I am grateful to Benjamin McKean for his thoughtful engagement with my book, The Work of Politics: Making a Democratic Welfare State. Although I cannot exhaustively deal with the issues McKean raises, I hope to indicate how my theory could respond. McKean raises three concerns about the contemporary applicability of my argument: (1) Does my theory presuppose the primacy of national politics and so neglect the transnational character of globalized capitalism? (2) can my theory account for the transformation of democratic politics generated by the rise of neoliberalism, the decline of traditional Social Democratic parties, and the fragmentation of the public sphere? and (3) can my argument sufficiently address the barriers to democratic solidarity in the welfare state erected by white supremacy?

Although, as McKean persuasively shows in his book Disorienting Neoliberalism, capitalist production has become increasingly transnationalized, I believe proclamations of the nation-state’s demise are premature. National political institutions have been, for the past 40 years, key enablers of the globalization of capitalism. Insofar as globalized capitalist structures depend on the state for their reproduction, then the national political institutions associated with the welfare state will be important mechanisms for challenges to even global forms of domination. By no means do I think they need to be the primary site of such struggles. My argument does not require the “renationalization” of politics on democratic grounds—just a recognition of the ongoing importance of that level.

But, of course, national democratic polities are not particularly healthy. Is there something romantic, if not quixotic, in writing about the viability of the welfare state after 50 years of retrenchment and labor disorganization? My first response is that it is important not to exaggerate the enabling conditions of past successful struggles around welfare institutions—victories that look inevitable only in retrospect. My second is that, although I agree about the implications of neoliberalism, I think it is important to examine the contradictions within the neoliberal growth regime—such as the ambivalent role of government-subsidized private debt in supporting neoliberal policies. Even though I do not address these issues in the book, aspects of my framework could apply to the increasing way private debt is becoming the occasion for public judgment and collective mobilization. These are countercurrents to the right-wing populism, fueled by new information technologies, that McKean observes are powerful forces reaffirming racial and gendered hierarchies.

Finally, McKean presses me on the role of race in my vision of welfare politics. Especially in the American context, the profound economic, institutional, and psychic reality of racial domination has historically undermined efforts to construct solidaristic welfare institutions. To what extent can a “dialectic of moral life” occur under such conditions? In The Work of Politics, I point to some moments where welfare politics has occasioned multiracial social movements challenging domination. Yet history is also full of instances where the politics of social welfare—reflecting broader racialized notions of entitlement—has reinforced racial hierarchies. Where it manifests as a violent denial of the humanity of the dominated, racial domination represents an outer limit to the political possibilities I identify. Yet even within contexts marked by settler colonialism and white supremacy such as the United States, racial hierarchy also operates more subtly, combining an official commitment to equality with a disavowal of the ongoing effects of racial hierarchy. In those contexts, I remain hopeful that social movements can engage with welfare institutions to draw attention to these contradictions and challenge the material foundations of racial domination.