[WS:] It is a fair statement. My contention is that they key element is the creation of the material base, by which I understand is organizational form of the economy that is labor friendly. I specifically reject the Marxist belief that the proletariat itself will provide such a material base.
Qualifications are, of course in order. Organizational form cannot not created by fiat - it takes time to develop. Unions cannot just do it by pouring union dues to this end. But at the same time, the money that the unions forl over to the Democrat party would probably be better spent on creating union friendly businesses.
While we are at this, one one of the key problems that I see in the Etats Unis is that the shortage of business alternatives led to thorough socialization of the public into the capitalist business model. Even those who oppose that model on ideological grounds implicitly acknowledge the economic superiority of this model - they just question the moral virtual of it. This is so, because most people have not experienced anything that the business models that the corporate bosses implemented. They may hate it, but they see no alternative to it.
One of the main advantages of the alternative "social economy" is socialization to a different organizational culture and different set of values that can counter balance the existing corporate culture. It will break the false neoliberal dichotomy of being either ethical or efficient, or give everyone an equal share of a small pie or unequal shares of a much larger pie. If the spell of the profit maximization is broken - and it is a myth whose main purpose is to shield corporate bosses from personal responsibility for their misdeeds and crimes - this will make plausible an alternative that makes it possible to be both ethical and efficient, to create both good life for everyone and have a large pie.
Re: " I wouldn't describe myself as either an "economic determinist" or a "contingentist (?)" and have only a sketchy idea of what content you supply to each. "
[WS:] As I understand it, economic determinism is a belief that all or almost all important aspects of collective behavior are determined by economic factors, such as market forces, ownership of the means of production, the role in the production process etc. I see that both neoliberalism and Marxism fall into this category, as both seriously downplay the role of non-economic factors in their narratives. "Contingetism" by contrast is a belief that such behavior is contingent on a wide array of factors, including power, legitimacy, social norms and expectations, in which economic factors may play a instrumental role, but that role may considerably vary depending on social circumstances. More specifically, politics is not determined by economics but rather it is contingent on a wide array of social factors, and unpredictable circumstances, and thus outcomes are at best probabilistic and almost never certain.
The practical implication of the latter is that it does need a wholesale overhaul of the existing economic institutions to achieve a significant social change - such a change can result from a different configuration of forces within the existing institutional framework or from relatively modest changes to that framework.
Wojtek