Matt Huber, Leigh Phillips, and Fred Stafford in Jacobin:
Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s 2025 bestseller Abundance kicks off with sharp critiques of Jimmy Carter’s anti-statist declaration that “government cannot solve our problems” and Bill Clinton’s announcement that “the era of Big Government is over.” It concludes with a rousing endorsement of Karl Marx’s famous “fettering” thesis — the idea that capitalism eventually stifles the very productive forces it once unleashed. In spite of these anti-neoliberal flourishes, it has received a surprisingly cool response from some sections of the Left.
The book is, at its core, an argument about the myriad blockages that constrict state capacity — the ability of governments to get things done — and the need for various flavors of industrial policy (a form of economic planning) to overcome market failure (that is, when private firms fail to produce something despite its clear social necessity).
This all should be ABCs for any socialist — or even a garden-variety social democrat. In that tradition, the Holy Trinity consists of generous and hyper-competent public services, strong trade unions, and muscular industry policy, even if the book’s authors are self-described liberals and not socialists of any denomination.
To be sure, the book is insufficient in many ways. It does not go anywhere near as far as we would in affirming the role of the public sector or in grappling with the extent to which markets inhibit abundance. But this insufficiency — about which we will have more to say shortly — does not mean that most of the book’s recommendations are mistaken or unnecessary.
Beyond the book itself, “Abundance” — capital A, as an emerging ideology — has drawn a wide circle of partisans.
More here.
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