Bhaskar Sunkara: Socialism and Communism | Lex Fridman Podcast #349

00:00:00.000 | The following is a conversation with Bhaskar Sankara.

00:00:02.880 | He's a democratic socialist, a political writer,

00:00:05.600 | founding editor of Jacobin, president of the nation,

00:00:09.440 | former vice chair of the Democratic Socialists of America,

00:00:12.440 | and the author of "The Socialist Manifesto,"

00:00:15.760 | the case for radical politics

00:00:17.760 | in an era of extreme inequality.

00:00:20.080 | As a side note, let me say that this conversation

00:00:23.480 | with Bhaskar Sankara,

00:00:24.880 | who's a brilliant socialist writer and philosopher,

00:00:27.520 | represents what I hope to do with this podcast.

00:00:30.160 | I hope to talk to the left and the right,

00:00:33.440 | to the far left and the far right,

00:00:35.520 | always with the goal of presenting and understanding

00:00:38.080 | both the strongest interpretation of their ideas

00:00:40.920 | and valuable thought-provoking arguments

00:00:43.360 | against those ideas.

00:00:45.560 | Also, I hope to understand the human being

00:00:47.640 | behind the ideas.

00:00:50.240 | I trust in your intelligence as the listener

00:00:52.200 | to use the ideas you hear to help you learn,

00:00:55.000 | to think, to empathize, and to make up your own mind.

00:00:58.120 | I will often fall short in pushing back too hard

00:01:03.360 | or not pushing back enough,

00:01:05.440 | of not bringing up topics I should have,

00:01:08.080 | of talking too much, of interrupting too much,

00:01:10.800 | or maybe sometimes, in the rare cases, not enough,

00:01:14.240 | of being too silly on a serious topic

00:01:16.560 | or being too serious on a silly topic.

00:01:19.280 | I'm trying to do my best,

00:01:20.720 | and I will keep working my ass off to improve.

00:01:25.080 | In this way, I hope to talk to prominent figures

00:01:28.480 | in the political space, even controversial ones,

00:01:31.360 | on both the left and the right.

00:01:33.440 | For example, I hope to talk to Donald Trump

00:01:36.240 | and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,

00:01:39.120 | to Ron DeSantis and Barack Obama,

00:01:42.320 | and of course, many others across the political spectrum.

00:01:45.880 | I sometimes hear accusations about me being controlled

00:01:49.360 | in some way by a government or an intelligence agency,

00:01:53.640 | like CIA, FSB, Mossad,

00:01:56.760 | or perhaps that I'm controlled in some way

00:01:58.360 | by the very human desire for money, fame, power, access.

00:02:03.000 | All I have is my silly little words,

00:02:05.920 | but let me give them to you.

00:02:07.600 | I'm not and will never be controlled by anyone.

00:02:11.800 | There's nothing in this world that can break me

00:02:13.720 | and force me to sacrifice my integrity.

00:02:16.520 | People call me naive.

00:02:18.400 | I'm not naive.

00:02:19.880 | I'm optimistic.

00:02:21.400 | And optimism isn't a passive state of being.

00:02:24.920 | It's a constant battle against the world

00:02:27.200 | that wants to pull you into a downward spiral of cynicism.

00:02:30.440 | To me, optimism is freedom,

00:02:33.400 | freedom to think, to act, to build, to help,

00:02:37.320 | at times in the face of impossible odds.

00:02:40.120 | As I often do, please allow me to read a few lines

00:02:44.040 | from the poem "If" by Rajar Kipling.

00:02:46.480 | If you can keep your head when all about you

00:02:49.840 | are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

00:02:52.560 | if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

00:02:55.160 | but make allowance for their doubting too,

00:02:57.640 | if you can wait and not be tired by waiting

00:03:00.280 | or being lied about, don't deal in lies,

00:03:02.880 | or being hated, don't give way to hating,

00:03:06.040 | and yet don't look too good or talk too wise.

00:03:09.280 | Even this very poem is mocking

00:03:12.520 | my over-romantic ridiculousness as I read it.

00:03:15.480 | The meta-irony is not lost on me, my friends.

00:03:19.240 | I'm a silly little kid

00:03:20.480 | trying to do a bit of good in this world.

00:03:22.840 | Thank you for having my back through all of it,

00:03:25.480 | all of my mistakes.

00:03:27.260 | Thank you for the love.

00:03:28.400 | This is the Lex Friedman Podcast.

00:03:31.440 | To support it,

00:03:34.800 | please check out our sponsors in the description.

00:03:37.000 | And now, dear friends, here's Bhaskar Sankara.

00:03:40.660 | Let's start with a big, broad question.

00:03:44.760 | What is socialism?

00:03:46.680 | How do you like to define it?

00:03:48.120 | How do you like to think about it?

00:03:49.400 | - Well, there's so many socialists out there,

00:03:51.580 | and we can't seem to agree about anything.

00:03:54.200 | So my definition, I'm sure, is really just my definition,

00:03:57.220 | but I think at the minimum,

00:03:58.960 | socialism is about making sure

00:04:01.520 | that the core necessities of life,

00:04:04.000 | food, housing, education, and so on,

00:04:07.360 | are guaranteed to everyone just by virtue of being born

00:04:10.440 | so that those people can reach their potential.

00:04:13.200 | And I think that's a minimum requirement of socialism.

00:04:16.360 | Beyond that, I think socialism,

00:04:18.560 | especially democratic socialism,

00:04:20.440 | the type of socialism that I believe in,

00:04:22.320 | is about taking democracy

00:04:24.760 | from just the political democratic realm

00:04:27.560 | and extending it into economic and social spheres as well.

00:04:31.080 | So if we think that democracy is a good thing,

00:04:33.680 | why do we allow our workplaces

00:04:36.480 | to be run in autocratic ways?

00:04:39.480 | - So economic, political, social,

00:04:44.400 | in all those realms, the ideas,

00:04:47.280 | the philosophical ideas apply.

00:04:49.640 | Like what are, if you can put words to it,

00:04:52.240 | what are some philosophical ideas about human beings

00:04:57.240 | that are at the core of this?

00:04:59.000 | - I think at the core,

00:05:00.440 | it's the idea that we have intrinsic value.

00:05:03.980 | We are individuals that have unequal talents, of course.

00:05:08.920 | We're individuals that want different things.

00:05:13.040 | But this unique individualness

00:05:15.360 | can only truly come to light in a society

00:05:19.800 | in which there are certain collective or social guarantees.

00:05:23.720 | So we could think, just like Stephen Jay Gould,

00:05:27.080 | the scientist and socialist used to say,

00:05:31.040 | about how many thousands of potential Einsteins

00:05:35.200 | or Leonardo da Vinci's that died in sweatshops

00:05:39.760 | and on plantations

00:05:41.320 | and never got the chance to cultivate

00:05:43.640 | what was unique and human about themselves

00:05:45.720 | and also never got a chance to have families

00:05:49.600 | and impart what was special and important to them

00:05:51.820 | to future generations and to posterity.

00:05:54.680 | My own grandmother was born in Trinidad and Tobago.

00:05:58.560 | She was illiterate till her dying days.

00:06:00.840 | She, in East Orange, New Jersey,

00:06:03.120 | she never had the chance to write down

00:06:06.280 | her memories of her life in Trinidad as a young woman

00:06:09.540 | and what it meant.

00:06:10.960 | She, of course, had lots of children

00:06:13.200 | and she was able to impart some stories

00:06:15.040 | to her children and grandchildren.

00:06:16.880 | But I often think about what someone with her wit

00:06:20.040 | and intelligence could have done

00:06:21.960 | with a little bit more support.

00:06:24.560 | - But if all human beings have intrinsic value,

00:06:27.720 | you don't have to be an Einstein

00:06:29.880 | for the application of some of the ideas

00:06:31.320 | that you're talking about.

00:06:32.720 | Is there a tension or a trade-off

00:06:35.200 | between our human civilization, our society,

00:06:40.080 | helping the unlucky versus rewarding

00:06:43.360 | the skillful and the hardworking?

00:06:47.620 | - I think you could do both.

00:06:48.760 | There's always a balance between the two.

00:06:50.760 | I think you could reward people who make innovations

00:06:53.640 | and who improve lives for everyone through their innovations

00:06:58.000 | by giving them, let's say, even more consumption,

00:07:00.240 | even that level of inequality,

00:07:02.480 | while still making sure that there's not people

00:07:05.360 | in poverty and suffering,

00:07:07.920 | and while making sure that, hey,

00:07:09.440 | we're gonna give these people who want to work

00:07:14.440 | that extra 10 hours or 20 hours

00:07:16.920 | or want to apply their hard work some extra benefits,

00:07:21.920 | but that these benefits would be

00:07:25.960 | not the extreme disparities that you have today.

00:07:29.040 | - So at the core of socialism

00:07:32.400 | and maybe democratic socialism

00:07:34.220 | is maybe a reallocation of wealth,

00:07:36.400 | reallocation of resources?

00:07:38.040 | - I think it's wealth and resources, yes,

00:07:39.920 | but it's also power.

00:07:41.620 | And I guess one way to think about this is

00:07:43.720 | some thinkers on the right, like Hayek,

00:07:47.600 | they would say in their most generous moments

00:07:49.920 | talking about socialists and socialism,

00:07:52.100 | they would say, "Socialists want to trade

00:07:55.760 | "some of your freedom for equality."

00:07:58.440 | And that's them trying to just accurately describe

00:08:02.840 | what socialism is trying to do.

00:08:04.880 | The way that I would put it, it's a little bit different.

00:08:06.920 | Socialists are proposing a trade-off,

00:08:09.880 | but it's really a trade-off between freedom and freedom.

00:08:13.120 | And by that, I mean,

00:08:14.640 | let's say you set up a successful business

00:08:17.400 | and you set up a business right here in Austin, Texas,

00:08:22.400 | some sort of firm, it's producing some widget or whatever,

00:08:26.720 | and it's producing a good that people really want and demand

00:08:31.560 | but you have some competition.

00:08:34.000 | You decide to hire 20, 30 people to help you.

00:08:38.240 | You entered into a free contract with these people

00:08:41.200 | who under capitalism, of course,

00:08:42.820 | we're not living in feudalism,

00:08:44.320 | have the option to join any other firm,

00:08:47.880 | but they like you and they like this firm

00:08:49.560 | and they like your offer and you're paying them,

00:08:51.620 | let's say $20 an hour for 40 hours of work per week.

00:08:56.620 | Now, if the government comes along and says,

00:09:03.120 | okay, there's now a new minimum wage,

00:09:04.920 | the minimum wage is $22 an hour.

00:09:07.000 | And also there's a maximum work week, 35 hour work week.

00:09:11.440 | And if you work someone over 35 hours, even if they agree,

00:09:14.520 | you have to pay them time and a half.

00:09:17.040 | Now, that of course is now an abridgment

00:09:20.520 | of your freedom as an entrepreneur,

00:09:22.360 | your freedom to set certain terms of employment

00:09:25.640 | and to engage in a contract with free people.

00:09:27.960 | But now your workers and other workers in the sector,

00:09:31.040 | 'cause if you did it unilaterally,

00:09:32.280 | you'd just get undercut by your competition.

00:09:34.640 | Now, these people now have a few extra hours a week,

00:09:37.320 | they can do whatever they want with,

00:09:38.880 | they could watch more NFL with it,

00:09:41.720 | they could spend more time with their friends or family

00:09:44.440 | or whatever else, and they're still getting paid the same,

00:09:46.960 | if not better, 'cause the wages also went up.

00:09:50.640 | So it's really a question often of trade-offs

00:09:53.720 | between whose freedom and autonomy

00:09:56.320 | are you going to prioritize,

00:09:58.000 | the freedom and autonomy of the entrepreneur

00:10:02.120 | or the capitalist in this case,

00:10:03.280 | or the freedom and autonomy of ordinary workers.

00:10:06.760 | Now, you could create a society that swings

00:10:09.480 | so far in the direction of prioritizing the freedom

00:10:14.040 | of one group or one class or whatever else

00:10:17.040 | compared to another, that you end up in some sort of tyranny.

00:10:19.960 | Now, if the state said, you know, you Lex,

00:10:22.960 | you're a capitalist, so you don't get the right to vote,

00:10:26.280 | or we're gonna take away your private home

00:10:29.000 | or your ability to do things

00:10:32.080 | that we think are intrinsic human rights.

00:10:33.960 | Now, this would be tyranny,

00:10:35.000 | this would be an abridgment of your rights,

00:10:38.800 | but shaping your ability in the economic sphere

00:10:41.720 | to be an economic actor is, I think,

00:10:44.320 | within the realm and scope of democratic politics.

00:10:47.800 | - Yeah, so those are the extremes you're referring to.

00:10:50.160 | And one perspective I like to take

00:10:54.480 | on socialism versus capitalism is,

00:10:58.040 | under each system, the extremes of each systems

00:11:00.680 | and the moderate versions of each system,

00:11:02.880 | how can people take advantage of it?

00:11:06.160 | So it seems like no matter what part of human nature is,

00:11:10.600 | whatever the rules, whatever the framework,

00:11:12.360 | whatever the system, somebody's gonna take advantage of it.

00:11:15.320 | And that's a kind of pragmatic look at it.

00:11:19.720 | In practice, what actually happens?

00:11:22.360 | Also, the incentives and the human behavior,

00:11:27.040 | what actually happens in practice under these systems?

00:11:29.840 | So if you have a higher and higher minimum wage

00:11:33.040 | and people watch more and more NFL,

00:11:35.320 | how does that change their actual behavior

00:11:38.200 | as a productive member of society?

00:11:40.240 | And actually at the individual level,

00:11:42.640 | as somebody who could be an Einstein

00:11:47.240 | and chooses not to because NFL is so awesome to watch.

00:11:50.680 | So is both how do people,

00:11:52.600 | malicious people that wanna take advantage,

00:11:54.960 | maybe not malicious, but people that like me are lazy

00:11:59.920 | and wanna take advantage.

00:12:01.960 | And people that also I think like me,

00:12:05.320 | like I tend to believe about myself that I have potential.

00:12:09.520 | And if I let my laziness naturally take over,

00:12:13.640 | which it often does, I won't materialize the potential.

00:12:17.480 | So if you make life too easy for me,

00:12:21.480 | I feel like I will never get anything done.

00:12:23.680 | Me personally, of course,

00:12:25.360 | there's a giant set of circumstances

00:12:28.280 | of the unlucky and the overburden and so on.

00:12:31.400 | Okay, so how can people take advantage of each system,

00:12:35.440 | socialism, capitalism?

00:12:37.080 | - So for one thing,

00:12:37.920 | people are going to take advantage of systems.

00:12:40.040 | They're gonna find loopholes,

00:12:41.040 | they're gonna find ways around,

00:12:42.160 | they're gonna find ways to at times,

00:12:46.240 | dominate and coerce others,

00:12:47.680 | even in systems meant to get rid of domination and coercion.

00:12:50.920 | That's why we need to design our systems

00:12:53.160 | in such a way that it eliminates

00:12:55.800 | as many of these things as possible.

00:12:57.280 | And also that's why we need democracy, we need freedom.

00:13:00.160 | So in a Soviet system, for instance,

00:13:03.320 | you had the rise of this authoritarian bureaucracy

00:13:06.880 | that dominated and coerced others in the name of socialism.

00:13:10.840 | Now that system desperately could have used

00:13:14.640 | some political democracy and some checks

00:13:17.040 | on what people were doing

00:13:18.200 | and some ability to reverse their power, right?

00:13:21.440 | And as soon as of course,

00:13:22.680 | little elements of democracy was brought to that system,

00:13:25.760 | the system collapsed because there started to be outlets

00:13:30.160 | for dissent and for dissatisfaction.

00:13:33.200 | So I think we can't design a priori a perfect system.

00:13:37.240 | We need to be committed to certain principles

00:13:39.480 | that allow systems to be perfected.

00:13:42.320 | And for me, that's the importance of democracy.

00:13:45.440 | So even a few years ago, not to go on a tangent,

00:13:48.080 | but people were alluding Chinese authoritarianism

00:13:52.400 | and they're saying, China's building this efficient system.

00:13:55.440 | The state runs so well, there's technocratic excellence,

00:13:58.760 | plus there's just productivity

00:14:00.800 | and they're just working harder than Americans

00:14:02.800 | and whatever else.

00:14:04.440 | But look at in practice, what really happened with COVID,

00:14:07.560 | both the initial suppressing of information

00:14:11.160 | about what was happening in Wuhan and the outbreak

00:14:14.320 | where many ordinary Chinese workers and doctors

00:14:17.680 | and others were trying to get the word out

00:14:19.160 | and they were suppressed by communist party officials

00:14:22.840 | locally in Wuhan, probably with the collusion nationally.

00:14:27.320 | And now with zero COVID policies and whatever else.

00:14:30.600 | So I think that often we find that even though it seems

00:14:35.360 | like these are weak systems and democracy makes us

00:14:39.600 | less competent technocratically and otherwise,

00:14:42.840 | I think it's kind of a necessity for systems to grow

00:14:45.520 | and evolve to have that freedom in civil society.

00:14:48.280 | But as for individuals, now the first part of it is,

00:14:53.280 | yeah, I think people should be free

00:14:54.560 | to make their own choices.

00:14:55.840 | You might have tremendous potential,

00:14:57.800 | but you might choose to spend it in leisure.

00:15:00.600 | And leisure doesn't only mean doing,

00:15:03.600 | sitting around at home, drinking a bunch of beers,

00:15:05.360 | kind of wasting your life away that way.

00:15:07.040 | Leisure might mean spending more time

00:15:09.320 | with your friends and family,

00:15:11.000 | building these sort of relationships

00:15:13.080 | that are gonna maybe not change the world

00:15:15.480 | in some meta sense, but will change the lives

00:15:18.200 | of the people around you and will change your community

00:15:21.120 | for the better.

00:15:22.720 | - I'm taking notes here 'cause for me,

00:15:24.800 | leisure just meant playing a lot of Skyrim.

00:15:26.520 | This whole family relationship thing,

00:15:28.120 | I'm gonna have to work on that.

00:15:30.320 | I didn't realize that's also including leisure.

00:15:32.360 | So I'm gonna have to reconsider my whole life here.

00:15:34.560 | Anyway.

00:15:35.400 | - No, leisure should mean sitting activity too, right?

00:15:37.840 | I mean, there's that famous book,

00:15:39.480 | the Robert Putnam one, "Bowling Alone" or whatever,

00:15:42.320 | which described it for now.

00:15:43.480 | I mean, I'm, it was born in 1989.

00:15:45.640 | I like video and computer games,

00:15:48.920 | so I definitely do that type of leisure too,

00:15:52.680 | but I found a lot more richness in my life

00:15:55.880 | when in the last decade, a lot of my leisure

00:15:58.680 | has returned to going to the local bar

00:16:01.080 | for the couple of drinks I have a week

00:16:03.000 | instead of doing it at home alone,

00:16:05.480 | watching TV or something,

00:16:06.880 | 'cause you get that random conversation,

00:16:09.240 | that sense of a place and belonging.

