Interregnum

When this chapter was written, a conservative era appeared to have just ended and an era of reform seemed already in prospect. COVID and a post-COVID world are discussed. The chapter argues for new ways of coping with the US’s national economy as an appendage of the international economy, the return of nuclear weapons and the China rivalry. Unfree, i.e., quasi-bondaged labor is seen, under contemporary unjust conditions as increasingly the international norm. A proposal is made not for an internationalist political party but for an international political society on the model of the First International (1864). There follow some recounting of our current domestic travails: Seven Feckless Presidents and Trump the “reformer”. Unpacking the courts and the Congress, National third parties have proven sterile but that is not the case for state level third parties especially in Wisconsin, New York and North Dakota. The book closes by returning to the subject of social and civic rights based on work and wages.