Boring Radicalism

Disappointed Bernie fans are threatening to vote for Stein or Johnson or even Trump on the theory that half a loaf isn’t even worth half. Of course some of ‘em have bought into the Republican campaign to demonize Clinton and really think that she’s somehow a crook, but I think the deeper reason for this cunning plan to shoot yourself in the foot is the belief that only some sort of drastic, paradigm change will materially improve the situation. From where I’m sitting, there are two problems with this notion:

1.  An earthshaking comprehensive alternative to the neoliberal version of capitalism is simply not on offer. It’s not just that a really radical reorganization of America’s political economy is not politically feasible. It isn’t just the road to utopia that’s missing. It’s a credible utopia. Sanders may get credit for political courage by calling himself a socialist, but that is really a brag since his politics, considered issue by issue, is at most a not particularly left version of routine social democracy. You hear it said that wingnuts are like the dog that chases the truck, i.e., that they don’t have any idea of what to do if they manage to catch up with it; but the crew at the National Review don’t have a patent on that sort of thing. The Left has been searching for a substantive program for a long time now, but only the crankiest of cranks still thinks that a modern economy can dispense with markets. Nobody with any sense proposes to nationalize the toilet paper factory. Sanders certainly doesn’t.

2.  The absence of a vision of a new political economy doesn’t mean that capitalism in its current form is inevitable. Indeed, to judge by the history of the last two centuries, the one thing that apparently is inevitable is that capitalism will change. We still call it capitalism and will probably call its successor capitalism, but the economy of 2016 is a far cry from the economy of the 1950s with its huge centralized factories. Thing is, though, there is no replacement blueprint. That doesn’t mean that political action is futile, however. What the disaffected Left doesn’t seem to notice is that incremental changes can make an enormous difference, which is why the right, which is clearheaded on this score at least, fights apparently commonsensical measures with such passion. Raising the Federal minimum wage to $12 or figuring out how to make college affordable to people of middling means or increasing Social Security benefits or making the income tax more effectively progressive may not reverse the increase in economic inequality that has marked the last three decades but it will accomplish a great deal more than Jill Stein vapor wear. In fact, if you look at the measures of inequality over the last several administrations, you’ll note that for all its ideological impurity the Bill Clinton administration was actually a period during which the Gini coefficient didn’t rise and the incomes of middle class people did. The countless “little” decisions that a regime makes on a routine basis mattered. And there were also all those judges. If four years from now, the Supreme Court has a liberal majority, the entitlement programs are in good shape, we’ve actually taken material steps to deal with global warming, education has become more affordable, the infrastructure is being rebuilt, our immigration policies have been adjusted to reality, and, above all, if the disaffected two-fifths of the nation calms down, it will seem as if a revolution had taken place and not just to hysterical conservatives.

My overall point is this: incremental reform is not only the best outcome anybody can reasonably hope for at this point; it’s actually pretty radical.