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The Future We Want: Radical Ideas for the New Century

R·A.Dl lC.AL iDEAS, FO,R A NEW 1CEI

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ED I ITfD B'f

SAR,AH LED1N.Al 1

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AND BHASKAR S.UNKARA

�I.ETROPOLI.TAN BOOKS iH[NR.'i H(JLT AND COMP.ANY NEW YORK

Sarah Leonard

The Future We Want: Radical Ideas for the New Century

CONTENTS

Title Page Copyright Notice

Introduction Sarah Leonard

Working for the Weekend Chris Maisano

Imagining Socialist Education Megan Erickson

How to Make Black Lives Really, Truly Matter Jesse A. Myerson and Mychal Denzel Smith

Sex Class Sarah Leonard

The Green and the Red Alyssa Battistoni

Red Innovation Tony Smith

The Cure for Bad Science Llewellyn Hinkes-Jones

Finding the Future of Criminal Justice Phillip Agnew, Dante Barry, Cherrell Carruthers, Mychal Denzel Smith,Ashley Yates

Sarah Leonard

The Future We Want: Radical Ideas for the New Century

After Gay Marriage Kate Redburn

Small, Not Beautiful Tim Barker

The Red and the Black Seth Ackerman

Coda Peter Frase and Bhaskar Sunkara

Notes Contributors About the Authors Copyright

Sarah Leonard

The Future We Want: Radical Ideas for the New Century Sarah Leonard

INTRODUCTION

Sarah Leonard

Every election season is a time of bemoaning why millennials won't vote

for politicians boldly committed to picking at the edges of their prob­

lems. Consider a snapshot of the situation young people face: the unem­

ployment rate for workers under age twenty-five is 18.1 percent; unem­

ployment for black people who have not graduated from high school is

82.5 percent; the people most likely to be shot by police are black twen­

ty-five-to-thirty-four-year-olds; the national student loan debt has sur­

passed $1 trillion; and the only jobs lucrative enough to pay off college

loans are in the financial industry that detonated our economy or Sili­

con Valley companies deregulating working-class industries.

The future doesn't hold much hope either, with median household

income declining 12.4 percent between 2000 and 2011. Having a family

is simply harder to afford now. Meanwhile, each new year sets another

low record for union density, meaning we have few levers for turning

those income numbers around. Unlike most wealthy countries, the United

States lacks universal child care and maternity leave, so women are stuck

with the same old debates over an impossible work-life balance.

We were told that in the knowledge economy good jobs followed higher

education; there are few jobs, and we lock ourselves into miserable ones

as quickly as possible to feed the loan sharks. The magazine writers who

report on self-indulgent twenty-somethings (think Time's ''The Me Me Me

Generation'' cover), the well-meaning guidance counselors who coach

kids to ''invest in themselves''-they should save their breath. You don't

need a college course to know when you're getting screwed.

The most grotesque feature of the 2016 election is the razor-thin

spectrum of solutions proposed by the f rant runners to a historic set of

The Future We Want: Radical Ideas for the New Century Sarah Leonard

problems. Lost in the noise of the 2016 election cycle is the fact that no

viable candidate offers any hope for a radically more equal society: the

policies on offer would merely mitigate the dire inequality that has been

growing since Reagan. And this is despite the fact that a majority of

Americans express widespread discontent with the country's extreme

consolidation of wealth: about three in four Americans think that in­

equality is a serious problem in the United States. (This places Ameri­

cans in the mainstream of world opinion, where in all forty-four nations

polled by Pew, people think inequality is a big problem facing their coun­

tries.) It is this popular dissatisfaction that no doubt accounts for the un­

expected surge of support for the unlikely long-shot Democratic candi­

date, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, an avowed socialist.

Indeed, the most obvious source of this election's futility is that popular

opinion, expressed through elections, has essentially proved to have no

influence on policy. According to a now-famous 2014 Princeton and North­

western study measuring influence in American politics, ''economic elites

and organized groups representing business interests have substantial in­

dependent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based inter­

est groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.''

On key issues like gun control, financial reform, and education spend­

ing, the policymakers' divergence from popular opinion has been partic­

ularly stark.

