Crisis of the Common Good

The Fight for Meaning and Connection in a Broken America

By: Chris Murphy

A prominent senator assesses the destructive ideas that have seized the American spirit—and shows how the hidden alignments in our politics can free us from their hold.

Today, the United States is in a crisis—and it’s not just a political one: over fifty years, the pursuit of profit has undermined virtue and character, while too many of us have become convinced that happiness results from acting as good consumers, rather than as good citizens. New technologies threaten essential human capabilities, like friendship, thinking, and creation. And a winner-takes-all mentality has given the rich and well-connected nearly uncontested control of our politics and has corrupted our government. The result: Americans have lost the sense of daily purpose and connection that are vital to happiness, becoming anxious, angry, and adrift. In this vacuum, Donald Trump, feeding off the emptiness and resentment, has come to power.

In recent years, Senator Chris Murphy has stepped forward to challenge the Trump administration’s assaults on our democracy. But he also sees that these assaults are a symptom of a deeper crisis: the abandonment of the common good as our country’s organizing principle. In his unflinching new book, he draws on history and political philosophy to expose how six different cults have seized hold of American life and paved the way to our current troubles: a cult of profit that punishes workers, a cult of globalism that weakens communities, a cult of technology that turns us against one another and poisons our young, a cult of consumption that undermines citizenship, a cult of credentialism that devalues those without degrees, and a cult of corruption that threatens democracy.

Refusing despair, Murphy offers a new politics of the common good that is both deeply rooted in our past and a radical challenge to the status quo. It is also capable of drawing support across the political spectrum: as Murphy shows, a majority of Americans—including many Trump voters—favor policies that confront these destructive cults by curbing corporate power, controlling predatory technology, enhancing face-to-face connection, granting workers greater control of their lives, and removing big money from our politics. The common good, Murphy shows, is no object of nostalgia; it is a vital principle ready to be claimed today.

Critic reviews

Praise for Crisis of the Common Good:

“For those who worry that Democrats lack vision, Chris Murphy’s book comes as a welcome relief. His call for economic populism combined with civic and spiritual renewal points to a common good beyond the toxic politics of our time. Empowering workers, reining in corporate power, unrigging the system, reweaving the moral fabric of communities—this is an agenda that could realign our politics and rejuvenate the project of self-government.”
—Michael J. Sandel, author of The Tyranny of Merit: Can We Find the Common Good?

“Crisis of the Common Good offers an urgent and compelling diagnosis of the major ills plaguing our country at this critical juncture, as we face widespread economic precarity and deep distrust in democracy. Senator Chris Murphy brilliantly traces these problems to policy choices that have persistently favored concentrated economic power, with huge material and spiritual costs for a vast majority of Americans. Modeling both a deep understanding of how we got here and a principled set of directions for how we get out, this book is essential reading for these troubling times.”
—Lina Khan, former Chair of the United States Federal Trade Commission

“Working in the Daniel Patrick Moynihan tradition of the thinker-legislator, Chris Murphy has stepped back from the maelstrom of the Senate and this moment to grapple with where America went wrong spiritually to get into such a state. He digs beneath the political watchwords of ‘authoritarianism’” and ‘inequality,’ into the substrate of our emotional inner life as a people. He writes of the forces that have cut into the dance of our civic relationships, how they have altered our experience of being citizens and being human. He has come up for air from this study with a deeper understanding of Trump’s appeal than most Democrats possess. And this book brims with ideas for healing the diseased body politic on which Trumpism is a mere boil. Not all lawmakers think. He does. Read him.”
—Anand Giridharadas, author of Winners Take All and The Persuaders

“Chris Murphy is a visionary leader who refuses the easy cynicism of our age. He does more than diagnose our national crisis—he offers bold, practical solutions and a unifying vision of who we can become together. Murphy unflinchingly confronts our deepest fractures while summoning us toward repair, redemption, and a richer sense of belonging. Crisis of the Common Good is both a policy blueprint and a moral call to action; it is both an urgent, solution-driven prescription and an uplifting civic sermon.”
—Cory Booker, United States senator