlays for military spending with bipartisan support, the dwindling supply of energy from the Persian Gulf that businesses and consumers rely upon is driving inflationary pressures. The rise of gas prices is proof of that. There’s more.
Spending a bigger chunk of household income on gas means that working families spend less in other areas. Take fast food spending. Consumption of fast food is down 4% in May 2026 from its peak in September 2025, according to the US Bureau of Economic Affairs.
It’s unclear how more temporary ceasefires in hostilities between the growing number of parties involved in the Iran-US war, now including Saudi Arabia and Yemen, can solve problems such as the rise of gas prices and fall of spending on other commodities in the US. The logic of military conflicts is one of unpredictable outcomes, economically and politically. Claiming to know what's next is a fool's errand.
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Working People Need Power, Not Promises
If we want the Democrats, or the Republicans, or any political party to enact a political agenda that effectively addresses the real concerns of working Americans, we must build a movement that enhances and applies the power of working Americans.
Jun 03, 2026
Democrats are eager to recapture the House, and perhaps even the Senate, in this November’s elections. They are banking in part on the customary midterm pendulum swing and in part on backlash against President Donald Trump’s unhinged, cult-like governing style (despite the ineffectiveness of this strategy throughout several election cycles). They also hope to reclaim their reputation as the party of the working class.
As a lifelong labor activist, I am gratified whenever people in electoral politics say they want to uplift the American worker. But I admit some skepticism—particularly since both major parties spent a generation or more embracing the neoliberal consensus that the government should surrender to giant multinational corporations and their wealthy executives and investors. Working people are not stupid; they know most prominent Democrats and all pre-MAGA Republicans advanced an agenda that eviscerated worker interests at home and sent tens of millions of jobs abroad. (Many unions, especially those in manufacturing, opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement when George H.W. Bush negotiated it and when William J. Clinton signed it.) Public frustration and outrage have shaken politicians’ commitment to neoliberalism (rhetorically, at least), but will it be replaced by a program that advances the real interests of the people who rely on their own labor to make ends meet?
Now that he is back in office, Trump has abandoned any pretense of being pro-worker. He has stripped a million federal employees of the right to bargain collectively, gutted overtime rules and other workplace protections, crippled the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), and deprived millions of working people of health and food benefits. He is proud and loud about protecting artificial intelligence from effective regulation just as employers start using it to mow down thousands—and ultimately millions—of jobs. Will the Democrats offer a real alternative for working people?
Some Democrats seem to be focused on the performative—searching for candidates who project non-elite “authenticity.” You know, candidates who know how to operate power tools and who drink beer from plastic cups. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great to run candidates who actually work for a living, but that’s not a comprehensive strategy. Working people want—and demand—actual change in how our leaders govern, not just how they look on TV (or TikTok). If the Democrats fail to articulate and deliver a legitimately pro-worker agenda, working people will continue to look elsewhere—perhaps voting for “none of the above.” (Note that, although the 2024 presidential election was proclaimed to be about the survival of our nation and its sacred values, more eligible voters stayed home than voted for either Trump or former Vice President Kamala Harris.)
Congress has failed to adopt legislation to enable workers to build their own power because workers do not have enough power to force Congress to do so.
Just as slick candidate packaging is not enough, the same is true of hollow “messaging.” Working people—like most voters—are tired of promises that bloom just before Election Day and wither right after. To represent workers effectively, elected officials will have to take political risks and challenge the power of the corporate elite, fighting for measures that tackle unaffordable healthcare, the housing crisis, and the vast (and growing) inequalities of wealth and income.
This seems so obvious it raises the question of why elected officials have ignored working voters’ real interests for so long. Here’s the key: Politicians will only stand up to corporate interests and press for meaningful pro-worker change if working people have enough leverage to force them to do so. For the past several decades our elected leaders chose a neoliberal path because the giant multinational companies and the ultra wealthy had the power to demand it—and working people did not have the countervailing power to resist it and to advance their own interests. It is no coincidence that the pro-corporate political consensus arose at precisely the same time that union membership plummeted in the United States. Although public approval of unions is as high as it has been in decades, the percentage of working people who are actually represented by unions is near an all-time low: about 10% of all workers and less than 6% in the private sector.
As the great United Auto Workers union leader Walter Reuther said, no one gives you anything you’re not strong enough to take for yourself. Working people need to build, or rebuild, the power to insist that politicians act in their interests, not just those of the corporate elite. Here’s a concrete example at the heart of building worker power: One of the reasons unions are so small now is that federal labor law has failed to protect workers’ right to organize and to engage in collective bargaining. There are plenty of great ideas for reforming US labor law. The Employee Free Choice Act, first introduced in 2006, would have streamlined the way the NLRB governs union organizing efforts. Opposition from pro-business senators (including some Democrats), together with the threat of a GOP filibuster, doomed it—even when Barack Obama was in the White House and the Democrats controlled both chambers. The Protect the Right to Organize Act, or “PRO Act,” would have addressed a whole range of structural and substantive problems with US labor law. It did not make it to full floor votes even when the Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate in 2021.
Why did Congress fail to adopt either of these essential bills, even when Democrats were in power? Because elected leaders—including Democrats—did not feel political pressure or fear political fallout. It’s like a Zen koan: Congress has failed to adopt legislation to enable workers to build their own power because workers do not have enough power to force Congress to do so.
Bottom line: If we want the Democrats, or the Republicans, or any political party to enact a political agenda that effectively addresses the real concerns of working Americans, we must build a movement that enhances and applies the power of working Americans. Unless and until we create a larger, stronger labor movement, politicians will not feel enough pressure to do the right thing for working people. Leverage is how politics work, and we should act accordingly. We should roll up our sleeves and get busy organizing in the workplace so we can assert real influence in the halls of government.
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California’s Choice: The Progressive Path or Centrist Stagnation
Today June 2, 2026, in California, voters have an opportunity to alter American history by electing progressives up and down the ballot.
Jun 02, 2026
Within national mythology, California is understood to be a progressive haven—with a ruling Democratic Party passing strong regulations, ever-higher taxes on the wealthy, and supporting unions to its heart’s desire.
Unfortunately, this is far from accurate. The Democratic Party may dominate California politics, but the wealthiest state in the union no longer leads the way with innovative laws and regulations, let alone serving the interests of working people, the poor, and the middle class.
Yes, California still has a progressive income tax, the nation’s highest gas taxes, relatively strong environmental regulations, and the world’s greatest public university system—but these are legacies of bygone eras. The story of the last 20 years of single-party Democratic rule is far less inspiring (unless you’re a Silicon Valley oligarch).
Now, as progressives are making significant gains across the country, revitalizing the Democratic Party in the process, the California party remains dominated by a caste of perennial incumbents committed to neoliberal centrism that, at best, generates incremental change.
Rest assured that progressives on the ballot are part of a national movement that understands that the Democratic Party has bifurcated into a vibrant progressive wing and an increasingly sclerotic moderate establishment.
Perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising. Once Democrats started winning supermajorities in both houses of the state legislature, corporations and big money interests stopped wasting their time courting Republicans. They focused their lobbying on Democrats, and to great effect. California’s Democratic Party, and its leading figures, are more beholden to big business and wealthy donors than almost any state Democratic Party. This, in turn, means Democratic incumbents accrue huge campaign war chests for their re-election.
The result is a more conservative party, one that is out of sync with the electorate. Want evidence? Ask yourself how many members of the Squad have come from California? The answer, of course, is zero. Yet all public opinion polling shows that the California electorate is decisively more progressive than the national average.
It’s true that Reps. Ro Khanna and Lateefah Simon are Squad adjacent, and a few others are solid progressives—but given that California represents about 20% of the Democratic Caucus in the US House, the state’s delegation is on balance middle-of-the-road.
This disconnect—between the political beliefs of Californians and the policies supported by their elected representatives at the national, state, and even local levels—is a major barrier to the necessary transformation of the Democratic Party into a force able to vanquish the fascist-authoritarian GOP before it consolidates power and brings down the curtain on American democracy.
Simply put, the American public increasingly understands that the status quo ante of neoliberal policy, which has organized the country’s economy since the 1980s, produces one result: ever-increasing wealth inequality. The Democratic Party must break from the economics of the Clinton and Obama administrations. The Democratic base and the general public want policies that boost the lives of working Americans, just as they want a sane foreign policy and an honest democracy. They want progressive policies.
Today June 2, 2026, in California, voters have an opportunity to alter American history by electing progressives up and down the ballot. This will transform the largest state Democratic Party, bringing it back in sync with the sentiment of the state’s population so that it can lead in the development of a new 21st century social justice compact.
There are many progressive champions with a real chance of victory today—and in the general election runoff on November 3. To start, there is a clear choice at the top of the ticket: Tom Steyer for governor.
Steyer is one of three viable candidates, two of which will make the runoff. In the best circumstance, the two democrats, Steyer and Xaiver Beccera, will take first and second—a result that will translate into more Democratic victories across the state in November. However, MAGA-supporting Republican Steve Hilton still looks likely to disrupt that result. So, it’s essential to vote, and get everyone you know to vote for Steyer by 8:00 pm PT today.
