The 1970s saw the term “stagflation” become commonplace in economic parlance as advanced economies became characterized by high unemployment, low growth rates, and high inflation. Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century illustrated that slow growth and extreme wealth concentration are the defining features of twenty-first-century capitalism, and its Achilles’ heel.

This has led to a crisis of “stagtration” — a combination of stagnation and rising concentration — in the advanced economies, in which economic gears are no longer greased with the expenditure of the working and middle classes, as the wealthy stockpile the income that would otherwise propel the economy. To seize the opportunities that will present themselves in the near future, leftists and socialists need to understand the processes at work.