"In the 1935 Telling, Redistribution Was the Mechanism of Abundance"

"Even in those invocations of abundance, the stark differences between the socialist abundance movement of 1935 and the moderate abundance agenda of 2025 are apparent. The concept of 'production for use' is in contrast to the capitalist profit motive. In socialist thought, one of the core issues of a capitalist economy is that profit motives result in wealth accumulation becoming divorced from the creation of actual economic value. A production for use system makes production and allocation decisions based on need (or 'use value'), rather than market prices."

Dylan Gyauch-Lewis at The New Republic describes "An Altogether Different Kind of Abundance Agenda."

"It Makes Sense to Ask Why Leftists Are Involved in the Democratic Party in the First Place"

"The framework of 1972 has given radicals ever since a stake in the Democratic Party. It's also been the source of a lot of frustration. The role of the left is mostly invisible and thus different than 1930s and 1940s when clearly identified radical caucuses were common. For one thing, it is hard to know what 'the left' is and who belongs to it. The contemporary left has no structure nor even a definite label. 'Progressive' has become a vague identifier, but the term is used so loosely as to be almost meaningless.
"Secondly, the left has been largely shut out of national level Democratic Party campaigns since 1972. Only once has there been anything like the Sanders campaign. In 1984, Jessie Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition primary challenge turned into a grand crusade that energized and expanded the left in a manner not unlike 2016. Otherwise centrists have commanded the party's main stage."

James N. Gregory at The Conversation quickly traces the story of left-wing Democrats over the past eighty years.

"An Analogous Effect on the Nation's Democratic Party and Its Liberal Movement"

"In the improbable (but not impossible) event that Sanders wins the Democratic presidential nomination, he will certainly be subjected to a latter-day version of the calumnies heaped on Sinclair–but like Sinclair, his influence will surely outlive his campaign. He's prodding a party and a generation to define their missions as reversing America's descent into plutocracy."

Harold Meyerson in the Los Angeles Times compares Bernie Sanders to Upton Sinclair.

"We're All Still Being Kept Down on the Farm"

"After what was then the longest trial in California history, eight of the defendants were convicted on a lesser charge of conspiracy to commit criminal syndicalism. But the particulars of the case counted for much less than the stirring spectacle of bona fide labor-agitating Communists being led in shackles to serve years-long prison terms. District Attorney Neil McAllister—a 'principal tool' of the agribusiness establishment—brought out an actual American flag as a prop during his closing argument and implored the jury to return a conviction 'for the good old U.S.A, for My Country 'Tis of Thee, for the Star-Spangled Banner, for my Own United States, and God will bless you.' He crowed at a post-verdict press conference that the outrageous verdict was 'a step forward for America and all that America stands for.'
"These labor struggles have cast a long shadow on our national politics, particularly when a Californian—who made a point of eating grapes in defiance of the United Farm Workers boycott—launched the conservative revolution proper in the 1980 presidential election."

Chris Lehmann in In These Times explains the story depicted in Kathryn Olmstead's new book, Right Out of California: The 1930s and the Big Business Roots of Modern Conservatism.

And Elias Isquith interviews Olmstead in Salon.

"The First People to Make Politics a Business"

"Political consulting is often thought of as an offshoot of the advertising industry, but closer to the truth is that the advertising industry began as a form of political consulting. As the political scientist Stanley Kelley once explained, when modern advertising began, the big clients were just as interested in advancing a political agenda as a commercial one. Monopolies like Standard Oil and DuPont looked bad: they looked greedy and ruthless and, in the case of DuPont, which made munitions, sinister. They therefore hired advertising firms to sell the public on the idea of the large corporation, and, not incidentally, to advance pro-business legislation. It’s this kind of thing that Sinclair was talking about when he said that American history was a battle between business and democracy, and, 'So far,' he wrote, 'Big Business has won every skirmish.'"

Jill Lepore in The New Yorker discusses Clem Whitaker and Leone Baxter, the first professional campaign consultants.

"The Radical Ideas of One Generation Are Often the Common Sense of the Next"

"Unfortunately, most Americans know little of this progressive history. It isn't taught in most high schools. You can't find it on the major television networks or even on the History Channel. Indeed, our history is under siege."

Peter Dreier in The Nation presents a list of "The Fifty Most Influential [Activist] Progressives of the Twentieth Century."