00:16:12.720 | But I guess what's the undercurrent maybe

00:16:16.680 | of your question was,

00:16:18.320 | now, if you have a system with lots of carrots,

00:16:21.040 | but not the whip of, hey, you might be destitute,

00:16:24.760 | you might be unemployed,

00:16:25.760 | you might not be able to support yourself

00:16:29.160 | unless you're working a certain amount,

00:16:31.920 | would we still be as productive?

00:16:34.920 | Would we still be able to generate enough value for society?

00:16:41.040 | And I think that that's a question

00:16:42.360 | that is quite interesting.

00:16:45.160 | I think that we're living in a society now

00:16:48.520 | with enough abundance that we could afford

00:16:51.720 | more people deciding to opt out of the system,

00:16:56.440 | out of production,

00:16:58.560 | and that the carrots of staying in,

00:17:02.240 | more money for consumption,

00:17:04.800 | more ability to do cool things,

00:17:07.240 | more just social rewards

00:17:08.680 | that comes from being successful

00:17:11.080 | or from providing would be enough.

00:17:13.960 | But that's another thing

00:17:14.800 | that would have to be balanced in a system.

00:17:16.680 | So if we were seeing mass unemployment by choice

00:17:21.560 | in a democratic socialist system,

00:17:24.120 | then you might need to reconfigure the incentives.

00:17:27.240 | You might need to encourage people

00:17:28.920 | to go back into production.

00:17:30.240 | But that's something that, again,

00:17:31.600 | you could do through democracy

00:17:33.400 | and through good governance.

00:17:35.080 | You don't have to set the perfect blueprint

00:17:38.200 | in motion,

00:17:39.640 | write up a treatise now in 50 years from now,

00:17:43.160 | try to follow it like it's scripture.

00:17:45.480 | - So by the way,

00:17:47.240 | I do like how you said whip instead of stick

00:17:49.480 | in "Carrot and Stick."

00:17:51.560 | That's putting a weight on the scale of which is better.

00:17:55.880 | But yes.

00:17:56.720 | But I would actually argue to push back

00:18:00.040 | that the wealthier we get as a society, as a world,

00:18:04.000 | that the more comfortable the social nets become.

00:18:08.680 | So the less of a whip or a stick they become.

00:18:13.680 | Because one of the negative consequences,

00:18:15.640 | even if you're on welfare,

00:18:16.640 | is like, well, life is not gonna be that great.

00:18:19.520 | But the wealthier we become,

00:18:23.400 | the better the social programs become,

00:18:25.720 | the easier life becomes at the bottom.

00:18:29.000 | And so you might not have this motivation financially

00:18:34.000 | to get out from the bottom.

00:18:36.000 | That said, the pushback on the pushback

00:18:38.560 | is that there's something about human nature in general,

00:18:40.920 | money aside, that strives for greatness,

00:18:44.480 | that strives to provide a great life,

00:18:49.000 | a great middle-class life for your family.

00:18:51.240 | And so that's the motivator to get off from the bottom.

00:18:54.920 | - Well, I think a lot of people

00:18:57.200 | who are stuck at the bottom of the labor market today,

00:19:00.720 | one, these are people who are kind of,

00:19:03.000 | are true philanthropists,

00:19:04.920 | 'cause a lot of them are the ones who are working two jobs

00:19:07.560 | and are working 60 plus hours

00:19:09.480 | and are providing in this country,

00:19:12.520 | it's such a bargain for their labor

00:19:14.600 | 'cause they're so underpaid,

00:19:16.280 | so many of the things that the rest of us use

00:19:19.160 | to enjoy life and consumption or whatever else.

00:19:22.200 | Like I got here from downtown Austin,

00:19:26.520 | and I think my lift, I did tip,

00:19:28.400 | but I think my lift was like eight bucks base

00:19:30.480 | or whatever else.

00:19:33.280 | It's the, I think that we are all indebted

00:19:38.080 | to people who are working

00:19:40.080 | and we don't see it at various stages

00:19:42.320 | of the production process from the workers in China

00:19:46.840 | and Taiwan producing technological things

00:19:51.000 | that we're recording this on to growers

00:19:55.600 | and workers in agriculture in the US.

00:19:59.840 | So I think that one,

00:20:01.720 | working class people are already working,

00:20:04.000 | but as far as getting out from under poverty and desperation,

00:20:09.000 | we're in a society that doesn't give people a lot of tools.

00:20:12.840 | So if you don't have access to good public schools

00:20:17.760 | from age five until 12, 13,

00:20:22.600 | it's gonna be really hard to move from generations

00:20:26.160 | of your family being involved in manual labor

00:20:29.240 | to doing other forms of labor.

00:20:31.720 | You're gonna be stuck at a certain part

00:20:33.560 | of our labor market as a result.

00:20:37.800 | If you don't have access to decent healthcare

00:20:41.000 | throughout your life,

00:20:42.120 | you might be already preordained to an early grave

00:20:45.920 | by the time that something kicks in,

00:20:47.720 | you really want to change something in your life

00:20:50.000 | in your mid twenties.

00:20:51.800 | Obviously it's a combination of agency

00:20:54.440 | and all these other factors.

00:20:55.800 | There's still something,

00:20:57.760 | I think innately human, innately striving

00:20:59.880 | that a lot of people have,

00:21:01.440 | but we don't really give people in our current society

00:21:03.880 | the tools to really be full participants in our society.

00:21:07.680 | We just take for granted, for example,

00:21:09.960 | and I'm from the Northeast,

00:21:10.800 | I give like excessively Northeast example,

00:21:13.040 | but we take for granted that someone from,

00:21:16.320 | Hartford, Connecticut is gonna have,

00:21:19.160 | your average working class person in Hartford

00:21:21.160 | is gonna have a very different life outcome

00:21:23.440 | than someone born on the same day, the same hour,

00:21:27.160 | in Greenwich, Connecticut.

00:21:29.280 | We take for granted that accidents of birth

00:21:33.400 | are gonna dictate outcomes.

00:21:35.680 | - So you mean like,

00:21:36.960 | depending on the conditions of where you grew up,

00:21:40.520 | there's going to be fundamentally different experience

00:21:42.760 | in terms of education,

00:21:44.520 | in terms of the resources available to you

00:21:47.040 | to allow yourself to flourish.

00:21:49.120 | - Yes, a poor city and a rich city,

00:21:51.400 | and Connecticut is great.

00:21:52.880 | It's highly, highly underrated.

00:21:54.480 | Both New Yorkers and people from Boston

00:21:56.800 | kind of have a colonial feeling about Connecticut

00:21:59.600 | where we make fun of it and we try to carve it up.

00:22:02.360 | The West belongs to New York, the East to Boston,

00:22:04.640 | but I'm here for Connecticut nationalism.

00:22:08.040 | I think it's a great place.

00:22:10.200 | - Okay, can we actually step back a little bit

00:22:13.760 | on definitions?

00:22:14.600 | 'Cause you said that some of the ideas practically

00:22:17.680 | that you're playing with is democratic socialism.

00:22:21.200 | We talked about the higher level,

00:22:23.600 | the higher kind of vision of socialism,

00:22:25.920 | the ideals, the philosophical ideas,

00:22:27.960 | but how does it all fit into the big picture historically

00:22:33.080 | of ideas of Marxism, communism, and socialism

00:22:38.080 | as it was defined and experienced

00:22:40.760 | and implemented in the 20th century?

00:22:42.480 | So what's your key differences?

00:22:44.200 | Maybe even just like socialism, communism.

00:22:47.280 | - Yeah, well, I hate the no true Scotsman

00:22:49.960 | sort of response to this, which is,

00:22:51.920 | oh, that socialism is bad.

00:22:54.120 | So it wasn't really socialism.

00:22:55.880 | And my socialism is good, so it is socialism.

00:22:58.320 | But I think that socialism and communism

00:23:02.840 | share a common ancestor, which is they both emerged

00:23:07.120 | out of the turmoil and development

00:23:09.920 | of late 19th century capitalism.

00:23:13.800 | And the fact that there was all these workers parties

00:23:16.640 | that were organizing across the capitalist world.

00:23:20.920 | So in Europe, for instance, you had this mass party

00:23:24.920 | called the German Social Democratic Party.

00:23:27.080 | That became probably the most important,

00:23:31.560 | the most vibrant party in Germany in the 1880s and 1890s,

00:23:35.600 | but they were locked out of power

00:23:37.520 | because Germany at the time was still mostly a Tarkic.

00:23:41.520 | It had a parliamentary democracy,

00:23:43.480 | but it was a very undemocratic democracy.

00:23:47.160 | The Kaiser still ruled.

00:23:49.080 | These movements took root across the capitalist world,

00:23:52.560 | but including in Russia and in conditions of illegality.

00:23:56.040 | So it was assumed for many, many years

00:23:59.720 | in the workers movement across Europe

00:24:01.360 | and among socialists of Europe,

00:24:02.960 | they called themselves social Democrats then,

00:24:05.320 | that the revolution would first probably happen in Germany

00:24:09.040 | in this developed, growing hub of industrial capitalism

00:24:13.800 | and not in semi-feudal Russia.

00:24:16.840 | But then World War I came,

00:24:19.080 | the workers movement was split between parties

00:24:22.160 | that decided to either keep their head down

00:24:24.520 | or to implicitly support the war.

00:24:28.200 | And then, you know, support the war for now,

00:24:29.760 | keep your heads down, don't get banned, don't get arrested,

00:24:33.480 | then we'll just take power after the war is over.

00:24:36.880 | And those like Russia,

00:24:38.400 | and also in the United States for that matter,

00:24:40.480 | they chose the path of resistance to the war.

00:24:45.120 | And it was the Bolshevik faction of the Russian movement,

00:24:50.120 | Lenin's Bolshevik party that took power in Russia

00:24:56.480 | after a period of turmoil where it didn't seem,

00:24:59.240 | well, was it gonna go to the fascist right?

00:25:01.160 | Or was it gonna go to the far left?

00:25:02.600 | There was a period of flux and turmoil in Russia,

00:25:05.440 | but definitely the old regime was not able to stand.

00:25:09.000 | And these Russian social Democrats, these Bolsheviks said,

00:25:14.000 | social democracy has so betrayed the idea

00:25:17.720 | of internationalism and brotherhood and progress

00:25:20.520 | that was supposed to stand for,

00:25:21.920 | that we can't call ourselves social Democrats anymore.

00:25:24.360 | We're gonna go back to this old term that Marx used,

00:25:27.160 | we're gonna call ourselves communists.

00:25:29.800 | And that's where official kind of communism

00:25:33.240 | out of Russia emerged.

00:25:35.520 | In other parts of Europe,

00:25:37.680 | parties were actually able to take power,

00:25:39.880 | some in the interwar period,

00:25:41.560 | but most in the post-war period.

00:25:43.520 | And they also came out of this

00:25:45.640 | old social democratic movement.

00:25:47.720 | And these parties mostly just call themselves socialists.

00:25:50.960 | And a lot of them still on paper

00:25:52.840 | wanted to go beyond capitalism,

00:25:55.000 | but in practice, they just managed capitalism better

00:25:58.200 | in the interest of workers.

00:25:59.520 | But they all had the same common ancestor.

00:26:03.360 | And in practice, to me, social democracy means

00:26:08.360 | trying to insert doses of socialism within capitalism,

00:26:13.120 | but maintaining capitalism.

00:26:14.960 | Communism met this attempt to build a socialism

00:26:18.240 | outside of capitalism and often authoritarian ways,

00:26:22.360 | in part because of the ideology of these communists,

00:26:26.720 | but in part because of the conditions

00:26:28.360 | in which they inherited.

00:26:29.520 | They were inheriting a democracy,

00:26:30.920 | they were inheriting a country

00:26:31.880 | that had been ruled by the czars for centuries.

00:26:36.720 | And with very little condition,

00:26:39.200 | like a very weak working class,

00:26:41.440 | a very poor and devastated by war and so on,

00:26:44.720 | where authoritarianism kind of

00:26:46.360 | lended itself to those conditions.

00:26:48.640 | Then there's me.

00:26:51.280 | Then there's democratic socialists.

00:26:52.640 | And the way I would define it is,

00:26:54.360 | we like a lot of what the social democrats accomplished,

00:26:57.440 | but we still believe in going beyond capitalism

00:27:01.120 | and not just building socialism within capitalism,

00:27:03.720 | but we believe in this ultimate vision

00:27:05.720 | of a world after capitalism.

00:27:09.360 | - What does that world look like

00:27:11.280 | and how is it different from communism?

00:27:12.840 | Actually, maybe we can linger,

00:27:14.840 | before we talk about your vision of democratic socialism,

00:27:18.400 | what was wrong with communism, Stalinism,

00:27:21.960 | implementation of communism in the Soviet Union?

00:27:24.160 | Why did it go wrong?

00:27:25.680 | And in what ways did it not go wrong?

00:27:28.960 | In what ways did it succeed?

00:27:30.520 | - Let me start with the second part of that question.

00:27:32.440 | And that's a very difficult one to answer,

00:27:34.720 | in part because I morally and ethically

00:27:38.400 | am opposed to any form of authoritarianism or dictatorship.

00:27:42.720 | And often when you talk about the successes of a government

00:27:46.320 | or what it did developmentally that might've been positive,

00:27:49.920 | we have to abstract ourselves from what we morally believe

00:27:52.920 | and just kind of look at the record, right?

00:27:55.520 | I would say that the Soviet experiment

00:28:01.320 | started off in Lenin's time

00:28:04.560 | as the attempt to kind of just a holding action.

00:28:09.560 | Hey, we don't really have the conditions

00:28:12.000 | to rule this country.

00:28:13.120 | We have the support of the working class or most of it,

00:28:15.880 | but the working class is only 3% of the population.

00:28:20.440 | The peasantry is really against us.

00:28:22.640 | A lot of this 3% of the population has died in war

00:28:25.640 | and half of them supported the Mensheviks

00:28:27.400 | and the more moderate socialists anyway.

00:28:29.840 | But the alternative in their minds

00:28:33.520 | was going to be a far right reaction,

00:28:36.920 | some sort of general taking power in a coup or whatever else

00:28:41.840 | or just them ending up back in prison

00:28:44.480 | 'cause a lot of them were in prison under the czar

00:28:46.120 | or just killed.

00:28:47.360 | So they figured, all right,

00:28:49.840 | we're gonna have a holding action

00:28:51.320 | where we maintain as much of this territory

00:28:54.480 | of the old Russian empire as possible.

00:28:58.080 | We'll try to slowly implement changes,

00:29:00.760 | restabilize the economy through something called

00:29:02.920 | the New Economic Program,

00:29:04.520 | which was kind of a form of social democracy, if you will,

00:29:09.120 | 'cause it allowed market exchange for the peasants

00:29:12.640 | combined with state ownership of industries in the cities.

00:29:16.320 | And for a while, it seemed to be working.

00:29:19.520 | The revolution never came that they were expecting

00:29:21.760 | in Western Europe, but in Russia itself,

00:29:24.560 | they were able to restabilize things

00:29:26.240 | by the middle or end of the 1920s.

00:29:29.000 | And they were able to build more of a popular base

00:29:31.360 | for some of their policies because people who had seen

00:29:34.520 | the chaos of World War I and revolution and then civil war

00:29:39.240 | kind of just wanted stability.

00:29:40.680 | And after a decade plus of war,

00:29:43.360 | if you had a government that was able to give you enough

00:29:46.320 | to eat and a job, that was good enough for them.

00:29:49.600 | Then Stalin came into power

00:29:53.040 | and he wanted to rapidly industrialize.

00:29:55.800 | And his logic was the revolution's not gonna come

00:29:58.600 | in the West.

00:29:59.680 | We need to build socialism in one country

00:30:02.080 | and we need to catch up with the West.

00:30:03.640 | We need to turn ourselves into industrial powerhouse

00:30:06.120 | as quickly as possible.

00:30:08.040 | And that's where you got forced collectivization

00:30:10.240 | to try to increase the productivity of Russian agriculture

00:30:14.720 | through state ownership of previously fragmented

00:30:18.600 | agricultural holdings and through the implementation

00:30:23.320 | of mechanization, so bringing in more machines

00:30:25.640 | to make agriculture more productive,

00:30:27.080 | all under state ownership.

00:30:29.600 | Plus more ambitious attempts to build heavy industry

00:30:33.040 | through five-year plans.

00:30:34.480 | Now, I say this kind of coolly,

00:30:37.240 | but we know in practice what that meant.

00:30:39.640 | Forced collectivization was a disaster.

00:30:42.760 | I mean, first of all, I think it was built

00:30:44.800 | on the faulty premise that scale always equals

00:30:48.360 | more productivity when in fact, especially in agriculture,

00:30:51.520 | but in any field, it's a little bit more complicated

00:30:53.440 | than that.

00:30:54.280 | And it led to millions of deaths, it led to a famine,

00:30:57.240 | it led to a host of other problems.

00:31:00.080 | Industrialization in the way that it happened under Stalin

00:31:03.960 | also kind of unbalanced the Soviet economy

00:31:06.800 | to lean too heavy towards heavy industry,

00:31:10.160 | not enough for medium or light industry.

00:31:12.320 | But this did mean, especially the five-year plan

00:31:18.560 | and industrialization did manage to put Russia

00:31:23.640 | on a different developmental trajectory.

00:31:28.000 | So by the time the post-war period came,

00:31:32.400 | one, it might've gave them the ability to survive

00:31:35.160 | the Nazi invasion to begin with,

00:31:36.640 | so that's a complicated question.

00:31:38.160 | And then by the time the post-war period came,

00:31:40.880 | Russia had kind of jumped ahead

00:31:42.600 | of its developmental trajectory in a way

00:31:44.480 | that a lot of other countries didn't do.

00:31:46.640 | There are a few examples, like Japan is one,

00:31:48.720 | they managed to.

00:31:49.880 | If you kind of ran a scenario where Japan would be

00:31:53.240 | in the 1870s, 1880s and ran it a hundred times,

00:31:57.360 | the Japan of the post-war period

00:31:58.720 | is kind of one of the best outcomes, right?

00:32:01.160 | And I think that you could say that

00:32:03.920 | about Russian economic development,

00:32:07.040 | its ability to catch up at a certain level to the West.

00:32:09.960 | And then after that, of course, later on,

00:32:14.840 | as economies got more complex,

00:32:17.280 | as they kind of moved beyond regular heavy industry

00:32:21.080 | and as the main stable of the economy,

00:32:23.640 | the Russian economy and its command system

00:32:25.960 | was unable to adapt and cope

00:32:27.760 | and ended up falling back behind the West again

00:32:30.760 | by the 1970s.

00:32:32.600 | So all this is a very long story to say

00:32:34.760 | that a lot went wrong in Russia.

00:32:36.920 | The economic picture is actually

00:32:38.200 | a little bit more complicated.

00:32:39.840 | Politically, I think it's just a small party

00:32:44.040 | without much popular support,

00:32:45.960 | but with real popular support in a couple of cities,

00:32:48.040 | but a lot without a lot of popular support,

00:32:50.640 | empire wide, took power

00:32:53.920 | and they felt like they couldn't get back power.

