Discussion at the well-attended supporters’ meeting, which included workers from other New York and New Jersey unions, ranged over many issues: whether public sentiment is for or against so-called middle-class workers (those with relatively decent wages and benefits), the long-lost concept of “no contract, no work,” and whether, as a result of the massive demonstrations in Wisconsin at the beginning of this year, there is now a new dimension to “class warfare” in which private and public sector unions are linked. Private and public workers’ mutual support appears key to reversing the push to break unions and lower workers’ standard of living.

Verizon employs 45,000 unionized workers. The August strike was the largest U.S. strike since the General Motors strike in 2007 that lasted just two days. But other Verizon workers are not unionized, including the cell phone workers. Verizon claims that it is entitled to cut back its costs for employees who work on declining landline phone services, while the union points out that the company has never been more profitable. The strike was called after six weeks of negotiations, during which Verizon did not budge from its demand for 100 givebacks. Verizon doesn’t claim it cannot afford to maintain the pay and benefits in the expired contract, but instead claims that it should not have to maintain them in this day and age.

“The strike is not over”

Vincent Galvin, a worker with 34 years in the union at Verizon and its predecessor companies, declared at the meeting: “The strike is not over: this is just a time-out.” He said that Verizon was more likely to bargain in good faith now because the strike had crippled its ability to accomplish repairs and installations. He noted the extra repair problems caused by the weather: “God must be a union man, because heavy rain and old copper wires don’t mix.” Phones went out and customers were angry when they weren’t fixed.  Potential customers trying to order new phone service or Fios were being given installation dates in December. An official of one large corporation approached the union and asked whom he could see about getting its phones working; he was directed to go tell the head of Verizon to settle the strike.

The other “success” of the strike was in shutting down cell phone stores, “Verizon’s cash cow.” Galvin noted the great help at the workplace and store picket lines from the public and from members of other unions, including the Transit Workers Union, United Federation of Teachers, District Council 37 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (New York’s largest public employees union), the Teamsters, and Service Employees International Union 32B-J, especially their youth brigade.

Other strikers we met on a wireless store picket line a few days earlier praised the public’s support in New York City, but feared the company’s campaign to paint the workers as making “too much” and being “greedy” was getting traction elsewhere. The union publicized Verizon’s huge profits––$24.2 billion in 2009 and 2010, and $6.9 billion in the first six months of this year–while it failed to pay any income tax at all, according to the union. But while the union played up “saving middle class jobs,” it failed to attack the idea of give-backs head on. It is not even asking for improvements in pay or benefits, but only to continue current pay and benefits without making concessions.

CWA workers set wages for others

Local 1101 works on landlines and the infrastructure on which cell phones depend. Verizon, Galvin said, does not want to have a work force, preferring to contract out all the work to companies using non-union workers. Verizon claims that the workers must expect to pay a larger share of their health care costs at a time when so many other workers are agreeing to givebacks; Galvin explained that Verizon workers had helped build up the company over the years, including the wireless division and Fios, all the while receiving only small wage increases, and they had done this in return for increases in their benefits.  Due to the phone workers’ long and militant history of unionism, Galvin said, “Everyone in the world is watching us; we set the wages for union and non-union workers.”

Ron Spaulding, with 17 years in the union, spoke about the Rebuild 1101 Movement of rank-and-file members who are challenging the current CWA leadership. The last long and militant strike of phone workers was 22 years ago. Since then, the union has accepted a two-tier system in which new hires have lower pay and fewer benefits and rights. Now anyone hired in 2003 or later has no job security. As Galvin put it, “we gave away the unborn.”

Spaulding described the creative strike activity that had just taken place, including harassing scabs, chasing managers, and shutting down wireless stores. There was great energy, he said, such as the rally of 2,000 strikers when members of Local 1109 marched across the Brooklyn Bridge and joined Local 1101 and others in a mass demonstration. All the speakers remarked on the strike’s good side effect of breaking down long-standing divisions among the union locals that cover different areas in New York and other states.

Strikers see their strength and possibilities

Amy Muldoon, a young Verizon worker, said that “the wheel is turning” toward workers’ victories after a long period of defeats. “I feel like we’re discovering our secret power,” she said, although she knows victory is not guaranteed. She pointed out that the stewards, not the union leadership, instituted the pickets of the wireless stores: “It felt like we were turning the wheel.”