The United States is now, in effect, an oligarchy. Beyond this sad

reckoning lies an even more fundamental problem: there is no better al­

ternative on offer. We need a vision of a better future, one that turns

our modern capacity for abundant food, shelter, and health into a guar­

antee that no one will suffer for their lack.

So when people demand that we vote, you can see why the answer

comes back: for what?

The economic crash was not just an ugly fluctuation that we' re all trying

in good faith to correct. It has provided cover for neoliberal benefit roll­

backs-cutting government services in the name of budget crises-in

which all of these candidates have participated. Vulnerable people who

need the services the most get screwed first: the young, the old, the

The Future We Want: Radical Ideas for the New Century Sarah Leonard

poor. Eligibility for unemployment benefits has been tightened and op­

portunities to extend them rejected because we ''can't afford them.''

A college education is edging beyond reach for many of us. In 2012,

Congress restricted Pell grants for low-income college students. While

national student debt has surpassed $1 trillion, the federal government

has made it impossible to default on these college loans-even your So­

cial Security can be garnished to pay them off. And before students even

make it to college, they are subjected to schools with such attenuated

budgets that physicians have started prescribing Adderall to poor kids to

keep them focused in unruly classrooms whether they have ADD or not.

In the words of one doctor, ''We've decided as a society that it's too ex­

pensive to modify the kid's environment. So we have to modify the kid.''

Perhaps it's wise to modify the kid for the brave new world that will

await her: one with constantly shifting and disappearing jobs and no

safety net of any kind. It is a truism now that no one expects one career.

Most people now in college or high school will have six jobs by the time

they' re twenty-six. And let us not mistake flexible work for fulfilling

work. This is an age when the power of the boss is so ascendant over the

power of the worker that we can be shuffled around to match precisely

the needs of capital. Department stores and retailers now use apps that

will inform an employee midway through a workday if their services are

no longer needed to match customer demand. About half of early-career

hourly workers learn their schedule for the week less than one week in

advance. A full day's work, or a ''steady'' job, is a thing of the past. This

is a chronically unstable way to operate in the world, picking up bits of

knowledge work, service work, or manual labor as needed.

When asked what factors led to such a dramatic divide between the

needs of the average citizen and the actions of the state, Princeton so­

ciologist Martin Gilens, co-author of the 2014 study measuring influence

in American politics, cited moneyed lobbying on the one hand, and ''the

lack of mass organizations that represent and facilitate the voice of or­

dinary citizens,'' on the other. ''Part of that would be the decline of

The Future We Want: Radical Ideas for the New Century Sarah Leonard

unions in the country, which has been quite dramatic over the last 30 or

40 y ears,'' Gilens added. ''And part of it is the lack of a socialist or a

worker's party.''

It is not only in the United States that unions are crumbling and the

safety net is being torched in the name of leaner, more responsible bud­

gets. The Eurozone, which was once touted as the means to a prosper­

ous and peaceful continent, has revealed itself to be nothing more than

a continental sy stem of extraction.

Poor countries in southern Europe borrowed money from foreign banks

before the devastating financial crisis of 2010, only to find themselves

unable to pay them back. To protect the euro, much of this debt was re­

structured and taken over by the troika-the International Monetary

Fund, European Commission, and the European Central Bank-that then

forced countries such as Greece, Spain, and Italy to cut social spending

to pay off the debts. Now in Greece, for example, unemployment has

hit 25 percent in part due to huge public-sector cuts, and infant mortal­

ity, suicide, and addiction are all on the rise because the troika has re­

quired cuts in health care spending.