00:32:56.920 | And they kept holding on to power

00:32:59.760 | and eventually among their ranks in these conditions,

00:33:02.640 | one of history's great tyrants took power

00:33:07.440 | and was able to justify what he was doing

00:33:10.320 | in the context of the Russian nation and development,

00:33:13.440 | but also all the threats that came from abroad.

00:33:17.240 | The Civil War wasn't just a civil war,

00:33:18.600 | it was really an invasion by many imperial powers

00:33:22.080 | all around the world as well.

00:33:24.720 | So I think a lot of it was conditions and circumstance.

00:33:27.920 | And I guess the question really is,

00:33:32.360 | to what role ideology played?

00:33:34.240 | Was there something within the socialist tradition

00:33:36.080 | that might've lended itself to authoritarianism?

00:33:38.520 | And that's something we should talk about.

00:33:40.640 | - And that's a really complicated human question.

00:33:43.280 | It does seem that the rhetoric,

00:33:48.280 | the populism of workers unite,

00:33:52.960 | we've been fucked over for way too long.

00:33:56.480 | Let's stand together.

00:33:58.520 | Somehow that message allows flawed

00:34:01.840 | or evil people to take power.

00:34:06.240 | It seems like the rhetoric, the idea is so good.

00:34:11.000 | Maybe the utopian nature of the idea is so good

00:34:13.640 | that it allows a great speaker to take power.

00:34:16.700 | It's almost like if the mission,

00:34:20.880 | like come with me, friends, beyond the horizon,

00:34:25.520 | a great land is waiting for us.

00:34:28.320 | That encourages sort of, yeah, dictators,

00:34:31.280 | authoritarians to take power.

00:34:32.680 | Is there something within the ideology

00:34:35.300 | that allows for that, for the sort of,

00:34:39.200 | for lying to people, essentially?

00:34:41.400 | - Well, I might surprise you with my answer

00:34:43.880 | 'cause I would say yes, maybe.

00:34:45.760 | But I think that it's not just socialism.

00:34:49.000 | Any sort of ideology that appeals to the collective

00:34:54.880 | and appeals to our long-term destiny,

00:35:00.400 | either as a species or as a nation

00:35:02.740 | or as a class or whatever else,

00:35:04.800 | can lend itself to authoritarianism.

00:35:07.420 | So you can see this in many of the nationalisms

00:35:10.320 | of the 20th century.

00:35:11.880 | Now, some of these nationalisms

00:35:14.240 | use incredibly lofty collective rhetoric,

00:35:18.520 | like in Sweden, the rhetoric of,

00:35:20.680 | we're gonna create the people's home.

00:35:22.420 | We're gonna make this a country with dignity

00:35:24.800 | for all Swedes.

00:35:25.840 | We're gonna make this a country that's more developed,

00:35:28.200 | more free, and so on.

00:35:29.960 | And they managed to build a pretty excellent society,

00:35:32.320 | in my estimation, from that.

00:35:36.360 | Countries like fascist Germany and Italy,

00:35:39.000 | they managed to do horrendous things in Japan

00:35:42.040 | and horrendous things with that.

00:35:44.020 | In the US, with national popular appeals,

00:35:47.660 | FDR was able to unite a nation

00:35:50.300 | to elevate ordinary working-class people

00:35:53.420 | into a position where they felt like

00:35:55.180 | they had a real stake in the country,

00:35:57.300 | and I think did great things with the New Deal.

00:36:00.480 | In Russia, of course, this language was used

00:36:05.420 | to trample upon individual rights

00:36:07.980 | and to justify hardship and abuses

00:36:12.980 | of ordinary individual people

00:36:15.020 | in the name of a collective destiny.

00:36:17.040 | A destiny, of course, that was just decided

00:36:19.060 | by the party in power and during the '30s and '40s

00:36:23.980 | by just Don himself, really.

00:36:25.680 | Now, I think that that's really the case

00:36:31.780 | for making sure that we have a bedrock

00:36:35.420 | of civil rights and democracy.

00:36:37.060 | And then on top of that, we can debate.

00:36:38.700 | We can debate different national destinies.

00:36:43.180 | We can debate different appeals,

00:36:45.000 | different visions of the world.

00:36:47.140 | But as long as people have a say

00:36:48.980 | in what sacrifices they're being asked to do,

00:36:51.660 | and as long as those sacrifices don't take away

00:36:54.620 | what's fundamentally ours, which is our life,

00:36:58.340 | which is our basic rights.

00:37:03.340 | - And voice, our voice.

00:37:07.120 | So this complicated picture,

00:37:09.860 | because help me understand,

00:37:13.400 | you mentioned that social democracy

00:37:18.780 | is trying to have social policies

00:37:20.540 | within a capitalist system, in part,

00:37:23.980 | but your vision, your hope for a social democracy

00:37:28.380 | is one that goes beyond that.

00:37:31.140 | How do you give everybody a voice

00:37:33.180 | while not becoming the Soviet Union,

00:37:36.820 | while not becoming where basically people are silenced

00:37:41.500 | either directly through violence

00:37:43.140 | or through the implied threat of violence

00:37:45.620 | and therefore fear?

00:37:47.100 | - So I think you need to limit the scope

00:37:49.420 | of where the state is and what the state can do

00:37:51.900 | and how the state functions, first of all.

00:37:54.100 | Now, for me, social democracy was like the equivalent of,

00:38:00.060 | I'll give a football analogy.

00:38:02.960 | It was the equivalent of getting to the red zone

00:38:07.000 | and then kicking a field goal.

00:38:08.620 | You'll take the three points,

00:38:09.820 | but you would have rather got a touchdown.

00:38:11.940 | And for me, socialism would be the touchdown.

00:38:13.900 | It's not a separate, different playing field.

00:38:16.460 | - Some people would say socialism would be an interception.

00:38:19.660 | - Sure, sure.

00:38:20.800 | No, and they would have the right to, again,

00:38:25.180 | to say that and to say we shouldn't go further.

00:38:28.540 | - And most coaches would take the safe route, right?

00:38:32.940 | So you're going against the decision.

00:38:35.940 | Anyway, I'll just take three points.

00:38:37.740 | - Yeah, yeah.

00:38:38.580 | - But I understand, I understand.

00:38:39.620 | So for you, the goal is full socialism.

00:38:43.540 | - But I'll take the three points.

00:38:45.300 | You know, it's a part of,

00:38:46.540 | I just wanna march down the field.

00:38:48.060 | I want to get within scoring position.

00:38:50.180 | The reason why we should really move from this analogy,

00:38:53.180 | but the reason why I call myself a socialist

00:38:56.580 | is looking through history

00:38:59.000 | and these examples of social democracy,

00:39:01.060 | you saw that they were able to give working class people

00:39:04.880 | lots of rights and income and power in their society.

00:39:08.680 | But at the end of the day,

00:39:10.140 | capitalists still had the ultimate power,

00:39:12.600 | which is the ability to withhold investment.

00:39:16.880 | So they could say in the late 1960s and early 70s,

00:39:21.880 | listen, I was fine with this arrangement 10 years ago,

00:39:24.940 | but now I feel like I'm gonna take my money

00:39:29.260 | and I'm gonna go move to a different country

00:39:31.780 | or I'm just gonna not invest

00:39:33.540 | because my workers are paid too much.

00:39:35.540 | I'm still making money,

00:39:36.560 | but I feel like I could be making more.

00:39:38.980 | I need more of an upper hand, right?

00:39:40.620 | So their economic power

00:39:42.840 | is then challenging the democratic mandate

00:39:47.140 | of Swedish workers that were voting

00:39:48.600 | for the social democratic party

00:39:50.180 | and were behind this advance.

00:39:52.920 | So to me, what socialism is in part

00:39:55.820 | is taking the means of production, right?

00:39:58.420 | Where this capitalist power is coming from

00:40:00.700 | and making it socially owned

00:40:02.860 | so that ordinary workers can control their workplaces,

00:40:06.300 | can make investment decisions and so on.

00:40:10.780 | Now, does that mean total state ownership of everything

00:40:14.320 | or a planned economy?

00:40:15.480 | I don't think that makes any sense.

00:40:17.680 | I think that we should live in a society

00:40:20.280 | in which markets are harnessed and regulated and so on.

00:40:24.220 | My main problem is capitalist ownership

00:40:29.120 | in part on normative grounds,

00:40:31.160 | just because I think that it doesn't make sense

00:40:33.680 | that we celebrate democracy and all these other spheres,

00:40:36.280 | but we have workplaces that are just treated like tyrannies.

00:40:40.880 | And in part, because I think that ordinary workers

00:40:44.940 | would much prefer a system in which over time,

00:40:48.280 | they accrued shares and ownership

00:40:51.220 | where they got, in addition to base kind of wage,

00:40:53.940 | they got dividends from their firm being successful

00:40:58.160 | and that they figured out how to,

00:41:00.820 | large firms, they're not gonna be making

00:41:02.720 | day-to-day decisions by democratic vote, right?

00:41:05.680 | But maybe you would elect representatives,

00:41:07.920 | elected managements once every year or two,

00:41:11.240 | depending on your operating agreement and so on.

00:41:13.360 | That's kind of my vision of a socialist society.

00:41:16.820 | And this sounds, I hope, like agree or disagree,

00:41:20.860 | like it would not be a crazy leap into year zero, right?

00:41:24.800 | That this could be maybe a way in which we could take

00:41:27.180 | a lot of what's existing in society,

00:41:29.200 | but then just add this on top.

00:41:31.120 | But what it would mean is a society

00:41:34.140 | without a capitalist class.

00:41:36.720 | This class hasn't been, individually, these people,

00:41:41.200 | haven't been taken to re-education camps or whatever else,

00:41:46.200 | but they're just no longer in this position.

00:41:50.340 | And they're now part of the economy in other ways.

00:41:53.080 | They'll probably be the first set of highly competent

00:41:56.140 | technocrats and managers and so on.

00:41:58.440 | They'll probably be very well compensated

00:42:00.040 | for their time and expertise and whatever else.

00:42:04.240 | But to me, both the practical end of things,

00:42:07.640 | like taking away this ability to withhold investment

00:42:11.840 | and increasing our ability to democratically

00:42:14.760 | shape investment priorities and to continue down

00:42:19.140 | the road of social democracy and on normative grounds

00:42:21.920 | by kind of egalitarian belief that ordinary people

00:42:26.080 | should have more stake in their lives in the workplace,

00:42:30.780 | leads me beyond social democracy to socialism.

00:42:34.680 | - So there's a tricky thing here.

00:42:36.480 | So in Ukraine especially, but in the Soviet Union,

00:42:40.480 | there's the Kulaks.

00:42:41.620 | The possible trajectory of fighting for the beautiful

00:42:46.680 | message of respecting workers' rights

00:42:52.640 | has this dynamic of making an enemy of the capitalist class,

00:42:57.640 | too easily making an enemy of the capitalist class

00:43:01.240 | with a central leader, populist leader,

00:43:06.040 | that says the rich and the powerful,

00:43:09.460 | they're taking advantage of you.

00:43:11.680 | We need to remove them.

00:43:12.800 | We need to put them in camps perhaps.

00:43:15.640 | Not said explicitly until it happens.

00:43:18.120 | It can happen overnight.

00:43:19.580 | But just putting a giant pressure on that capitalist class,

00:43:23.080 | and again, the Stalin type figure takes hold.

00:43:26.740 | So I'm trying to understand how the mechanism

00:43:30.040 | can prevent that.

00:43:32.020 | And perhaps I'll sort of reveal my bias here

00:43:35.540 | is I've been reading, I was gonna say too much,

00:43:39.260 | maybe not enough, but a lot about books like

00:43:42.840 | Stalin's War on Ukraine and just I've been reading

00:43:44.860 | a lot about the '30s and the '40s for personal reasons

00:43:48.900 | related to my travels in Ukraine and all that kind of stuff.

00:43:51.500 | So I have a little bit of a focus on the historical

00:43:56.500 | implementations of communism currently

00:43:58.720 | without kind of an updated view of all the possible

00:44:01.620 | future implementations.

00:44:02.460 | So I just wanna lay that out there.

00:44:04.100 | But I worry about the slippery slope

00:44:08.400 | into the authoritarian figure that takes the sexy message,

00:44:13.280 | destroys everyone who's powerful in the name

00:44:16.380 | of the working class and then fucks

00:44:18.860 | the working class afterwards.

00:44:21.140 | - So first of all, I think it's worth remembering

00:44:23.980 | that the socialist movement had different outcomes

00:44:27.140 | across Western Europe and Eastern Europe.

00:44:30.340 | And in some of these countries in Western Europe,

00:44:32.820 | there wasn't actually democracy before the workers movement

00:44:36.020 | and before the socialist movement.

00:44:37.140 | So the battle in Sweden, for instance,

00:44:41.560 | was about establishing political democracy,

00:44:44.040 | establishing true representation for workers.

00:44:46.180 | And that's how the parties became popular.

00:44:48.060 | Same thing in Germany too.

00:44:50.140 | Then it was the social Democrats who were able

00:44:52.820 | to build political democracy.

00:44:55.000 | Then on top of that, add layers of economic democracy,

00:44:59.620 | social democracy.

00:45:01.480 | The Swedish social Democrats ruled basically uninterrupted

00:45:05.700 | from the early 1930s until 1976.

00:45:09.700 | It's kind of crazy to think about,

00:45:11.020 | but they were just in government.

00:45:12.180 | They were the leading member of government.

00:45:13.720 | But a few different coalition partners would shift.

00:45:16.240 | Sometimes they were with their agrarians.

00:45:17.800 | Sometimes they were with the communists briefly,

00:45:21.620 | but they ruled uninterrupted.

00:45:23.720 | And they lost an election in 1976 and they just left power.

00:45:27.480 | Then they got back into power in the 80s.

00:45:29.400 | So in other words, they created a democratic system,

00:45:32.920 | of course, with mass support of working class people.

00:45:35.820 | Then they truly honored the system

00:45:37.720 | because when they lost power, they lost power.

00:45:40.420 | They left power.

00:45:41.960 | There's plenty of cases like that across Europe

00:45:45.520 | and the world and in other countries like Korea

00:45:47.560 | and elsewhere where the workers movements,

00:45:49.440 | the most militant, the most class centric workers,

00:45:52.320 | South Africa is the same way, created democratic systems.

00:45:58.420 | Now, Russia, I think a lot of what happened had to do

00:46:01.600 | with the fact that it was never a democratic country.

00:46:04.520 | It was ruled by a party and the party itself was very easy

00:46:09.320 | to shift from a somewhat democratic party in Lenin's day

00:46:12.360 | to an authoritarian one in Russia.

00:46:15.080 | And there was no distinction then

00:46:16.440 | between the party and the state.

00:46:17.960 | So your authoritarian party then became authoritarian

00:46:21.240 | total control over the entirety of the state.

00:46:25.260 | Now, the fact that the Soviet system involved

00:46:29.000 | total state ownership of production meant

00:46:32.400 | that the authoritarianism of the party state

00:46:35.360 | could go even deeper into the lives of ordinary people

00:46:38.440 | compared to other horrific dictatorships

00:46:42.080 | like Pinochet's Chile and so on,

00:46:44.120 | when maybe you could find some solace just at home

00:46:47.880 | or whatever else, you didn't have the same sort

00:46:49.600 | of totalitarian control of people's lives.

00:46:54.600 | But I would say that socialism itself

00:46:59.320 | has yielded different outcomes.

00:47:00.400 | Now, on the question of polarization,

00:47:02.840 | I guess that implies that this polarization,

00:47:06.160 | this distinction is a distinction that isn't real

00:47:10.760 | in society and that is kind of being manufactured,

00:47:14.760 | generated.

00:47:15.600 | - You mean the capitalist class and the working class

00:47:17.600 | just to clarify?

00:47:18.440 | Yeah, okay.

00:47:19.260 | - So in certain populist distinctions,

00:47:21.760 | the division is basically arbitrary or made up,

00:47:26.480 | the us versus them polarization,

00:47:28.080 | depending who the us and who the them are.

00:47:30.160 | You know, it's truly something that's manufactured.

00:47:35.240 | But capitalism itself as a system,

00:47:38.000 | as a system based on class division,

00:47:41.440 | whether you're a supporter or opposite,

00:47:42.960 | I think we should acknowledge it's based on class division,

00:47:46.260 | that is the thing creating that polarization.

00:47:49.800 | Now, I think what a lot of what socialists try to do

00:47:52.720 | is we try to take bits of working class opposition

00:47:57.720 | to capitalism, to their lives,

00:48:00.440 | to the way they're treated at work and so on.

00:48:03.280 | And yes, we do try to organize on those bases

00:48:06.480 | to help workers take collective action,

00:48:09.720 | to help them organize in political parties and so on,

00:48:14.600 | to represent their interests, economic and otherwise.

00:48:19.320 | But the contradiction exists to begin with.

00:48:22.280 | And if anything, this system,

00:48:24.360 | which I'm proposing, democratic socialism,

00:48:27.120 | would be kind of a resolution of this conflict,

00:48:30.360 | this dilemma, this thing that has always existed

00:48:32.520 | since Chieftain and follower and so on.

00:48:35.560 | We've had class division since the Neolithic Revolution.

00:48:38.200 | You know, I think this is a democratic road

00:48:40.640 | out of that tension and that division of humanity

00:48:44.080 | into people who own and people have nothing to give

00:48:46.480 | but their ability to work.

00:48:48.000 | - So that idea is grounded in,

00:48:51.280 | going all the way back to Marx,

00:48:52.540 | that all of human history can be told

00:48:54.700 | through the lens of class struggle.

00:48:57.440 | Is there some sense, can you still man the case

00:49:00.000 | that this class difference is over-exaggerated?

00:49:04.320 | That there's a difference,

00:49:07.720 | but it's not the difference of the abuser and the abused.

00:49:12.640 | It's more of a difference of people that were successful

00:49:17.640 | and people that were less successful.

00:49:20.680 | - So I'll play devil's advocate,

00:49:22.080 | which is that maybe one could argue

00:49:25.720 | that in its purest, earliest stage,

00:49:28.560 | capitalism was based on a stark difference.

00:49:32.360 | But then since then, two things have happened.

00:49:34.720 | One, a bunch of socialists and workers have organized

00:49:37.760 | to guarantee certain rights for working class people,

00:49:41.760 | certain protections.

00:49:43.160 | So in our system now, there are certain safety nets,

00:49:46.880 | less in the US than in other countries,

00:49:49.400 | but in a lot of countries,

00:49:50.320 | there are pretty extensive safety nets.

00:49:52.000 | - Even like 40-hour work week, minimum wage,

00:49:55.840 | safety regulations, all that kind of stuff.

00:49:58.360 | - And all those things are, in my mind,

00:50:01.600 | doses of socialism within capitalism,

00:50:03.440 | 'cause what you're doing is you are taking the autonomy

00:50:07.520 | of capitalists to do whatever they want

00:50:09.240 | with the people contracted to them.

00:50:12.000 | And the only thing stopping them is them potentially

00:50:15.080 | being able to go to another employer,

00:50:17.160 | but even then, it's kind of potentially a race

00:50:19.480 | to the bottom.

00:50:20.320 | If you can't get more than $2 an hour

00:50:24.200 | from any employer in your market,

00:50:27.040 | you're gonna have to live with it.

