Abundance is up for grabs
Progressives should help shape it.
Sat in the back of a large cultural center on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, I watch humans flooding in by the hundreds for a book launch event about policy. Strange, unusual, unthinkable. Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s Abundance has drawn a crowd fit for some sporting event. But everyone’s wearing suit jackets and sneakers. And we’re all watching them talk about housing policy, governance, and how scientists at the NIH get stuck with too much paperwork.
The mass appeal might have something to do with their stated ambition to shape what would be the third political order the country has seen in the past century. And that Klein and Thompson are both big-time writers and podcast hosts at The New York Times and The Atlantic, respectively.
“The problem with the abundance framing,” said Klein of his own book, while perched on a luscious looking blue-velvet chair alongside Thompson and moderator Josh Barro, “is that it’s a little too good. Like, what, you’re against plenitude?”
A political order can be defined as the common ground shared by opposing political parties; the subterranean consensus that no one questions. During the New Deal order that sprang up in the 1930s, Democrats and Republicans alike agreed that the government should help manage the economy and support workers. They mostly disagreed on how. Through the neoliberal era that succeeded it in the 1970s, the bipartisan backdrop was an ascendent individualism. No party bragged about getting the government involved in things, and workers were meant to figure out how to support themselves.
Klein and Thompson’s proposal for a new political order of abundance sounds so obvious that you might wonder why anyone would need to write a book about it: “we need to build and invent more of what we need. That’s it, that’s the thesis.”
Of course, that isn’t really a thesis. It’s like saying Americans value freedom. Sure, but what political commitments does freedom entail?
With a bit more detail, their vision centers on housing, infrastructure, clean energy, state capacity, and innovation. Everyone’s rent is too damn high, so we should build more housing. Fossil fuels are cooking the earth, so we should build more clean energy. Government has gotten very bad at executing ambitious projects, like building high-speed rail, or, say, tripling the electricity grid's output in less than 30 years while converting it to renewable energy sources, so we should rebuild that capacity. And bureaucracy has swallowed science, so we should free it.
“What we are proposing is less a set of policy solutions than a new set of questions around which our politics should revolve. What is scarce that should be abundant? What is difficult to build that should be easy? What inventions do we need that we do not yet have?”
To Ezra’s point — there isn’t much to argue with here. Right?
Progressives versus “Abundance”
Reactions from my social media chamber make it seem like Abundance is already neatly polarized, pitting a rebranded center-left-and-right coalition against progressives. I don’t think this is actually the case, though. There’s more overlap between progressives and the abundance agenda than Twitter makes it seem.
Still, many critiques from the left have been defensive. Law professor Zephyr Teachout writes of Klein and Thompson’s “abundance of ambiguity” on antitrust:
“I still can’t tell after reading Abundance whether Klein and Thompson are seeking something fairly small-bore and correct (we need zoning reform) or nontrivial and deeply regressive (we need deregulation) or whether there is room within abundance for anti-monopoly politics and a more full-throated unleashing of American potential.”
And executive editor of The American Prospect David Dayen takes issue1 with their neglect of labor power. He writes: “In order to actually remove the barriers that have hollowed out our industrial base, the answer is not a liberalism that builds, but a liberalism that builds power.”
He continues: “Supply-side progressives like [Matt] Yglesias and Klein are skilled at detecting the structural problems in American government. They’re less concerned with the problem of power as an impediment to progress. And they’re certainly not interested in equalizing that power, aligning the interests of labor and capital, as the clearest path to deal everyone into a next-generation economy.”
Onstage, it seemed that the relationship between labor power and abundance is one that Klein and Thompson aren’t quite sure how to tackle. Or aren’t sure they want to. During the event’s Q&A portion, an audience member asked how public sector unions fit into the abundance agenda. Thompson looked right over to Klein. “You’re looking at me like you want me to take this one,” Klein said. “I sure am,” Thompson shot back.
Klein went on to say that while he supports unions (and has for a while), they’re complicated. Sometimes, union demands clash with rapid development. Other times, organized and experienced employees with production know-how can be an asset to development projects. And abroad, you’ll find both higher union density and faster building, so claiming that unions, in general, affect the speed of development one way or another doesn’t hold up.
