"The Political Economy of the Next System" with Joe Guinan

Next System Speakers Series at Mason

Past Event

Center for Social Science Research

Tuesday, March 1, 2022 12:00 PM EST
Van Metre Hall (formerly Founders Hall), #113

Join us as Joe Guinan, co-author of, "The Case for Community Wealth Building," inaugurates Mason's Next System Speakers Series. This hybrid event will take place both in-person with a free catered box lunch on our Arlington campus as well as via Zoom.

"The Political Economy of the Next System"

"In one of her earliest messages to her departmental staff, Janet Yellen, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, spoke of “four historic crises” facing the United States:

Photo of Joe GuinanCOVID-19 is one.  But in addition to the pandemic, the country is also facing a climate crisis, a crisis of systemic racism, and an economic crisis that has been building for fifty years.

The Treasury Secretary is not alone in her use of such language, which can increasingly be found in official U.S. government communiqués and even in the pronouncements of international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund  and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.  It is a sign of important progress that the profoundly systemic nature of the crisis has finally begun to dawn even on high-ranking officialdom, and is increasingly widely accepted in the halls of power both domestically and internationally.  In that respect, at least, the real and present dangers of the Trump era have had their effect. 

And yet, a dangerous gulf still remains between the magnitude of the systemic challenge and the scope and scale of the responses that are being conceived and proposed—a gulf from which new monsters may soon begin to appear.  While the early signs from the Biden Administration have been more promising than many might have expected in terms of the actions they are willing to entertain, we should not delude ourselves that this kind of modest “liberal reform” agenda, while it may do good things, is anything like the level or depth of intervention necessary to bend the curve on the long-run negative trends we are facing.  And the real political limits of the Administration’s circumscribed ambitions may already be heaving into view.

In analytical terms, the hard constraints of these overlapping crises are such that the “landing zone” for effective remedial and transformative action is becoming increasingly clear, and must now be articulated as part of boosting the overall level of ambition of crisis responses.  In very broad-brush terms, it should be possible to delineate and model the magnitude of the required transition.  Beyond the immediate challenges of (post-)Covid economic reconstruction, the triple crisis—of economic inequality, environmental collapse, and racial injustice—brings with it a very severe challenge if we are to strike simultaneously at all three together:

  • The racial wealth gap in the United States, for example, is estimated at around $10 trillion—wealth that has been extracted and stolen from and denied to communities of color—which is equivalent to around half of US gross domestic product (GDP).  
  • At the same time, we are currently consuming at a rate of throughput that is beyond regeneration and equivalent to two and a half planet Earths.  To get back within planetary boundaries and avert climate collapse, even with technology and “green growth” in some sectors, will inevitably require major cutbacks in consumption or degrowth of some kind, however unpalatable that may be.  
  • Meanwhile, the economic inequality and stagnant median wages and living standards for so many pose the stark challenge of building a majoritarian political coalition that is both predistributive and redistributive, without relying on growth and at the same time delivering reparative justice, avoiding the pitfalls of reactionary politics, racialized division, and instincts to pull up the ladder by semi-privileged groups.  

The intersection of these three challenges presents a wicked problem in political economy terms.  The landing zone for accomplishing all of this at once is by definition pretty narrow and circumscribed—it is certainly not a world that contains trillionaires, the latest grim new prospect to appear on our post-Covid horizon.  It will likely require a shift in the ownership and control of capital that dwarfs even such radical previous episodes in history as the industrial revolution or the upheavals of the twentieth-century, whilst seeking to do so peaceably and on the basis of a rebuilding and reconstruction of community in democratic public life.  

Only certain pathways forward will deliver the fundamental changes in outcomes that are necessary, and these must become the de facto contours of a possible, practicable, and desirable “next system”—one that does not rely on correcting anti-social externalities “after the fact” through taxation and regulation but is capable in and of itself of producing the desirable outcomes—economic, environmental, social, and political—we want and need as a result of its everyday operations.  We need a democratic economy in support of a democratic politics. 

There will also be a concomitant challenge—as has already been evidenced by much of the climate change debate—in framing what are in effect real hard constraints on solutions in a manner that is expansive rather than restrictive of future possibilities and potentialities.  Developing the politics and strategy that can pull this off is the fundamental epochal challenge of our age—and must  become the central mission of transformative political action in the years ahead. 

Please join us for a wide-ranging discussion of the political economy of the next system and the politics and pathways required for getting there."

 

Hosted by Arlington Fellows at Mason.

Sponsored by Next System Studies at Mason, Center for Social Science Research, Sociology and Anthropology, Movement Engaged Research Hub.

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