00:50:29.400 | So one factor is we have built in those protections.

00:50:33.520 | So we've taken enough socialism into capitalism

00:50:37.840 | that you could say that at a certain point,

00:50:40.320 | maybe it makes a qualitative difference

00:50:42.400 | and not just a quantitative difference in people's lives.

00:50:45.120 | The other thing is over time, we've gotten wealthier

00:50:48.280 | and more productive as a society.

00:50:51.960 | So maybe at some point, the quantitative difference

00:50:55.440 | of just more and more wealth means that even if,

00:50:58.480 | in the abstract, the division between a worker

00:51:01.920 | and a capitalist is real, if that worker is earning

00:51:05.120 | a quarter million dollars a year and has a good life

00:51:07.800 | and only has to clock in 35 hours a week, 30 hours a week,

00:51:11.760 | and has four weeks of vacation,

00:51:14.560 | then isn't it just an abstract or philosophical difference?

00:51:19.560 | So I think you could level those two arguments.

00:51:21.920 | What I would say is that, one,

00:51:24.200 | a lot of these rights that we have fought for

00:51:28.720 | are constantly being eroded and they're under attack,

00:51:31.920 | in part because the economic power that capitalists have

00:51:35.160 | bleeds into our political democracy as well.

00:51:38.600 | There's constant lobbying for all sorts

00:51:40.680 | of labor market deregulations and so on.

00:51:45.280 | I fundamentally believe that if tomorrow

00:51:49.720 | all those regulations went away,

00:51:51.880 | capitalists would fight to pay people as little as possible

00:51:55.640 | and we'd be back in 19th century capitalism.

00:51:58.680 | And not because they're bad people,

00:52:00.640 | because if I'm running a firm and all of a sudden

00:52:04.320 | my competition is able to find a labor pool

00:52:08.040 | and is paying people less than me,

00:52:10.320 | I'm gonna be undercut 'cause they'll be able to take

00:52:12.240 | some of that extra savings and invest into new technology

00:52:16.000 | or whatever else and they'll gobble up my market share

00:52:18.680 | before long.

00:52:20.000 | And then also beyond that,

00:52:21.960 | I do think there's a normative question here,

00:52:24.920 | which is, now, do we believe that ordinary people

00:52:29.920 | have a capacity to be able to make certain decisions

00:52:34.880 | about their work?

00:52:35.720 | Do we believe they know more about their work

00:52:37.720 | than their bosses?

00:52:39.360 | Now, I don't think that's natural at every level,

00:52:42.200 | but I think there's no doubt that in workplaces,

00:52:45.200 | workers know how to productively do their task

00:52:49.200 | in ways that their manager might not know.

00:52:51.040 | I think we've all been in workplaces

00:52:52.520 | where we've had managers who kind of don't know

00:52:55.120 | what you do or whatever else.

00:52:57.680 | And I think that collectively, if incentivized,

00:53:01.880 | we could have them, one, instead of hoarding

00:53:05.680 | more of that information, since they're getting a stake

00:53:09.280 | in production and so on, they'd be able to more freely

00:53:12.960 | share it and be able to reshape how their day-to-day work

00:53:16.960 | happens.

00:53:18.200 | And also with elected managers,

00:53:20.120 | you kind of take that up the chain,

00:53:21.640 | I think you would have perfectly efficient

00:53:24.920 | market-based firms that could exist without capitalists.

00:53:29.920 | - So there's a, I mean, there's a lot of things to say,

00:53:36.080 | maybe within just very, very low level question

00:53:39.360 | of if the workers are running the show,

00:53:42.600 | there's a brutal truth to the fact that some people

00:53:46.720 | are better, and the workers know this,

00:53:49.360 | it's the Steve Jobs A players,

00:53:51.040 | you want to have all the A players in the room,

00:53:53.280 | 'cause one B player can poison the pool,

00:53:56.320 | 'cause then everybody gets demotivated by,

00:53:58.680 | by the nature of that lack of excellence and competence.

00:54:08.840 | This is just to take sort of a crude

00:54:11.640 | devil's advocate perspective.

00:54:13.400 | Are the workers going to be able to remove

00:54:17.120 | the incompetent from the pool in the name,

00:54:21.320 | in the goal of, towards the mission of succeeding

00:54:24.080 | as a collective?

00:54:25.400 | - So I think that any successful model of socialism

00:54:28.800 | that involves the market, you need two things.

00:54:31.080 | One is at the micro level, you need the ability

00:54:34.120 | to fire people and for them to exit firms,

00:54:38.520 | which might be a slower process in cooperative based firms

00:54:43.200 | than it is in a capitalist firm without a union,

00:54:45.720 | but it would be probably akin to the process

00:54:47.440 | that would happen in a capitalist firm

00:54:49.240 | of which there are many with unions.

00:54:51.000 | So you need that, and then at the macro level,

00:54:54.280 | you need firm failure.

00:54:55.720 | You need to avoid a dilemma that happened

00:54:59.120 | in Soviet style economies, which was soft budget,

00:55:03.120 | you know, constraints and firms basically

00:55:07.000 | not being allowed to fail because the government

00:55:09.720 | was committed to full employment,

00:55:11.080 | the firms employed people.

00:55:12.480 | So even inefficient firms were at the end of the day,

00:55:14.800 | they knew they were going to be propped up

00:55:16.920 | by the government and they would be given

00:55:18.680 | all the resources they would need,

00:55:20.080 | no matter how inefficiently they were using those resources

00:55:23.320 | to maintain employment.

00:55:24.640 | So I think you need both.

00:55:27.120 | - Do you worry about this idea of firing people?

00:55:30.360 | Man, I'm uncomfortable with the idea, I hate it,

00:55:33.960 | but I also know it's extremely necessary.

00:55:36.600 | So is there something about a collective,

00:55:40.000 | a socialist system that makes firing,

00:55:43.080 | you said it might be slower, might it become extremely slow?

00:55:47.840 | Too much friction?

00:55:49.400 | Isn't there a tension between respecting the rights

00:55:52.240 | of a human being and saying, like, you need to step up,

00:55:57.240 | maybe sort of deposit the care, like, you really,

00:55:59.760 | like, to really encourage fellow workers, no,

00:56:03.080 | when there's a person that's not pulling their side

00:56:06.120 | of the, doing as great of a job as they could be.

00:56:09.240 | But isn't the person that's not doing a great of a job

00:56:14.040 | going to start to manipulate the system

00:56:15.920 | that slows the firing in their self-interest?

00:56:18.880 | - Well, I think there would be certain,

00:56:20.360 | so maybe another way to put it is,

00:56:22.600 | think about like if you're a partner at a law firm, right?

00:56:25.360 | I don't really know how law firms work,

00:56:26.840 | so I probably shouldn't use this analogy,

00:56:28.440 | but correct me if I'm wrong, but let's say you're a partner,

00:56:31.800 | you kind of have equity in your law firm

00:56:33.640 | or something beyond your billable hours,

00:56:36.320 | and let's say you're going to be fired from your law firm

00:56:39.880 | or they're laying off people or whatever else,

00:56:42.000 | they could just get rid of you,

00:56:43.720 | but they would also have to figure out

00:56:45.080 | how to kind of buy you out too after a certain point.

00:56:48.840 | So I think that like in a cooperative firm,

00:56:52.720 | you'd probably have a system where you,

00:56:55.640 | after a certain point of working productively,

00:56:58.720 | you probably have a period

00:56:59.640 | where you get fired really quickly, no matter what,

00:57:02.560 | but once your job security kicks in,

00:57:05.200 | you would be able to, it would be a process.

00:57:10.000 | It would probably be like a day or two process

00:57:13.640 | to figure it out,

00:57:14.480 | or maybe they would have a progressive discipline process,

00:57:16.360 | which is first you have to get a verbal feedback,

00:57:21.360 | and then maybe a written performance review,

00:57:23.760 | then you could be fired.

00:57:24.800 | I mean, that's how it works in a lot of workplaces

00:57:26.760 | with either unions or with just basic job security.

00:57:29.920 | Most countries, that's how it works,

00:57:32.480 | 'cause there's not at-will employment in most countries.

00:57:35.040 | So I think that the real tension is if you fire someone,

00:57:40.040 | if you're condemning them to destitution,

00:57:43.960 | then morally you would really feel something there,

00:57:46.560 | as you should as a human being

00:57:48.160 | concerned about other people,

00:57:50.240 | but in a social system

00:57:51.920 | or even basic social democratic system,

00:57:54.680 | there'd be mechanisms to take care of that person.

00:57:57.240 | So one, if a firm is failing for any reason,

00:58:00.360 | they're getting out-compete or whatever else,

00:58:03.000 | those workers would then land in the hands,

00:58:08.120 | just for a little bit, of the state, right?

00:58:10.240 | And there could be active labor market policies

00:58:13.000 | to retrain people to go into expanding sectors,

00:58:15.160 | or your sector is now obsolete,

00:58:16.600 | but here, you have these skills,

00:58:18.320 | you're gonna be trained,

00:58:19.960 | and here are some resources

00:58:21.600 | to kind of help you along your training,

00:58:23.000 | and then there's a bunch of firms hiring,

00:58:24.360 | so go on your way.

00:58:26.200 | Then also just with an expanded welfare state,

00:58:28.560 | being destitute in certain countries,

00:58:30.800 | being unemployed in certain countries,

00:58:32.560 | is easier than in other countries or situations.

00:58:36.680 | So you still can fall back on that mechanism,

00:58:41.680 | and also my vision of market socialism,

00:58:46.800 | a democratic socialism,

00:58:48.800 | there would be an expanded state sector.

00:58:51.080 | Not anything you can imagine,

00:58:53.400 | but the way in which there's more of a state sector

00:58:55.520 | in countries like Norway or Denmark

00:58:57.520 | than there is in the US.

00:58:58.760 | So there would be various forms of state employment

00:59:02.480 | and whatever else.

00:59:05.000 | So I mean, I think that the real question is,

00:59:08.280 | should being bad at your job,

00:59:09.920 | or getting fired for any reason,

00:59:12.320 | or getting laid off,

00:59:13.440 | should that be a cause to have you totally lose your shirt,

00:59:17.200 | or maybe should you just have to rebound,

00:59:19.800 | maybe you have less money for consumption,

00:59:22.360 | or whatever else,

00:59:23.320 | and you'll be on your way onto bigger and better things

00:59:25.960 | in a few months.

00:59:27.840 | - So a strong social net,

00:59:29.400 | in many ways, make it more efficient

00:59:32.960 | to fire people who are not good at their job,

00:59:35.880 | because then they won't be,

00:59:37.640 | that won't actually significantly damage

00:59:40.400 | their quality of life,

00:59:41.240 | and they have a chance to find a job

00:59:42.760 | at which they can flourish.

00:59:44.360 | - Sure. - Right.

00:59:45.720 | To step out into the macro,

00:59:47.640 | there's a tension here as well.

00:59:52.760 | So you said that there's inequality between the classes,

00:59:56.200 | the capitalist class and the working class,

00:59:58.360 | and sort of, there's a lot of ways

00:59:59.920 | you can maybe correct me on the numbers,

01:00:01.560 | but you could say that the top 1% of Americans

01:00:04.200 | have more wealth than the bottom 50%.

01:00:06.440 | That's not talking about perhaps capitalist class

01:00:09.240 | and the working class,

01:00:11.360 | but it's a good sort of estimate, right?

01:00:14.120 | The flip side of that,

01:00:16.040 | if you just look at countries

01:00:19.480 | that have more economic freedom

01:00:21.280 | versus less economic freedom,

01:00:23.200 | more capitalism versus less capitalism,

01:00:27.920 | their GDP seems to be significantly higher.

01:00:30.560 | And so at the local level,

01:00:33.920 | you might say that there's an inequality,

01:00:37.800 | but if you look historically over decades,

01:00:40.040 | it seems like the more capitalism there is,

01:00:42.920 | the higher the GDP grows,

01:00:44.720 | and therefore the level of the quality of life

01:00:48.920 | and the basic income, the basic wealth,

01:00:51.320 | the average, even including the working class,

01:00:53.480 | goes up over time.

01:00:55.240 | Can you see both sides of this?

01:00:57.720 | - So I could definitely accept some of that premise.

01:00:59.360 | One, within capitalism, right,

01:01:02.120 | you want a bigger pie.

01:01:04.920 | And then if you divide up that pie,

01:01:06.720 | even if the bottom 10% of the working class share,

01:01:12.080 | let's say is less as a percentage,

01:01:16.000 | it's still more in raw terms.

01:01:18.760 | So it's better for everyone.

01:01:21.600 | The part that I would dispute

01:01:22.960 | is more economic freedom versus less economic freedom.

01:01:27.320 | So there's obviously some countries

01:01:28.760 | in which capitalism doesn't work,

01:01:32.080 | and maybe economic freedom plays a role.

01:01:35.360 | Like if you're in a country like Egypt or India

01:01:38.720 | with a highly, or previously highly bureaucratic system,

01:01:42.600 | so you need to get licenses to do anything,

01:01:45.560 | and you need to run things for the state,

01:01:47.680 | or you need to bribe someone to get an incorporation done,

01:01:50.200 | or whatever else,

01:01:51.440 | that's in case in which I would accept the premise of,

01:01:53.800 | okay, economic freedom to take entrepreneurial risk

01:01:57.080 | to start something new is limited.

01:01:58.800 | There's all sorts of factors in which it's too difficult

01:02:04.760 | to start a firm, and it benefits no one really,

01:02:11.560 | except for whatever bureaucracy might be,

01:02:13.640 | might be taking their 15% cut.

01:02:17.960 | But in general, I think in advanced economies,

01:02:21.280 | it doesn't really work that way.

01:02:23.040 | So think about it this way.

01:02:24.400 | If you're, pretend like we're back,

01:02:28.600 | I'm sorry to go to Scandinavia again,

01:02:30.200 | but this is a good example.

01:02:33.760 | Let's say you're back in the 1970s

01:02:35.440 | in Scandinavia or whatever else.

01:02:37.280 | You're in a country with extremely powerful unions.

01:02:41.800 | So the unions have a lot of labor rights,

01:02:46.480 | the state has certain high taxation,

01:02:48.720 | certain guarantees on you too,

01:02:50.800 | but you're a capitalist there.

01:02:52.720 | Now, what would you do if your capitalist competitors

01:02:59.480 | in the US were able to pay workers $10 an hour,

01:03:04.480 | and you have to pay them 20?

01:03:07.560 | You would probably,

01:03:11.320 | and assuming you can't just flee or shut down

01:03:13.280 | or whatever else,

01:03:14.400 | you'd probably find ways to use labor saving technology.

01:03:17.760 | That power of the high wages

01:03:23.040 | might encourage you to invest more in technology

01:03:25.680 | and to utilize people's times better

01:03:27.400 | so they're more productive at work.

01:03:28.800 | So they're not just like sitting around or whatever else.

01:03:32.080 | So this really happened in practice

01:03:35.440 | in the Scandinavian countries,

01:03:37.200 | in part 'cause it was combined with a certain type

01:03:40.800 | of pattern wage bargaining.

01:03:44.160 | So I'll explain this really simply,

01:03:46.080 | but let's pretend that you're in a sector

01:03:49.520 | with three different companies.

01:03:55.480 | I would say on automotive sector,

01:03:57.600 | and I'll just say one is GM, one is Ford, one is Chrysler.

01:04:02.600 | Now, all these workers in your sector are all unionized.

01:04:08.800 | They're all Swedish UAW, whatever the equivalent is,

01:04:14.080 | members, and they're all paid the same.

01:04:17.800 | And the union is setting through bargaining,

01:04:19.560 | the union is setting the wages across the sector.

01:04:22.760 | But the unions, and let's say GM is the most productive

01:04:25.560 | of these companies, Ford is number two,

01:04:29.000 | Chrysler is number three.

01:04:31.320 | The unions would intentionally set the wages,

01:04:35.400 | set their benchmark to Ford in the middle.

01:04:37.920 | So what that would do is say to Ford,

01:04:41.720 | okay, Ford will stay in business

01:04:43.120 | 'cause they'll be able to meet the wage demands.

01:04:45.360 | Chrysler's probably might go out of business

01:04:48.240 | because they won't be able to meet the demands

01:04:51.160 | or they'll have to really adapt really quickly.

01:04:52.720 | They might have to lay off people,

01:04:53.760 | they might have to restructure.

01:04:55.000 | So union knows this in advance

01:04:56.560 | and all the auto workers know this.

01:04:59.320 | But the most efficient manufacturer, GM,

01:05:02.560 | now has excess profits

01:05:04.800 | because if they were negotiating with just the GM workers,

01:05:08.160 | the GM workers might even have been able to demand more,

01:05:11.280 | but instead these workers are pegging their wage demands

01:05:15.200 | to Ford's level and GM is in theory able to expand

01:05:19.600 | and employ more people

01:05:20.880 | and adopt new production techniques with their surplus.

01:05:24.800 | Then those Chrysler workers would be absorbed by the state

01:05:29.120 | by active labor market policies,

01:05:31.200 | then put back to work for GM

01:05:33.680 | or for these expanding sectors.

01:05:36.320 | So in other words, you're now in a situation

01:05:39.080 | where the state has a pretty big role in your economy,

01:05:41.520 | taking a lot of your money and taxes.

01:05:43.440 | Unions are really shaping your life as a capitalist

01:05:48.440 | far more than would happen in a country

01:05:51.480 | like the United States.

01:05:52.760 | And yet still, despite your more limited economic freedom,

01:05:57.280 | you're still creating a more productive economy.

01:06:01.520 | So it could work.

01:06:02.360 | It just has, the system has to be designed right.

01:06:03.920 | And I think social democracies were designed the right way.

01:06:06.480 | I think any future democratic socialism

01:06:08.320 | after social democracy would have to be designed

01:06:10.800 | the right way.

01:06:11.720 | - Could you just linger on that a little more,

01:06:13.080 | the pattern wage bargaining?

01:06:15.960 | So GM is the most efficient and Ford is the second most.

01:06:20.960 | Can you explain to me how, can you explain to me again,

01:06:25.640 | the wages, setting the wages to the Ford level,

01:06:28.840 | how that is good for GM?

01:06:30.640 | - So-

01:06:32.280 | - How that encourages more GM?

01:06:33.760 | - This is just sectoral or actually in this case,

01:06:37.120 | centralized wage bargaining.

01:06:40.640 | So setting the wages at a level that Ford can afford,

01:06:45.640 | but a level that would probably be too expensive

01:06:49.280 | for Chrysler in the automotive sector would benefit GM

01:06:53.320 | because they're drawing what we could call excess profits.

01:06:58.320 | Because GM, if the GM itself could potentially

01:07:06.120 | have to deal with just the enterprise of GM workers,

01:07:09.400 | bargaining for wages.

01:07:10.680 | And if they saw their profitability was high,

01:07:13.000 | they would know their leverage and they would say,

01:07:14.680 | "Pay us even more or else we're gonna go on strike."

