Gar Alperovitz

What Then Must We Do?

Democratizing wealth and building a communitysustaining economy from the ground up

S t r a i g h t Ta l k

About the Next

American Revolution

Introduction

What Then Must We Do?

ve borrowed my title What Then Must We Do? from Tolstoy, and the profoundly disturbing 1886 book he wrote once he began to dig below the surface of what was happening in late-nineteenth-century Russiaa time when the system was in decay, the aristocracy enjoyed extraordinary luxury, and the peasants endured lives of hunger and pain. As a person of privilege he began to understand something deeper about his time in history: I sit on a mans back, choking him and making him carry me, he wrote, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible meansexcept by getting off his back.1 Most of us do not literally sit on mens backs, making them carry us. We do, however, often uneasily look the other way, satisfying ourselves with modest changes that reassure us all is well while millions are in despair. Weve done the best we can do, we might say, given the realities. Still, many sense, as did Tolstoy, that to actually do something serious would require us to confront much deeper problems than we are commonly willing to. What then must we do? is not shouted in the streets, but it is a question that more and more Americansyoung and old, liberal, radical, and conservativeare quietly beginning to ask themselves in much more penetrating ways. So let us begin. My starting point is the obvious fact that despite its great wealth the United States today faces enormous difficulties, with no easily discernible political answers that even begin to offer strategic handholds on a truly democratic future. Elections occur, and major fiscal debates ensue, but many of the most pressing problems facing ordinary citizens are only marginally affected (and in many cases in ways that increase burdens, not reduce them). The issue is not simply that our situation is worrisome, however; it is that there are growing reasons to believe that in fact we face systemic problems, not simply political problems.

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Systemic problems in the fundamental, not the superficial, sense. In the pages ahead I will suggest that our nations truly critical problems are built into the very structure of the economic and political system; they are not something passing in the night that will go away even when we elect forwardlooking leaders and actively pressure them to move in a different direction. I wont load you down with statistics at this point. (Ill provide many more details in due course.) A couple of obvious reminders, however: Not only has the economy been stagnating for a long time, but for the average personand the average familythings have been bad for a very long time. Real wages for 80 percent of American workers, for instance, have not gone up more than a trivial amount for at least three decades.2 At the same time, income for the top 1 percent has jumped from roughly 10 percent of all income to roughly 20 percent.3 Put another way, virtually all the gains of the entire economic system have gone to a tiny, tiny group at the top for at least three decades. Worth pausing to think about that one. What is going on when virtually all the gains in the entire economic system go to the top? Im not interested here in criticizing those at the top (we can deal with that later). The question is: What is going on with the system when this kind of thing happensand continues to happen in an ongoing way, year by year, decade by decade over time? Another reminder: Almost fifty million Americans live in officially defined poverty. The rate is higher, not lower, than in the late 1960sanother disturbing trend marker. Moreover, if we used the measuring standard common throughout the advanced world (which considers the poverty level to be half the median income level), the number would be just under seventy million, and the rate almost 23 percent.4 This is to say nothing of steady increases in global warming and an unemployment rate that, if properly measured, is stuck in the range of roughly 15 percent.5 At the most superficial level, Washingtonas the saying goesis broken. Give or take an occasional gain in selected areas, the political system is simply incapable of dealing with the deeper challenges. It focuses on deficits, not answers. Long trends that dont change are a clear signal that its not simply the modern period of partisan bickering and congressional stalemate that is causing the problems. The trends were moving steadily downward long before the Tea Party and the recent partisan foolishness, long before the Citizens United Supreme Court decision allowed corporations to put big money

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directly into politics, and long before many events that have been heralded as tipping points of one kind or another. Nor are people stupid. More and more have a sense that something different is going onboth with the economy and, more fundamentally, with democracy itself. A few more bits of information just as reminders, again, of something we are all beginning to sense: A mid-2011 poll found that roughly 80 percent of Americans believe their congressional representatives to be more interested in serving the needs of special interests groups than the people they represent.6 Another poll found that almost four out of five believe a few rich people and corporations have much too much power.7 And only 37 percentnot much more than a third of the populationhave confidence in the most solemn and august of American institutions, the Supreme Court.8 Im going to dig much, much deeper into all this, of course. But for now lets leave it at this: When critical long, long trends do not improvewhen they steadily get worse, year in and year outit is clear that we face deeply rooted systemic problems, not simply political problems in the usual sense of the term. Moreover, as those polls suggest, people increasingly understand that something is really wrong. The question is: How do we deal with a systemic crisissomething built in to the way the political-economic world worksrather than a simple political crisis or economic crisis? How do we really confront that question squarely? The traditional (very general) answer has been to organize a movement to build political power and pressure leaders to act, and I certainly agree that this is necessary. But urging this in general terms is hardly a strategy, much less, if taken seriously, an answer to the question of how serious trendshifting change can be achieved. Rather, it is a general call to arms with little more in deeper strategic understanding than a recognition that we had better begin, somehow, to act, or we are in trouble. (But not, for most people, more than that.) No, a serious answer demands both a call to arms and a clear strategy. This book does not claim to answer every question. It will, however, urge an explicit strategyone that I hope is sufficiently well developed that at least a beginning answer to the question What then must we do? will be on the tableone that I hope may be improved by ongoing debate and dialogue as we go forward.

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It will also suggest that our emerging historical context is both radically different from that of the Great Depression and New Deal era and different, too, from the postwar boom era of progressive change. Which means that it may now be possible to develop very different organizing and systemchanging strategies than many have thought seriously about in recent years. For this reason, I am going to put off for just a bit some traditional questions of political tactics, organizing, and even vague rhetorical calls for revolution. Well get back to them after we have dealt with the system-related issues and the question of what the unusual nature of the emerging historical context might make possible. Finally, by the way, as a historian and political economist, it is obvious to me that difficult historical times do not always or even commonly persist forever. In my judgment we shall overcome is not simply a slogan but in fact the likely, though not inevitable, outcome of the long struggle ahead. It is possible, quite simply, that we may lay the groundwork for a truly American form of community-sustaining and wealth-democratizing transformative changeand thereby also the reconstitution of genuine democracy, step by step, from the ground up.

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