The alt would be a peaceful, passive revolution. There’s mass support for reorganizing the production of wealth, even from elites.

We stand at a tipping point in history when acute dissatisfaction with capitalism is rising, not on account of its poor economic performance or the unfair distribution of wealth, but rather its excellent economic performance, its intensity. In other words, as the real income and the social clout of the working class has risen, exploitation is no longer the key engine of social injustice. Instead, it is the competitive production of profit—the key dynamic of capitalism—that is felt as harmful by all participants in this process. It is for the first time that acute injustices are experienced from, and social hostility is directed at, both the competitive and the productivist components in the operation of capitalism. What is being challenged is not simply the unfair distribution of wealth, but, importantly, the very process through which wealth is generated and the impact this has on individuals, communities, and nature. This is the case because the trouble with current-day capitalism is not just material inequality, but a massive economic and social uncertainty afflicting a growing multitude of groups beyond the poor and the excluded. The intensified competitive pressures of globally integrated capitalism have also done tangible damage to the winners in the distribution of power—labor market insiders with good and well-paid jobs, owners and managers of capital—and is triggering their discontent.

This novel multifaceted discontent is shaping a powerful political force. A variety of interests across class divides, educational levels, and cultural identities are making diverse individuals converge into a multitude united by an overarching grievance against the impact the competitive production of profit is having on their lives as well as their social and natural environment. Mobilized in a mundane and inglorious anticapitalist revolution, these forces can perform a social change yet more radical than any proletarian class struggle could ever achieve.

Progressive politics since the birth of capitalism have proceeded in one of two ways. Both Social Democracy and Christian Democracy have sought to humanize capitalism through reforms such as redistribution of wealth. The radical Left has sought to overthrow it by a revolutionary expropriation of privately held productive assets and placing them in public hands. As I have argued, none of these measures are a threat to capitalism, because they do not hamper its constitutive dynamic— the competitive production of profit. It is worth recalling that the clash between the communist dictatorships and capitalist democracies during the Cold War perpetuated the competitive production of profit, which was simply pursued with different means.

However, the by now well-oiled political machinery of liberal democracy, despite the well-deserved criticism of its failings, is nevertheless able to deliver radical change through incremental policy responses to public preferences, as long as diverse publics push in the same direction. This logic of building influential alliances brought about the codification of basic rights (well before the advent of mass democracy), racial and gender equality (despite the opposition of numerical majorities and powerful minorities), as well as the post-WWII welfare state.

Symptomatic of the tangible potential of an anticapitalist shift in public opinion is that the idea of democratic socialism is gaining political influence in the United States, the flagship capitalist democracy. This was displayed by young Americans’ enthusiastic support for Bernie Sanders in the run-up to the 2016 presidential elections. Membership in the Democratic Socialists of America increased tenfold between 2016 and 2018. The defeat of long-time Democratic boss and congressman Joe Crowley (a typical Democratic Party member of the neoliberal policy establishment) by democratic socialist Alexandria OcasioCortez in the primaries in Queens, New York, in June 2018 has become emblematic of the phenomenon of “Socialist Millennials.” Importantly, politically engaged millennials are mobilizing both against poverty and for saving the environment, concerns that rank as essentials of life. These two objectives can be achieved only through radical practices that go against the competitive production of profit—ergo, against capitalism—even if not all espouse the ideas of socialism or communism. Symptomatic of an emergent anticapitalist impetus is also the mainstreaming of concerns with inequality in the political discourse of all political families, after the “Occupy” movement broke a decadeslong taboo over the mention of inequality in political discourse.

Exactly which political force is initiating these emancipatory policies is of lesser importance. For example, the European Pillar of Social Rights that was inaugurated in 2016 was an initiative of the center-right. In the United States, many of the job-protection policies President Trump has advocated or launched (such as pulling the country out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership) go against the competitive production of profit and have been endorsed by Left political groups as well.

These developments, just like the shock of angry Americans propelling a maverick presidential candidate through the democratic vote or the counterwave of political protest that accompanies Trump’s presidency, signal that the technocratic politics of no alternatives (the TINA policy logic) that had paralyzed Western democracies for the previous three decades is over. The institutional channels of liberal democracies have been unblocked. They are effectively processing social discontent and translating it into pressures for radical alternatives. The grievances of the multitude against the effects of competitive profit production could thus obtain political expression through the mechanisms of democratic politics. This would amount to overcoming capitalism in the manner of what Antonio Gramsci called “passive revolution”—a significant, yet gradual metamorphosis of the social order, a radical but not rapturous change. Herein lies the radical nature of the current conjuncture, even as capitalism has recovered from the latest economic downturn, talk about crisis of capitalism has vanished, an organized revolutionary force is not in sight, and the utopian models for a postcapitalist society have largely been discarded.