In both cases, antitrust and labor power, my read is that the pair just don’t think they’re the most relevant issues to the problems their book focuses on. Thompson pissed a lot of leftists off by saying that oligarchy “does a terrible job of describing today’s problems.” He then clarified, via Twitter, that antitrust can be useful in some cases, but when you’re looking at why red states like Austin build so much more housing than blue ones like California, antitrust — or a theory of oligarchy — just isn’t the best explanation. Neither is union density.
That’s all fine. It’s okay for a book to merely advocate for zoning reform and state capacity. But here’s where I think progressives have a point. Abundance does not make a modest argument. According to their own introduction, Klein and Thompson are pitching a new political order to redefine the common sense of the entire Democratic party, and beyond it, American political life in general.
And here’s Thompson in The Atlantic two weeks ago:
Maybe they had to make their argument more grandiose in order to sell books, or engage more readers. But emphasis matters when you’re trying to define the common sense of an era. If zoning and permitting reform are elevated while labor power and antitrust are not, and the agenda succeeds in getting traction, then you’ll get, predictably, more results in zoning and permitting reform than labor and corporate power.
Another example. Both Klein and Thompson have vocally supported redistribution for a long time. They affirm their support in the book. But they don’t emphasize its contribution to an abundant future, which has already left room for terrible interpretations, like this Harvard economics PhD student (and researcher at the Institute for Progress) arguing that the subtle, radical message of Abundance is that redistribution doesn’t matter2:
As for the confused vision of Abundance on the whole — is it modest, or paradigmatic? — writer Malcolm Harris argues that Klein and Thompson ultimately fail to offer an exciting new way forward for society (Harris’ preferred example is David Schwartzman’s call for “solar communism”).
“Permitting single-stair apartment buildings, ending single-family zoning, and eliminating parking requirements are all strong housing reform ideas,” Harris says of some Abundance policies. “A good policy is better than a bad policy, but don’t piss in a ditch and call it an ocean of lemonade.”
Which could sound pretty ridiculous, as if anyone who isn’t pushing solar communism is just pissing in a ditch. We need zoning reform. We need a government that can execute ambitious projects. It’s not only fine, but good, to advocate for these things. Except, as other leftist reviewers have commented, Klein and Thompson explicitly define their project as a utopian vision for the future.
“Our era features too little utopian thinking,” they write. “What is often missing from both sides is a clearly articulated vision of the future and how it differs from the present. This book is a sketch of, and argument for, one such vision.”
Abundance does not bill itself as a modest political overhaul to prune the overgrown thicket of regulations, empowered coalitions, and bureaucracy that slow us from building and inventing more of what we need. It’s presented as a galvanizing vision for the future. A “once-in-a-generation, paradigm-shifting call to renew a politics of plenty,” as per the book jacket. And as such, their vision of Abundance falls pretty flat, a fact evidenced by their decision to recruit exciting political possibilities in their introduction that the book never mentions again.
Don’t promise shorter workweeks if you aren’t going to talk about power
Abundance opens with a vision, written in all italics so you know it’s sort of dreamy, of how life could be in 2050. “You open your eyes at dawn and turn in the cool bedsheets.” You drink desalinated water from your tap. You eat cellular meat that spares animals from slaughter, and vegetables grown in vertical farms that free up land for forests and parks. Outside, you don’t hear engines churning; you hear only the quiet hum of electric vehicles. Drones deliver miracle “star pills” that make powerful medicines available to all.
But then, they overreach:
“Across the economy, the combination of artificial intelligence, labor rights, and economic reforms have reduced poverty and shortened the workweek. Thanks to higher productivity from AI, most people can complete what used to be a full week of work in a few days…Less work has not meant less pay. AI is built on the collective knowledge of humanity, and so its profits are shared.”
But labor rights get no further attention. Nothing they write about in the remainder of the book will deliver shorter workweeks or sharing AI profits. Clean energy, lower housing prices, more scientific innovation, and more capable governing will not reduce the workweek, nor collectivize the profits from AI. As history makes clear, those require the very things that Klein and Thompson sidestep: labor power and antitrust.