Admittedly, it sticks in the throat to be supporting a billionaire, but the simple truth is that Steyer will pursue a transformative progressive policy agenda. In contrast, Xavier Beccera, who 20 years ago seemed a sincere progressive, long ago redefined himself as an establishment Democrat. Becerra is committed to maintaining Gov. Gavin Newsom’s policies that have left California stranded with the nation’s co-equal highest poverty rate, an affordability crisis that makes New York City residents blush, and a pronounced failure to lead on environmental and social policies in the manner the world expects of California.
Tom Steyer, by contrast, supports a billionaire’s tax, meaningful living wage legislation, aggressive incentives to re-boost green energy production (and film production too), and, most tellingly, a single-payer universal healthcare system for everyone in the state. A top-two finish by Steyer will guarantee a powerful debate about the direction of the state over the next five months
Beyond the governor’s race, in nearly every US house district, state assembly, and senate race, and significant city and local elections, there are strong progressive candidates challenging the dominant California Democratic Party mainstream—many of whom are poised to advance to the November runoff. Still, it’s worth noting that this has been a very confusing election season due to redistricting (and the chaos of the governor’s race), such that down-ballot candidates have had a difficult time attracting adequate attention. But rest assured that progressives on the ballot are part of a national movement that understands that the Democratic Party has bifurcated into a vibrant progressive wing and an increasingly sclerotic moderate establishment. Please do the necessary research to learn who the progressives are in your district.
So far, it’s been a very good year for progressives—let’s continue the momentum tomorrow in New Jersey, Montana, Iowa, New Mexico, South Carolina, and the largest state and soon-to-be truest bastion of progressive public policy, California.
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Electile Dysfunction—Why Can’t the Dems Get Their Polls Up?
The Democratic Party cannot afford to attend to the material needs of its traditional popular base because it is terrified of offending its donor class.
May 27, 2026
“The Republicans go for the jugular; the Democrats go for the capillaries,”—Kevin Phillips
With the recent release of the long-withheld, but little anticipated Democratic National Committee “autopsy” of the 2024 presidential electoral loss, we’re back to the perennial questions of which issues should receive priority; how should messaging and narrative around those issues be crafted; which wing(s) of the party should be amputated before their rot infects the entire organism, suburban soccer moms or inner city youth; and on and on. All good questions, but ultimately, in present circumstances, unanswerable except in the most platitudinous, hand-waving ways. The most fundamental dilemma resides in the Faustian bargain the party entered beginning in the 1970s, and the result of that bargain is neatly captured in Sheldon Wolin’s 2010 coinage “the inauthentic opposition”:
While the transformed Republican Party reveals what a “party of government” might look like under inverted totalitarianism, the Democrats reveal the fate of opposition politics under inverted totalitarianism. The Democrats’ politics might be described as inauthentic opposition in the era of Superpower [i.e., the US after the fall of the Soviet Union]. Having fended off its reformist elements and disclaimed the label of liberal, it is trapped by new rules of the game which dictate that a party exists to win elections rather than to promote a vision of the good society… Accordingly, the party competes for an apolitical segment of the electorate, “the undecided,” and puzzles how best to woo religious zealots. Should Democrats somehow be elected, corporate sponsors make it politically impossible for the new officeholders to alter significantly the direction of society. [This point is exquisitely exemplified by the first couple of years of the Obama administration, when they held the federal trifecta and still managed to privilege the kleptocratic banksters of the housing crisis and the war criminal gangsters of the W. Bush regime.] The timidity of a Democratic Party mesmerized by centrist precepts points to the crucial fact that, for the poor, minorities, the working class, anticorporatists, pro-environmentalists, and anti-imperialists, there is no opposition party working actively on their behalf.
The origins of this current malaise date back to the mid 1970s, and followed the actions taken by business class elites responding to the exhortations contained in the now-famous Powell Memorandum. This was a secret 1971 memo from then-corporate lawyer Lewis Powell to the Secretary of the US Chamber of Commerce. The memo wasn’t revealed to the public until well after Powell had been appointed to the Supreme Court, where he continued to wage his ideological battle in defense of capitalism and corporate power (including, of course, free speech rights articulated in cash). In the memo Powell argued that:
The US Chamber of Commerce should lead an assault upon the major institutions, universities, schools, the media, publishing, the courts, in order to change how individuals think about the corporation, the law, culture, and the individual.
US businesses, Powell suggested, did not lack the resources for such an effort, particularly if they were pooled. That is, if people started to think together as a class rather than as individual firms and corporations. The US Chamber of Commerce took up this challenge in a very dramatic way. It expanded its base from around 60,000 firms in 1972 to about a quarter of a million just a decade later. Other elite organizational forms also began to coalesce around this core following the advice of the memo. These included think tanks (e.g., the Heritage Foundation, established 1973 by Adolph Coors), as well as corporate money pumps to operationalize the memo’s chief objectives.
One of the most prominent of these organizations was the Business Roundtable, founded in 1972, and comprising CEOs whose corporations at the time accounted for about half of the US gross national product. During this period, through political action committees, the Roundtable was spending about $900 million annually on political matters, a very significant sum at the time. These newly emerging entities provided a mechanism for corporations to contribute substantial funds to political campaigns and candidates, authorized in large measure through a number of Supreme Court rulings, several written by Powell himself.
These PACs, which were just beginning to have a political presence (there were 89 PACs in 1974, and around 1,500 by 1982) gave to both parties largely in equal measure in the 70s, but began leaning heavily toward the Republicans, who had little difficulty aligning their platforms with capital corporate interests. This was also the moment that the traditional political base of the Republican Party began to merge with the Christian Right and with white working classes, who were persuaded that they had been left behind by affirmative action and other “illegitimate” policies (now, of course, cloaked as DEI and “wokeness”).
The problem for anyone struggling to get by, as this alliance portrayed it, was not capitalism and the neoliberalization of the society and economy. The real problem was liberals, who had used excessive state power to provide for special groups. The prevalent narrative, more pertinent now than ever, was the idea of unworthy “others” cutting in line ahead of worthy citizens: “You've worked hard. You've played by the rules. You're not getting ahead. Well, it's not that the system is stacked against you. It's that these people, who are undeserving, are getting more advantages than you get.” The Republican political base (and now most particularly MAGAnites) could be energized through positive mobilizations of things like religion and cultural nationalism, but it could also be turned out through very negative, though coded, though I would say increasingly less coded if not blatant, racism (e.g., President Richard Nixon’s “southern strategy”), xenophobia, homophobia, and anti-feminism.
Democrats, seemingly, were more conflicted, at least at that time, between support for their base and the need to pursue big money. That ambivalence, at least within the ranks of the Democratic Party establishment in its current manifestation, has now all but disappeared and constitutes the irreconcilable contradiction that plagues the party now. To return for a moment to Wolin:
By ignoring dissent and by assuming that the dissenters have no alternative, the party serves an important, if ironical, stabilizing function and in effect marginalizes any possible threat to the corporate allies of the Republicans.
According to critical geographer David Harvey, the structure that emerged out of this political realignment was as simple as it was predictable and durable. The Republican Party could, and still can, marshal massive financial resources and mobilize its popular base to vote against its own material interests on cultural or religious grounds, while simultaneously advancing the capital accumulation policies (ongoing war and arms sales, lowered taxation, massive deregulation, privatization of public goods and services) of their elite masters.
The Democratic Party, conversely, could not, and still cannot, afford to attend to the material needs (e.g., a national healthcare system, affordable housing, environmental and consumer protection, financial and anti-trust regulation, a peace dividend) of its traditional popular base because it was and is terrified of offending its donor class. Given the asymmetry, the political hegemony of the Republican Party became more sure over this period, and has relegated the Democrats, even when in power, to their current position of inauthenticity. If and until this most fundamental contradiction can be resolved, the policies and messaging will remain flaccid, impotent, and unsatisfying. Under these circumstances we can aptly paraphrase Phillips, to wit: So now the Democrats also go for the jugular. Unfortunately, it’s too often their own.
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The Promise of Radical Municipalism in New York City
What kind of power and solidarity is built and transformed in New York City’s municipalist moment will depend on whether or not the remaking of public and civic infrastructures is guided by participatory democracy.
May 15, 2026
It is an inspiring time to be a New Yorker. Over the last year, thousands have been mobilized by a vision for a more just city, where the interests of the people, not the 1%, are at the center of social and economic policies. Driving this vision is a city that is affordable, one where public infrastructures are not indicative of neglect, exclusion or harm, but are life-affirming institutions grounded in principles of participatory democracy: where everyday residents have a direct say over the public policies that govern their lives.
It is a beautiful vision, especially in a city that has long been plagued by corporate and private interests, and one that draws from models of what is termed new or radical municipalism and experiments with mass and co-governance in cities including Barcelona, Jackson, and Porto Alegre, among others.