For examples of turning radical ideas into platforms for power, we might

consider the rise of radical European parties in opposition to this sort of

austerity-examples of Gilens' counterweights to oligarchy. As we write,

these parties are being buffeted by international creditors and may col­

lapse, but they have far outpaced Americans in organizing militant left

institutions. Greece elected Sy riza, the first radical leftist, antiauster­

ity party to hold power within the EU. Syriza entered government prom­

ising to defy troika mandates and leave debt unpaid rather than starve

Greeks. They promised, as well, greater democracy in the workplace,

supporting enterprises such as the national television station, which had

come under worker control during the crisis. In Spain, the lndignados

movement, a sort of precursor to Occupy in the United States, has trans­

formed into a political party called Podemos. They, too, promise to defy

EU austerity measures, root out corruption, and devolve more democ­

racy to local councils. These parties are quite different from one anoth­

er, the former a party born from a fusion of radical-left forces and the

The Future We Want: Radical Ideas for the New Century Sarah Leonard

other out of a haphazard and less ideologically coherent coalition of re­

gional groups. They will not solve the crisis right away, and may even

disintegrate under pressure from the troika, but they provide an exam­

ple of organizing successfully for power.

* * *

The United States has shown glimmers of such radical potential. The

surge of youth politicization embodied by Occupy injected class into our

public debate back in 2011 and formed connections with antiausterity

movements across the world, especially with the Spanish lndignados.

More recently, the Black Lives Matter movement for racial justice has

forced the whole country to confront not only the violence that oppresses

black people in America, but also the recession that black America has

suffered since 2001. Parts of the movement are putting forward eco-

nom1c programs.

Like Occupy, Black Lives Matter eschews centralized leadership in favor

of a more horizontal structure that privileges local autonomy. On Decem­

ber 13, 2014, some 30,000 people marched th rough New York City in

honor of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and other black victims of police

brutality, creating a new normal in the public's response: today, police

shootings, which are no more prevalent than before, regularly make

headline news and inspire mass protests. One of President Barack

Obama's last acts in office will be limiting military equipment for police

departments; his reform barely scratches the surf ace of the problems

with American policing, but is one of the first tangible results of the

movement at the federal level. No change would be on the agenda with­

out pressure from the new organization.

Young activists in the United States are embedded in other rising leftist

forces as well. Fight for 15 is a low-wage workers' movement that started

with promising victories for fast-food workers and has most recently

achieved a previously unthinkable $ 15 minimum wage for all of Los An­

geles. The domestic workers' movement, almost entirely run by and rep­

resenting immigrant women of color, has organized to achieve a domes­

tic workers' bills of rights-which includes the right to overtime, days

The Future We Want: Radical Ideas for the New Century Sarah Leonard

off, and legal protection from sexual harassment-in New York, Califor­

nia, Massachusetts, and Hawaii. The debt abolition movement, which

emerged from Occupy, has recently been the undoing of Corinthian Col­

leges, a shady for-profit education company that ripped off thousands

of students, a few of whom, in an act of economic disobedience, are

now refusing to pay their student debts in protest. The immigrants' rights

movement has been tremendously brave, with many young people tak­

ing leadership roles and exposing themselves to potential deportation.

All of these organizations have enormous challenges ahead of them, es­

pecially because most are reliant on centralized labor union and foun­

dation funding and are not self-sustaining through dues or other tradi­

tional labor methods. They also represent a tiny fraction of citizens even

as they point to creative ways forward.

So where does that leave us? Some across left-of-center American

politics have stepped forward to condemn the new activism. If the re­

action to Occupy was ''what are your demands?''-shorthand for ''show

us your reasonable think tank-approved white papers''-then the reac­

tion to Black Lives Matter has not been far off. Establishment liberals

such as Al Sharpton have condemned the movement for lacking leaders

and have demanded a focus on voter registration and mobilization. Black

voter registration did surge in Ferguson, Missouri, after Michael Brown's

killing by police officer Darren Wilson, but in the poignant words of one

activist and scholar, ''voting would not have saved Michael Brown.'' Cer­

tainly, voting for Obama has produced little change, either in the treat­

ment of black people by the police and the criminal justice system, or

for students and their chronic state of debt, or for the falling incomes

of ordinary workers.

The unimaginative stance of established politicos demonstrates a

fundamental misunderstanding of grassroots politics. Protests don't

write policy in their first months, but rather shift conversations and tell

everyone suffering through American capitalism that they are not alone.