The workers lost two weeks’ pay while on strike, and 59 people are facing disciplinary action. The conditions under which they returned to work on August 22 stipulate that they cannot resume the strike for 30 days, during which period there is no cap on the amount of overtime they can be forced to work. “They will attempt to demoralize us and break us,” Muldoon opined, “but we can have an aggressive in-plant policy, like work-to-rule and pursuing grievances.”

There was also criticism of the union for not preparing for the strike and for failing to provide strike pay, or even to advise the workers during the futile bargaining period that they should save up money for a possible strike. If the strike had continued to the end of the month, the workers would have lost their health insurance coverage. Yet no one hesitated to join the picket lines, the workers reported. They even viewed returning to work under the pay and benefits provisions of the expired contract as a kind of victory, since the alternative was givebacks.

Muldoon had spoken at a large rally a few days earlier outside the Department of Education (DOE), where the Panel for Education Policy (PEP) was voting on a $120 million contract with Verizon. Teachers, transit workers, and the general public turned out with the strikers in a mass rally to oppose renewal of Verizon’s contract. They pointed not only to the strike, but to the recent discovery that a contractor stole $3.6 million dollars from the education system by falsely billing for wiring schools, and Verizon was found to have concealed the theft from the DOE!  Nevertheless, PEP approved a new contract with Verizon.

Several audience members asked if the workers had “a plan” for fighting from the inside now. Galvin suggested that it could take some time to get work back up to speed: “The first week, we’ll all be talking about the strike at the water cooler. The second week, we’ll be so tired from all the activity that we’ll have to rest. The third week, we’ll be remembering how to do our jobs. By the fourth week, I hope we’ll have a contract.”

Relations between private and public workers are key

Some in the audience criticized the CWA for calling off the strike without having a contract in sight, while others noted that the teachers, transit workers, and other unions had done the same thing, and some of them then worked for years under disadvantageous expired contracts. However, it is illegal for public employees in New York to strike, and so easier to force their unions to end strikes through fines and injunctions than it should be to force private sector unions to end strikes. In spite of their differences, public employees’ unions were the biggest supporters of the Verizon strike.

The strikers were asked what supporters could do now that there are no picket lines. The workers suggested they continue to picket the wireless stores, but we haven’t seen that happen.

Much audience discussion focused on the issue of whether new alliances between public and private sector workers could “turn the wheel” back from defeats to victories. One person said that if the Verizon workers give concessions, “the message will be that striking doesn’t work.” Another pointed out that although public sector workers have recently had concessions forced on them, there has been much resistance: in Connecticut, the public workers voted down concessions, but the union forced a re-vote that put them through; New York State public workers were just pressured into passing a concessions contract under threat of massive job cuts, but 40% of the vote was against accepting the contract. And private sector workers sometimes win: the concrete workers at the World Trade Center site went out on strike recently and got a better contract.

Also, it was pointed out, there are organized rank-and-file groups within several unions that could gain control of locals and defeat bad contracts in the future.  Some in the audience termed the Verizon struggle “class warfare” and an overtly political fight, calling it preparation for breaking the union. To the Verizon workers, one supporter said, “thank you for being the spark for war.”

In the “New Economy,” many of the available and newly created jobs require that the employees “work remotely.” The employee is expected to furnish the work environment…be it at the local Starbucks––with blaring music and deafening coffee grinding––or in the social seclusion of one’s home. Typically, the employee provides computer equipment, Internet connection, Smartphone with unlimited calls, e-mailing and texting, general office supplies (e.g., high-priced cartridges), and business transportation, subject to escalating fuel costs. Depending on the employer, all, some, or none of those expenses are reimbursed. There may or may not be healthcare benefits.

This is the modern version of the old home-work system prevalent in capitalism in centuries past. Women picked up fabric from the factory, worked on it at home, and were paid by the piece. They had to provide their own space, light, thread, tools, and sewing machines and electricity after those came in. They worked day and night to earn a pittance. Often, their children worked, too.

For years, I worked on the premises of my former employer, a large conglomerate. My new employer, a business start-up, requires that I work at home in order to minimize (their) overhead. While this gives me certain freedoms, I often yearn for the camaraderie and structure of my old environment. Yet, the world I left behind a short time ago no longer exists: the building that once housed hundreds of employees is now an empty shell, with most positions having been eliminated, outsourced, or converted to home-work.

Contrary to the stereotype of the home-work employee as someone who stays in her pajamas all day, I put on a suit each morning and focus on work. I dress for business because of personal preference, but also out of financial necessity. When I worked in an office, I always wore suits, so those are the items in my closet. I am sure I am not unique in this.

