“Can the System Save Itself Again?” [Vulgar Marxism]. “From the point of view of the Democratic Party, Biden’s domestic agenda is critical to its

short-term electoral fortunes,
the medium-term stability of the political system that empowers it, and
the long-term health of the biosphere in which the capitalist mode of production is possible.

So how can it be that this party, both as a self-interested actor and the superego of American capital, may fail to pass it?… But it turns out capital remains as shortsighted as ever, and has mobilized to tank Biden’s agenda.

 

Throughout its history, critics and admirers alike have understood that if improperly managed, capitalism will destroy a society’s capacity for social reproduction, and with it the conditions that sustain its own existence. For this reason, much of the political class in the Global North came to recognize the need for their states to ensure a more stable balance between the productive needs of capital and the human needs of labor - for their own citizens anyway. Though capital fiercely resisted this renegotiation of the social contract, it was disciplined through the power of organized labor and a political class willing to accept and enforce a compromise. 

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