More important, all of these movements for change ultimately have one

focus: on redistribution-of wealth, power, and justice. Their decentral-

The Future We Want: Radical Ideas for the New Century Sarah Leonard

ized structures pose challenges, and are sometimes liabilities, but they

indicate a real hunger for democracy, one that may manifest itself dif­

ferently in the future.

In fact, according to a 2011 Pew poll, a higher percentage of Americans

between the ages of eighteen and thirty have a more favorable opinion

of socialism than of capitalism. This points to a tremendous churn of rad­

ical potential, and while we should not get too utopian about its immi­

nent triumph, it is crucial that we, like the rising European parties, ar­

ticulate the sort of world we would like to see, the world that no lead­

ing candidates have promised. This is a world that could only be born

with the force of social movements at its back.

It is time, in other words, for ideas big enough to be worthy of the global

discontent that put them on the agenda. The ideas in this volume draw

on a rich tradition of socialist proposals, long a force in American poli­

tics, only recently quashed into obscurity. It's easy to forget that social­

ist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs won almost a million votes,

twice. Or that hundreds of mayors and local officials were socialists in

the first half of the twentieth century, and that Milwaukee elected three

''sewer socialist'' mayors, the last as late as 1956. Even today, the Senate

boasts a self-described democratic socialist, presidential candidate Ber­

nie Sanders. This is not a strain alien to American soil-despite the neo­

McCarthy ite language of the Republican Party. The modern GOP accuses

every Democrat of being a socialist (we wish!) and slurs progressive tax­

ation, universal health care, and a host of other decent policies as ''for­

eign'' and ''European'' in order to cast suspicion on anyone left of cen­

ter.

We propose an alternative vision-both reformist and revolutionary,

utopian and pragmatic. Leftists have often shied away from suggesting

blueprints, thinking them undemocratic. But proposing a course isn't the

same thing as imposing one. If the movements we've embraced in the

past couple of y ears are worth taking seriously, it's because they can

form the political basis for social plans. People want to know that there

is another way.

The Future We Want: Radical Ideas for the New Century Sarah Leonard

The openness of young people to socialism may indicate two things:

they are fed up with being repeatedly let down by capitalism; and peo­

ple who came to political consciousness after 1989 do not have a vision

of socialism heavily influenced by the Cold War. When the economic cri­

sis hit, there was a resurgence of casual interest in Marx, with headlines

like ''Why Marxism Is on the Rise Again'' and ''A Generation of Intellec­

tuals Shaped by 2008 Crash Rescues Marx From History's Dustbin.'' Some

Black Lives Matter activists have taken up the mantle of the Black Pan­

thers, whose vision of socialism confronted centuries of racist ex­

ploitation. Newfound engagement resulted from attempts to describe

what was happening to us, and Marxism-which describes a system

designed to produce expropriation at the bottom and growing windfalls

at the top-suddenly seemed more convincing than liberal fumbling to

explain how Democratic policies generated by people such as former

Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers could have contributed to the di­

sastrous crash.

The socialism we envision, and toward which we take some first steps

toward describing in this book, is one that prizes democracy, striving al­

ways for the sort of mass redistribution that makes individual human

flourishing possible. Our goal is an economic democracy that produces

more freedom than we could ever hope for under our current system.

The Future We Want: Radical Ideas for the New Century Sarah Leonard

CODA

Peter Frase and Bhaskar Sunkara

You get what you pay for, and we haven't paid for much. Compared to other rich countries, the United States does little to ensure its

citizens have access to vital services or to prevent them from falling into depriva­ tion due to unemployment or low-wage labor.At 19.4 percent of GDP,American social spending is far below the 25 to 30 percent budgeted in most of Western Europe. Meanwhile, 16 percent of Americans lack health insurance, almost a quar­ ter of our children live in poverty, and millions are unemployed.

Yet not only does an expansion of the safety net seem politically impossible, even existing protections are under attack everywhere. But a movement to ex­ tend social protections has the potential to foster a new majoritarian left coali­ tion. Republicans know this that's why they manipulate the way welfare is per­ ceived at every turn.

The reality is that 96 percent of Americans have benefited from government programs, but the right works hard to hide that fact. It's part of a deliberate strat­ egy t.o divide the country into two camps by convincing the majority of voters that their labor is benefiting parasites dependent on the social safety net.

