> Over the last half century, democratic pluralism has been replaced by technocratic neoliberalism, which is a synthesis of progressive social engineering and e

> Over the last half century, democratic pluralism has been replaced by technocratic neoliberalism, which is a synthesis of progressive social engineering and economic libertarianism. The transition from the democratic pluralist system of the United States between the 1940s and the 1980s, to the post-Reagan technocratic neoliberal system consolidated under Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, wasn’t the result of popular demand. On the contrary, the basic elements of the old New Deal pluralist order have never ceased to be popular, and after 50 years, the basic elements of the new technocratic neoliberal order have failed to win widespread public support. Polls show that most Americans, including pluralities of Republicans, are favorable to trade unions. Most Americans favor trade policies that give a leg up to US firms and workers. Most Americans oppose the idea of increasing immigration and favor current or lower levels of immigration. A majority of 58 percent of Americans believes that transgender athletes should compete only on teams that match their biological sex. The replacement of the democratic pluralism of Roosevelt and Eisenhower by the technocratic neoliberalism of Reagan and Clinton in the United States, in spite of its unpopularity, was possible only because the three mass-membership organizations that had given voice and agency to working class people in the New Deal era were destroyed: the political party, the labor union, and powerful institutions of organized religion. The decline of mass-membership parties, mass-membership unions, and mass-membership churches and other religious institutions by default has shifted political, economic, and cultural power upward to university-credentialled managers and professionals in the United States and Europe, who are much more likely to be technocratic progressives or libertarians than communitarian pluralists.