The remainder of the introduction doubles down on this flavor of utopianism that the book itself fails to live up to, using subtitles like “Beyond Scarcity,” “Scarcity is a Choice,” and “The Abundant Society.” In order to generate buy-in for their vision, Klein and Thompson can’t help but invoke the very things that their agenda leaves out. But you can see why: what sort of utopian vision is an ‘abundant society’ where everyone is still forced to work 40 hours per week just to get by?
To be clear — if you amputated parts of the introduction and conclusion, I’d have nothing but good things to say. Abundance shines as a call for common sense reforms that both political parties can get on board with. Whatever your vision of the future, it would probably benefit from most of the ideas in this book. But they’re best understood as the ground floor of a sane political order, not a ceiling for pragmatic utopian visions.
Building a politics of abundance worth the name
Writing about the contemporary Left, Klein and Thompson mostly focus on the “degrowth” wing. But they also acknowledge, briefly, that “abundance is a return to an older tradition of leftist thought,” where the capitalist forces of production could be turned towards building true abundance for all.
This is true — leftists of what sociologist Aaron Benanav calls the “post-scarcity tradition” have been arguing for a political economy of abundance for centuries. From Thomas More’s 1516 novel Utopia, John Maynard Keynes’ 1930 vision that we might “solve the economic problem” by 2030, Murray Bookchin’s 1971 Post-Scarcity Anarchism, to contemporary works like economist Mark Paul’s The Ends of Freedom, “post-scarcity” is generally defined around unconditionally meeting everyone’s basic needs.
This tradition isn’t merely an older one. There are plenty of post-scarcity leftists around today, even if bickering about degrowth gets more media traction. And given Klein and Thompson’s mention of shorter workweeks and collectivizing AI profits, maybe this new abundance agenda and post-scarcity leftists don’t have to be in conflict. Instead, contemporary post-scarcity politics could help inform the agenda.
What I’m saying, I now realize, is that Klein and Thompson were correct to bring up shorter workweeks and collectivized profits in their introduction. But that choice meant the book — the agenda — would be left unfinished. And instead of shit-flinging about it, progressives should help fill in the rest. Especially since there’s serious attention and money (to the tune of $120 million from Open Philanthropy) pumping into the space. In that spirit, here are two additions that might help nudge the abundance agenda towards the progressive ethos of its name:
Can we build an abundance of worker power by dealing sectoral bargaining into the agenda?
Labor standards aren’t just a drag on development — they’re outputs. Part of what we need an abundance of is good jobs. Especially so long as jobs continue to claim so much of our time.
If “abundance” becomes code for brute deregulation and union-busting in the name of rapid development, then it really would become some sort of neoliberalism reboot. That isn’t what Klein and Thompson advocate, though they do seem ambivalent on unions. So are there other forms of building worker power that fit better?
Towards the end of Klein’s response to the audience question about public sector unions, he added: “I’m a bigger fan of sectoral bargaining than a lot of other ways we do bargaining.” Why not take him up on that?
From a labor power perspective, sectoral bargaining — where representatives for workers, employers, and sometimes government bargain to set contracts that apply to workers across an entire industry, whether or not they’re unionized — is a bigger deal than individual workplace unions.
It’s also possible that “abundists” would be more likely to embrace sectoral bargaining than supporting unions since the former sets industry standards that create more predictable conditions. One bargaining standard set across an entire industry is less of a hurdle for planning development projects than a thousand unions with different demands.
There are plenty of caveats here. Framing sectoral bargaining as an alternative to unions would undermine both. To get effective sectoral bargaining, you want higher union density. Ultimately, you want sectoral bargaining units setting minimum standards that workplace unions can build on. But it’s possible to advance sectoral bargaining even before the union infrastructure is in place.
California, for example, passed Assembly Bill 1228 in 2023 (replacing the stymied FAST Recovery Act of 2022), establishing a 10-person council to set wage standards across the entire industry. That council wound up agreeing on a $20/hour minimum wage for California fast food workers, which took effect in April 2024.