Democrats have too often bolstered this effort by echoing calls for ''welfare reform'' and ''fiscal responsibility'' and by supporting policies that channel bene­ fits through the tax code (such as the home-mortgage deduction) and private or­ ganizations (such as employer-provided health insurance). The result is a system that provides few benefits, makes them largely invisible, and disproportionately serves the more affluent.

In the face of this neoliberal consensus, the left's countermission must be to show that social democracy benefits everyone. The efforts of generations of lib­ erals have rarely gone beyond rebranding and messaging. Few have pushed for the structural changes necessary t.o build a strong welfare state.

The Future We Want: Radical Ideas for the New Century Sarah Leonard

Given the country's economic situation and the massive discontent at the political level, the left is in the best position in decades to argue for social-demo­ cratic programs.Austerity has only worsened unemployment and stagnated wages, and only a concerted effort to create jobs and boost purchasing power can revive growth and restore employment. Despite fear-mongering about the effects of bud­ get deficits, the government is still able to borrow money virtually interest-free. And contrary to right-wing claims of out-of-control spending, taxes as a percent­ age of GDP are at their lowest level since 1950. We can and should ensure that everyone has access to health care, education, a secure retirement, and a livable income regardless of labor market uncertainties.

Most on the left would agree with these goals; the question has always been how to achieve them.

We think we have an answer.We propose a new anti-austerity coalition united by the immediate demand that certain social spending burdens, currently borne by states and municipalities, be federalized.Almost all states are legally required to keep balanced budgets, making it unfeasible for them to deploy deficit spend­ ing. Even if these laws were changed, states would still face greater difficulties in this arena than the federal government. States could never borrow money on as favorable terms as the United States can, and they haven't been printing their own currencies since the Articles of Confederation.

Simply put, without centralization, social democracy in America is impossible. Once achieved, progressives could pursue policies that not only immediately im­ prove working-class lives, but also lay the groundwork for more radical reforms in the future. W hich is to say that the left needs an affirmative strategy that can go beyond the piecemeal defense of the status quo against austerity. We need a comprehensive strategy that is adapted to the current state of our politics and economy and that draws on existing areas of progressive strength.

For too long, liberals have focused on technocratic policy analyses, seeking granular remedies to isolated problems. Such solutions lack the kind of sweeping political vision that wins and sustains policy reforms. Conversely, radicals have for too long made rhetorical appeals without any grounding in political realities. The plan outlined here is a corrective to both trends, written with the understanding that wonky policy and class politics are inextricably linked.

* * *

Though the struggle over state budget cuts has sparked debate at the national lev­ el, the politics of austerity has been prominent in the lower levels of government. Indeed, as long as social welfare programs are funded at the state and local levels, the fiscal limitations of subnational governments make expanding the safety net nearly impossible in the future. Local movements may sporadically succeed at fund-

The Future We Want: Radical Ideas for the New Century Sarah Leonard

ing sporadic programs, but they will be fighting a losing battle as long as they are trying to win concessions from governments with little spending flexibility. In the long run, building a better and more robust social safety net will mean unifying and reorganizing our fragmented welfare state. Some liberals defend the current sys­ tem by holding up the states as ''laboratories of democracy'' that can pioneer new progressive initiatives that are impossible at the national level. Historically, how­ ever, the least progressive aspects of American welfare have been those that are passed off to the states, while the most generous and universal are national pro­ grams.

As the political scientist Suzanne Mettler observes in her book Dividing Citizens: Gender and Federalism in New Deal Public Policy, the elements of the New Deal that were left to the states were largely those that serve women and minorities, and these programs tend to subject recipients to surveillance and scrutiny by bureau­ crats and social workers. National programs such as Social Security and Medicare, which have a large proportion of white men on their rolls, are by contra.st re­ garded as entitlements and their recipients treated with respect.

This pattern is likely to be perpetuated, especially by right-leaning states that are both hostile to welfare programs and contain a disproportionate share of the nation's poor: It's no coincidence that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan's 2012 budget plan planned to push even more social welfare administration onto the states, by converting programs such as Medicaid and food stamps into block grants.

