Economic Justice: Why We Must Build a New Common Sense

Social movements and political parties are accountable to the same politics, but elections are majoritarian. You need to get to 50 percent plus one if you want to win an election.

—Maurice Mitchell, “Building Movement-Accountable Government,” NPQ

Elections can be brutal. At least as structured in the United States—really, there are far better, more representative ways to make collective voting decisions!—elections are typically a binary choice, with a winner and a loser.

Many articles will slice and dice the election returns. Or parse which Project 2025 policy ideas a Donald Trump administration—a phrase I had hoped never to utter again after 2020—might pursue.

Alternatively, one could highlight state-level economic justice wins on ballot measures, such as paid sick leave in Nebraska, Missouri, and Alaska (the latter two also increased minimum wages).

These are valid topics. But here, the focus isn’t on electoral wins or losses per se, but on how economic justice advocates might approach a changed environment.

The Role of Civil Society 

At NPQ, we rarely write about why we publish what we publish. But it’s worth noting that our mission is to “advance conversations and practice in civil society.” Nonprofits are a part of civil society, but they are not all of it. They are not even—at least not always—the most important part of it.

Broadly speaking, civil society is “the arena outside the family, the state, and the market, which is created by individual and collective actions, organizations, and institutions to advance shared interests.” Or, as I often say, the space between the family and the state where social meaning is contested and constructed.

The concept is broad, but it depends, crucially, on people making meaning in groups in conversation with each other. Famously, Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam has argued that the decline of bowling clubs (and, of course, many other informal associative groups) has had a highly corrosive effect on US civil society. Too many people, Putnam wrote, are “bowling alone.”

Civil society can be powerful. It has toppled governments many times. Carlos Monsiváis, the late Mexican author and longtime editor of the Mexico City newspaper La Jornada (literally, The Daily), wrote about civil society as la sociedad que se organiza—the society that organizes itself.

Monsiváis wrote his book back in 1988, at a time when Mexico’s government was being called the “perfect dictatorship.” That year, Mexican officials stole the presidential election, later burning the ballots to erase evidence of fraud. But Mexico’s perfect dictatorship is no more. The society that organizes itself prevailed.

In pursuing racial and economic justice today, we, too, must strive to become a society that organizes ourselves.

Of course, movement groups will be forced to fight defensive battles as well. But building can and does occur in hostile conditions; indeed, harsh conditions often inspire creative action. For example, the Red for Ed movement of teacher walkouts of 2018 and 2019 took place primarily in “red” states during the Trump administration.

Common Sense

Can movements change our notion of what is common sense? Famously, Thomas Paine wrote the revolutionary pamphlet Common Sense to build support to overthrow the British monarchy and create what became the United States—an idea that clearly contradicted the common sense of a world dominated by monarchical governments.

It is time to change…our common sense.

This phrase “common sense” is still used today. In his victory speech, Trump called Republicans “the party of common sense.” One could dispute this claim, but for many people, sadly, Trump’s ideas do seem like common sense.

Trump’s claim to legitimacy, at least in part, relies on his supposed business acumen. This claim’s power can be seen in how President Joe Biden in his 2023 State of the Union address and Vice President Kamala Harris this fall on the campaign trail both chose to say, “I am a capitalist”—even though both come from working-class backgrounds and had to work to earn a living.

These popular notions of economics affect our politics. The “common sense” capitalist frame helps explain why the issue of universal healthcare coverage was absent from the presidential campaigns in 2024, despite a growing life expectancy gap between the United States and comparable countries, and even as Americans spend nearly $6,000 more per capita for worse healthcare than our counterparts.

It is time to change, as Paine did, our common sense.

Toward a New Common Sense

What would a new common sense look like? There are two parts to this. One is to be clear about the nature of our present economy. Simply put, the United States does not now nor ever did have a “free market” economy. Oligopoly and monopoly power is not a bug, it is a feature.

A community-based economics, backed by public policy, but neither corporate- nor government-dominated, offers a compelling vision.

Building understanding of how corporate power distorts housing, healthcare, and nonprofits—to name a few areas—is vital for breaking through a narrative that has glorified capitalism and ignores festering problems that have left as many as three-quarters of all Americans, according to a 2024 Forbes magazine estimate, living paycheck to paycheck. Our economy, in short, is not serving us.

Second, advancing more positive visions is critical. There is some good news here. Eight years ago, worker co-op policy was nonexistent, labor unions were in retreat, tenant unions were largely moribund, and solidarity economy advocates had little influence. Today, worker co-ops have won a string of policy victories (especially at the state level), labor unions are winning workplace representation elections at “rates not seen in decades,” tenant unions are gaining ground, and solidarity economy organizing has grown enormously.

The notion of social housing—homes for people, not profit—has begun to take root nationally. More broadly, economist Manuel Pastor contends, “We need to rely on us. We need to rely on the community that we build together.” Emily Kawano and David Cobb echo this idea in advocating for a solidarity economy, highlighting five key principles: solidarity, equity, sustainability, participatory democracy, and pluralism.

In short, a community-based economics, backed by public policy, but neither corporate- nor government-dominated, offers a compelling vision. It is also a necessary vision to advance not just economic justice, but racial, gender, climate, and health justice.

The work will require relational organizing. A year-and-a-half ago, my former colleague Rithika Ramamurthy and I wrote an article about movement economies, which we defined as “democratic economic structures that social movements understand to be in their interests and worth fighting for.”

“The task ahead,” we noted, “is to build the infrastructure, institutions, and movement connectivity needed to foster structural change.” Much work in this direction is occurring. Much more will need to occur in the years to come.