I do not own a TV, I do not take food breaks every 1-2 hours, and my online activity is generally job related. The one distraction I do have is cleaning. At 5 p.m., no one comes into my apartment to empty the trash, mop the floors, or restock the bathroom with toilet paper. It is up to me to maintain a hygienic, professional work space. The upside of my home-work situation is that I am autonomous and do not have a boss breathing down my neck eight hours a day. One downside is that I am simultaneously responsible for uncreative tasks like cleaning. Furthermore, as I am in sales and paid commissions only, the time I spend cleaning reduces my earnings potential. It doesn’t take the boss’s presence on the premises to make me work long and hard.

Another downside is the lack of social interaction. There are few opportunities for workers to relate to each other, discover mutual concerns, and put––at minimum––indirect pressure on management to improve their situations. People know better than to complain to each other about their jobs via e-mails that could get back to the boss.

For young employees, the physical isolation of working from home can stifle career growth. They miss out on opportunities to be mentored, learn from co-workers in the same role, expand their knowledge at cross-departmental meetings, and help out during emergencies, when they could acquire and visibly demonstrate new skills. Home-work employees are out of sight and therefore often out of mind.

What would a non-exploitative workplace look like? One Utopian vision guarantees the highest pay for the most distasteful, treacherous tasks. In this topsy-turvy world, I imagine executives who make far reaching, removed decisions being paid minimum wages, while the janitors who scrub the corporate washroom are rewarded as princes. A variant on this scenario is that all tasks––from the menial and mindless to the intellectually advanced and personally fulfilling––are distributed evenly among all members of society. I crave concrete, realizable examples, because home-work is far from non-exploitative.

From my study of Marx, I expect that it is impossible to escape the dictates of capitalism within capitalism. No matter the type of work, it will be exploitative as long as the essence of the system is to get the maximum labor out of people for the least expense. We need to look further than home or office to create non-exploitative work.

This article responds to recent works by Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler, influential radical political-economic thinkers who teach, respectively, at York University in Toronto and at colleges in Israel. Part I, below, responds to Bichler and Nitzan’s (B&N)  “Systemic Fear, Modern Finance and the Future of Capitalism” (Bichler and Nitzan 2010). In this paper, they argue that (1) “systemic fear”–fear of the death of the capitalism–has gripped capitalists during the last decade, but (2) capitalists’ belief that their system is eternal is necessary for its continued existence. So (3) the alleged systemic fear is itself a threat to the system. And thus we have yet another version of the notion that capital itself may be the historical Subject that will bring it down.

B&N claim that fear of the death of the system’s death has gripped capitalists only during two periods in recent history–the Great Depression and the 2000s. Their evidence for this claim consists entirely of the alleged fact that these two periods of crisis were the only periods since World War I in which equity (stock) prices and current profits were strongly correlated, i.e. the only periods in which they closely moved up and down together.[1] However, using the exact same methods and the exact same data as B&N, I show below that that equity prices and current profits were also strongly correlated from the early 1950s through 1973–during the so-called golden age of capitalism!

In Parts II and III of this article, which will appear here later this month, I will respond to the critique of Marx’s value theory that pervades Nitzan and Bichler’s 2009 book, Capital as Power. In this book, they allege that Marx’s value theory is practically useless for the study of accumulation. So my response will show, among other things, that his theory sheds significant light on the long decline in the rate of accumulation (investment) that contributed to ever-increasing debt burdens in the U.S. and helped set the stage for the recent Great Recession.

Part I

In November, Nitzan presented his and Bichler’s “systemic fear” thesis–including the correlation data that supposedly supports it–in a presentation to a joint session of the prestigious Harvard Law School and Harvard’s equally prestigious Kennedy School of Government. And a different version of the same argument, featuring the same correlation data, appeared earlier in an article they published in Dollars & Sense, a left-liberal economics magazine.

But since their data actually show that equity prices and current profits were also strongly correlated from the early 1950s through 1973–during the so-called golden age of capitalism!–we should doubt their claim that systemic fear has prevailed in recent years. After presenting and discussing these data, I will argue that flaws in B&N’s reasoning should also cause us to doubt their claim that capitalists are normally convinced that capitalism is eternal, as well as their claim that this conviction is crucial to its continued existence. But if the future of capitalism doesn’t hinge on the conviction that the system is eternal, it also doesn’t much matter whether capitalists have recently been gripped by systemic fear in B&N’s sense.

