ABSTRACT
Liberals have relied on politics, particularly the capture of Federal and State Government power, in order to regulate business and redistribute income and opportunity in the interest of efficiency and fairness. Contrary to the political myths of the Right, the Left's program worked quite well from the New Deal until the 1980s, when profound changes in the nature of global capitalism, and the use of racial hatred for political gain, stymied further progress along left-liberal lines. The collapse of the conservative economic and racial project in the aftermath of the recent mini-Depression has not given the Left a second chance to use the old redistributive State because the American oligarchy has purchased politics and blocked the way to reform. The true democratization of capital can only happen when the people own the economy—as small freeholders—and the people earn the bulk of capital income.
