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Some Friday evening thoughts on the current state of things in a world increasingly on fire. Our greatest challenge lies in closing the deadly gap between what is increasingly understood to be necessary economically and what is possible politically.
In recent years there has been a great deal of progress in developing detailed policies, institutions, and pathways for bringing about political-economic transformation of our failing system.
We already know the fundamentals of what could be a viable next system: a democratic, community-sustaining political economy that operates within planetary boundaries, where all can thrive.
We have strong evidence for the effectiveness of democratic economy models and community wealth building approaches as deep responses to our growing crises. We know we have our hands on the beginnings of powerful answers to many of the difficult challenges we face as a society.
Now the task is to move this work to scale and system-level impact—and in very short order.
However, a very dangerous chasm remains between solutions we know are practicable and necessary to address the overlapping crises of climate, inequality, and racial injustice and what is proving to be saleable politically.
Recent opportunities to implement large-scale aspects of such an agenda, whether via the ‘new economics’ of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party in Britain or via Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign in the United States, have come up radically short when put to the electoral test.
This has been especially true among working class communities who would be among the principal beneficiaries of such programmes.
Unless we close this political gap soon we risk tipping further into a spiral of climate breakdown, political backlash, and civilizational collapse.
Key to this will be the development of a powerful and effective programme of political education around systemic alternatives and political-economic change in communities where such capacities have been hollowed out (and sometimes lost entirely) after decades of neoliberalism.
This is particularly urgent given the rising tide of right-wing populist politics and the widespread uptake of all manner of conspiracy theories that are filling the vacuum left by the absence of political education and ideological work in many of our communities.
We must develop powerful political education tools that can begin to close the gap between the understanding ordinary working people have of their material interests and the new economic paradigm that is in the making.
We must work with potential activist and community political leaders to propagate new understandings and approaches capable of responding to the climate and economic crises, building the necessary political base for the new economics exactly where it is most sorely lacking.
Thus we would begin closing the dangerous political gap between new economy ideas capable of responding to our social, economic, and environmental crises and their actual implementation. This increasingly seems like the most important political task we are facing.
I’m learning so much from @TrademarkBF @pmpoc and other great comrades in this regard. Watch this space!