Distinguishing New York City’s municipalist moment is its political geography: It is a global city, a center of global finance; a metropole in the Global North, at the center of the imperialist core, and the home of Wall Street; and it is an urban center long defined by uneven development and inequity. The city with the highest concentration of wealth in the world runs on a workforce where only 33% of workers have “good jobs” (qualified by living wage pay, full-time, and year-round employment, employer sponsored health insurance, and safe working conditions). Over one-quarter of New Yorkers struggle with poverty, and nearly two-thirds are economically precarious. Adding to this context is intensified fascism, integral to which has been the bipartisan project of what Ruth Wilson Gilmore has termed the anti-state state: The structured expansion of corporate interests and privatization schemes coupled with the shrinkage of the public infrastructures, entitlements, and services alongside the increased entanglement of policing, surveillance, and punishment into nearly every vestige of the public that remains.
Transforming Public and Civic Infrastructures
On one hand, the renewed interest in public infrastructures grounding radical municipalism signals an important turn from neoliberal consumer citizenship, exemplified recently by former New York City Public Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina’s description of parents as the Department of Education’s “clients.” On the other hand, New York’s wealth, part and parcel of its long-standing and structured class- and race-based inequity, presents a real challenge to the reinvigoration of civic and public life, to what kind of power, what kind of public, will be built and transformed—and to what ends. How do we ensure that the promise of a more just city is truly and actively guided (not just informed) by New Yorkers whose experience of the public has long been shaped by histories of organized abandonment (or the intentional divestment of state and private capital that shape particular places), by the harm, exclusion, and violence of the anti-state state?
Often, what people are fighting for is not a “failing school” but rather, a place through which they have grown community and practiced care, where they have made meaning and collective life despite and within state divestment.
The promise of radical municipalism to enliven deliberative spaces that build capacity for protagonism and expand practices of citizenship needs to be guided by what Celina Su understands as epistemic justice, “actively questioning what bodies of knowledge are counted as expert, rational, and valuable.” More than an advisory role, epistemic justice must actively structure deliberative spaces. In its absence, Su notes, deliberative spaces run the risk of perpetuating already existing inequities. The urgency of this approach is captured by the now infamous New York City District 3 CEC (Community Education Council) meeting, when City University of New York Professor Allyson Friedman’s racist remarks, in response to an eighth grade student who was speaking out against their school being closed, were captured by an open mic. As many recognize, Friedman’s remarks are not a unique case, but emblematic of the changing same in the district.
The district, among the most segregated and unequal in the city, is where I have worked with others to build power, organizing, and leadership among low-income families of color for just and equitable public schools. There have been countless occasions in which “concerned parents” broadcast their racism sometimes in official testimony, sometimes in unofficial remarks. Most often, these remarks have not captured headlines. And in that mix (which included CEC, district, Community Board, and school-site meetings) poor and working class families of color were regularly told that they didn’t “understand” or might be “confused” by their own experiences—their own stories—and dismissed. Friedman’s comments implied the same: that the student speaking out against their school being closed simply did not understand (and, according to Friedman’s racist analysis, could not understand) their own circumstances or the value of their school community. Yet students, teachers, parents, and school workers have long recognized and resisted school closures as a mechanism of dispossession, racist violence, encroachment, and displacement. Often, what people are fighting for is not a “failing school” but rather, a place through which they have grown community and practiced care, where they have made meaning and collective life despite and within state divestment.
In our municipalist moment, deliberative spaces need to be reinvigorated and also reassessed. Gianpaolo Baiocchi, Sumathy Kumar, and Celina Su write that New York City has an extensive infrastructure for civic participation (which includes CECs, community boards, the Civic Engagement Commission, and more). However, they assess, “much of it is shallow, uncoordinated, fragmented, and symbolic. New Yorkers are rightly skeptical of consultations that go nowhere.” They note the need for an audit of such structures with a goal of repurposing and revitalization, guided by the knowledge and experience of community organizers and organizations. As such, the question raised by the winter meeting that went viral is not only if such remarks should be tolerated, but rather, how to intentionally transform the CEC and other infrastructures that are supposed to enliven participatory democracy from places that too often confirm and perpetuate inequity into places where the long-standing violence enacted by austerity and mechanized through school closures is interrupted. To do so, the voices, experiences, and analyses of those who have experienced such violence need to be active, understood as credible, and prioritized.
Epistemic Justice, The Presence of Abolition, and the Remaking of Social Relations
The transformation of our public and civic infrastructures requires both deep local knowledge and an understanding that such spaces are not static. Bonnie Honig reminds us that public things—libraries, schools, healthcare, and housing—as well as civic infrastructures through which they are governed, are “holding environments.” That is, they are simultaneously containers through which life is reproduced in the everyday (including making sure that all students have warm winter coats, that access to ultrasound mammograms is universal, and that lighting and heat work in public and subsidized housing) and spaces of contestation over what democracy, citizenship, and our social relations—not yet determined—might be.
These holding environments have been contradictory at best. More often, they have been vehicles through which the silencing, exclusion, and disenfranchisement that liberalism relies upon are administered, and where scarcity engenders social relations of competition and individuation, where it is assumed that one’s needs are only confirmed in opposition to the security of others.
Radical municipalism offers the promise to shift that configuration, and actualize Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s insight that “abolition is not absence, it is presence.” This insight directs us to the need not just to dismantle, but to build practices, structures, institutions, and experiments that affirm life. The perspectives of structurally marginalized communities are essential to determining what kind of presence is necessary: to mapping not only how harm works, but also to what kinds of alternatives are needed and might be capable of transforming our social relations.
A good example of why this is true comes from Communities United for Police Reform (CPR) and the Public Science Project’s (CUNY) report, We Deserve to Be Safe. Rooted in Participatory Action-Research (PAR), the project’s leadership team included CPR member-led organizations in over-policed communities, was grounded in long-standing relationships and an understanding of the multi-layered harms of policing, and anchored by the shared principle that highly policed communities need to be at the center of how safety and harm are understood and re-imagined. As they note:
Our findings illuminate that people in highly policed New York neighborhoods often hold deeply complex beliefs, attitudes and proposals for community safety, supporting this report’s approach of presenting data about the multiple truths that communities hold. Notably, our findings suggest that while police officers have provided moments of successful intervention and important services for New Yorkers, for many respondents the police are also a constant threat to safety.
The perspectives and findings outlined by the report provide insight that, as the authors note, reach beyond an “overly simplistic duality of either decreased policing and lawlessness or increased policing and safety.” The stories and experiences outlined make painfully clear the violence of policing while also centering participants' complex personhood not simply as anecdote, but as analysis and insight to understanding what kinds of alternatives to policing—informed by place-based histories and realities—might actually be transformative. Bound up in the stories that the report documents is the sobering reality that understanding what “successful interventions and important services” have actually meant is integral to disentangling policing with the provision of social services.
Examples of radical municipalism in other cities show the meeting of our material and everyday needs is deeply connected to the transformation of our social relations, rooted in structures and practices that expand (rather than shrink) how we understand ourselves in relationship to one another, and how we value life, its reproduction, and sustainability. Drawing on her work with the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra or Landless Workers' Movement (MST), Rebecca Tarlau terms this process contentious co-governance which “is not simply [about] more resources or policy changes but, rather, the prefiguration of alternative social and economic relations within… public institutions.” Importantly, in the case of the MST, Tarlau finds that prefiguration need not be outside of the state and that participation is not simply a means to an end, but rather invokes practices that expand and transform social relations through and within public and civic infrastructures, while also strengthening social movements.
New York City’s political geography—as a global city, as a metropole in the Global North and center of the imperialist core, and as an urban center long defined by uneven development and inequity—matters to how we navigate our current conjuncture. Chaumtoli Haq reminds us that in the context of the global city, radical municipalism presents a “powerful strategy for change… [that] enables communities, given their proximity to local governance, to mobilize for changes in law and policy.”
The strength of this strategy has already been demonstrated by the historic campaign to elect Zohran Mamdani as mayor. Rooted in strong partnerships with grassroots organizations including CAAAV Voice, DRUM Beats, and New York City Communities for Change, the material conditions of these organizations’ members shaped the policy platforms of the campaign. What kind of power and solidarity is built and transformed in New York City’s municipalist moment will depend on whether or not the remaking of public and civic infrastructures is guided by participatory democracy and deliberative spaces that are grounded in epistemic justice and contentious cogovernance: whose knowledge, experience, and know-how actively shapes those processes; what kind of protagonism and popular shared analysis propels momentum and movement; and what kinds of social relations are enlivened to expand political horizons and protracted struggle.
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It Falls Upon the Left to Defeat Fascism Once Again
Neofascism is on the rise and the neoliberal establishment is a big part of the problem and very much the opposite of the solution.
May 11, 2026
The world is at a precipice, facing existential threats while fascism is on the rise. Yet we lack the proper governance structures to address global challenges, and it also seems that it falls upon the left to defeat fascism once again. So argues political scientist/political economist, author and journalist C. J. Polychroniou in the interview that follows with the French-Greek journalist Alexandra Boutri.
Alexandra Boutri: We live in a time of great uncertainty and profound disillusionment. We see a global escalation of violence and a lack of accountability. Even Israel’s genocide goes unpunished, which speaks volumes of the hypocrisy of western governments with regard to human rights and international law. There is a global wave of democratic backsliding, massive amounts of inequality by design, and extreme power concentration. Am I painting too bleak of a picture for the current state of the world?
