ABSTRACT
The United States’ attempt to prolong the life of capitalism over the last century went through its phase of jeopardy during the Long Boom, where it was endangered by circumstances arising from a world of popular empowerment whose leading edge was Communism. This chapter reviews how the chief proposals that emerged in left discussions amid the pandemic reflect these limitations before going on to consider what it will take to overcome them if the working people of the West are to put their political shoulders to the wheel of building socialism worldwide. The first thing to note about the proposals that captured public attention during the pandemic is their provenance. Breaking the decades-long neoliberal taboo against expanding government spending, the Canadian Liberal Party, for instance, campaigned successfully in 2014 on a pledge to expand budget deficits and Britain’s Johnson government did the same in 2019, promising to expand spending to ‘level up’ the north.