Since true sectoral bargaining is constrained by federal law (via the National Labor Relations Act, or NLRA), AB-1228 found a few clever workarounds to achieve a similar outcome without actually producing a binding collective bargaining agreement.
But clearing away the regulatory barriers that prevent outcomes we want is what Abundance is all about. Present NLRA law basically kills sectoral bargaining by requiring employer consent for unions to combine bargaining units (note: employers will never consent to this). And since the NLRA generally preempts state and local labor law, this is a case where — unlike housing abundance — federal regulation is actually the level of government where the main problem resides.
Abundance enthusiasts could change that3. In the same way that Institute for Progress wrote The Case for Clinical Trial Abundance, and How the White House can Reform NEPA, progressive wonks and thinktanks should write something like The Case for an Abundance of Sectoral Bargaining. And even though the current White House will probably not, uh, do anything to support sectoral bargaining, there is some support for it among conservatives. So why not also write How the White House can Reform the NLRA to Unleash Sectoral Bargaining4?
Can we build an abundance of leisure time?
Klein and Thompson write that “Just as freedom has historically loomed large in the American consciousness, so has abundance.” That is true, and historically, both freedom and abundance were broadly understood as a rising tide of leisure time (both have written about this quite a bit).
Beginning right around the 1930s, the idea of free time as a measure of freedom began to die. Anthologies have collected various theories as to why, despite forecasts of 15-hour weeks by now, we still work so much. Thousands of podcast hours have been taped (I contributed about 1.5 of those hours).
Whatever the case, I think philosopher Martin Hägglund was right when he argued that “socially available free time,” where necessity does not force the hand of our decisions, remains the best measure of freedom (even “spiritual freedom,” as he argues) we have, and we ought to pursue it — for everyone — with everything we’ve got.
Further, I’d suggest that leisure time (I prefer Goodin’s construct of “discretionary time,” but don’t want to get bogged down in contrasting it to leisure time) is the most general teleology of abundance we can express without getting dogmatic.
Klein has been decrying DOGE for chasing “efficiency” without a well defined vision of a life worth pursuing. Efficient towards what end? The same goes for abundance. An abundance of what? “What we need” isn’t a helpful answer. The book offers housing, clean energy, and better medicines. All of which are important.
But all can be seen as means towards the end of facilitating an abundance of time ownership for all. A cooked planet with sky-high rents, untreatable disease, and half-built high-speed rail lines are all impediments to meaningful time ownership. But neither are lower rents and better trains intrinsically good. They’re good insofar as they facilitate an abundance of time and capability.
At their launch event, Klein and Thompson said that one of a book’s products is the discourse it generates. In that sense, Abundance remains incredibly productive. The book tour still isn’t finished, the $120 million abundance fund has just been announced, and my Twitter feed remains a maelstrom of abundance takes. The jury is still out. Abundance is still up for grabs.
Maybe the rhetoric will get carved away from the common-sense, and we’ll be left with a modest but necessary focus on rebuilding the capacity to carry out the baseline functions of a sane society. Maybe we’ll just get real traction around zoning reform. Or maybe, abundance can still be wrestled into a political order that threads pragmatism with the full scope of the book’s opening sequence. An abundance inclusive of time and power. Not an ocean of lemonade, exactly, but something at least worthy of the name.
Dayen’s piece is from 2023, so it isn’t responding to the book directly, but Klein and Thompson have been writing about these same ideas for years, and Dayen’s piece is a direct response to them.
Tell that to the 5 million children shoved back into poverty when we let the expanded Child Tax Credit expire in 2022, 16 million seniors lifted from poverty by Social Security in 2023, and the 80% of all children living in poverty who receive health coverage through Medicaid, etc.
It’s likely that adding sectoral bargaining to the abundance agenda would fracture the broad coalition many of its members are trying to build. You’ll lose a lot of the center-right support. But I think that’s fine — better to get those ideological divides out in the open. The argument I hope gets made is that sectoral bargaining — and labor power in general — is a necessary input to any form of “abundance” worth building.
Of course, these pieces have already been written under different names. We know what needs doing. But the point is to loop them directly into the abundance discourse as a means of seeing if they can piggyback off its traction.