C. J. Polychroniou: No, you are not exaggerating the current state of the world. The truth is that it is far worse than that. We are witnessing the resurgence of naked imperialism and the emergence of a new world of spheres of influence and, concomitantly, the death of international peacemaking institutions. The continued existence of nuclear weapons, which today are far more powerful than ever before, poses an existential threat to humanity while at the same time human beings are on a collision course with the natural world. To be sure, not only do we live in an era of polycrisis but in one in which developments are occurring at an increasingly rapid pace. We need polysolutions, yet neither the mechanisms are in place nor is there any detectable willingness on the part of current world leaders to pull humanity back from the precipice.
Political hypocrisy per se is not the major issue here. Pathological hypocrisy is a constant in the behavior of western governments. What I find most disconcerting is the sharp decline of rational thinking in contemporary society. Misinformation is spreading faster than facts and trust in science has virtually collapsed, especially in the United States. For example, scientific studies have concluded that climate change is mainly caused by human activity and scientists have documented the dangerous disruptions in nature. Yet you have the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, calling climate change “con job” and “scam.” Trust in healthcare and public institutions has also declined in recent years, and it is not a coincidence that these trends occur with the political ascendancy of right-wing extremism. Fascism is organized mass irrationality and leaders like Trump have been doing their best to design a society sustained by ignorance while at the same time normalizing cruelty and destruction. So, yes, we live in a world of increasing uncertainty, profound confusion, and maybe even civilizational decline. We are in the midst of a whirlpool of events and developments that are eroding our ability to manage human affairs in a way that is conducive to the attainment of a good and just world order. That being said, the world is not coming to an end any time soon, and we actually know that there are solutions for the world’s biggest problems. But paradigm shifts in political, social, and moral thinking are urgently needed for a sustainable future.
Alexandra Boutri: Is the nation-state at the present historical juncture a hindrance to the realization of a sustainable future for humanity?
C. J. Polychroniou: The general consensus among scholars about the nation-state is that it was a consequence of modernity and that it represents a progressive development in the course of human political history. It was an invention designed to unify people, the state, and the country. The Peace of Westphalia (1648), which marked the end of the Thirty Years’ War in Europe, established a new system of political order based upon the idea of co-existing sovereign states. Subsequently, the norm of Westphalian sovereignty became central to international law and world order. It shifted the balance of power, but it did not end conflicts. The nation-state sparked nationalism across Europe, and war over resources, driven by capitalist modes of production, remained predominant in the modern world. In fact, nationalism and capitalism have worked in tandem to make war a permanent feature of the modern world system. In any case, whatever benefits have accrued over the centuries because of the emergence of the nation-state (social solidarity, human rights, and democracy), it has become increasingly clear that the nation-state is not capable of managing, on its own, the globalized forces. And collective institutions in general have suffered a severe blow from the wrecking ball of neoliberalism. The climate crisis is a case in point.
Actions taken so far to combat climate change are insufficient. Moreover, while local and national climate policy efforts are important, the new energy infrastructure needed for establishing a zero emissions global economy must be global in scope. Economist Robert Pollin, who has done extensive work on building a green economy, has made a compelling case for the necessity of implementing a Global Green New Deal (GGND). Pollin has described in fine detail the impact of a GGND on economic growth and how it can be financed. But we are nowhere near to achieving such a goal. The problem is political in nature, not economic. Are nation-states capable of the type of international collaboration needed to secure a global green transition in order to save the planet? Are capitalist nation-states even able to sacrifice short-term interests for long-term benefits?
My own view is that the nation-state is indeed a hindrance to a sustainable future for humanity, but that doesn’t mean that the global governance structures needed to ensure that human civilization will endure despite the many existential threats it faces will inevitably happen. Such an outcome requires imagination, courage, and bold action. But it is not inconceivable that an alternative world order may emerge at some point in the future. After all, as sociologist Andreas Wimmer has convincingly shown, the creation of nation-states was mainly the result of external circumstances (geopolitical factors) rather than internal processes (ethnic homogeneity or nationalism). The climate crisis might very well become at a certain juncture a turning point for the emergence of new global governance structures. Hopefully, it won't be too late by then.
Alexandra Boutri: Where does the Left stand on the question of universalism and the nation-state?
C. J. Polychroniou: This is a very complicated issue, especially since the Left is not monolithic. Generally speaking, however, the traditional Left has always held internationalist principles and viewed the nation-state as a modern phenomenon tied to the emergence of the capitalist mode of production. That was pretty much Marx’s own view on the subject. Lenin also argued that Marxism cannot be reconciled with nationalism. Communists and revolutionary socialists opposed World War I as an imperialist war. But most socialist parties and trade unions abandoned the internationalist vision and backed their respective governments. On the other hand, communists defended their own countries during World War II. This is because they came to view World War II as a “people’s war” against fascism. Communists fought heroically in World War II but also against fascism everywhere. The International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War represented a remarkable expression of international solidarity, a response of anti-fascists to the emergence of a new tyranny.
In the contemporary period, a significant segment of the Left has been critical, even dismissal, of the nation-state but has also championed self-determination. Yet the question of how to circumvent the nation-state remains. The neoliberal hyper-globalization wave of the 1990s that envisioned the world becoming a global village transcended the boundaries of nation-states, but the new rules were made possible only through enforcement from the capitalist state itself. In fact, there was/is a symbiotic relationship between capitalist states and neoliberal globalization.
The Left is obligated to advance an alternative vision of a world order beyond capitalism and the nation-state. It must envision and fight for a world where the rights of labor reign supreme and the means of production are collectively owned by workers. There can be no socialism without collective ownership and democratic management of the means of production. The former USSR took a major step in the direction of collective ownership but a bureaucratic elite controlled the state and drained life out of society. Socialism in the twentieth-first century must be democratic, put average people at the center of society, and give priority to sustainability. And the rise of the socialist state must be of such socio-cultural nature that it inaugurates an authentic cosmopolitan horizon.
Alexandra Boutri: Today, the Left is in disarray while the far right is surging all over the world. Hard-right parties are most popular in many parts of Europe, although there is a ray of hope for reversing the trend on account of Viktor Orbán’s crushing defeat in last month’s Hungarian election. Why is the western left weak and disoriented when the problems caused to society by the policies of neoliberal capitalism are so destructive?
C. J. Polychroniou: There are no definite answers to that question. Moreover, the problematic of the political condition of the left in western societies is not new. The weakening of the western left has been long in the making. The traditional left undergoes a major ideological and political crisis with the collapse of communism in eastern Europe. Yet its decline had started as early as the mid-1970s and the 1980s. Take for instance the case of the Italian Communist Party (PCI). From the beginning of the 1960s to the end of the 1970s, the PCI was the largest communist party in western Europe, gaining a historic 34.4% of the vote in the 1976 parliamentary elections. Under the leadership of Enrico Berlinguer, the PCI had distanced itself from the Soviet Union and promoted “Eurocommunism,” an attempt on the part of certain western communist party leaders to reconcile parliamentary democracy with the transition to socialism and overcome the constrains of the Cold War. To further enhance the image of the PCI as a non-revolutionary party, Berlinguer also introduced the compromesso storico (the historic compromise), a proposal of an agreement between the Communist and Christian Democratic parties, for reforming the economy along capitalist lines and proclaimed his support for NATO.
Obviously, the leadership of the PCI felt that breaking away from the tradition of revolutionary socialism was the surest and safest path to power. But the experiment failed miserably. By the time of Berlinguer’s death, in 1984, the PCI was already losing support among the industrial working class and was officially dissolved in 1991 and then transformed into the Democratic Party of the Left. From the 1990s onward, left parties and conservative parties in western Europe became virtually indistinguishable. This is a key factor in explaining the decline of the western left. But this doesn’t mean that if the left had not become reformist and still clung to forms of socialism associated with the Soviet experience or with revolutionary Marxism that it would have become a hegemonic political power in advanced capitalist societies. Clearly, the western left needs to challenge capitalist social relations and hegemony but must also offer to the masses a convincing vision for an alternative socioeconomic order. It has yet to do so.
We must also recognize the fact that advanced capitalist societies are complex, multilayered systems, divided into several different classes. Class matters as much as ever, even if neoliberalism has reshaped the working class internationally. Moreover, while there is a widening social class divide, the class of the exploited remains fragmented. There is indeed a difference between a class “in itself” and a class “for itself.” In that regard, there can be no denying that the left has changed the way people think about exploitation, human rights, freedom, and personal identity, and has indeed “a great story to share about alternatives to capitalism.” But for various reasons, which include major structural factors, the ideological battle over capitalism and alternative worldviews has yet to be won. As Frederick Jameson once remarked, it appears that “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”
Alexandra Boutri: What does the end of Viktor Orbán’s reign in Hungary mean for Trump and the far right in the US and globally?