Good old regular fear, “the dread and apprehension that regularly puncture [capitalists'] habitual greed” (Bichler and Nitzan 2010, p. 18), is another matter. There can be little doubt that good old regular fear was intense at the start of the last decade, and even more intense at the end. I believe that this good old regular fear was justified and that it remains so. The underlying long-run economic problems that led to the recent Great Recession, and to the weakness of the subsequent recovery, have not been resolved. As I will discuss in Part II of this article, slow growth of employment relative to investment during the last six decades has led to a persistent fall in the rate of profit; the fall in the rate of profit has caused capital accumulation and economic growth to be sluggish for decades; and this sluggishness has led to mounting debt burdens. I doubt that the fall in the rate of profit can be reversed or that the debt problem can be solved without much more destruction of capital value–i.e. falling prices of real estate, securities, and means of production, as well as physical destruction–than has taken place to date. And if these problems remain unresolved, the economy will continue to be relatively stagnant and prone to crisis.

But it is difficult to discuss these ideas with B&N, or at all, because they and others like them contend that the theory on which the ideas are based, Marx’s value theory, is internally inconsistent and circular. An internally inconsistent theory cannot possibly be correct.[2] All ideas resting upon such a foundation can thus be disqualified at the starting gate, without further ado. In order to clear the ground for a genuine discussion–one in which B&N’s approach to questions of crisis and the future of capitalism is compared with and contrasted to something rather than nothing–Parts II and II of this article will respond to the main criticisms of Marx’s value theory.

* * *

B&N (2010, p. 17, emphasis in original) note that “if we adhere to the scriptures of modern finance, we should expect to see no systematic association between equity prices and current profits.” And they claim that equity prices have indeed become decoupled from current profits since 1917, except during two brief and exceptional periods. “Figure 2 and Table 2 show two clear exceptions to the rule: the first occurred during the 1930s, the second during the 2000s. In both periods … equity prices moved together–and tightly so–with current earnings” (Bichler and Nitzan 2011, p. 17 emphasis altered).

However, their Figure 2 actually shows four clear exceptions to the alleged rule. Equity prices also moved together with current earnings–and tightly so–from the early 1950s to the early 1960s, and from the early 1960s to the early 1970s (see my Figure 1). 

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During the first of these additional “exceptional” periods, period 4 of Table 1, below, the correlation between equity prices and current earnings was stronger than during the Great Depression (period 2). During the other “exceptional” period that B&N fail to bring to our attention, period 5, the correlation was lower, but still considerably stronger than during the 2000s (period 7).[3] The percentage of the variation in one variable that is “explained” by, or attributable to, the variation in the other is the square of the correlation coefficient, r². Thus, as Table 1 shows, only about two-fifths of the variation in share prices during period 7 is attributable to variations in current profits; the explained variation during period 4 is almost twice as great, while the explained variation during period 5 is more than 50% greater.[4]

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Table 1. Correlations between the annual rates of growth of stock prices and earnings per share, S&P 500 companies (monthly data are expressed as 3-year moving averages)

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Table 1 also shows that share prices have been strongly and positively correlated with current profits more than 40% of the time since 1917, and almost half the time since 1929. So the “exceptions” are not exceptional; the “rule” that share prices and current profits have become decoupled is no rule at all.

But B&N haven’t merely gotten their facts wrong. Because their facts are wrong, so is their paper’s key claim that we can infer that investors are gripped by “systemic fear” when the relationship between current profits and equity prices is strong and positive. They tell us that the two periods in which systemic fear prevailed were two periods of acute crisis, the Great Depression and the 2000s. If a strongly positive correlation between current profits and share prices were another exceptional feature of these periods of crisis, then the notion that we can infer the existence of systemic fear from the positive correlation might be plausible. But the 1930s and 2000s were not exceptional in that respect, as we have seen. And the other two strongly positive-correlation periods, which run from the early 1950s through the early 1970s, cannot plausibly be characterized as a time of systemic fear. On the contrary, that era was the so-called golden age of capitalism.[5] So a strongly positive correlation between current profits and equity prices does not allow us to infer the existence of systemic fear.

But the correlation data are B&N’s only evidence that capitalists were gripped by systemic fear in the 1930s and 2000s. (The statements by the Financial Times, Alan Greenspan, Bernie Sucher, Gillian Tett, and Mervyn King quoted in their paper discuss a highly uncertain environment, economic crisis, and discredited economic theory and ideology, not fear of the death of capitalism.) So they have not given us a good reason to accept that claim.

