The Problem

In "America Beyond Capitalism", a book that provides perhaps the best and most complete set of prescriptions for the many, many problems that beset America today, Gar Alperovitz writes:

"How do we detect when a society is in trouble — real trouble?  What canary in the coal mine signals danger?  The real signs of major trouble are to be found not only in huge deficits, unemployment, even terrorism.  The time to pay close attention is when people begin to lose belief in things that once mattered profoundly — like the most important values that have given meaning to American history from the time of the Declaration of Independence: equality, liberty, and democracy.

"The long trends are ominous: there is now massive evidence that for decades Americans have been steadily becoming less equal, less free, and less the masters of their own fate.

"The top 1 percent now garners for itself more income each year than the bottom 100 million Americans combined.  Even before the war on terrorism produced new threats to civil liberties, the United States (as a conservative judge, Richard Posner, has observed) criminalized 'more conduct than most, maybe more than any, non-Islamic nations.'

"And repeated studies have shown that the majority of Americans know full well that something challenging and fundamental is going on with 'democracy': Four out of five in a recent assessment judged that 'government leaders say and do anything to get elected, then do whatever they want.'  Another study found that seven out of ten felt that 'people like me have almost no say in the political system.'

"We tend to dismiss such signs of trouble.  Most political debate focuses on who wins this or that election or on immediate problems like medical costs, tax cuts, unemployment.  Some writers sense that something deeper is at work — that, for instance, with the radical decline of labor unions and the rise of the global corporation, the balance of power between labor and corporations that once kept U.S. politics within a certain range simply no longer operates.  (The administration of George W. Bush in significant part reflects this shift in underlying institutional power.)

"A few have recognized that we face even more fundamental questions.  Thus Kevin Phillips writes of a new American 'plutocracy' in which wealth 'reaches beyond its own realm' to control political power and government at all levels.  Robert Kaplan suggests that we are moving in the direction of a regime that could 'resemble the oligarchies of ancient Athens and Sparta.' He believes 'How and when we vote during the next hundred years may be a minor detail for historians.'

"But the idea that the American 'system' as a whole is in real trouble — that it is heading in a direction that spells the end of its historic values — that idea is difficult, indeed all but impossible, for most people to grasp.

"Though the evidence is rarely confronted, it is a contention that is not at all difficult to support.  Indeed, it is obvious to most people when they reflect on the long-developing trends in connection with equality, liberty, and democracy.

"If the critical values lose meaning, politics obviously must also ultimately lose moral integrity.  Cynicism, apathy, and a sense that the powerful control, no matter what, must grow until, finally, recognition that current political processes are at a dead end quietly becomes endemic.  The polls already indicate that beneath a patina of conventional political concern, the basic elements of such an understanding are not far off.  Beyond this, if equality, liberty, and meaninfgul democracy can truly no longer be sustained by the political and economic arangements of the current system, this defines the beginning phases of what can only be called a systemic crisis — an era of history in which the political-economic system must slowly lose legitimacy because the realities it produces contradict the values it proclaims.

"Moreover, if the system is at fault, then self-evidently — indeed, by definition — a solution would ultimately require the development of a new system.

"For most Americans the idea that a 'different system' might be possible is something very few have considered.  With the collapse of the Soviet Union — and the decline of older, more democratic visions of socialism — what, specifically, would it mean to 'change the system'?

"Furthermore, the United States today is the most powerful political-economic system in world history.  To most Americans, the notion that ways might ultimately be found to transform the insitutions at its very core seems utterly utopian and impractical — even if one had an idea of what an alternative system might entail.

"The conventional wisdom, of couse, leaves us at a dead end. The old ways don't work, but no one even imagines the possibility of systemic change.

"Or so it seems."

Here at HPI, it doesn't seem that way at all.  Our objective is to not only imagine the possibility of systemic change, but to provide a detailed, step-by-step blueprint for doing so that any American can follow.  We hope and believe that the details spelled out here can serve as a template for action in all 50 states.