The socialists wont win degrowth, but violence will.

The United States is not trembling on the precipice of a communist revolution.

Uncle Sam commands the most powerful military in human history, and its rank-and-file exhibit few socialistic sympathies; U.S. precincts with military bases backed Donald Trump in both 2016 and 2020. America’s civilian security forces — which is to say its roughly 665,000 police officers — are even more hostile to the left than the troops. Our nation’s most heavily armed private citizens, meanwhile, would by and large prefer a Hobbesian war of all against all to a Marxist government. Should America’s constitutional order ever give way to an extralegal power struggle, an overwhelming force of arms will be arrayed against the radical left.

If those contras would have superior firepower, they would also (almost certainly) have more popular support. Some 73 percent of U.S. voters identify as moderates or conservatives. There is some ambiguity about what voters mean when they choose such labels. But it seems safe to say that very few self-identified moderates intend to convey their support for a revolution to establish market socialism, but not anarcho-communism.

In fact, the U.S. electorate evinces a strong bias toward the status quo. When federal policy moves left on a given issue, public opinion tends to move right in response, and vice versa. Support for universal health care hit a modern low after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, while support for abortion rights hit an all-time high after the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

This fondness for stasis can’t be written off as false consciousness alone. America’s political economy condemns a minority of its population to unremunerative labor and/or penury. And our nation’s exceptionally low life expectancy bespeaks its profound social pathologies. Nevertheless, median real household income in the U.S. is about as high as it has ever been, having risen from $60,313 in 2012 to $70,784 in 2021. That leaves the typical U.S. family more prosperous, at least by one plausible measure, than roughly 90 percent of all humans on the planet today (and 99-plus percent of all who have ever existed).

The most damning feature of the present economic order may be the threat it poses to Earth’s climate and ecosystems. And climate change does inspire public concern. But in a 2022 AP-NORC poll, voters were nearly twice as likely to name “gas prices” as a top priority as they were to name any subject related to climate or the environment. This finding is consistent with the U.S. public’s broader political behavior. Much of the country consistently supports a party that is actively hostile to decarbonization. In blue America, meanwhile, voters have repeatedly shot down carbon-tax referenda, while self-avowed climate hawks have prioritized their antipathy for nuclear energy, hydropower, and “upzoning” over reducing carbon emissions.

In other words, the small minority of Americans who say decarbonization is their top political goal won’t reliably sacrifice their sentimental attachment to a particular piece of nature in service of that cause. It is therefore unlikely that they are prepared to sacrifice all the consolations of political stability — and/or their very lives — in support of an ecosocialist insurrection.