* * *

Nor do they give us a good reason to accept that the opposite of systemic fear–the conviction that capitalism is eternal–is the norm. Their “demonstrat[ion]” that capitalists are almost always guided by this conviction is fatally flawed. And since the same demonstration is the basis upon which B&N (2010, p. 3) claim that “[t]his … conviction is necessary for the existence of modern capitalism, at least in its present form,” they also fail to give us a good reason to accept this latter claim.

The most glaring flaw in their “demonstration” comes at the end, when they write, “the fact that capitalists invest shows that they expect … that the value of their assets will grow, not contract–and that expectation means that, consciously or not, they also think that the ritual that valuates their assets will never end” (Bichler and Nitzan 2010, pp. 3-4, emphasis added). The italicized clause is simply false. Just as some people buy lottery tickets even if they don’t expect to hit the jackpot, some people buy shares of stock even if they don’t expect their prices to rise. A large enough jackpot or a large enough potential capital gain more than makes up for a low probability of success.  Hence, the fact that people invest does not mean that they normally expect capitalism to last forever.

Imagine, for instance, that you think that there’s only a 50-50 chance that capitalism will exist a year from now, and that you are considering buying shares of stock for $10,000 today. If capitalism doesn’t survive, you’ll lose the whole $10,000, so it would be better to spend the $10,000 now, not invest it. You believe that this outcome is as likely as not, but you also believe that if capitalism does survive, the shares will be worth $500,000 a year from now. If you are like most people, you’ll go ahead and invest.

Secondly, dozens upon dozens of experiments conducted by Nobel laureate Vernon Smith and colleagues (e.g. Smith, Suchanek, and Williams 1988; Porter and Smith 2003) during the past quarter century have demonstrated conclusively that people frequently invest in assets even when know that “capitalism” (i.e., its experimental equivalent) will soon perish. Participants in the experiments are given some cash and some shares of an imaginary equity. They are told that the shares will pay dividends for a fixed length of time, such as fifteen periods, and that the experiment will then end, at which point the shares will be worthless. The current fundamental value of a share–the sum of the average per-period dividends throughout the remainder of the experiment–is announced at the start of each period.[6] Participants can buy additional shares from other participants, sell their shares, or hold onto them and collect their dividends. At the end of the experiment, they get to keep their initial cash endowments, dividends, and any net capital gains they have obtained.

Now, B&N (2010, p. 3)  claim to demonstrate that if capitalists believed that the system “would cease to exist at some future point,” then share prices “would have no-where to trend but down,” and capitalists would therefore be unwilling to buy additional shares. But even though participants in the experiments are absolutely certain that the system (i.e., the experiment) will soon cease to exist and that the asset’s fundamental value is continually falling, share prices typically rise throughout  much or most of the experiment–big bubbles are formed–and the volume of investment in additional shares is typically heavy. This has been the routine outcome even when the participants in the experiments are over-the-counter stock dealers, businesspeople, or students at the California Institute of Technology or the Wharton School.

Research into why this “perverse” behavior occurs is still ongoing, but the basic reason why people buy shares that eventually become worthless, and whose prices must therefore eventually fall, is obvious. People think that they may well make a substantial profit in the meantime, by reselling the shares at prices higher than those they paid.

Finally, even if the rest of B&N’s “demonstration” were sound, it would not prove that capitalists are normally guided by the conviction that capitalism is eternal. At least it wouldn’t prove this if we use the word “conviction” in the normal way. B&N are undoubtedly aware that it would not, since they write that “consciously or not, [capitalists] also think that the ritual that valuates their assets will never end” (emphasis added).  I doubt that “unconscious conviction” is a coherent concept, but even if it is, B&N’s appeal to it turns what started out as a provocative and straightforward claim into a piece of unfalsifiable Freudian speculation.[7]

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References

Bichler, Shimshon and Jonathan Nitzan. 2010. Systemic Fear, Modern Finance and the Future of Capitalism, July. Available at bnarchives.yorku.ca/289/03/20100700_bn_systemic_fear_modern_finance_future_of_capitalism.pdf .

James, William. 1890. The Principles of Psychology, Vol. 1. New York. Henry Holt and Co.

Nitzan, Jonathan and Shimson Bichler. 2009. Capital as Power: A study of order and creorder. London and New York: Routledge.

Porter, David P. and Vernon L. Smith. 2003. Stock Market Bubbles in the Laboratory, Journal of Behavioral Finance 4:1, 7-20.

Skidelsky, Robert. 2010. Keynes: The Return of the Master. London: Allen Lane.