C. J. Polychroniou: I do not wish to downplay the significance of this development but, at the same time, it is politically naive to think that it will have an impact on the way the Trump administration behaves. It is true of course that Hungary under Orbán provided inspiration for the MAGA movement and the far right across Europe. In fact, Orbán’s anti-immigrant ideology and immigration policy became the norms across Europe. But I would argue that Trump is far more dangerous than Orbán ever was. Orbán never denied election results, nor did he engage in acts of state-led violence. Orbán eroded the rule of law in Hungary and, for that, Trump thought he was a “fantastic man” and once even praised him as the “great leader” of Turkey. But Trump has already caused far more damage to US society than Orban caused to Hungary with his political shenanigans, and Hungary’s new prime minister is not a liberal. Nor do I think that Orbán’s defeat will have any impact on the political fortunes of the far right elsewhere. In Germany, the far right AfD has become the country’s strongest party. In France, Marine Le Pen’s far-right The National Rally (RN) is “already the biggest single opposition party in parliament” and its rise to power seems unstoppable.
Neofascism is on the rise, and the conservative/liberal/neoliberal establishment does not know what it will take to defeat it. It won't even address the very structural factors that gave rise to the far right. So far, the establishment in both France and Germany has confined itself to labeling RN and AfD respectively as “extremist” entities as if that will deter voters from casting a ballot for those parties. As far as I can see, it falls upon the left to defeat the rising tide of fascism once again.
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If We Want a Different Future, We Have to (Literally) Build It
We have a power imbalance in this country and a big part of that is that we no longer believe that we can demand a better life and it's a serious problem that we have too little skill in organizing ourselves and constructing the future we deserve.
May 02, 2026
When you grow up in this country one thing that’s wired into you early is that the government can’t do anything right. The free market is the only way things get done. Public is a dirty word. By the time you’re an adult, it sits in your head like it’s always been there. You don’t question it any more than you question gravity.
The problem is that it puts so many solutions out of reach and out of our imagination.
If we look around at the things that make our society work and our lives better, we can see we’ve been duped from the start. This didn’t all come from some pure, untouched version of the free market. Our roads, our bridges, libraries, fire departments, the internet, Social Security. All of these things happened because we came together as people and decided we wanted them.
These weren’t accidents. They weren’t side effects of private competition. They came out of a period when ordinary people had power. Real power. Power to demand that the systems they paid for actually delivered. The government was the instrument of that power. Not a side player. Not a check writer. Not a referee. A doer. A builder of things, on behalf of the people who built it.
In 1981, more than 40% of the hospitals in this country were owned by federal, state, or local government. Cities and counties ran their own hospitals.
That’s the idea we don’t name anymore. The idea that the public has the right to organize, to own, and to demand. That’s the competing idea. And without it, the system has no counterweight.
That tension mattered. It forced decisions. It forced investment. It forced the country to build.
Now that pressure is gone. Not completely, but enough that it doesn’t function anymore. There’s no real counterweight shaping outcomes. And what you’re left with is a system that just expands in the direction of profit. Profit over efficiency. Profit over outcomes. Profit over people.
You can see it most clearly in healthcare. We spend nearly six trillion dollars a year on it. Six trillion. And we are not the healthiest country on earth. We are not even close. We are paying the most and getting the least. That’s not an efficiency problem. That’s a power problem.
We’ve run this experiment for decades now. Consolidation, extraction, pricing that has no relationship to reality. It’s not competitive in any meaningful sense. It’s a closed loop. The product isn’t working. People feel it every day. They don’t need a study to tell them.
And here’s the thing nobody remembers. We used to own a lot of this. In 1981, more than 40% of the hospitals in this country were owned by federal, state, or local government. Cities and counties ran their own hospitals. States ran academic medical centers. The federal government ran the VA, military hospitals, the Indian Health Service. We the people owned the means of caring for ourselves.
That’s what made the whole system function. Not the charity of it. The leverage of it. We knew what it cost to set a bone. We knew what it cost to do a bypass. We knew what it cost to deliver a baby. Because we ran the hospitals where it happened. We paid the salaries. We bought the supplies. The numbers were public and the numbers were real.
You can’t lie to someone about the price of something they already produce. Public ownership wasn’t an alternative to the market. It was the thing that kept the market honest. It was the public’s seat at the table. It was the public’s power over the price. Strip it out and the private side stops competing and starts extracting. That’s not a hypothetical. That’s what happened. We sold the seat. We lost the power. The bills came due.
There was a time when we knew certain things were too important to leave entirely to the market. We didn’t let private companies own nuclear weapons.
Today that public share is closer to 15%. Most of the rest has been sold off, shut down, or absorbed into chains. What’s left is doing the hardest work the private system refuses to do. Public hospitals still handle most of the trauma care and most of the burn care in this country’s cities. They are the safety net. They are also the proof that we know how to do this. We just decided to stop.
Same thing starting to happen with AI. Something as transformative as the Industrial Revolution, arguably bigger, is being built and controlled by a handful of private actors. Massive margins. Massive control. No real public stake. No real competition in the way we used to understand it. No seat at the table for the rest of us.
There was a time when we knew certain things were too important to leave entirely to the market. We didn’t let private companies own nuclear weapons. We didn’t let them build private armies with that kind of power. We understood the scale of the risk. The consequence of getting it wrong.
AI sits in that category. Healthcare sits in that category. These are not normal sectors. They shape everything else. And the question of who owns them is the question of who has power in the country that comes next.
It’s not about fairness. Fuck fairness. This is about power. About whether ordinary people have any leverage left in a system that has spent forty years stripping it from them. About whether the country we live in is something we shape or something that happens to us.
Here are the numbers. The top 20% of earners in this country now account for nearly 60% of all consumer spending. Consumer spending is about two-thirds of GDP. So a small slice of households is propping up the entire economy. And the jobs most exposed to AI displacement, finance, law, software, analysis, corporate work, are concentrated in exactly that slice.
The same people whose spending holds the economy up are the ones whose work is about to be automated.
That’s not a labor problem. That’s a structural problem. You can’t retrain your way out of it. You can’t UBI your way out of it at the scale required. The CEOs warning you about 20-30% unemployment are running companies with 40% margins. They’re not wrong about the disruption. They’re wrong about it being something the private sector can absorb.
The market is facing a situation it cannot handle.
The market is the thing that brought us here.
Here’s the part people don’t say out loud. A future of plenty is possible. Not in some abstract, theoretical way. In a very real, material sense.
Health. Wellness. Safety. Time. Travel. Freedom. Education. Meaning. Food. Clothing. Shelter. All high quality and abundant. Enough for everyone.
Most people want that. You can feel it when you talk to them. But they don’t say it plainly because it sounds naive. It sounds like something you’re supposed to grow out of. Like if you take it seriously, you won’t be taken seriously.
Here’s the part people don’t say out loud. A future of plenty is possible. Not in some abstract, theoretical way. In a very real, material sense.
It reminds me a little of The Matrix. The idea that a version of the world that actually worked for people would be rejected because it didn’t match what they believed was real or possible. So instead, we settle into something worse and call it reality.
I grew up in East Tennessee, in the Bible Belt. And one of the things that always stuck with me was how religion was used. Not as a mission to improve people’s lives through effort and sacrifice, but as a way to sort people. To rank them. To separate. To justify who had what and why.
That same instinct shows up here. The idea that wanting a system that delivers for everyone is childish. That building something better is unrealistic. That you’re supposed to accept what exists and work within it, even if it’s clearly failing.
Here’s what gets forgotten. This country has done it before. Not once. Many times.
The New York City subway was built and is owned by the public. The interstate highway system is public. The Hoover Dam, the TVA, every river dam that powers the South and the West, public. The arsenal that won the Second World War was organized and largely paid for by the federal government. Rural electrification was a public project because no private company would run wire to a farmhouse for a price the farmer could pay. The internet started as a public research program. Public universities trained the engineers and doctors and scientists who built the modern American economy. Medicare is a public health insurance program that works better and costs less than what the private market offers people under 65.
Every one of those is a story about power. The public looked at a sector that mattered too much to leave to private capital, and the public took it. Owned it. Ran it. Set the terms. Made it deliver.
This is not foreign. This is not theoretical. This is the history of our country.
What comes next has to be built in public, owned in public, and run in public. The market had its turn at healthcare. The market is having its turn at AI. We’ve seen how this ends.
If we want a different future, we have to build it.
That’s not a metaphor.
We need hospitals, clinics, wellness centers. That means training tens of thousands of doctors, nurses, mental health professionals, dentists, physical trainers. Not hoping the market decides to produce them. Deciding to produce them. Owning them. Running them. Setting the price by knowing the cost.
What comes next has to be built in public, owned in public, and run in public. The market had its turn at healthcare. The market is having its turn at AI. We’ve seen how this ends.
We need millions of homes. New cities. New towns. That means builders, electricians, plumbers, framers, engineers. It means supply chains based in America that can deliver materials at scale. It means breaking the leverage that landlords and developers have spent decades accumulating.
We need to transition energy. Renewable generation. Storage. Transmission. A modern grid that can handle it. High-speed rail. A competitive EV industry that isn’t just a handful of companies protected by scale and capital. Independence from utilities that have spent a century turning a public good into a private toll booth.
Every one of these is a sector where the public used to have power and gave it up. Every one is a sector where the public can take that power back, if it decides to.
