The author provides a broad perspective with rich insights that encompasses political events from the 1930s until today, and comparing and contrasting anti-capitalist consciousness in Europe with the US with emphasis on the latter.
The old ideological mechanisms that for decades had persuaded most US citizens -- that economic hardship was the result of individual decisions and personal failures -- left growing numbers dissatisfied. The old scapegoats (immigrants, the poor, minorities, foreign powers, etc.) raised to deflect systemic criticism have been working less well than in the past. In their place, the notion is rising that today's economic problems are systemic, that capitalism itself is the problem. Systemic criticism is returning into the public consciousness and into public debate in ways not seen in the US since the 1930s.
