Abundance

Politics is a way of organizing conflict, so people’s attention goes toward divisions. Beyond divisions, however, is a path toward a new political order. “Political order” is a term American historian Gary Gerstle coined that describes “how hidden points of consensus between the parties create distinctive periods of history” (204). The neoliberal order lasted from the 1970s to the 2010s, which followed the New Deal Order of the 1930s to 1960s that collapsed under the weight of stagflation and the Vietnam War. The New Left challenged the New Deal Left. By the 1970s, individualism ran rampant in the American political sphere. The government became smaller than ever under Bill Clinton, who slashed the federal budget and deregulated the financial and IT sectors.

Presently, the neoliberal order is ending and making space for a new political order. This order, according to Klein and Thompson, may be defined by cynicism and distrust in government. People no longer believe that the life they had been promised is achievable, leading to increasing populism on both the left and right. Klein and Thompson describe the current moment as a shift, where people are searching for a politics that feels relevant.

A Fork in the Road: Scarcity or Abundance?

Klein and Thompson believe this may be the moment for a politics of abundance. However, the politics of scarcity can be seductive. Right-wing populism seeks power by closing doors, halting change, and venerating the “dominance hierarchies” of the past. Scarcity is a key aspect of this political ideology, as is the idea that government is weak, making popular strongmen necessary to deliver on the failed promises of democracy. Liberal politics has its own scarcity issues, like the implementation of zoning laws that have exacerbated the housing crisis far more than any influx of immigrants.

The housing crisis and affordability crisis are internal problems for America, and China is an external problem. China is a manufacturing superpower, casting a shadow of pressure across the US. Donald Trump has espoused xenophobic beliefs and has encouraged the US to return to its manufacturing roots. Across the political aisle, Joe Biden continued some of Trump’s policies, like keeping tariffs on China and subsidizing American manufacturing. As in the 1930s and 1970s, internal and external crises are converging, creating the rise of a new political order.

Abundance Emerging?

Klein and Thompson assert that Trump won the 2024 election in part because of the failures of contemporary liberalism, but he did not run on a compelling vision for America’s future. He did not focus on bringing the Texan housing miracle to the US, or the success of OWS, or investing in technology. He abandoned the right’s past successes and focused on scarcity. The left has the opportunity to embrace abundance, and in ways, it already is. Coalitions have formed to support housing equality, the Biden administration pushed forward the green energy cause, and the Biden administration tried to remove some bottlenecks in the solar and wind infrastructure.

The politics of abundance are not easy, though. Abundance requires unmaking the machine of excessive rules and regulations, opposing ideas of scarcity on both the left and right, and embracing ideas surrounding degrowth. Capitalism has constrained abundance, and it is necessary to shift the machine of production and direct its ends toward a shared abundance.

A Lens, Not a List

Klein and Thompson state they could have made Abundance a list of policy ideas, but there are questions surrounding how the policies could be implemented that would serve as shortcomings to the efficacy of the list. Changing political values is harder than making a list of desired changes. What Klein and Thompson craft in Abundance is not a set of suggestions but a set of questions around which politics should be centered, such as, “What is scarce that should be abundant? What is difficult to build that should be easy? What inventions do we need that we do not yet have?” (216). Klein and Thompson sought to create a lens through which to view the challenges of the contemporary political era.

Abundance Versus Scarcity

In 1964, New York City hosted the World’s Fair and transformed the marshland of Flushing, Queens, into a glimpse into the future of technology, like Bell Labs’s “picturephone.” President Lyndon B. Johnson gave an address in which he warned that progress has two possibilities: abundance or annihilation. Now, the US has even more technological promise, and Johnson’s warning remains true, but the outcomes are either abundance or scarcity.

Abundance asks if the current problems can be solved with supply. To pursue abundance is to pursue institutional renewal. Klein and Thompson reflect on their blind spots, including viewing stories like unfinished public works projects or increased homelessness as exceptions to the norm of well-functioning government. If outcomes like these are typical, they become the results of choices that become rules, which are also the results of ideas and movements. The ideas and movements of the past decades are not the villains, but the responses to crises of another time that often succeeded them are.

Klein and Thompson state that political movements succeed when they “build a vision of the future that is imbued with the virtues of the past” (221). Both freedom and abundance loom large in the American political consciousness, and Klein and Thompson argue that abundance formed the American character that stems from the formation of the colonies. American ideals and aspirations were formed under the idea of plentitude. The plentitude of the colonies is spare compared to modern standards, illustrating that both abundance and scarcity are stories that people tell themselves.

America is turning toward scarcity, changing American politics and national character, but Klein and Thompson seek an abundance that delivers real, tangible marvels. They seek an abundance that is a liberalism that builds.