the U . S . employee class also began to turn against the system , but it found the new Right unacceptable and “ centrism ” only slightly less so . The Democratic party has so far retained most of these people , although many have increasingly moved toward “ progressive ” champions such as Bernie Sanders , Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez , and Cori Bush . Cornel West and Jill Stein carry similar banners into this year ’ s election but they insist on doing that from outside the Democratic Party .
Hostility has intensified between the two major parties as their opposition has become more extreme . This keeps happening because neither found nor implemented any solutions to the deepening problems besetting the United States . Ever more extreme wealth and income inequalities undermine what remains of a sense of community binding Americans . Politics ever more controlled by the employer class and especially the super-rich produce widespread debilitating anger , resignation , and rage . The relatively shrinking power of the United States abroad drives home a sense of impending doom . The rise of the first real economic superpower competitor ( China ) raises the specter of the U . S . global unipolar moment being replaced , and soon .
Each major party blames the other for everything going wrong . Both also respond to the declining empire by moving rightward toward alternative versions of economic nationalism — “ America First ” — in place of the cheerleading for neoliberal globalization that both parties indulged in before . Republicans carefully refuse to blame capitalism or capitalists for anything . Instead , they blame bad government , the Democrats , the liberals , and China . Democrats likewise carefully refuse to blame capitalism or capitalists for anything ( except the “ progressives ,” who do that moderately ). Democrats mostly blame Republicans who have “ gone crazy ” and “ threaten democracy .” They erect new versions of their old demons . Russia and Putin stand in for the USSR and Stalin as chief awful foreigners with Chinese “ communists ” a close second . Trying to hold on to the political middle , the Democrats denounce Republicans and especially the Trump / MAGA people for challenging the last 70 years of political consensus . In that Democratic Party version of the “ good old days ,” reasonable Republicans and Democrats then alternated in power dutifully . The result was that the U . S . empire and U . S . capitalism prospered first by helping to end the exhausted European empires and then by profiting from the United States ’ unipolar global hegemony .
Biden ’ s plans pretend the U . S . empire is not in decline . In 2024 , he offers more of the old establishment politics . Trump basically pretends the same about the U . S . empire but carefully selects problem areas ( e . g ., immigration , Chinese competition , and Ukraine ) that he can represent as failures of Democratic leadership . Nothing fundamental is amiss with the U . S . empire and its prospects in his eyes . All that is necessary is to reject Biden and his politics as incapable of reviving it . Trump ’ s plans thus call for a much more extreme economic nationalism run by a leaner , meaner government .
Each side deepens the split between Republicans and Democrats . Neither dares admit the basic , long-term declining empire and the key problems ( income and wealth inequality , politics corrupted by that inequality , worsening business cycles , and mammoth debts ) accumulated by its capitalist foundation . The parties ’ jousting turns on substitute issues that offer temporary electoral advantages . It also reinforces the public ’ s incapacity for systemic critique and change . Both parties endlessly appeal to a population whose alienation deepens as relentless systemic decline worms its way into everyone ’ s daily life and troubles . Both parties increasingly expose their growing irrelevance .
Neither party ’ s campaign offers solutions to systemic decline . Gross miscalculations of a changed world economy and shrinking U . S . political power abroad underlay both parties ’ failed policies in relation to Afghanistan , Iraq , Ukraine , and Gaza . The turn toward economic nationalism and protectionism will not stop the decline . Something bigger and deeper than either Party dares consider is underway . Capitalism has moved its dynamic centers yet again over the last generation . This time the move went from western Europe , North America , and Japan to China , India , and beyond , from the G7 to BRICS . Wealth and power are correspondingly shifting .
The places capitalism leaves behind descend into mass depression , overdose deaths , and sharpening social divisions . These social crises keep worsening alongside deepening inequalities of wealth , income , and education . Steadily if also maddeningly slowly , the rightward shift of U . S . politics after 1945 has finally arrived at social exhaustion and ineffectuality . Perhaps thereby the United States prepares another possible New Deal with or without another 1929-style crash .
Hopefully , then , one crucial lesson of the New Deal will have been learned and applied . Leaving the capitalist class structure of production unchanged — a minority of employers dominating a majority of employees — enables that minority to undo whatever reforms any New Deal might achieve . That is what the U . S . employer class did after 1945 . The solution now must include moving beyond the employer-employee organization of the workplace . Replacing that with a democratic community organization — what we elsewhere call worker cooperatives — is the missing element that can make progressive reforms stick . When employees and employers are the same people , no longer will a separate employer class have the incentive and resources to undo what the employee majority wants . Replacing employer / employeeorganized workplaces with worker coops is the very different “ great replacement ” we need . On the basis of reforms secured in that way , we can build a future . We can avoid repeating the last half-century ’ s failure even to preserve the reforms imposed on a capitalism that crashed and burned in the 1930s .
80 x The Trial Lawyer