Smith, Vernon L., Gerry L. Suchanek, and Arlington W. Williams. 1988. Bubbles, Crashes, and Endogenous Expectations in Experimental Spot Asset Markets, Econometrica 56:5, 1119-1151.

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Notes

[1] They interpret a strong influence of current profits on share prices as evidence that investors are acting on the basis of the current situation, having abandoned their supposedly normal “conviction” that the shares will yield returns ad infinitum because capitalism is eternal.

[2] An internally inconsistent theory may happen by accident to hit upon correct conclusions, but the arguments it provides in support of these conclusions are always invalid.

[3] The correlation was negative between February 1961 and May 1964. If we count this as a distinct period and shorten periods 4 and 5 accordingly, the correlations during these periods increase to 0.92 and 0.82.

[4] I computed a correlation of 0.65 for period 7, while B&N report a correlation of 0.64. My other results match theirs, so this slight discrepancy may be due to a recent revision of the data set, published by Robert Schiller Shiller on his website.

[5] Since I, like B&N, computed the correlations between 3-year average values, periods 4 and 5 use data from August 1950 through December 1973, which is almost exactly coextensive with the golden age as defined by Skidelsky (2010, p. 24)–the period “from 1951 to 1973.”

[6] In some experiments, shares pay a fixed dividend. In others, participants are told what the possible dividends are and the probabilities that each will be paid.

[7] As William James (1890, p. 163, emphasis omitted) noted, “the distinction … between the unconscious and the conscious being of the mental state … is the sovereign means for believing what one likes in psychology and of turning what might become a science into a tumbling ground for whimsies.”

One of the most notable parts of the rally was the presence of a relatively sizable socialist contingent of approximately 100 to 200 participants that marched down to the rally. The group with the clearest presence by far within this contingent was the International Socialist Organization, which provided most of the signs that the participants in the contingent carried; however, members of the Socialist Party USA and Socialist Action were also present, although in much smaller numbers.

Although the primary aims of the rally–outside of the socialist contingent–were in no way related to breaking with the two-party system, there was a clear air of anger and frustration directed towards the Obama administration for its failure to push through many of the changes that voters had believed his election would bring for the working class. I believe that the rally was definitely worthwhile, and that some of the people who attended it­­­­–those who are very dissatisfied with the present state of political affairs in the U.S. and are becoming disillusioned with the Democratic Party as an advocate for working class interests–present a possible future force for the advancement of a socialist movement.

I believe that the way to bring these dissatisfied people closer to the cause of socialism is to demonstrate that the political and economic failures and shortcomings that they are protesting against are not simply caused by wrong choices within the framework of capitalism by a particular capitalist political party, but that these failures are, rather, inherent in the logic of capitalism itself–a demonstration for which the recent economic crisis and current recession provide the perfect context.

Student Participant

A Rasmussen poll conducted earlier this month found strong support for socialism, especially among low-income people and youth. And Scott Rasmussen is a Republican pollster.

In a nationwide U.S. survey of 1000 adults conducted on April 6 and 7, Rasmussen asked, “Which is a better system–capitalism or socialism?” Overall, 53% of respondents favored capitalism, 20% favored socialism, and the rest were undecided. That in itself is a surprising degree of support for socialism. But it gets better.

Only 37% of respondents under 30 years old favored capitalism, while almost as many, 33%, favored socialism. Among those between 30 and 40, 49% chose capitalism, while 26% chose socialism.

Respondents whose income is less than $20,000 favored capitalism by only a 35% to 27% margin. Among people with income between $20,000 and $40,000, the results were 46% to 25%.

We don’t know what the people who expressed a preference for “socialism” meant. The poll didn’t define “capitalism” or “socialism.” But one thing is clear: Margaret Thatcher’s TINA doctrine–”there is no alternative” to capitalism–is no longer all-dominating.

And while the poll provides no clue as to why (or even whether) pro-socialist sentiment is on the upswing, I’d bet my last dollar that the answer is: “It’s the economy, stupid.” And the way things are going, “bet my last dollar” might not be just a cliché.

As people begin to search for an explanation of what has gone wrong and a different way of life, we need to be prepared to meet them halfway with a clear understanding of how capitalism works; of why, when push comes to shove, it cannot work for the benefit of the vast majority; and of what exactly must be changed in order to have a viable and emancipatory socialism. Rather than slogans, they need genuine theories and concepts that provide real understanding.

That’s why I’m glad we now have the Marxist-Humanist Initiative, a new organization that can help meet the quest for new beginnings halfway.