Paradigm shift now towards the alt.

Change from below Many analysts are taking notice of this paradigm change. Paul McCulley, a business professor at Georgetown, told the New York Times earlier this week, “Having the tools of economic stabilization work a whole lot more through the fiscal channel and a whole lot less through the monetary channel is a profound, pro-democracy policy mix.” In plainer language: It’s better to have elected representatives rather than unelected bankers making the call on how public money is spent. Some media commentators are seeing the shift, but they’re missing the real reasons for why it’s happening. Times opinion writer Neil Irwin, for instance, characterizes it as a battle between “pointy-headed technocrats” and lawmakers, or as the headline of his article earlier this week put it, “Move over, nerds. It’s the politicians’ economy now.” Without the insights that come from a class analysis of the situation, Irwin and other commentators in the bourgeois press continue to look only at the differences among those at the top of society to explain social change. The truth, however, is that the pressure now being applied to neoliberal ideology is the result of class struggle from below. Since the last recession, working-class action has been steadily building and gaining strength. The first sparks came in the Occupy Wall Street movement that emerged in the wake of the financial crisis. There were the two Bernie Sanders campaigns for president as well as that of Elizabeth Warren, which inserted explicitly social democratic demands like Medicare for All into public conversation. The trade union movement has begun to reverse its decades-long decline, with new organizing efforts like the campaign by Alabama Amazon workers showing that more and more workers are looking to collective action as the way to improve their lives. The Black Lives Matter national uprising, with its demand to defund policing and militarization and redirect funds toward human needs, has melded together the fights to end racism and economic inequality. Opinion polls have shown interest in the ideas of socialism gaining steam for several years already, showing up also in the fact that left-wing organizations like Democratic Socialists of America and the Communist Party USA have seen explosive growth. The 2018 and 2020 elections were further proof, as the caucus of progressive legislators swelled. Bold women of color leaders like Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, and Pramila Jayapal now lead the charge in Washington on everything from the Green New Deal to the Fight for $15 and more. The mass death and destruction experienced in the past year because of coronavirus have only accelerated the trend of people questioning the status quo and looking for alternatives. The pandemic has accelerated class struggle trends that were already becoming apparent. Increasingly, millions are questioning capitalism, as shown by this message spray-painted onto a wall in Toronto. | C.J. Atkins / People’s World All this simmering of organized working-class activity and political growth—driven by the material conditions workers and oppressed people find themselves living in—is having an impact at the national level of policy and debate. In Marxist terms, changes in the economic foundation of society are affecting mass consciousness and therefore prodding change in the superstructure—the legal, political, and philosophical ideas of our times. Old ideologies like neoliberal capitalism are under pressure from new ones arising out of class struggle. Those new ideas are not yet fully formed, though, and the forces pushing them are not yet strong enough to assert their power at all times. The new is still in conflict with the old, and the outcomes are uneven. Allies (like politicians) will at times waver. Victories will be real, but incomplete (like the dropping of the $15 minimum wage from the ARA). Defeats are not unavoidable. As Frederick Engels wrote, “History makes itself in such a way that the final result always arises from conflicts…there are innumerable intersecting forces.” So the American Rescue Plan, despite whatever we didn’t get out of it, is a big win for the working class. The people have been demanding a change in how our economy operates and whom it benefits. Organization and unity are making it happen—the 2020 election was proof of that as well.