Given the current disarray, a one-size-fits-all solution for consolidating the welfare state does not exist. Under a new progressive system, state and local spending could be transferred to federal programs in various ways.

WELFAREAND UNEMPLOYMENT

In these cases, where benefits are already a shared responsibility of federal and nonfederal governments, Washington must simply assume more of the responsi­ bility.

PENSIONS

The current shortfall in pension funds is largely a result of the 2008 stock-market collapse after the burst of the housing bubble, a circumstantial, not essential, depri­ vation of funds. But some type of federal guarantee for these plans is required to ensure that workers receive the benefits they are contractually entitled to, espe­ cially in times of recession.

The federal government already has an entity, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, responsible for ensuring that private-sector employees receive their pensions even when their plans fail or their employers go bankrupt. Something

The Future We Want: Radical Ideas for the New Century Sarah Leonard

A broader shift to the left among Americans under thirty has already begun, reflecting the frustration of young people facing rising inequality and diminishing economic prospects.The recession hit this demographic group especially hard,and its effects will dog them throughout their lives. Those who have entered the job market in recent years face lower employment rates, worse wages, and higher debts than those who preceded them.

The Occupy movement left the streets some years ago. It did, however, unleash a wave of politicization that remains with us. Thousands of people are still active in groups that found their genesis in Occupy. Moreover, the idea that elites use their wealth and power to the detriment of the vast majority of people has intro­ duced a level of cla.ss analysis into the national public debate unseen in eighty years.

The early success of Occupy owed much to a creative wellspring from the anarchist movement. The novel idea of occupying space and creating camps is tes­ timony to that. But too many within the movement saw those encampments as models of a future postcapitalist utopia, rather than merely tactical deployments. Not surprisingly, they failed to connect these tactics to a wider political strategy.

Occupy's failure in this respect and its inability to translate its energy into more sustained organizing around a broad anti-austerity message reflect both historical -and innate weaknesses within the anarchist movement and activists' fears of being co-opted into a neoliberal electoral framework.

By linking younger activists on the extraparliamentary left with labor unions and policymakers under an umbrella program that's both radical and achievable, Oc­ cupy activists could contribute to tangible progressive change without sacrificing their uncompromising zeal.

ORGANIZED LABOR

Today, only 12 percent of the workforce belongs to labor unions. However, 37 per­ cent of public employees are unionized, compared to just 7 percent in the private sector. This is both a striking sign of the American left's decline and a reason why resistance to the current economic crisis has been hard to muster.

That the public sector houses what remains of the labor movement is taken by many to be an indication of the movement's terminal decline.And even this last union bastion is eroding.

Cash-strapped states and cities have launched an effective bipartisan attack on the salaries, benefits, and collective bargaining rights of public workers. Scott Walk­ er's victory against collective organizing in W isconsin was just the most outra­ geous example of a generalized phenomenon. In the context of local competition over resources and general economic downturn, public employees are easy tar­ gets.

The Future We Want: Radical Ideas for the New Century Sarah Leonard

The strength of a middle-class politics built around resentment should not be underestimated: Walker had a real social base, and thousands were energized around antiunion sentiment. His supporters saw union pensions, health benefits, and worker protections as special privileges stolen from more productive sectors in the private economy, rather than as the just rewards for hard labor that every­ one deserves. Even some liberals, sympathetic to unions in the private sector, view the interests of unionized public employees and the interests of the public they serve as at odds.

Instead of asking ''Why not me?'' this anti-working-class alliance demands ''Why them?'' For this precise reason, shifting fiscal burdens from underwater state and local budgets onto firmer, federal terrain is vital. But in the meantime, we should accept that the labor movement is now concentrated in the public sector.This can be turned into a source of strength.

Some see public-sector unions as little more than cartels that protect the privileges and pay of their members. But these unions can be the chief protectors of big federal programs. And if the public sector were more stable, with its jobs linked to politically untouchable and universal federal programs, public-sector unions could have clout similar to that of their powerful European counterparts, visible and reliable protectors of the welfare state.