01:07:17.720 | But instead they're accepting slightly lower wages

01:07:22.560 | than they would have otherwise had in return

01:07:25.240 | for the company having excess profits,

01:07:27.580 | that they're through both the state, their union,

01:07:30.520 | and sometimes like there's worker councils

01:07:33.160 | or whatever else.

01:07:34.400 | They're playing a role in saying,

01:07:36.160 | "Okay, we're gonna make sure this excess profit

01:07:38.760 | is actually invested productively

01:07:40.840 | in order to expand employment and just output."

01:07:45.840 | - Okay, can we talk about unions in general then?

01:07:51.320 | What are the pros and cons of unions?

01:07:54.480 | So the interest of the union,

01:07:56.240 | maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong.

01:08:00.040 | I have a lot to learn both about the economics

01:08:02.760 | and the human experience of a union.

01:08:05.200 | The union's interest is to,

01:08:07.160 | what, to protect worker rights

01:08:12.520 | and to maximize worker happiness,

01:08:16.020 | not the success and the productivity

01:08:18.720 | and the efficiency of a company, right?

01:08:20.840 | - No, I would disagree.

01:08:22.800 | So I think a union's interest is in

01:08:27.400 | what's collectively bargaining on behalf of workers.

01:08:30.440 | Because in certain cases,

01:08:31.880 | I am right now a manager at The Nation magazine, right?

01:08:38.040 | If I have a problem with my working conditions

01:08:43.320 | or I need a raise or whatever else,

01:08:45.440 | I could with my skillset, my background,

01:08:47.920 | my role in the company, I could go to my boss,

01:08:51.160 | the owner of The Nation and say,

01:08:52.640 | "Okay, I need to renegotiate my contract on these terms."

01:08:55.800 | I could bargain, right?

01:08:57.440 | Now, if I was a ordinary worker at like a CVS or something,

01:09:02.440 | if I didn't like my conditions and I went to my boss

01:09:06.560 | and said, "Hey, I need a $2 raise

01:09:09.720 | and I need to be home by 8.30

01:09:13.160 | 'cause I have obligations at home,"

01:09:16.680 | the boss would probably say,

01:09:17.660 | "I'm sorry, that's not possible, right?

01:09:20.200 | Maybe try the Rite Aid down the street

01:09:22.440 | or the Walgreens down the street or whatever."

01:09:26.040 | Now, if I went to the boss at a place like CVS

01:09:30.600 | or even better, if all the pharmaceutical workers

01:09:35.240 | at Rite Aid, CVS, Walgreens went to our bosses and said,

01:09:41.000 | "Listen, we collectively need to,

01:09:45.800 | $2 more and better hours, shorter shifts,"

01:09:51.000 | or whatever else,

01:09:52.200 | then they would probably have no choice but to concede.

01:09:54.980 | You have to bargain collectively at any level

01:09:58.200 | if you're an ordinary worker.

01:10:02.040 | And there are some exceptions,

01:10:03.520 | but that's for certain highly skilled workers.

01:10:06.460 | But even in those cases, of course, all workers are skilled.

01:10:10.280 | I mean, just the technical definition.

01:10:12.180 | Even in those cases, a lot of those workers

01:10:15.680 | have to bargain collectively as well

01:10:18.960 | in order to get more wealth.

01:10:21.440 | But they cannot make their demands so excessive

01:10:25.340 | that their firm gets out of business.

01:10:27.260 | So the workers only are workers

01:10:30.380 | as long as they're gainfully employed.

01:10:32.620 | So often unions will try to select their wage demands

01:10:37.620 | at such a level that it ensures

01:10:40.900 | that their firm will stay in business.

01:10:43.180 | - Yeah, but the problem is the way firms go out of business

01:10:45.900 | isn't by an explosion,

01:10:49.740 | like the way popcorn starts getting cooked.

01:10:52.440 | At a certain moment, it just is over.

01:10:56.040 | It seems like the union can,

01:10:59.880 | through collective bargaining, keep increasing the wage,

01:11:03.240 | keep increasing the interest of the worker

01:11:06.720 | until it suffocates the company,

01:11:08.420 | that it doesn't die immediately,

01:11:09.680 | but it dies in like five years.

01:11:12.100 | So that might still serve the interest of the worker,

01:11:15.840 | but it doesn't serve the interest of society as a whole

01:11:19.180 | that's creating cool stuff.

01:11:20.880 | A market that's operating and increasing cool stuff

01:11:25.660 | and constantly innovating and so on,

01:11:27.100 | and creating more and more cool stuff

01:11:29.100 | and increasing the quality of life in general.

01:11:31.440 | - I disagree with the premise,

01:11:32.720 | because I think even taking your example,

01:11:34.800 | that would be better for society.

01:11:36.900 | If a firm cannot pay its workers a living wage,

01:11:40.760 | but its competitors can,

01:11:43.200 | then that firm will either figure out a way to innovate,

01:11:46.840 | develop new techniques, new markets,

01:11:49.180 | new ways to be productive, or it should go out of business.

01:11:53.380 | And it would be better for it to go out of business

01:11:56.380 | than to stay in business

01:11:57.940 | or to be artificially kept in business in any sort of way.

01:12:01.580 | That's the Chrysler, my old centralized bargaining.

01:12:07.820 | - Right, but then there is, innovation costs money too.

01:12:12.020 | So the flip side of that,

01:12:15.620 | I think to play devil's advocate,

01:12:17.260 | is that it incentivizes, automotive industry

01:12:19.900 | is probably a good example of that.

01:12:21.800 | It incentivizes cutting costs everywhere

01:12:26.080 | and sort of whatever has been making you money currently,

01:12:29.780 | figuring out how to do that really well

01:12:32.540 | without investing into the long-term future of the company

01:12:35.120 | for all the different ways it can pivot,

01:12:38.420 | all the different interesting things it could do

01:12:40.340 | in terms of investing into R&D.

01:12:42.120 | Whenever there's more and more and more pressure

01:12:44.200 | on paying a living wage for the workers,

01:12:47.800 | it might not, again, it might suffocate and die

01:12:51.640 | over the next five, 10, 20 years,

01:12:53.960 | which might be a good destructive force

01:12:58.980 | from a capitalist perspective,

01:13:00.800 | but it might rob us of the Einstein of a company, right?

01:13:04.160 | Of the flourishing that the company

01:13:06.560 | and the workers within it can do

01:13:09.280 | over a period of five, 10, 20 years.

01:13:11.320 | - Well, this is just a problem with a lot of capitalism,

01:13:13.960 | which is about short-termism, right?

01:13:16.120 | 'Cause the same thing could be said

01:13:17.560 | from you're starting a company,

01:13:19.280 | you have a plan for it to make a lot of money,

01:13:21.440 | but your investors want dividends right away.

01:13:24.700 | So you have to take away from your long-term R&D

01:13:29.700 | or other plans and deliver short-term dividends.

01:13:33.980 | That's often why a lot of, I think, R&D

01:13:37.000 | is often rooted in state institutions and research

01:13:40.320 | and whatever else is being drawed on.

01:13:42.680 | And also I think that that's a reason why

01:13:44.880 | the state has some sort of role in fostering firms

01:13:49.240 | in either my version of a socialist economy

01:13:51.800 | or a capitalist economy or whatever else

01:13:54.000 | to help with these time horizon problems.

01:13:57.840 | So I won't dispute that workers could play a role

01:14:01.240 | or wage demands could play a role in time horizon problems,

01:14:04.700 | but more often than that, it's coming from investors,

01:14:08.400 | it's coming from just a host of other market pressures

01:14:11.520 | that people might have.

01:14:13.360 | And I would say that in the real world,

01:14:15.280 | a lot of investment funds don't come

01:14:19.200 | from just retained earnings,

01:14:21.840 | it comes from a lot of sources.

01:14:24.080 | So I think this is a problem that could be solved

01:14:26.680 | through public policy, but definitely exists today as well.

01:14:30.080 | - So you mentioned living wage.

01:14:32.300 | Is there a tension between a living wage,

01:14:36.440 | and maybe you could speak to what a living wage means,

01:14:39.360 | and the workers owning all of the profit of the company?

01:14:44.340 | Sort of this kind of spectrum.

01:14:48.600 | No, I guess the spectrum is from like no minimum wage,

01:14:53.600 | the lowest possible thing you could pay to a worker,

01:14:57.120 | then somewhere in that spectrum is a living wage,

01:14:59.980 | and then at the top is like all of the profit

01:15:03.680 | from the company is owned by the workers.

01:15:05.720 | So split to the workers.

01:15:09.280 | - I mean, I think that any society

01:15:11.040 | is going to have to make distributional choices.

01:15:14.900 | You could have, imagine a variety of capitalism

01:15:18.880 | in which workers are paid quite little,

01:15:21.120 | but there's extremely high taxation,

01:15:23.480 | and there's redistribution after the fact.

01:15:25.200 | You can imagine a system in which

01:15:27.120 | there's less taxation after the fact,

01:15:29.080 | but there's more guarantees and regulations

01:15:31.040 | on how much people are paid before the fact.

01:15:33.600 | In my vision of a socialist society,

01:15:38.060 | there would be some other way that unions work,

01:15:41.280 | and in my example, the centralized bargaining unions

01:15:45.000 | would work that bargain at the sectoral level,

01:15:48.600 | and not just at the enterprise level

01:15:50.240 | like our unions do today.

01:15:52.440 | There could be benchmarks set

01:15:56.540 | for different occupations or wages.

01:15:59.840 | And the reason why you would want a benchmark

01:16:01.520 | at a worker-controlled firm

01:16:03.600 | is that you don't want workers self-exploiting themselves

01:16:06.920 | in order to gobble up market share,

01:16:09.220 | or because you don't want them collectively deciding,

01:16:11.740 | "Okay, we're gonna invest in this longer-term time horizon,

01:16:14.940 | "and out-compete other people that way."

01:16:16.940 | So you might say, "Okay, if you do this sort of

01:16:18.460 | "clerical work, you have to be paid

01:16:20.680 | "the equivalent of $15 an hour, and that's minimum,

01:16:24.020 | "but on top of that, you get dividends from excess profits."

01:16:29.020 | And I think it would also have to be combined

01:16:34.040 | with public financing for expansions and for development,

01:16:39.040 | which could be done in quite a competitive way.

01:16:42.500 | So you could have a variety of banks.

01:16:45.500 | My vision, state-owned banks,

01:16:48.700 | but how would they decide who to invest in

01:16:53.260 | and who to not invest in,

01:16:54.380 | who to give a loan for expansion to and who not to?

01:16:57.860 | 'Cause you don't want it to be like,

01:16:58.840 | "Oh, I'm gonna invest in my nephew's firm,

01:17:01.660 | "and not this other firm,"

01:17:02.900 | or, "I'm gonna invest in this guy's firm

01:17:05.360 | "because he's an Italian, but not this guy's firm

01:17:07.740 | "'cause he's Albanian," or whatever else.

01:17:10.220 | Just make it rational at the level of their goal

01:17:14.260 | is just like any other investment person at a bank today

01:17:19.260 | to maintain a certain risk profile

01:17:22.900 | and to have an interest yield,

01:17:25.620 | and decide to invest on that basis.

01:17:28.140 | So if there's a huge automotive firm

01:17:30.180 | that has been in business for 50 years

01:17:32.140 | that needs a little operating cash,

01:17:33.820 | like, yeah, they could get their $50 million,

01:17:36.340 | their 3% loan.

01:17:37.620 | If you have some crazy blue sky idea

01:17:39.700 | and you managed to get it to that point,

01:17:41.820 | like maybe you and your friends would get it at 12%

01:17:44.620 | or something close to what a VC would offer today.

01:17:47.880 | So I only kind of go into these details,

01:17:50.820 | not because to say that a system doesn't have to,

01:17:54.820 | in advance, map out all the different possibilities,

01:17:59.420 | but I think it does have to be willing to accept

01:18:03.300 | a lot of things that we know today.

01:18:05.580 | I can't give you a version of socialism

01:18:07.540 | that everything's gonna be fine,

01:18:09.580 | we're gonna live harmoniously,

01:18:11.220 | and we won't have these sort of tensions,

01:18:13.420 | and you could hunt in the evening

01:18:16.100 | and fish in the afternoon and write criticism,

01:18:19.740 | or whatever else.

01:18:22.300 | I do hope that there's horizons beyond this

01:18:25.700 | that we could aspire to.

01:18:26.920 | I do have those visions,

01:18:28.980 | but for now I think our task as socialists

01:18:32.140 | is to imagine five minutes after midnight,

01:18:36.340 | what can we do right away within our lifetime vision?

01:18:41.580 | - So that means through some level of central planning,

01:18:45.860 | reallocating resources to the workers.

01:18:49.020 | - So I think the primary mechanism

01:18:51.620 | in this private sector under socialism

01:18:54.900 | would be a market mechanism,

01:18:56.380 | firms competing against each other to expand,

01:18:59.100 | connected to a system of public financing.

01:19:02.580 | But even at that level,

01:19:03.940 | the individual bankers and public banks and so on

01:19:08.500 | would be operating based on their own rationality,

01:19:11.900 | and the state would certainly shape investment decisions,

01:19:16.440 | but maybe no more than they do

01:19:19.180 | in a lot of capitalist systems.

01:19:20.820 | So the state might, already today,

01:19:22.820 | in a lot of countries decide,

01:19:24.940 | we wanna invest in green technology,

01:19:27.300 | so it's gonna be favorable rates for people

01:19:30.180 | or tax credits for people investing in green technology.

01:19:32.780 | So the state already shapes investment.

01:19:35.380 | I think what should be centrally planned,

01:19:37.060 | and this is where I'm proud to sound

01:19:39.480 | like an old school socialist,

01:19:40.700 | is things like healthcare,

01:19:42.740 | things like transit,

01:19:45.340 | things like our natural monopolies of lots of types,

01:19:50.260 | I think can be done very well through planning,

01:19:54.280 | and we already have plenty of examples,

01:19:56.460 | but a lot of this society, I think,

01:19:58.340 | would be the private sphere

01:20:01.300 | of worker-controlled cooperatives

01:20:04.420 | competing against each other,

01:20:05.860 | weak firms failing, successful firms expanded.

01:20:09.420 | - And the banks, you're saying publicly or privately owned?

01:20:12.180 | - Publicly owned.

01:20:13.180 | - Let's just put it all on the table

01:20:15.660 | that it's almost guaranteed that every system has corruption.

01:20:18.660 | So I guess the bigger question is,

01:20:20.900 | which system has more corruption?

01:20:23.820 | This one with central planning and worker cooperatives

01:20:28.080 | versus unfettered capitalism,

01:20:31.200 | or any flavor of capitalism.

01:20:33.360 | - I think any system has potential for corruption.

01:20:36.760 | I think it depends on how good your civil service is,

01:20:40.720 | how much oversight do you have

01:20:42.480 | to resolve a problem once it arises.

01:20:44.800 | - How does corruption happen in a socialist system?

01:20:47.680 | So you have to, again, I apologize,

01:20:49.820 | but the large-scale examples of it,

01:20:52.080 | so we can look at Soviet Union, China, and Sweden,

01:20:55.820 | fundamentally different nations and histories

01:21:00.660 | and peoples and economic systems and political systems,

01:21:04.120 | but all could be called in part socialist.

01:21:09.040 | And so what, you know, there's a ridiculous,

01:21:13.200 | almost caricature of corruption in the Soviet system,

01:21:16.560 | the gigantic bureaucracy that's built,

01:21:20.200 | where somehow corruption seeps in

01:21:23.280 | through kind of dispersion of responsibility,

01:21:28.360 | that nobody's really responsible for the corruption.

01:21:32.200 | I just had a conversation with Ed Calderon,

01:21:34.520 | who fought the cartels in Mexico,

01:21:37.600 | and there is a huge amount of corruption in Mexico,

01:21:40.240 | but it's not like even seen as corruption.

01:21:42.440 | You understand when a cop pulls you over,

01:21:44.320 | you give this much money, and so on.

01:21:46.480 | And so that kind of seems to happen in certain systems,

01:21:49.360 | and it seems to have happened in socialist systems

01:21:52.000 | more than in capitalist systems in the 20th century.

01:21:56.280 | Or maybe I'm wrong on that.

01:21:57.640 | - No, I mean, I think in a lot of countries,

01:21:59.120 | it's seen as the cost of doing business, right?

01:22:02.000 | Now, in particular countries built on a system

01:22:06.040 | of central planning, or just state allocation of resources,

01:22:09.120 | where the state both produces and allocates

01:22:12.040 | and things run through bureaucracies,

01:22:15.480 | then I think you're much more apt to have corruption

01:22:19.160 | than in a system with just a smaller sphere for the state.

01:22:23.800 | So for example, if you're in a hypothetical version

01:22:26.960 | of the US, you might see a lot more corruption

01:22:29.120 | in like the post office, but you wouldn't have

01:22:31.440 | that corruption in your workplace,

01:22:33.080 | so you kind of learn to go around that.

01:22:36.320 | For one thing, even in state sectors, you can have,

01:22:41.280 | and this often is the case in democratic countries,

01:22:43.920 | you have a transparent civil service,

01:22:47.920 | where people who are corrupt are prosecuted by judges,

01:22:51.960 | where it's frowned upon, and it just,

01:22:54.920 | over time, it goes away.

01:22:56.840 | So you go from having political machines

01:22:58.920 | that were tied to certain, had friends

01:23:01.000 | in certain police precincts and whatever else in the US

01:23:03.840 | in the 19th century and early 20th century,

01:23:07.120 | to now today, that would be a huge scandal

01:23:08.960 | and unheard of, right?

01:23:10.120 | So I think over time, having a independent court system,

01:23:15.720 | having a truly meritocratic civil service

01:23:20.120 | can be implemented anywhere.

01:23:22.080 | I think though, in the Soviet Union,

01:23:23.600 | the extra little bit that happened was,

01:23:27.400 | you had a bureaucracy that just had so much power

01:23:29.880 | because the bureaucracy was producing

01:23:32.840 | and distributing everything, and everyone was relying

01:23:35.000 | on the bureaucracy with jobs.

01:23:36.640 | The way to social advancement was through the bureaucracies,

01:23:39.920 | so you end up with people like Khrushchev,

01:23:42.480 | people going from peasants to supreme leaders of countries

01:23:46.920 | just through getting hooked up in the bureaucracy

01:23:49.840 | and advancing within it.

01:23:51.040 | And not all of these were bad people.

01:23:54.440 | I don't think Khrushchev was that bad of a person,

01:23:56.000 | or Gorbachev, but this is their mechanism

01:23:58.680 | to advancement in systems like this.

01:24:00.920 | In the vision of democratic socialism that I propose,

01:24:05.440 | the state doesn't have that overriding power to begin with,

01:24:09.120 | but I think in either case,

01:24:11.360 | corruption has arose in many different systems

01:24:13.760 | and has been successfully dealt with.

01:24:17.000 | I think on the developmental trajectory

01:24:19.160 | of even countries today that we think of

01:24:20.960 | as being very corrupt, corruption will fade away as well.

01:24:25.960 | But you definitely need a system in which individuals act,

01:24:33.080 | individuals are incentivized to act rationally.

