(Best read after reading Part I) One contrast with current anti-capitalist rhetoric found in early 20th Century commentary is the prominence of a dysfunctionality critique, rather than a moralistic one. The latter I would say is more dominant these days, especially among the comrades in Democratic Socialists of America. Back in the early 1900s, typified by writers like Thorsten Veblen, an incisive line of criticism went to the notion that control of capital by a moneyed elite was an obstacle to economic development, to Progress itself.
You might be interested to know that I wrote most of what Howie Hawkins, Green Party presidential candidate in 2020, called an "Ecosocialist Green New Deal", https://howiehawkins.us/the-ecosocialist-green-new-deal-budget/, which proposes a $4 trillion per year Federal national plan, mostly to create (green) national infrastructure. This is based on my 2010 book from Praeger, which you can see at ManufacturingGreeenProsperity.com, and you can see other links at GreenNewDealPlan.com (I worked with Seymour Melman for 20 years, fwiw). At any rate, it is a shame that national planning, an idea that was quite prevalent on the left 100 years ago (and not the Soviet kind), is not part of the current national conversation, because I think it has the potential to attract a large chunk of the working class voter base.
You might be interested to know that I wrote most of what Howie Hawkins, Green Party presidential candidate in 2020, called an "Ecosocialist Green New Deal", https://howiehawkins.us/the-ecosocialist-green-new-deal-budget/, which proposes a $4 trillion per year Federal national plan, mostly to create (green) national infrastructure. This is based on my 2010 book from Praeger, which you can see at ManufacturingGreeenProsperity.com, and you can see other links at GreenNewDealPlan.com (I worked with Seymour Melman for 20 years, fwiw). At any rate, it is a shame that national planning, an idea that was quite prevalent on the left 100 years ago (and not the Soviet kind), is not part of the current national conversation, because I think it has the potential to attract a large chunk of the working class voter base.