There is more to build in this country than we currently have people trained to build it. The bottleneck is not technology. It is not money. It is the decision to organize the effort. Those decisions will never be made by the market.
Solutions are going to take public action and competition. A new way of thinking.
Real work. Coordination. Training. Time. Effort. Change.
It’s a shame but nobody is coming to do this for us.
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Understanding the Link Between Capitalism and War
For a long time, the word “capitalism” was taboo. Now that multimillionaires and billionaires have taken over the US government, it’s on everyone’s lips. Yet there are only a few systematic analyses of “capitalism and war.”
Apr 29, 2026
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels taught us that capitalism is a system primarily characterized by private control over the means of production. In other words: Factories and banks are privately owned. Business decisions are guided by whether they generate surplus value that can be appropriated as profit by the owners. Workers become a commodity, one that must, however, market itself and generate exchange value.
In this context, the state’s primary role is to safeguard these relations of production and balance the interests of the various factions of capital. In doing so, the construction of neoliberal ideologies sought to minimize state benefits for the poorer strata of society, destroy the protective mechanisms of poorer societies, and simultaneously transfer state resources to capitalist oligarchies. Those who demanded the elimination of subsidies were, in fact, the very ones who benefited from them. Elon Musk is a current example of this, having actively helped reduce government spending while simultaneously securing subsidies for SpaceX.
Capital has always been and remains constantly on the lookout for new avenues of exploitation. This requires, on the one hand, the necessity of permanent economic growth within society and, on the other hand, the constant development of new global markets. This not only comes at the expense of people but also devastates and destroys the ecology of this planet. The compulsion and the inherent dynamics of capitalism to constantly grow and achieve ever-higher profits lead to the depletion of the planet and, step by step—but also through tipping points—destroy the conditions of existence on Earth.
Marx and Engels already foresightedly analyzed in the mid-19th century how the process of globalization unfolds under capitalism—here is their famous and still relevant quote from the Communist Manifesto:
The need for ever-expanding markets for its products drives the bourgeoisie across the entire globe. Everywhere it must take root, everywhere it must expand, everywhere it must establish connections. Through the exploitation of the world market, the bourgeoisie has made production and consumption cosmopolitan.
Capitalism means the embedding of economic greed in the deep structures of a society. This manifests itself in an extreme wealth gap, with very rich multimillionaires and billionaires and an increasingly larger class of impoverished people. The Marxist theory of impoverishment applies not only to the wealth gap between the rich nations of the Global North and the nations of the Global South affected by global exploitation, but is now also evident in the wealthier nations.
US President Donald Trump, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Vice President JD Vance, and others are examples of the capitalist right wing, which is attempting, through radical means, to undermine the welfare state and install an extremely ruthless form of capitalism.
Capitalism expanded worldwide as part of its historic triumphal march. It not only spread from Europe into all geographical regions of the world, but it also penetrated hegemonicly into the inner spaces of human coexistence—as Elmar Altvater notes:
The micro- and nanostructures of life are assigned value and thereby manipulated in such a way that their transformation into commodities and their exploitation in monetary form result. Private retreats are not safe from the constraints of money and capital. Forms of social co-existence are increasingly structured in contractual terms and thereby subjected to the logic of monetary market equivalence. Capitalist valorization is an all-encompassing yet, within the confines of the planet, limited and limiting principle, whose rules must be obeyed as if they were God’s commandments.
In an ever-evolving and diversifying capitalism, zones are emerging worldwide where financial oligarchies live behind guarded walls, largely evade taxes, and refuse to fulfill the social obligations of a community. The system described by Canadian-born historian Quinn Slobodian as “crack-up capitalism” is characterized by him as follows:
Within the national containers, one finds unusual legal spaces, anomalous territories, and peculiar jurisdictions. There are city-states, tax havens, enclaves, free ports, technology parks, duty-free zones, and innovation centers. The world of nation-states is littered with zones—and we are only beginning to understand their influence on contemporary politics.
The capitalist Struggle for Resources
The privatization of public funds, destructive investment in weapons and the military, the lack of purchasing power among impoverished segments of the population, geopolitical rivalries, as well as the finite nature of the Earth’s resources and the struggles over them lead to economic crises that are managed in various ways. Eco-imperial tensions are—according to political scientists Ulrich Brand and Markus Wissen:
Tensions between states and state alliances resulting from capitalism’s access to an ‘outside’ that is becoming increasingly available and uncontested in the ecological crisis. These eco-imperial tensions are becoming a structural feature of international politics; they are therefore not merely temporary but permanently present.
The extreme political right, in particular, exploits the crisis-prone nature of capitalism to promise authoritarian solutions to crises and, ultimately, to further exacerbate the wealth gap if it gains the power to do so. Human rights are disregarded; international law is violated. The struggle for resources such as oil, gas, and rare earths, and the billions in profits associated with them, shapes international politics and leads to wars and mass displacement.
Currently, the largest fossil fuel dealers—the US, Russia, and Iran—are fighting over global resources in the interests of their economies and financial capital. They are also fighting against an emerging capitalist faction and against cooperative initiatives that aim to solve the global energy problem with the help of renewable energy.
This critique applies not only to conditions in the Global North but also to the capitalist development path in the countries of the Global South—according to political scientist and activist Alexander Behr:
A brutal class struggle is also underway in many other countries of the Global South. The national bourgeoisie serves the interests of transnational corporations. In the short term, it can rely on a growing middle class that wants to secure its imperial lifestyle. But the hegemonic development path—whether state-interventionist as in China or neoliberal as in Brazil—is deeply destructive and will further intensify resource conflicts in the future. It thus ultimately jeopardizes the security of supply for all people.
It should be noted here that a struggle over solar energy does not lead to wars. The sun’s energy is limitlessly usable for us humans. The struggle over fossil fuels and rare earths is a struggle over limited resources that will become increasingly scarce in the future. The peace- and ecology-oriented journalist and author Franz Alt therefore writes in his article “Sun and Wind Do Not Need the Strait of Hormuz”:
One of the most crucial questions for the future is: War over oil or peace through the sun? The Iraq War, the Afghanistan War, the war over Venezuela, and now the Iran War: All these wars were or are wars over fossil fuels. Sun and wind, however, are gifts from heaven. They are energies of peace.
Of course, we must not forget that even “green” raw materials needed to produce electric car batteries (e.g., lithium or cobalt) are already hotly contested—regardless of whether the electric cars are powered by solar energy.
Authoritarian Capitalism
Authoritarian capitalist systems have no qualms about invading other states to secure and expand their own economic growth as well as the returns and privileges for their ruling classes. In states where the scope for public action is still governed by democratic constitutions, however, an internal societal debate takes place. The question here is whether international law and human rights must be respected or whether asserting interests through military means is appropriate. Societies with a democratic self-image, however, are currently tending toward militarization and increasingly authoritarian structures in the face of individual states perceived as threats. Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, for example, is a trigger here.
In this context, the arms industry appears to be prevailing over capitalist circles more interested in peace regarding the use of public, state funds, due to geopolitical trends. This means that an industry and its shareholders are currently gaining the upper hand, whose products are used for destruction, rather than for constructive investments. Conversely, attempts are being made to divert public funds away from ecologically oriented industries and social support for underprivileged segments of society in order to finance weapons and military personnel.
Wars are—besides geopolitical power ambitions—primarily resource wars in the interest of capital owners who profit from them and speculative war profiteers.
To this end, for example in Germany, a horrendous level of national debt disguised as a “special fund” is being accepted. This means that funds necessary for repairing what has been destroyed and for rebuilding alternative societies are also being withdrawn from future generations. This constitutes a massive privatization of public funds.
Naomi Klein discusses disaster capitalism and its profit-maximizing shock strategy. Natural disasters, military conflicts, or massive economic crises are deliberately exploited under capitalism to engineer economic redistribution and increase returns. Democratic structures and development would be brutally suppressed if the exploitation of disasters were to be hindered.
In particular, the combination of capitalism and an authoritarian-repressive social structure is a highly dangerous systemic alliance.
In this context, the further development of the means of production in a digital direction driven by artificial intelligence serves both to increase profits and to monitor and manipulate the population, as well as to enhance the efficiency of weapon systems used in wars—according to the Greek economist and politician Yannis Varouvakis (2025):
The implications are staggering: ubiquitous surveillance, automated targeting on the battlefields, macroeconomic instability (as cloud rents destroy aggregate demand), the end of democracy itself as an ideal (hailed by Peter Thiel), and the death of universities, replaced by personalized AI extensions.
US President Donald Trump, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Vice President JD Vance, and others are examples of the capitalist right wing, which is attempting, through radical means, to undermine the welfare state and install an extremely ruthless form of capitalism. In doing so, they seek to revise and abolish the centuries-long struggle of exploited and alienated people—both in their daily lives and in their work—against the inhuman power of unbridled capitalism.
Conclusion: On the Necessity of Rule-of-Law and Democratically Organized Control of Power
Wars are—besides geopolitical power ambitions—primarily resource wars in the interest of capital owners who profit from them and speculative war profiteers. The more repressive a state’s social structure is, the easier it is for its ruling “elite” or capitalist oligarchies to legitimize wars and enforce them within society.