01:24:38.600 | So if you're in a system in which cops who are corrupt

01:24:43.000 | are prosecuted and investigated,

01:24:45.720 | and there's internal controls, a civilian board review,

01:24:48.760 | and kind of an internal investigators

01:24:52.040 | within police departments or whatever else,

01:24:54.160 | there will be less corruption over time

01:24:56.520 | if people are punished.

01:24:58.680 | If you're in a system in which if you're running a firm

01:25:01.840 | or you're the manager of a firm, an elected manager,

01:25:04.920 | and everyone at that firm is trying for more efficiency

01:25:07.600 | and trying for more excess profits

01:25:09.920 | or whatever else at the end of the day,

01:25:11.600 | dividends at the end of the day,

01:25:13.160 | then if you try to hire your nephew

01:25:14.840 | and he's not good at your job,

01:25:16.320 | you're not gonna win re-election, right?

01:25:17.840 | So you shouldn't, I think no system should rely on

01:25:21.760 | a change in culture that come naturally

01:25:24.560 | or some sort of individual altruism.

01:25:27.240 | I think the systems have to be constructed

01:25:29.440 | in such a way that it's not rational to behave poorly.

01:25:33.080 | - In sort of from a theoretical perspective,

01:25:36.760 | either a socialist or capitalist system

01:25:38.680 | can have either culture.

01:25:41.860 | But it seems like if you prioritize meritocracy,

01:25:47.800 | if the people that are good, whatever the good means,

01:25:53.120 | in terms of integrity, in terms of performance,

01:25:55.360 | in terms of competence,

01:25:56.960 | it seems like that leads to a less corrupt system.

01:26:01.160 | And it seems like capitalism,

01:26:03.360 | there's all kinds of flavors of capitalism,

01:26:05.480 | but capitalism, because it does prioritize meritocracy,

01:26:09.120 | more often leads to less corruption.

01:26:12.720 | So that's not a question of political or economic systems,

01:26:15.720 | it's a question of what kind of stuff do you talk about

01:26:18.840 | that leads to a culture of less corruption?

01:26:21.800 | - First of all, I think in theory,

01:26:23.680 | maybe capitalism rewards meritocracy,

01:26:26.760 | but I think in practice, anyone watching this,

01:26:30.440 | or you and me, would think of some of the people we know

01:26:32.760 | that work the hardest, and they're often working class

01:26:36.320 | people working in the food service industry

01:26:38.120 | or whatever else, right?

01:26:40.320 | I think we don't have, in practice,

01:26:43.840 | I don't think we actually live in a society

01:26:45.600 | that rewards people for hard work.

01:26:48.600 | I think we reward people for a combination

01:26:51.240 | of accidents of birth plus hard work.

01:26:54.320 | - Let me push back, because yes, so I agree with you,

01:27:00.040 | but let me push back on a subtle point,

01:27:02.600 | because I like to draw a difference

01:27:04.360 | between hard work and meritocracy,

01:27:07.280 | because as a person who works really hard,

01:27:09.960 | like I work crazy hard, but I've also worked

01:27:13.120 | with a lot of people that are just much better than me.

01:27:16.240 | So hard work does not equal skill, good, productive.

01:27:21.240 | I just want to kind of draw that distinction,

01:27:23.400 | but I agree with you, I don't think our society rewards

01:27:28.760 | directly hard work or even high skill.

01:27:32.560 | There's many examples, at least we can see,

01:27:34.800 | that it does not do so.

01:27:36.240 | - So we have an unequal distribution of talent, of course.

01:27:39.480 | So if we lived in a society in which there was

01:27:42.640 | some level of acceptable inequality,

01:27:45.240 | and it's a normative kind of question

01:27:46.760 | of how much we would say is acceptable, right?

01:27:49.160 | And that inequality was based on this unequal distribution

01:27:54.240 | of talent, then I think that would be fine with me, right?

01:27:58.360 | That would actually be a meritocracy.

01:28:00.320 | What I see in the US is often, okay,

01:28:03.200 | so if you are a upper middle class or rich kid,

01:28:06.400 | and you get a good education, K through 12,

01:28:10.360 | out of those people, there will be some

01:28:14.280 | that work extra hard and go on to do incredible things

01:28:16.920 | or are very successful, and there'll be other people

01:28:19.160 | that do not, right?

01:28:22.160 | And decide for whatever reason or go down a different path.

01:28:26.280 | And you could say maybe among that group

01:28:28.400 | of the upper middle class, there is a meritocracy, right?

01:28:31.800 | But they're actually given those opportunities

01:28:34.040 | to make their own decisions and to fail,

01:28:36.440 | whereas many, many other people,

01:28:38.400 | the vast majority of American society,

01:28:40.600 | I would say 60 plus percent,

01:28:42.120 | don't really get those opportunities

01:28:43.680 | to make those choices to begin with.

01:28:46.200 | And I would aspire to the type of world,

01:28:48.560 | at least as a first step, in which our only inequalities

01:28:54.000 | are based on our unequal, innate distributions of talent.

01:28:59.000 | - Yeah, I guess a lot of people worry

01:29:01.920 | that when you have a socialist

01:29:05.240 | in any degree central planning,

01:29:07.520 | or perhaps a collective of workers,

01:29:10.440 | that it won't result in that kind of meritocracy

01:29:12.720 | that you're talking about.

01:29:13.560 | But you're saying that no, it's possible

01:29:15.920 | to have that kind of meritocracy.

01:29:17.440 | - Think about it this way.

01:29:18.640 | The workers themselves are incentivized

01:29:21.080 | and are shaped by market forces too, right?

01:29:24.000 | They're trying to respond to consumer needs and preferences.

01:29:27.480 | They're trying to expand market share.

01:29:28.720 | They're trying to make money.

01:29:30.040 | So it requires no kind of leap into,

01:29:32.120 | these people are gonna be more altruistic or whatever else,

01:29:34.600 | even on purely bourgeois terms,

01:29:36.680 | the same way you would maybe justify

01:29:39.320 | competitive capitalist firms.

01:29:40.560 | I think you could justify this system

01:29:42.760 | as long as you think that people,

01:29:45.520 | elected management can perform just as well.

01:29:47.840 | I think based on the experiences of cooperatives,

01:29:50.880 | we've seen that they can.

01:29:52.840 | And then at the state level,

01:29:54.560 | state bureaucracies have their own sort of sets of incentives

01:29:59.560 | but in most systems

01:30:02.040 | that already have extensive state bureaucracies,

01:30:04.880 | these people at high levels are appointed or elected,

01:30:08.200 | they're held to certain standards.

01:30:10.680 | At the national level,

01:30:11.960 | a national government wants to maintain the tax revenue

01:30:16.360 | that they need to pay for school services.

01:30:18.040 | So we already, I think, have incentive structures

01:30:21.280 | that you could say that some people might just,

01:30:23.720 | I think, disagree with the normative thing of like,

01:30:26.000 | why would people have to own their own means of production,

01:30:29.880 | control their workplaces or whatever else?

01:30:32.280 | Why do we need this level of equality?

01:30:34.520 | Can't we just get by with our existing system

01:30:38.360 | but just like make things a little bit easier

01:30:40.600 | for capitalists to make money

01:30:41.680 | and then everyone will benefit or whatever else.

01:30:43.360 | I mean, that's a normative question.

01:30:45.040 | In my vision of socialism,

01:30:46.600 | there'll be plenty of multiple parties

01:30:49.160 | with different views and perspectives

01:30:50.720 | trying to either push us deeper

01:30:53.280 | into more radical forms of socialism

01:30:55.240 | or on the other hand, to kind of roll back

01:30:57.600 | to more capitalist forms of government.

01:31:00.920 | So I think that, again,

01:31:02.400 | you can't try to make up a perfect system

01:31:04.920 | and try to implement it.

01:31:06.720 | You have to do it as a process democratically and so on.

01:31:12.440 | - So just philosophically, in your gut,

01:31:15.800 | you're more concerned about the innate equal value

01:31:19.560 | of human beings versus the efficiency

01:31:23.000 | of this wonderful mechanism that we call human civilization

01:31:26.440 | at producing cool stuff.

01:31:28.240 | Just like a gut, if we were sitting at a bar,

01:31:30.960 | that's where the gut feeling you come with.

01:31:34.480 | Of course, your mind is open

01:31:35.760 | but you want to protect the equal value of humans.

01:31:41.040 | - So I don't want to fight the hypothetical.

01:31:42.880 | So I'll say equality.

01:31:44.000 | I am concerned with equality

01:31:45.760 | but I don't think the two are necessarily always in tension.

01:31:49.340 | But also when you think about all the great things

01:31:53.280 | that human beings have produced,

01:31:56.640 | often I think people today just look at the end outcome.

01:32:00.400 | Like we go to the pyramids

01:32:03.800 | and we'll marvel at the pyramids

01:32:06.520 | and the human achievement that it took to make it happen

01:32:09.400 | but we won't stop to think about all the suffering

01:32:12.800 | that went into the making of that thing.

01:32:15.460 | So I think we kind of lean in the opposite direction

01:32:18.220 | where we marvel at our achievements

01:32:19.960 | but we don't often think about the suffering

01:32:23.280 | or exploitation that went into certain human achievements.

01:32:25.600 | I would love a society in which we could marvel at things

01:32:29.880 | and not have to worry about the exploitation

01:32:33.480 | that was involved because there was no exploitation

01:32:35.400 | or oppression involved.

01:32:36.640 | There was just human ingenuity

01:32:38.960 | and creativity and collaboration.

01:32:41.080 | - And to the degree, which you may disagree,

01:32:43.440 | to the degree there's a tension between the two,

01:32:45.920 | at least give equal weight

01:32:47.320 | to the consideration of the suffering

01:32:49.120 | and don't just marvel at the beauty of the creations.

01:32:53.280 | To the degree there is a tension between the two.

01:32:55.120 | - What Stalin did actually too, it's not just capitalists,

01:32:57.400 | but what Stalin did was he sacrificed whole generations

01:33:00.560 | because he thought that he was building something

01:33:02.720 | for the future, for future Russians to enjoy

01:33:05.360 | and for future people of the world to enjoy.

01:33:09.160 | And actually that analogy that I just gave

01:33:10.840 | about the pyramids was written by Karl Kotzke,

01:33:15.280 | the German socialist, anti-Stalinist critic,

01:33:20.200 | when he was complaining about US journalists and others

01:33:23.300 | going to Russia in the 1930s

01:33:25.120 | and marveling at all the new industries.

01:33:27.880 | Are these people blind to the suffering

01:33:29.800 | behind these things that they're marveling about?

01:33:32.320 | - Speaking of which, I think you mentioned

01:33:34.960 | in the context of a social democracy

01:33:38.240 | that freedom of speech and freedom of the press

01:33:40.880 | or basically the freedom of people to have a voice

01:33:43.120 | is an important component,

01:33:44.740 | which I think is something that caught my ear a little bit

01:33:47.640 | because if you think about the Soviet Union,

01:33:49.880 | one of the ways that the authoritarian regime

01:33:54.880 | was able to control,

01:33:56.960 | it's almost part of the central planning

01:33:58.760 | is you have to control the message

01:34:00.000 | and you have to limit the freedom of the press.

01:34:01.640 | So there's a kind of notion, especially in like ideas

01:34:05.960 | or maybe caricatures of the ideas of cultural Marxism,

01:34:10.680 | sometimes caricatured even further as wokeism,

01:34:13.840 | that you wanna be careful with speech.

01:34:16.440 | You want to censor speech because some speech hurts people.

01:34:19.640 | So in some sense, you want to respect the value,

01:34:23.880 | the equality of human beings

01:34:25.940 | by being careful with the words you say.

01:34:28.000 | So is there a tension there for you?

01:34:31.320 | - I think there's no tension.

01:34:32.840 | And part, I think that it is very condescending

01:34:36.680 | or patronizing to assume that people can't take debate,

01:34:41.120 | that people can't either as a society or individuals

01:34:45.960 | visually be engaged in the exchange of ideas

01:34:50.000 | without or even very vigorous debate

01:34:53.960 | without being broken by it.

01:34:56.800 | It's just not the case.

01:34:58.080 | - I'm basically a free speech absolutist.

01:35:01.080 | I mean, I would draw the line at obviously

01:35:03.240 | direct incitements of violence

01:35:06.120 | or certain other speech like that, but in general.

01:35:09.240 | - Do you think a lot of people

01:35:10.320 | would be surprised to hear that?

01:35:11.920 | - No, I mean, not people who know my work.

01:35:14.680 | I mean, more generally, I think a lot of people on the right

01:35:17.680 | even in the center, I think might have the idea

01:35:20.860 | that a lot of the far left wants to censor them.

01:35:24.720 | I think some of the center left wants to censor them,

01:35:27.160 | but I think a lot on the far left,

01:35:29.240 | on the Marxist or socialist left,

01:35:31.440 | I think that free speech is more or less the norm.

01:35:36.440 | - Yeah, where is the imperative to censor coming from?

01:35:43.200 | Is this just some small subset of the left on Twitter?

01:35:47.960 | Is there some philosophical idea behind certain groups

01:35:51.320 | that like if we're to steal me on the case

01:35:54.040 | in which group actually has the interest of humanity

01:35:58.200 | in mind in wanting to censor speech?

01:36:02.160 | - I think we might need to just take it case by case

01:36:04.560 | for an example by example, 'cause honestly,

01:36:07.440 | I would have to think about a particular case,

01:36:11.200 | but let's just say generally that a lot of American

01:36:14.880 | liberalism rightly sees the revolution

01:36:19.880 | around the civil rights and later the extension

01:36:23.380 | of this rights revolution for gay rights and so on

01:36:28.080 | as being a very positive achievement

01:36:31.080 | of the last half century and I completely agree.

01:36:33.940 | Now for me, now that we've won those rights,

01:36:39.000 | a lot of our battle for change needs to go beyond

01:36:42.120 | the representational realm and needs to really reground

01:36:45.880 | itself in the material bread and butter struggles

01:36:50.400 | of ordinary people trying to survive,

01:36:53.160 | the battle for good healthcare for all Americans

01:36:56.960 | and so on, these are my immediate demands.

01:36:59.160 | I think there's a segment of American liberalism

01:37:01.680 | that doesn't want to go in that confrontational

01:37:03.920 | economic direction and wants to skirt away

01:37:07.080 | from battles over things like universal healthcare

01:37:10.760 | and so on and really are just still caught

01:37:13.780 | at this battle over rights and representation

01:37:17.240 | and it's devolved in such a way that they feel

01:37:21.080 | like they need to make change the way they make change

01:37:24.240 | is only through interventions and culture

01:37:26.760 | 'cause they don't really have the same sense

01:37:28.320 | of class and class struggle that agree or disagree with it.

01:37:32.200 | It's a very material plane.

01:37:34.200 | So instead, they look at comedians who said

01:37:37.120 | the wrong thing or they look at all sorts of other ways

01:37:42.120 | to make change that's not really making a change,

01:37:45.080 | it's just making them look bad and making our culture worse

01:37:50.080 | and I think that's where a lot of it comes from

01:37:53.240 | but I think that a lot of the left,

01:37:56.640 | even the left that's much more into battles over race

01:38:00.640 | and lots of other stuff like real serious anti-racist

01:38:05.200 | on the left, of course I'm an anti-racist

01:38:06.800 | but a lot of my work is focused on the primacy of class

01:38:11.380 | but even these people are very concerned

01:38:12.980 | about material struggles and issues

01:38:15.160 | and they don't really care about these issues

01:38:18.960 | they think are ephemeral kind of issues.

01:38:22.480 | - So when you focus exclusively on language

01:38:25.880 | that somehow leads you astray,

01:38:27.600 | like on being concerned about language

01:38:29.760 | without like deeper economic inequalities and so on,

01:38:34.760 | you just become an asshole.

01:38:37.680 | That's on Twitter pointing out how everything,

01:38:39.920 | how racist everyone is.

01:38:43.000 | So the anti-racism becomes a caricature of anti-racism.

01:38:46.320 | - Exactly 'cause anti-racism was really about

01:38:49.240 | the struggle of people for equal rights and voting.

01:38:52.760 | It was about the struggle for people

01:38:54.640 | who were trapped into bad neighborhoods

01:38:58.360 | because they couldn't get decent jobs

01:39:01.080 | and their neighborhoods were redlined or whatever else.

01:39:03.080 | It was really like a struggle for survival.

01:39:05.040 | And what was the main demands, like the language of this?

01:39:08.080 | One, it was the march for jobs and freedom.

01:39:12.120 | It was the slogan, I am a man,

01:39:14.280 | asserting the kind of universal dignity of people.

01:39:17.600 | This is what the civil rights movement was about.

01:39:20.440 | And it wasn't a surprise,

01:39:21.400 | there was a lot of self-described socialists,

01:39:23.560 | people like Bayard Rustin, A. Philip Randolph,

01:39:28.480 | Martin Luther King Jr.

01:39:30.640 | I mean, these were people who were,

01:39:33.800 | Ella Baker, they were socialists.

01:39:35.880 | And I think a lot of Americans agree with them

01:39:39.480 | with their immediate demands,

01:39:41.640 | even though they weren't themselves socialists,

01:39:44.760 | but it was a very materialistic struggle.

01:39:47.600 | And I think a lot of this has been co-opted

01:39:49.640 | into just some sort of vague

01:39:51.800 | and just disconcerting complaints

01:39:55.800 | about language or culture and so on.

01:39:59.960 | - Martin Luther King was a socialist.

01:40:01.600 | To what degree was he a socialist?

01:40:02.920 | I would love to learn about that.

01:40:04.760 | - Martin Luther King, I think, broadly called himself

01:40:07.520 | at various points in his life,

01:40:08.560 | a Christian socialist or a democratic socialist,

01:40:13.280 | especially after his speech against the Vietnam War

01:40:18.280 | and the Riverside Church, I think that was '67,

01:40:21.360 | the last years of his life,

01:40:22.600 | he became much more involved in struggles against the war

01:40:25.920 | and also struggles for workers' rights.

01:40:29.520 | He was assassinated when he was at a rally

01:40:32.760 | at workers' rights, so he thought the next battle

01:40:35.080 | was gonna be an economic battle.

01:40:36.880 | He had this famous line where he said,

01:40:39.160 | "I don't just want to integrate the lunch counter

01:40:42.680 | "if it means that we can't afford to order a burger

01:40:46.200 | "while we're there."

01:40:47.240 | That was the line along those lines.

01:40:48.680 | And I think that got to his point

01:40:49.800 | where the civil rights struggle was part of a step

01:40:53.120 | of building some sort of wider movement.

01:40:55.080 | So he and these other civil rights leaders

01:40:56.840 | were very much interested in working with organized labor,

01:41:00.000 | with working with the left as it was constructed then,

01:41:04.080 | and building some sort of mass space

01:41:05.760 | for not just rights, but redistribution.

01:41:08.640 | - Yeah, it's fascinating.

01:41:10.720 | It's fascinating which figures self-identified

01:41:13.480 | and were in part socialists.

01:41:14.920 | - Albert Einstein was one.

01:41:16.560 | - Albert Einstein was a socialist.

01:41:17.400 | - Albert Einstein wrote an article

01:41:19.680 | for the first issue of this left-wing magazine.