Historically, public-sector unions are more oriented than their private-sector counterparts toward a social-movement unionism connecting organically with their communities rather than limiting their struggles to shop-floor-level disputes. This broader orientation was critical to the mass local support the Chicago Teach­ ers' Union garnered in its struggle in the fall of 2012 against Mayor Rahm Emanuel's assault on their bargaining rights and compensation. By devoting significant re­ sources toward community outreach and tying its demands to a vision of egalitar­ ian public education, the union made the strike about more than just wages and benefits.

Creating a new set of union proxies, either directly or by engagement with outside radical social movements, could also drive this coalition against austerity. These organizations could circumvent restrictive labor laws and build alliances with both nonunion workers and the unemployed.Actions pitched at this com­ munity level can show the public that unions are more than self-interested actors and make labor a cornerstone of a broader progressive movement.

The labor movement also has the ability to connect the outsider power of protest with the insider business of writing and lobbying for legislation. Unions have both the resources and the experience to sway Washington. This will be a necessity for any movement that seeks to reshape the structure of the American welfare state, an important complement to the visibility and disruptive potential of street protest.

The Future We Want: Radical Ideas for the New Century Sarah Leonard

Local and state officials will be necessary collaborators. Our strategy would generate political pressure first and most intensely at the state and local levels. Local governments' drive toward austerity has much to do with their intense bud­ get constraints.

Our era lacks the robust urban political coalitions that characterized the period when left-wing social scientists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven suggested banding together to overwhelm the welfare rolls, proving the inadequacy of the American welfare state to meet basic needs. At that time, the civil rights move­ ment was able to forge alliances between urban people of color and affluent, ed­ ucated white liberals and often against working-class political machines that ex­ cluded nonwhites.

* * *

Today, however, elite liberals are arrayed against what they regard as the modern machine: a ''bloated'' public sector that has become one of the few sources of sta­ ble, middle-cla.ss jobs for people of color. Neoliberal leaders such as New York's former mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chicago's Rahm Emanuel unapologetically represent the interests of wealthy business owners against the working class, push­ ing austerity and privatization as the solutions to fiscal crises. Breaking the power of this political bloc will necessitate offering fiscally stressed governors and may­ ors an alternative path.

State and local officials are generally happy to have the burden of social spending taken off their hands, whatever their nominal ideological commitments. The right may have denounced Obama's stimulus bill, but most Republican governors and mayors didn't turn down the money.

If progressives can articulate a positive political vision while simultaneously pushing for policies to ease the fiscal burden on states and cities, they will offer voters and officials an alternative that is appealing and practical. W hile refusing to sacrifice public services or jobs on the altar of balanced budgets, the left could ally with state and local leaders to lobby for national solutions to fiscal crises.

THEFUTUREYVEYVANT

The left must not only defeat austerity and preserve the social safety net; it must do so in a way that assembles the forces necessary for more fundamental trans­ formations in the future.

This vision should be premeditated. We can't go back to the postwar Golden Age of the American welfare state, but we can build a system in the twenty-first century that embodies what people remember most from that era an overrid­ ing sense of freedom. Freedom to give their children an education without rival. Freedom from poverty, hunger, and homelessness. Freedom to grow into old age

The Future We Want: Radical Ideas for the New Century Sarah Leonard

with pensions, Social Security, and affordable and accessible health care. Freedom to leave an exploitative work environment and find another job. Freedom to or­ ganize with fellow workers for redress.

* * *

The appeal of such a society, combined with the political strategy needed to make it a reality, will pave the way for the institution of a new set of economic and so­ cial rights to complement our bedrock political and civil rights. These steps are necessary to build the type of working-class power that can in time win more rad­ ical transformations.

What kind of society would we build? Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky's belief that if nourished the average person could rise to the heights of an Aristotle, Goethe, or Marx is perhaps too ambitious. But we can imagine a better future, one where technology makes the pace of work more and not less tolerable, where democracy is radically expanded into our workplaces and our homes, where com­ petition and exploitation eventually become barely remembered relics of an inhu­ mane age.