The death of people—including civilians—the destruction of painstakingly built infrastructure, as well as ecocide—the destruction of nature as a weapon of war—do not play a role in limiting the actions of these systems.
Critical peace research seeks to analytically elucidate this connection and raise awareness of it. At the same time, its task should also be to develop step-by-step perspectives on how to strengthen democracy within society in a broader sense and how international understanding and cooperation can be achieved.
In this context, the topic of "capitalism" must not be overlooked. All systems—including capitalism—must be scrutinized to determine the extent to which their structures exhibit excesses of power that go beyond the state’s legitimate monopoly on the use of force. Domination without constitutional and democratic oversight leads to domestic repression and the destruction of interstate peace and international peace orders. States such as Russia, the US, or Turkey are current capitalist examples of this—even if they are authoritarian in different ways.
Peace, on the other hand, requires a social system whose economic practices are both solidarity based and ecological, and which takes the rule of law, international and human rights, and democracy seriously. This system can begin within capitalism, but will only be able to fully develop in a different social formation that can no longer be described as a capitalist society.
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Building Beyond 'No Kings'
Why there is cause for both celebration and concern.
Mar 31, 2026
It’s easy to both celebrate and criticize the “No Kings” marches—and perhaps some of both is warranted.
The latest “No Kings” march in San Francisco, like others, featured a broad and diverse forest of protest signs spanning from moderately liberal to strongly left/progressive. There were American flags (many appropriately upside-down), copies of the Constitution, basic urges to rescue democracy and the vote; there were signs against Trump’s murderous and illegal war on Iran; signs for Palestinian rights and freedom; signs denouncing oligarchy and the billionaire class; and a wide array of others (one of my personal favorites from a friend’s octogenarian mom read, “I have dementia and even I know better.”)
It was inspiring to be among tens of thousands locally and more than eight million nationwide. When you get a record eight million people into the streets protesting fascism, war, and bigotry (and a host of other concerns), that’s something to celebrate. It’s no minor feat to mobilize so many millions nationwide to spend hours of their weekend marching and chanting for our rights and our future.
Before we get to the criticism and growing calls for change within this change movement, it’s important to honor the accomplishment of providing this avenue for mass dissent. “No Kings” and related movements have created a valuable space for public uprising and expression, a space that encourages and could enable other forms of dissent, disruption, and organizing.
I’ve been to every “No Kings” and dozens of other protests and marches against this insane, viciously destructive administration. It has been both inspiring and at times frustrating. It is remarkable we have assembled so many millions so quickly against Trump and his horrendous, harmful policies. It’s also true that the messages have been diffuse and diverse, lacking in concrete demands or impact. Weekend marches every few months have limited effect, but they’ve been an important start that we should build on now.
If we’re going to build a meaningful and lasting resistance movement that creates real impact and change, we need both the broader masses of liberals and moderates and the strong, sharp voices of progressives and the left.
“No Kings” and affiliated groups are a broad and loose yet growing coalition of liberals, moderates, some Republicans and former Trump supporters, as well as more progressive and left-wing activists. This coalition of dissent is united in at least a few things: we are against Trump and his assaults on democracy, the Constitution, government for the people, as well as on immigrants and core human values like diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Promisingly, evolving research shows that a strong and growing majority of “No Kings” protesters are being organized through a protest infrastructure and are motivated most by outrage at Trump’s illegal, murderous war on Iran, as well as by attacks on immigrants and protesters.
At the same time, it is problematic and concerning when “No Kings” features top Democrats in Congress who receive huge amounts of AIPAC funding and who have offered meager, milk toast resistance to Trump and who have helped uphold Israel’s genocidal war crimes and annihilation of Gaza. It is a very real problem and limitation for a movement to provide a platform for (and to align closely with) Democrats who, other than some basic opposition to Trump, have maintained this country’s murderous and deeply inequitable status quo. As some have pointed out, most “No Kings” protests featured little mention of the war on Iran or the US-aided Israeli annihilation of Gaza.
Decisions like that have led many lefties to diss and dismiss “No Kings” in ways that are both partly accurate and also simplistic and counterproductive. Some have repudiated “No Kings” as merely an AIPAC-run front group for the mainstream Democratic Party; others have announced they’re not attending because they believe “No Kings” is mostly a bunch of flag-toting liberals and moderates who aren’t allies with long-term left movements (and they are at least partly right). These are old, old divisions and wounds, nothing new. But if we’re going to build a meaningful and lasting resistance movement that creates real impact and change, we need both the broader masses of liberals and moderates and the strong, sharp voices of progressives and the left.
Why? Because, as an extra-astute op-ed in the New York Times explained, our troubles are not just about Trump—they are about this country as well. While we need a massive “big tent” resistance against this horrendous man and moment, we also need a sustained and independent mass movement against America’s bipartisan wars, its bipartisan military-industrial complex, its bipartisan marriage to corporate power and interests. As nightmarish as things are now, they sure weren’t “great” under Biden or previous Democratic administrations—they just weren’t as disastrously awful, in most ways. While Trump is enabling Israel’s sickening assaults on Gaza, Lebanon, and elsewhere, Biden did that as well.
This moment requires more both/and thinking and strategy. We need both the huge, unifying if diffuse mass protests and more concrete, impactful actions, whether huge or not. We need both a big Democratic victory in the midterms and a strong resistance movement that is independent of the party. We need to both celebrate and critique (and change) the “No Kings” rallies.
There is room and reason for both support and criticism of “No Kings.” The important thing is to be engaged and constructive. Build up, don't tear down. Come out and support the massive marches even if you have criticisms and frustrations. Create alternative actions, work with any allies you can, and build those up. Sneering and sniping from the sidelines isn’t useful. It’s also not helpful if we merely defend “No Kings” against that criticism. We must be a part of making this movement and moment all it needs to be.
If we are serious about stopping Trump’s atrocious policies, we must grow not only in numbers but in our focus and strategy.
As a writer and activist with more than 40 years of experience in the streets, I urge liberals and leftists to move through these age-old disputes and seek common ground wherever and whenever possible. We will often continue to disagree. I want to see more liberals at antiwar and pro-Palestine protests and more radical actions. I want more liberals to see that our real common enemy is the corporate neoliberal establishment; the military-industrial “forever war” complex; this country’s deep racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia; and America’s grotesque inequality and deprivations amid insane private wealth. Liberals and lefties will never agree on everything and won’t always support the same candidates or causes; but we must collaborate and coalesce to every extent possible.
As a writer and activist on the left who has participated in and analyzed movements for decades, I think it’s time for a significant shift in the “No Kings” movement, toward greater political independence and separation from the Democratic Party. Yes, many if not most of us will work hard to help Democrats win the midterms—but the movement must be separate if it is to grow and have greater impact. We can’t have a resistance movement closely allied with a party that, as a whole (with some notable exceptions), enables genocidal war crimes and forever wars.
If we are serious about stopping Trump’s atrocious policies, we must grow not only in numbers but in our focus and strategy. Weekend marches every few months are not nearly enough. “No Kings” has created a vast platform and momentum—the question is, what do we do with it now, and how do we create concrete, meaningful change? How do these movements directly confront and challenge power?
One promising answer is the upcoming May Day “general strike” actions, including mass work stoppages and boycotts. As Common Dreams reported, Indivisible and other groups are supporting this more confrontational and potentially impactful effort. A similar general strike by Minnesota activists in January following ICE’s murders of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti has provided an inspiring model for upcoming actions.
In the months and years ahead, there will be challenging ongoing questions about where this resistance movement puts its dollars and energy; about people’s varying willingness and abilities to put their time, energies, and bodies on the line against intensifying fascism and war; and about the need to build “big tent” mass movement unity and/or (I emphatically say “and”) more targeted and consequential actions to stop or slow Trump’s machinery of death and destruction.
Much like the divisions around the Democratic Party between centrists, liberals, and progressives, these divides and questions in the resistance will persist and, to some extent, may never get fully resolved. In this critical moment, having amassed eight million in the streets, we have an opportunity, in fact an obligation, to forge new alliances, and work with and beyond our differences—both to help stop today’s Trumpian “MAGA” insanities and to create meaningful long-term change toward peace, justice, and greater equality, no matter who wins the next two elections. I’ll be here for it all, and hope you will, too.
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The Real Cause of US Polarization: Class War, Not Culture War
The real crisis is America is not the deep political cultural divisions among its citizens as much as the concerted efforts of both political parties to play on imagined differences, while orchestrating a massive shift in wealth from working people to the super-rich.
Mar 26, 2026
At this year’s National Football League Super Bowl, the Trump regime could not resist politicizing the event by attacking the halftime performance of Bad Bunny, a celebration of Puerto Rican musical culture conducted entirely in the Spanish language. President Donald Trump endorsed an alternative country western streamed halftime program of Kid Rock, which was dedicated to the conservative icon Charlie Kirk. It was the president and his party inciting the MAGA base to campaign for congressional Republicans.