01:41:24.560 | It's actually still publishing today

01:41:25.600 | called "Monthly Review" in, I think, 1949.

01:41:28.400 | And his article was called "Why Socialism?"

01:41:31.680 | I don't think it's paywalled,

01:41:32.760 | so people should check it out.

01:41:35.080 | But yeah, Einstein was one.

01:41:36.320 | - Huh, huh.

01:41:38.640 | So probably the central idea is the pacifist,

01:41:42.040 | the anti-war idea for him, or no?

01:41:45.280 | - Honestly, it's been so many years since I read it.

01:41:48.200 | I think it was more about,

01:41:50.080 | I think it was actually more economically focused,

01:41:53.480 | but I would need to go back and read it.

01:41:54.920 | - But is war in general a part

01:41:59.040 | of the fundamental ideas that socialists are against,

01:42:01.920 | Democratic socialists are against?

01:42:03.600 | Like, what's the relation between socialism and war?

01:42:06.480 | - So I think that traditionally in the socialist movement,

01:42:08.600 | war was associated with capitalist competition

01:42:12.440 | and international competition.

01:42:15.040 | And you can look at World War I as very much a case

01:42:17.480 | where different nations were competing with each other

01:42:20.760 | and developing quite violent rivalries

01:42:23.760 | that was in part based on competition

01:42:26.080 | and the periphery over access to markets and colonies

01:42:29.360 | and whatever else.

01:42:30.560 | So it was very easy to draw a direct correlation.

01:42:35.320 | I am opposed to war.

01:42:40.040 | I'm opposed to imperialism,

01:42:41.400 | the domination of strong nations,

01:42:43.640 | dominating smaller nations.

01:42:46.300 | I wouldn't call myself a pacifist.

01:42:49.080 | I think most socialists wouldn't call themselves pacifists

01:42:51.440 | because there are some struggles that are worth fighting for.

01:42:53.720 | There's national liberation struggles and so on,

01:42:56.440 | where if there's no democratic avenue for change,

01:43:00.040 | positive change has been made through armed revolts

01:43:03.360 | around colonialism and whatnot.

01:43:05.240 | But we're living in an age where hopefully,

01:43:07.400 | I know neither of us have children,

01:43:10.800 | our children or children's children in the future

01:43:13.880 | won't have to live through war.

01:43:15.960 | And that is one thing that as countries

01:43:19.260 | have gotten more developed, as the world has changed,

01:43:22.960 | we've actually seen less and less war.

01:43:24.960 | Like I won't dispute Pinker on this.

01:43:27.600 | I think it's true.

01:43:28.580 | Obviously Putin's invasion of Ukraine

01:43:32.520 | and the conflict in Ethiopia is like kind of an exception,

01:43:36.180 | but on the whole, I think we're going in that direction.

01:43:41.180 | But I think it's always been a major organizing plank

01:43:45.080 | of socialists against war and against just kind of

01:43:48.000 | this sense of right-wing nationalism and national identity

01:43:52.440 | that often leads to war.

01:43:54.880 | And obviously not everyone on the right has embraced that.

01:43:57.080 | A lot of libertarians are consistently anti-war as well.

01:44:00.800 | But I think the right ideologically

01:44:04.160 | has been associated with war,

01:44:05.560 | even if some advocates of capitalism have not been.

01:44:09.200 | - Then there's the military industrial complex,

01:44:11.420 | which is the financial machine of the whole thing.

01:44:13.880 | I presume, well, well, since a lot of that is government,

01:44:18.880 | what's the relation to socialism

01:44:22.200 | and the military industrial complex?

01:44:25.340 | - Well, a lot of it's government contracts,

01:44:27.240 | but it's privately produced, right?

01:44:28.640 | By companies like Lockheed Martin and things like that.

01:44:32.460 | You could draw a very crude materialist connection

01:44:35.400 | between any of these things

01:44:36.640 | and to kind of prove an ideological point,

01:44:39.960 | but we could produce just as many arms

01:44:41.560 | and then just bury them or never fire them off

01:44:43.640 | or whatever else.

01:44:46.120 | Obviously there are companies that have a vested interest

01:44:49.220 | in heightening up tensions

01:44:52.820 | or saying that we need to buy a new weapon system

01:44:55.400 | and be prepared for a conventional war with China, Russia.

01:44:59.040 | Meanwhile, I think we all know

01:45:00.480 | that if there's gonna be a conventional war

01:45:02.000 | between these countries,

01:45:03.200 | it's gonna lead to something worse.

01:45:07.380 | And no amount of advanced fighter jets

01:45:11.720 | is gonna make a difference.

01:45:14.520 | But I try to avoid cruder, causal connections,

01:45:19.240 | even though there are relationships.

01:45:21.680 | It's kind of like the old slogan,

01:45:24.260 | which was quite an effective slogan in the early 2000s.

01:45:27.720 | At my first anti-war marches when I was a teenager,

01:45:30.920 | I definitely have shouted it,

01:45:32.000 | but kind of no war for oil.

01:45:33.960 | Like both is correct in that it gets to what people's senses

01:45:37.920 | of what's going on and how it's bad,

01:45:39.960 | but also analytically it's kind of wanting

01:45:43.160 | to explain what really happened

01:45:45.260 | or why we ended up in the Middle East,

01:45:47.840 | which is a much more complex geopolitical story.

01:45:50.340 | - Yeah, and it is a story of geopolitics.

01:45:54.060 | It's perhaps less a story of capitalism or socialism.

01:45:58.980 | It's a story, yeah, it's a geopolitical story

01:46:03.580 | that I think actually operates outside

01:46:05.660 | of the economic system of the individual nations.

01:46:08.520 | It has to do more with, honestly, in part, egos of leaders.

01:46:13.320 | And there's a international battle for resources,

01:46:19.600 | but surely there's alternatives.

01:46:22.000 | - Yeah, definitely.

01:46:22.840 | I think that part of what being a socialist is

01:46:26.380 | is about dreaming in the long-term

01:46:29.000 | about a different sort of world without, in my mind,

01:46:32.280 | needless divisions of people into nations

01:46:34.620 | with standing armies.

01:46:35.800 | I'm sure we'll still have pride about where we're from

01:46:39.600 | and there'll still be distinctive cultural features

01:46:41.740 | and so on about where we're from.

01:46:43.380 | We definitely would, at least for the foreseeable future,

01:46:47.680 | be divided into places as like administrative units,

01:46:52.420 | but the idea that there should be a Mexican army

01:46:55.620 | and an American army and a Russian army

01:46:59.060 | and a Ukrainian army is just on the face of it,

01:47:01.140 | I think in the long run will be seen as ridiculous,

01:47:04.020 | just like we see it as ridiculous today,

01:47:06.140 | looking back at the idea that a lord from London

01:47:11.140 | would be engaged in civil strife

01:47:15.780 | with a lord from Liverpool

01:47:18.380 | and a bunch of peasants would die.

01:47:20.580 | Just kind of on the face of it just seems kind of ridiculous

01:47:22.940 | that these different places would have their own banners

01:47:25.380 | and lords and armies.

01:47:26.740 | I think in the long run,

01:47:28.060 | you might have to zoom out 1,000 years,

01:47:29.660 | but in the long run, people will say the same

01:47:31.980 | about nation states and standing armies

01:47:34.780 | and battles over specks of dirt

01:47:39.780 | that mean nothing in a cosmic sense.

01:47:42.200 | - Yeah, no, for sure, aliens would laugh at us

01:47:45.440 | or humans that go far beyond Earth

01:47:48.980 | and look at the history, hmm.

01:47:52.860 | Well, most of the history will be forgotten

01:47:55.660 | because if humans successfully expand out into the universe,

01:47:59.420 | just the scale of civilization will grow so fast

01:48:02.380 | that the bickering of the first few thousand years

01:48:06.460 | of human history will seem insignificant.

01:48:08.860 | - There's a very Marxist idea

01:48:11.340 | that I both appreciate in one way,

01:48:13.260 | but on the other hand, it's kind of scary,

01:48:14.820 | which is that human history is only now beginning

01:48:18.720 | before we're in prehistory,

01:48:20.700 | but in the future, we'll be in real history.

01:48:24.300 | I think that a lot of really important history

01:48:28.460 | has already happened,

01:48:29.380 | and I think posterity will remember it,

01:48:33.500 | and I think that it will be easier to assign

01:48:36.420 | to certain people the role of villains,

01:48:40.260 | the people not to engage in the contentious topic,

01:48:44.900 | off topic of Ukraine or whatever else,

01:48:46.940 | but the idea that one government or man

01:48:49.980 | would launch a war to recover

01:48:53.180 | or to take several hundred square miles of territory

01:48:58.560 | and tens of thousands of people will die,

01:49:00.220 | I think seems absurd to us, many people today, luckily,

01:49:03.480 | but it would not have seemed absurd 50, 60 years ago.

01:49:06.620 | It would have just been a normal thing,

01:49:08.180 | these kind of territorial disputes and so on,

01:49:09.980 | and I think projecting the future,

01:49:11.900 | I think within our lifetimes,

01:49:13.120 | we'll live to see that kind of conflict be eradicated,

01:49:17.640 | and in part, you could say that, like, why?

01:49:22.600 | I think it's because of popular pressure and organization,

01:49:25.080 | so you could say kind of the pro-worker,

01:49:27.020 | socialist organizing part of it, making it less normal,

01:49:30.400 | but if you're a capitalist, you could say,

01:49:32.480 | well, markets are more interlinked,

01:49:34.160 | so war is even more irrational.

01:49:35.840 | I don't really have a firm answer, whatever it is,

01:49:39.240 | I think it's a good thing.

01:49:41.640 | - You mentioned Marxist view of history,

01:49:43.680 | it's kind of interesting to just briefly talk about,

01:49:46.120 | what do you think of it?

01:49:47.200 | What do you think of this Marxist view

01:49:50.240 | of how the different systems evolve

01:49:52.780 | from the perspective of class struggle,

01:49:55.280 | is what we're talking about?

01:49:57.080 | - Well, I fundamentally, I'm a Marxist,

01:49:58.720 | I fundamentally believe in the broad contours

01:50:02.160 | of historical materialism,

01:50:04.320 | but I think we should be clear on what Marxist theory

01:50:08.800 | tells us and what it doesn't tell us.

01:50:10.840 | I think Marxist theory tells us pertinent things

01:50:13.920 | about how societies evolve,

01:50:16.080 | about how the distributional resources work

01:50:18.640 | in any given society, who owns, who doesn't,

01:50:22.800 | how the conflict, distributional conflicts and so on.

01:50:27.400 | I think Marxism can tell us a lot.

01:50:29.400 | - How surplus is distributed.

01:50:31.240 | - Exactly, exactly.

01:50:32.680 | What it can't tell us is, as a friend put it,

01:50:37.480 | the sex appeal of blue jeans or whatever else,

01:50:40.800 | that's beyond what Marxism is meant to do.

01:50:44.520 | - What economic system can tell us

01:50:46.120 | about the sex appeal of blue jeans?

01:50:47.640 | - No economic system, but socialism in the Soviet sense,

01:50:51.720 | when it was turned into the Soviet style,

01:50:54.280 | dialectical materialism, was meant to tell us everything

01:50:57.960 | from explain genetics and agriculture and whatever else

01:51:02.960 | in a very disastrous way.

01:51:07.600 | So I definitely don't believe in the application

01:51:10.960 | of these ideas in an extremely wide way.

01:51:15.560 | And also I'm a Marxist because it's a framework

01:51:18.120 | that helps me understand pertinent facts about the world.

01:51:21.760 | If at some point I no longer think the framework

01:51:26.480 | is doing that, I will not be a Marxist,

01:51:29.320 | but I'm a socialist on normative grounds

01:51:33.080 | because I have certain beliefs about the equality of people

01:51:36.360 | because I believe we should have a society with liberty,

01:51:39.640 | with equality, with fraternity.

01:51:41.920 | And that I hope I'll always be a socialist

01:51:45.360 | until the day I die, but it's kind of a very unscientific

01:51:49.520 | or unserious thing to say, this is my framework

01:51:52.400 | from beginning to end for the rest of my life.

01:51:54.840 | - But from a perspective of history,

01:51:56.640 | you should say that, so Marx says that you go through,

01:51:59.560 | societies go through different stages.

01:52:02.440 | It could be crudely summarized as primitive communism,

01:52:06.920 | imperialism, maybe slave society, feudalism,

01:52:10.120 | defined by marketalism, and then capitalism and socialism,

01:52:16.800 | and finally stateless communism, communism.

01:52:21.760 | Did I miss something there?

01:52:23.920 | - I mean, I think that was close enough.

01:52:25.520 | I mean, I think that's definitely true of Marxist theory

01:52:29.960 | that the contradictions of capitalism,

01:52:33.520 | the fact that it has brought together all these workers,

01:52:37.720 | all these materials and whatever else,

01:52:41.200 | and it's now allowing it to socially create wealth

01:52:43.760 | on a mass scale, but that wealth is,

01:52:47.000 | that process is being privately directed.

01:52:51.160 | And also the surplus is being privately kind of appropriated

01:52:55.880 | is a contradiction.

01:52:57.160 | And that would lead to some sort of rebellion

01:52:59.960 | or revolution or change.

01:53:01.360 | And eventually this contradiction

01:53:03.920 | would be a Federal production too.

01:53:05.280 | So we would have to move into a socialist society.

01:53:09.200 | - But actually just to backtrack,

01:53:10.840 | so in terms of contradictions,

01:53:12.760 | so it starts when we're in a village, hunter gatherers,

01:53:16.320 | that's what you call primitive communism,

01:53:18.240 | where everyone's kind of equal.

01:53:20.080 | It's kind of a collective, right?

01:53:22.360 | All right, maybe you could just let me, hold on a second.

01:53:25.040 | And then inequalities form of different flavors.

01:53:27.520 | So that's what imperialism is,

01:53:28.800 | is one dude rises to the top

01:53:31.120 | and has some control of different flavor.

01:53:34.080 | That's what feudalism with,

01:53:35.560 | when you have one dude at the top

01:53:37.480 | and you have merchants doing some trading and so on.

01:53:40.960 | And then that leads to capitalism

01:53:42.360 | when you have private ownership of companies

01:53:45.040 | and they do some,

01:53:46.040 | they result in some kind of class inequality.

01:53:49.120 | And eventually that results in a revolution

01:53:53.600 | that says, no, this inequality is not okay,

01:53:56.840 | it's not natural,

01:53:57.680 | it doesn't respect the value of human beings

01:53:59.240 | and therefore it goes to socialism.

01:54:01.440 | Where there is, under Marx's view,

01:54:05.400 | I guess some role for the state.

01:54:07.140 | State is doing some redistribution

01:54:10.360 | and then the pure communism at the end is when it's,

01:54:14.920 | it's a collective where there's no state centralized power.

01:54:22.360 | - So-- - What part of that is wrong?

01:54:24.960 | - No, I think broadly the Marxist theory of history

01:54:29.480 | is about different types, different modes of production

01:54:35.400 | that exist at various times based on material conditions.

01:54:41.040 | So in the early times in this theory,

01:54:45.220 | there was not much surplus being generated, right?

01:54:48.840 | And there was generally egalitarian societies.

01:54:52.320 | Then as we became agricultural, as society developed,

01:54:57.320 | there was more surplus being produced.

01:55:00.600 | And then there was a group of people

01:55:02.560 | that were ruling classes of their age

01:55:05.700 | that controlled and distributed that,

01:55:09.080 | that controlled that divisional labor

01:55:11.240 | and appropriated more of that surplus for themselves.

01:55:13.880 | And they weren't involved in productive labor.

01:55:16.480 | In early primitive society,

01:55:17.680 | everybody's involved in productive labor.

01:55:20.160 | Later on, you had castes of priests

01:55:22.880 | who did nothing but kind of pray and write

01:55:24.720 | and kind of lecture people all day, right?

01:55:27.320 | And you had kings and rulers and bureaucrats

01:55:30.760 | and traders and so on.

01:55:31.920 | You have a more complex division of labor,

01:55:34.320 | but also more inequity driving out of that.

01:55:38.580 | Capitalism was a revolutionary system

01:55:43.120 | because it took away,

01:55:44.840 | one, it made us tremendously more productive, right?

01:55:47.360 | It expanded production beyond our wildest imaginations,

01:55:51.720 | but it also no longer bound workers

01:55:55.160 | to their lord or manor or whatever else.

01:55:58.280 | They were now free to move,

01:55:59.600 | free to engage in contracts with employers and so on.

01:56:03.820 | But even though workers are now producing

01:56:07.580 | all this tremendous wealth,

01:56:09.120 | and even though productive forces

01:56:10.640 | had been matured in such a way,

01:56:13.040 | they were ultimately taken away

01:56:16.720 | from all the wealth that they were created.

01:56:18.840 | They got some of it back.

01:56:20.080 | They were in wealthy societies,

01:56:21.960 | but they were all there collectively together

01:56:24.080 | producing this wealth.

01:56:25.600 | And that was a potent force.

01:56:27.520 | So Marx theorized that would lead to a revolution

01:56:30.840 | or change in a socialist direction.

01:56:33.720 | I think, in fact, what we saw was that,

01:56:35.900 | yes, workers are dependent on,

01:56:40.100 | capitalists are dependent on workers,

01:56:43.880 | but the dependency is obviously symmetrical

01:56:48.880 | in the sense that workers are also dependent on capitalists,

01:56:51.240 | but in fact, it's an asymmetrical dependency

01:56:53.400 | in that ordinary workers need their jobs

01:56:56.320 | more than capitalists need the contribution

01:56:59.340 | of individual workers.

01:57:02.440 | So it became kind of a collective action problem

01:57:05.640 | where you would need the mass of workers to get together,

01:57:08.560 | decide to change things,

01:57:09.800 | but also people would be afraid

01:57:11.080 | because they'd be dependent on their jobs

01:57:12.640 | for their livelihood and so on.

01:57:14.440 | So revolution became a lot harder than people thought,

01:57:18.560 | especially in democratic countries

01:57:21.440 | where workers had certain outlets

01:57:23.400 | and certain powers and rights and responsibility.

01:57:25.920 | It's no surprise that

01:57:27.360 | where you did have socialist revolutions,

01:57:28.960 | they were in places like the third world,

01:57:31.600 | post-colonial states trying to emerge out of colonialism.

01:57:35.800 | They were in places like China and Russia,

01:57:39.520 | autocratic countries,

01:57:40.720 | and never in a advanced capitalist country.

01:57:45.720 | Now, in Marxist theory of history,

01:57:50.560 | even as interpreted by a lot of smart Marxists

01:57:52.680 | like G.A. Cohen and others,

01:57:54.860 | there is a certain inevitability

01:57:58.840 | to socialism after capitalism.

01:58:01.760 | The way that I would put it myself

01:58:04.800 | is I kind of have a more,

01:58:06.720 | I guess you could say like Kantian view of it.

01:58:08.320 | Like I think socialism is something that ought to happen,

01:58:12.440 | but it's not something that necessarily will happen

01:58:16.800 | and we'll need to organize and persuade.

