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We need to take seriously the political economy of our moment: an age of relentless economic stagnation. Mainstream economists call this "secular stagnation" and Marxists describe it a number of other ways: crisis of profitability, overproduction, overcapacity, etc.
Why is this important? The New Deal serves as a model for many Democratic Socialists and leftists alike. Yet, the New Deal took place under unprecedented levels of economic profitability and growth. This is why the period is often referred to as the "golden age of capitalism."
With high levels of profitability, it became easier for politicians to achieve a slate of compromises that satisfied labor's need for growing wages and capital's need for growing profits. Existence of the Soviet Union made this compromise all the more seductive for capital, too.
But our age of capital is not golden. In the 1970s, economic crisis finally reappeared. Declines in the rate of profit strained the New Deal compromise between labor and capital. Both could no longer benefit as they had before. One side was going to lose. We know which side did.
There are quite a few interesting Marxist accounts of this. One central view is by Robert Brenner, who wrote a book about the relationship between declining rates of profitability and global overcapacity of goods (too much stuff being produced): https://www.versobooks.com/books/2485-the-economics-of-global-turbulence
One this transformation was achieved was through finance capital. Since politicians did not want to be blamed for the crisis, they turned to finance to adjudicate the new austerity which they thought of as neutral. This book gives a good account of this: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674066199
The right, finding itself empowered due to social democratic and progressive left's unwillingness to confront. capital, took advantage of this opportunity. One important way they did this was through "law and order" rhetoric. Here's Stuart Hall on this: https://colectivociajpp.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/stuart-hall-etc-policing-the-crisis-mugging-the-state-and-law-and-order-critical-social-studies-1978.pdf
With the crisis of profitability also came the birth of "neoliberalism," a term ubiquitous today. Neoliberalism is all about the turn way from Fordist capital and redistributive forms of governance and towards financial/real estate capital and marketized forms of governance.
If you'd like to learn about "neoliberalism" a quick and easy place to start is with David Harvey, who wrote a book about it. Here's a free version: https://syntheticzero.net/2014/08/07/a-brief-history-neoliberalism-pdf-david-harvey/
In our time the political possibilities for achieving a New Deal style compromise between labor and capital has become extremely difficult to materialize. Such a compromise would require significantly more force than what facilitated the New Deal, given declining profitability.
The balance of forces between capital and labor is significantly more favorable for capital today than during the lead up to the postwar period. Today's union density is at an all-time low. Working class organizations have been smashed.
This is why it's become our view that there is a need to rebuilt the sources of working class power and authority. We need, more than ever, new mass organizations populated and led by working class people that can allow for new fights to take place. https://communistcaucus.com/strategic-approaches/