The two shows represent two radically different cultural streams in America, roughly approximating the struggle over ethnic, gender, and racial representation in public life. On a more material level, however, the unfulfilled day to day needs of working people caught up in this ideological divide suggests that rhetorical claims about the culture wars are not grounded in the quotidian realities and material demands of most people.
The real crisis is America is not the deep political cultural divisions among its citizens as much as the concerted efforts of both political parties to play on imagined differences, while orchestrating a massive shift in wealth from working people to the super-rich class, which includes the congressional millionaire unrepresentatives. At least two-thirds of the Senate membership and more than half the House are millionaires, compared to 9% of Americans overall.
Diminishing access to basic human needs, a news topic that does not attract advertising revenue, except perhaps from Big Pharma, has a huge impact on the quality and very meaning of democracy. The real crisis of the working class is not on the MSM agenda.
True to its propaganda mission of creating legitimacy for the hegemonic state, the mainstream corporate media fails to help Americans understand that in their individual family struggles to survive or just about make ends meet, they are not alone.
In the midst of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln referred to an ideal America as a country of, by, and for the people. Looking at the political and civic participation and well-being of people, all the people, as a proxy for democracy, it is clear that the legitimacy of the democratic state is at a dangerously low level and in inverse correspondence with the degree of American military or police aggression at home and abroad. The largest injuries of wars fall on the working class.
The lower the trust the public invests in the state, the more the ruling apparatuses are compelled to distract public attention. Trump apparently believes he can override constitutional restraints on his power mandate, ignore public opinion, and function as a quasi-autocrat. He also hopes to deflect attention from his failed economic policies by redirecting the public gaze toward a constructed enemy threat.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton melded her identity politics strategy to neoconservative, pro-Israeli, and Russophobic rhetoric bereft of any vision or coherence, in the process losing the working class, 52% to 44%, to a faux pro-labor campaigner. Her “basket of deplorables” gaffe directed at the white working class didn’t help her chances. The Democrats under the neoliberal Clinton wing of the party turned away from the New Deal and toward neoliberal, anti-welfare, corporate-friendly, austerity, and tough-on-crime policies.
In 2024, a disunited working class voted overwhelmingly in favor of Donald Trump, who was anything but a pro-labor politician. According to the Pew Research Center, 67% of Trump voters were without a college degree, a proxy for working class, compared with 51% for Harris. Clinton protégé Kamala Harris captured just 42% of working-class voters, while Trump carried 56%.
Clinton-Obama acolyte Joe Biden, often identified as progressive, cut federal food stamp and childcare benefits during his presidency and allowed child poverty to nearly triple, while millions of Americans lost Medicaid and CHIP (Children's Health Insurance Program) support. On the international front, as Barack Obama’s vice president, Biden acted like an imperial proconsul in Ukraine, forsaking even token gestures of diplomacy in dealing with the Russian head of state, whom he publicly dismissed as “a thug.” His unconditional military assistance that enabled the Israeli genocide lost him and his stand-in much of the youth vote in 2024 prior to his decision to drop out of the presidential race.
The Democrats have followed the same militaristic, hegemonic foreign policy approach as Republicans. As secretary of state, Clinton, following John Foster Dulles’ style of “brinkmanship,” promised to confront Russia in Ukraine with a “no-fly zone” that she proposed would halt Russian aid to the rebellious Donbas region in eastern Ukraine. Overall, her identity-based politics campaign strategy in 2016 lost out to a faux labor-friendly campaigner, who took 52% of the working class vote to Clinton’s 44%.
Perhaps the only thing worse than a party of the billionaire class led by a real estate tycoon is another party of the billionaire class pretending to be an alternative. In reality, the well-being of Americans has continually declined for nearly 50 years under neoliberal governments of both parties. As a result, public trust of governing institutions by 2024 had reached a near all-time low in the post-war period. Today, Democrat voters are only marginally more trusting of the federal government, 35%, than Republicans, 11%.
The purported polarization of Democrat versus Republican voters has been constructed as an ideological trope to hide the more substantive economic and class basis of the great divide, which is the public’s recognition of the corruption of the state on the one hand and the concentration of wealth and power that has hollowed out the democratic status of citizens, especially workers and urban minorities, on the other.
In November 2025, the Kettering Foundation found a new low, 24%, in its tracking of American adults who believe that democracy is working in the country. The relatively weak organic character of American democracy measured in terms of social distribution corresponds to the perception of diminished state legitimacy that is documented in several studies of public trust in state institutions. Of all public institutions in America surveyed by Gallup in 2024, the very lowest regard is held for the one body that constitutes the essence of a representative democracy, the legislature. Gallup found that trust in Congress registered a “great deal” or “quite a lot” for a total of a meager 9% of respondents.
Trust in the presidency registered 26%, the Supreme Court 30%, newspapers 18%, television news 12%, and internet news 16%. Big business was trusted by 16% and, crucially, the medical system by a minority 36%. Indeed, 80% of Americans, including 91% of Democrats, 82% of Independents, and 67% of Republicans, see the rich as wielding too much power in American politics, according to a January 2026 YouGov poll. It identified a broad public perception that the economic system works primarily on behalf of powerful interests and that members of Congress, governors, and federal officials, moreover, are likely to accept bribes.
The public is indeed very skeptical about the conduct of electoral politics: 87% of Republicans and 85% of Democrats believe the parties "are more focused on fighting each other than on solving problems.” Per Max Weber, it was the charismatic and caudillo style of Trump that served as the last though shaky refuge of public confidence in government. That lasted about one year. In March 2026, enmeshed in a brutal war without real objectives in Iran, Trump’s approval rating reached an all-time low for presidents.
Neoliberalism and Social Polarization
A “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” to use Lincoln’s felicitous phrasing, captures the essence of democracy–over and above the right to vote, nominal free speech, or the existence of relatively independent news media, all of which in fact are under the threat or capture of partisan control. In this regard, the US has greatly declined as a democracy, even as measured by the conservative NGO Freedom House, and more closely resembles an oligarchy dominated by the billionaire class, with extremely wide income gaps and among the highest concentrations of wealth (Gini coefficient) among the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Compared to the European welfare states (e.g., Nordic countries, France, Germany, and Netherlands), the US is more of a warfare state, drawing much of its wealth from military interventions, military aid (which is largely recycled back to the US), and alliances with repressive political leaders such as the Gulf autocrats.
Looking at the material and social status of working Americans as the true measure of democratic empowerment, one finds a depressed state of well-being and social economic freedom for most citizens.
A few of the indicators of social demise (a fuller list is found in my book cited, below) that has fed distrust and material polarization in America:
- Highest rate of homelessness among wealthy countries;
- One of the worst countries in the OECD in real retiree income;
- Share of adults living in middle-class households fell from 61% in 1971 to 50% in 2021;
- 44% of workers in 2024 were not earning a living wage;
- Some 50 million Americans are living with household incomes below 125% of poverty, including more than 15 million children;
- In 2023, Blacks in the US had more than double the poverty rate of whites, 17.9% to 7.7%;
- Infant mortality rate in 2017 was 5.8 per thousand live births, ranked 32nd (out of 36) among OECD countries, 55th worldwide;
- People with less than $15,000 in earnings died on average more than 10 years earlier than those with annual income above $50,000. US ranked 46th in life span. Comparing American pre-Covid-19 life expectancy between the richest 1% and poorest 1% of individuals, the gap was 14.6 years;
- 35% of millennials and 22% of all Americans fear becoming homeless;
- Covid-19 deaths are the highest in the world;
- Among the highest numbers and rates of incarceration in the West, with extremely high rates for people of color (in the US, three times the population share for Blacks);
- Blacks and Latinos make up 29% of the national population but nearly 60% of the prison population;
- More than 5 million Americans are under supervision by the criminal legal system, of whom about 2 million, disproportionately Black, are living in prisons and jails rather than in their communities;
- The weakest middle class and the largest low-income and high-income strata compared to Western Europe;
- Since the takeoff of neoliberalism, among the lowest rates of civic engagement and immigrant enfranchisement of any advanced economy;
- Ranked among the 10 loneliest national populations, measured by percentage of people living alone, 5th at 28%; and
- Press freedom: 57th in 2025 (45th in 2018), behind every country in Western Europe except Greece.
These are the actual data of polarization in the US, intensified in the era of neoliberalism. True to its propaganda mission of creating legitimacy for the hegemonic state, the mainstream corporate media fails to help Americans understand that in their individual family struggles to survive or just about make ends meet, they are not alone. The MSM instead misleads the public by portraying political conflict as cultural warfare rather than class warfare, thereby dividing the people and protecting the system’s class repression and small minority of billionaires controlling the most critical affairs of the state and its propaganda apparatuses.
Democracy here is defined by the equality of citizenship. In practice, this means universal access to healthcare; quality housing; higher education; clean environment; equitable income; union empowerment; racial, gender, and ethnic justice; cultural amenities for all; and other core objectives pushed by public advocacy groups. Indeed, in a more genuinely democratic society there would far less need for public advocacy, and electoral and political activities would no longer be controlled by corporate and other undemocratic institutions. The role of progressive intellectuals is to struggle for democracy along this understanding of a democratic and just society.
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