When the Left talks about inflation, we tend to focus on how it’s used as a cudgel to undermine progressive reforms. Or on corporate executives exploiting inflation to profit off of suffering workers. Comparatively little attention is paid to what rising prices mean for our political prospects.

While countless analysts have concluded, following John Kenneth Galbraith, that “nothing so weakens a government as inflation,” it’s less clear how inflation may affect the Left’s electoral fortunes, or the broader political and economic conditions for building working-class power.

After all, it’s hardly inconceivable that anti-establishment left-wing politicians could benefit from inflation, as they take advantage of the misfortune of governing center-left parties who are blamed for the hardships that inflation imposes on working people. But it’s also likely that high inflation makes citizens much more skeptical of the kind of big economic reforms at the heart of socialist programs.