01:58:20.920 | And also potentially, again,

01:58:23.520 | the key part of any social system that's democratic

01:58:26.840 | is you have to allow for the possibility

01:58:30.360 | of a democratic revision to a different sort of system.

01:58:33.520 | So I'd be more than happy in my vision of socialism

01:58:36.560 | for there to be capitalist parties

01:58:38.320 | getting, you know,

01:58:40.720 | hopefully three, four, or 5% of the vote,

01:58:42.640 | maybe a lot more,

01:58:43.760 | in the same way that in the US or a republic

01:58:46.280 | we could right now have a monarchist party.

01:58:48.360 | No one's gonna support a monarchist party

01:58:50.080 | in the US in serious numbers.

01:58:53.960 | - Although that's gaining popularity.

01:58:55.880 | - In Europe or elsewhere?

01:58:56.840 | - No, in, isn't there, in the anarchist tradition,

01:59:01.840 | isn't there, aren't they saying that

01:59:04.000 | one of the ways you could have a leader's in monarchy,

01:59:06.920 | because they're more directly responsible to the citizens.

01:59:10.080 | If you have a leader, it's healthier to have a monarch.

01:59:13.640 | Anyway, I'm not familiar with this,

01:59:15.120 | but I have heard this stated multiple times.

01:59:17.440 | - In the left-wing anarchist traditions,

01:59:19.720 | like anarcho-syndicalism or whatever else,

01:59:22.360 | like their slogan is kind of no kings,

01:59:26.840 | no gods, no masters or whatever, so, no bosses.

01:59:30.480 | So they definitely would not agree with that,

01:59:32.320 | but I'm not familiar enough.

01:59:34.560 | Anarchism runs a gamut from left to right

01:59:38.240 | in interesting ways.

01:59:39.080 | - I'll have to ask about that.

01:59:42.040 | But yeah, okay, so you're not,

01:59:44.920 | you don't believe Marx's theory of history

01:59:48.320 | in the sense that everything,

01:59:50.680 | every stage is a natural consequence of every other stage.

01:59:53.480 | Of course, he would predict that somebody like you

01:59:55.560 | must exist in order for those stages

01:59:59.160 | to go from one to the next, 'cause you might,

02:00:01.080 | 'cause you have to believe ought

02:00:03.680 | in order for action to be taken,

02:00:05.280 | to inspire the populace to take action.

02:00:07.400 | - So, two things.

02:00:08.960 | One is, I do broadly believe in Marx's theory of history,

02:00:13.200 | 'cause it's just explaining how productive forces develop

02:00:17.080 | and the relations of production in any given system.

02:00:21.760 | I guess there's a theory of transition

02:00:24.200 | from capitalism to socialism

02:00:26.000 | that Marx didn't really spell out,

02:00:27.480 | but it was kind of implied that it would naturally happen.

02:00:30.760 | And Marx was living in an era of tremendous upheaval.

02:00:34.040 | Marx himself actually saw,

02:00:35.520 | when he was living in London in the 1870s,

02:00:39.080 | the Paris Commune,

02:00:40.200 | when workers took over for just a few months,

02:00:42.480 | but they took over, the producers of Paris

02:00:44.640 | took over the city,

02:00:45.800 | basically created their own government,

02:00:47.200 | their own system, and so on.

02:00:49.840 | So he was living through an era of upheaval.

02:00:53.080 | And Engels, especially, oversaw and was the mentor

02:00:57.320 | to all these rising socialist parties.

02:01:00.720 | So he was very closely collaborating with socialists

02:01:04.920 | in places like Britain and Germany,

02:01:07.200 | when they were drafting their first programs

02:01:09.840 | for the Social Democratic Party.

02:01:13.040 | So it felt like this was gonna happen.

02:01:16.240 | It felt like this rise in working class would take power,

02:01:20.560 | but I think the stability of the system was underestimated.

02:01:25.240 | It's easy to see the contradictions in the system,

02:01:27.680 | but can you see its mechanisms of stability?

02:01:30.960 | The way in which mass collective action or revolution

02:01:34.480 | is more the exception or the norm.

02:01:36.920 | Could you have imagined, if you're Marx,

02:01:38.920 | not only how much wealth the system would produce over time,

02:01:42.320 | which I think you could have imagined,

02:01:44.120 | but also developments like the welfare state

02:01:46.840 | and mass democracy and universal suffrage,

02:01:49.600 | which might've changed how workers relate to the system

02:01:53.480 | or operate within it.

02:01:55.840 | So I think it's just the transition part

02:01:58.520 | that I think wasn't spelled out properly.

02:02:00.960 | But I think in either case, as socialists,

02:02:04.240 | we can't assume that history is working in our favor.

02:02:07.960 | We just need to kind of hold out

02:02:09.720 | and wait for the inevitable revolution.

02:02:12.960 | We have to convince people of both,

02:02:15.560 | one, the struggle for day-to-day reforms

02:02:18.000 | and why it's important to be politically organized,

02:02:20.200 | why it's important to be a member of a union

02:02:22.520 | or to advocate for things like universal healthcare

02:02:26.400 | or whatever else to try to kind of build the cohesion

02:02:29.200 | and sense of self of the class,

02:02:32.520 | then ultimately for the desirability,

02:02:35.800 | once we accomplish it, once we build social democracy,

02:02:38.480 | of going beyond social democracy,

02:02:40.280 | which is, of course, the challenge.

02:02:42.160 | Now, I don't think it requires leadership from the outside.

02:02:44.960 | I think there are plenty of organic leaders

02:02:47.960 | that have emerged from the working class

02:02:49.560 | that have advocated for socialism from the working class.

02:02:54.560 | And if you look at the class composition

02:02:59.280 | during the glory days of the European socialist parties,

02:03:02.600 | I mean, this was very much a working class parties

02:03:06.920 | and organizations.

02:03:07.760 | It's only been the last like 30 years

02:03:09.320 | that it's been taken over by professionals

02:03:11.160 | and not coincidentally,

02:03:14.920 | they have accomplished very little in those 30 years.

02:03:20.040 | - So that's the practical and the pragmatic.

02:03:21.840 | Can we actually jump to the, at the horizon?

02:03:26.680 | As you mentioned, as a social democrat,

02:03:29.040 | you focus on the policies of today,

02:03:30.840 | but you also have a vision and dream of a future.

02:03:33.560 | And so Marx did as well.

02:03:35.040 | So the perfect communism at the end.

02:03:37.640 | Can you describe that world?

02:03:40.160 | Also, is there elements to that world

02:03:42.040 | that has elements of anarchism?

02:03:46.080 | So again, like I said, there's Michael Malice next door.

02:03:49.760 | So like a narco communism,

02:03:52.720 | I don't even know if I'm using that term correctly,

02:03:54.840 | but basically no central control.

02:03:57.720 | Can you describe what that world looks like?

02:03:59.480 | - I think the traditional socialist vision

02:04:02.800 | of kind of, if you want to call it full communism

02:04:05.440 | would be very similar to the anarchist vision

02:04:09.200 | of a world without coercion, mass abundance and so on.

02:04:13.640 | I myself don't share that vision.

02:04:15.840 | I believe that we will always need to have a state

02:04:22.520 | in some form as a way to, one,

02:04:27.040 | even just mediate difference.

02:04:30.120 | I think traditionally a lot of Marxists have thought

02:04:34.040 | that after you remove the primary contradiction,

02:04:36.400 | quote unquote, of class,

02:04:38.680 | that the other, all other political questions

02:04:41.200 | would be resolved.

02:04:42.920 | And I think that's a lot behind a lot of the thinking

02:04:44.840 | of we're gonna have a full communism after politics.

02:04:47.640 | I don't think there will be an after politics.

02:04:50.520 | I think for one thing, let's say,

02:04:53.040 | I'll give you another Northeast example.

02:04:54.920 | Let's say me and you are trying to,

02:04:57.560 | with different groups of people,

02:04:58.640 | we're trying to figure out how to build a crossing

02:05:00.920 | of the Hudson River.

02:05:02.280 | And for various reasons, you and the people around you

02:05:05.360 | want to build a bridge.

02:05:06.720 | Me and the people around me need, want to build a tunnel.

02:05:11.160 | That's a question that you will probably need

02:05:13.800 | a mediation for, right?

02:05:15.200 | You'll need, one, it's a big project,

02:05:17.360 | so there'll be a very complex division of labor and so on.

02:05:19.880 | But even beyond that, just politically,

02:05:21.800 | you will need the state to mediate the difference.

02:05:25.280 | You'll need to have a vote, have a vote that people trust,

02:05:27.920 | have institutions that people trust,

02:05:30.280 | and so on to make a decision.

02:05:32.640 | Society is never going to go beyond that decision-making.

02:05:35.680 | - You don't think it's possible outside of the state

02:05:37.840 | to create stable voting mechanisms?

02:05:41.680 | Or is human nature going to always seep into that?

02:05:44.640 | - I just wonder why we would have to,

02:05:47.640 | if the state is democratic and responsive,

02:05:50.280 | the state isn't authoritarian.

02:05:52.840 | - So it might not be called a state,

02:05:54.160 | but it would function as a state, right?

02:05:55.720 | - But why not just call it a state?

02:05:56.920 | But in other words, if you don't have something like that,

02:06:00.200 | then don't you have a greater risk of tyranny

02:06:02.840 | or a tyrant emerging in the vacuum?

02:06:05.000 | - So I think people's fear of the state

02:06:07.560 | is what would happen if the state had too much power.

02:06:10.760 | And I think that's a legitimate fear.

02:06:12.200 | That's why we have democratic checks on state power

02:06:15.320 | and certain guarantees of freedom and so on.

02:06:19.120 | But yeah, I guess I just wonder,

02:06:22.920 | I'm more afraid of the vacuum

02:06:24.520 | and not having a democratic, responsive state

02:06:27.600 | and what the world would turn into.

02:06:29.600 | And also, I'm just not a utopian thinker,

02:06:31.440 | if that makes sense.

02:06:33.160 | I like to think that I'm an egalitarian thinker.

02:06:37.520 | I'm a socialist, but my mind just goes to,

02:06:42.520 | I can see a vision of the future

02:06:45.680 | that I would like 50, 60 years from now.

02:06:48.640 | Maybe there's some sort of future

02:06:51.120 | of super abundance and automation,

02:06:54.640 | and there's some sort of techno-utopian future.

02:06:57.240 | We don't want some of those things

02:06:59.440 | that would exist in my five minutes for now

02:07:04.320 | vision of socialism, but I just don't see it.

02:07:08.480 | And in general, I'm kind of wary of visions of change

02:07:13.160 | that seem like they're not built off little pieces

02:07:17.760 | that we have now and not built off history

02:07:19.920 | and experience and whatever else.

02:07:21.560 | I don't want a year zero.

02:07:23.360 | I don't even like the term prehistory

02:07:25.280 | because I think there's a lot in history

02:07:28.520 | that I want Shakespeare under socialism.

02:07:32.120 | I want a lot of things

02:07:33.400 | that I think we should be grateful for.

02:07:35.360 | There's a part of tradition that I think that exists

02:07:39.800 | that's hierarchical and exploitative and whatever else,

02:07:42.360 | but there's another part of tradition

02:07:43.880 | that's our sense of place and belonging

02:07:45.800 | and our connection with the past

02:07:47.720 | and hopefully the future, and I wanna keep that.

02:07:51.640 | - Yeah, so you're worried about revolution

02:07:54.880 | or otherwise a vacuum being created,

02:07:56.760 | and you're worried about the things

02:07:59.640 | that might fill that vacuum.

02:08:01.000 | So the anarchists often worry about

02:08:04.600 | the same mechanism of the state that controls voting

02:08:09.160 | or keeps voting robust and resilient and stable,

02:08:13.280 | the same mechanism also having a monopoly on violence.

02:08:16.320 | And so that's the tension.

02:08:18.960 | So they get very nervous about a central place

02:08:23.040 | having a monopoly on violence.

02:08:25.120 | Whereas if there is gonna be a place

02:08:27.000 | for the monopoly on violence,

02:08:29.040 | let's just say we temporarily take that for granted,

02:08:32.400 | should it not be a place with a skilled,

02:08:37.280 | elected, accountable, transparent civil service

02:08:40.440 | with a democratic mandate and so on?

02:08:43.080 | - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, well put.

02:08:45.720 | Speaking of AI, just to go on that tangent,

02:08:48.560 | do you think it's possible to have a future world

02:08:50.320 | at least of 50 years, 50, 100 years

02:08:55.040 | where there's an AI sort of central planning?

02:09:00.040 | We remove some of the human elements

02:09:05.240 | that I think get us into a lot of trouble.

02:09:07.720 | Like you can take a perspective on the Soviet Union

02:09:10.840 | and the flaws of the system there

02:09:13.600 | have less to do with the different ideologies

02:09:15.640 | and more to do with the humans and the vacuums

02:09:18.280 | and how humans fill vacuums

02:09:19.720 | and the corrupting nature of power and so on.

02:09:22.040 | If we have AI that's more data-driven

02:09:25.480 | and is not susceptible to the human elements,

02:09:28.600 | is that possible to imagine such a world?

02:09:30.400 | Almost like from a sci-fi perspective.

02:09:32.360 | - Maybe in the future you can imagine

02:09:34.160 | certain calculation problems

02:09:35.960 | that arose during central planning

02:09:37.640 | solved through advanced computing.

02:09:40.640 | But I would say that there's another whole set of problems

02:09:45.160 | with the system that were incentive problems

02:09:47.480 | and I'm not sure how that advanced computing

02:09:50.080 | would solve the incentive problems of

02:09:52.400 | how do you get people to actually produce

02:09:55.640 | things that other people want?

02:09:57.880 | Kind of that informational question

02:09:59.240 | of how do you communicate without endless meetings

02:10:02.120 | or someone reading your brain what you actually want.

02:10:05.520 | So there's that kind of informational question

02:10:08.960 | but then there's the incentive of

02:10:10.800 | how do you get people to work efficiently at work

02:10:13.920 | and how do you get firms to use their resources

02:10:19.920 | that they're getting more efficiently?

02:10:22.840 | And I think solving the calculation problem

02:10:26.520 | solves some of these questions but not all of them.

02:10:30.840 | But that's kind of a who knows

02:10:33.400 | but if your vision of the future

02:10:34.720 | requires some sort of leap into a technological unknown

02:10:38.640 | that's very hard to advocate for today.

02:10:40.680 | - It's exciting to consider the possibility of technology

02:10:43.600 | empowering a better reallocation of resources.

02:10:47.800 | If you care about of kind of

02:10:50.080 | the innate value of human beings

02:10:53.320 | and think of the mechanism of reallocation of resources

02:10:56.280 | as a good way to empower that equality,

02:11:00.320 | that it's nice to remove the human element from that.

02:11:03.120 | Like if you work really hard

02:11:05.360 | and you're really good at your job,

02:11:07.600 | it's nice to be really data-driven

02:11:09.760 | in allocating more resources to you.

02:11:11.840 | - So kind of, like I kind of think that

02:11:16.400 | the agency part requires human beings

02:11:20.640 | and conscious human activity.

02:11:22.800 | So I think if you have a sort of planning system that works

02:11:26.840 | and let's say the technology is there for it to work,

02:11:31.160 | I would want it to be democratic planning in such a way

02:11:34.000 | that there is a human element,

02:11:35.240 | there is some debate and deliberation in society.

02:11:38.000 | And also even in my vision of socialism

02:11:40.360 | with the state sector and state investments and so on,

02:11:43.560 | I'd want there to be more public discussion and debate

02:11:45.760 | about certain things.

02:11:46.720 | So it's not just left to technocrats

02:11:48.920 | 'cause you'd wanna live in society

02:11:51.200 | where you just find out the next day

02:11:53.480 | that there's some massive infrastructure project

02:11:55.400 | that you haven't had a chance to think about or debate

02:12:00.120 | or feel like you're participating in.

02:12:03.200 | - And debate is not just facts and logic.

02:12:06.480 | That's why if the whole universe was about facts and logic,

02:12:10.400 | computers could do a better job of that.

02:12:11.880 | There's something about humans debating each other

02:12:14.840 | that goes into the difficult gray areas

02:12:17.680 | of what it means to be human

02:12:20.600 | or what it means to have a life that's worth living.

02:12:23.460 | That requires humanity.

02:12:27.040 | And I'm also worried about,

02:12:28.920 | while I'm excited by the possibility

02:12:30.560 | of AI controlling everything, half joking,

02:12:33.840 | but the reason I'm really terrified of that

02:12:36.400 | is because usually there's a possibility

02:12:39.920 | of a human taking control of that system.

02:12:42.320 | So you now start to get the same kind of authoritarian thing.

02:12:45.720 | Well, I am a human, I'm smart enough

02:12:48.480 | to be able to control this AI system.

02:12:51.520 | And I will do based on what this AI system says

02:12:55.040 | what's good for you.

02:12:56.600 | It's kind of like talking down to people

02:12:58.600 | and then use that AI system to now have the same kind

02:13:01.600 | of thing as Hollywood and more in 1930s.

02:13:03.760 | - And also our preferences might change.

02:13:05.280 | So an AI system might say the goal of humanity

02:13:09.880 | is to just increase infinitely efficiency

02:13:13.040 | or increase output.

02:13:15.280 | Whereas we might collectively decide

02:13:16.960 | that we have enough and we want to have a trade-off.

02:13:21.960 | And I think that we need a system

02:13:25.080 | that allows for people to make certain trade-offs.

02:13:30.080 | - And have more of this leisure

02:13:33.800 | that I've been learning about from you.

02:13:35.520 | This is a very interesting concept, leisure.

02:13:38.640 | How do you spell that?

02:13:39.960 | All right, so if we can step into the practical,

02:13:44.960 | we were talking about historical and philosophical,

02:13:48.240 | into the practical of today.

02:13:49.860 | What are some of the exciting policies

02:13:53.560 | that represent democratic socialism today, modern socialism?

02:13:57.300 | I think you mentioned some of them,

02:14:00.160 | Medicare for all or universal healthcare.

02:14:02.460 | Something you haven't mentioned is tuition-free college,

02:14:07.360 | increasing minimum wage,

02:14:09.480 | maybe stronger unions like we talked about.

02:14:12.520 | What are some ideas here?

02:14:13.800 | What are some ideas that are especially policy,

02:14:15.920 | especially exciting to you?

02:14:17.960 | - Well, I think that hours reduction

02:14:20.240 | has always been an important demand for socialists.

02:14:24.040 | So, I mean, it's been a reality in certain countries

02:14:27.000 | like France in recent decades,

02:14:30.720 | where part of the logic is,

02:14:33.320 | if you have a bunch of people working

02:14:34.680 | for 40 plus hours a week,

02:14:37.720 | and you also have some unemployed people

02:14:39.360 | who would like more employment,

02:14:41.280 | then it's not a zero-sum game.

02:14:42.880 | You could reduce hours to 35 hours

02:14:46.360 | and still maintain the same output by employing more people

02:14:49.840 | to kind of fill the slack in hours.

02:14:53.960 | So one, I think it's a solidaristic thing

02:14:55.880 | in working class movements,

02:14:57.280 | between unemployed and employed workers.

02:15:01.200 | I also think that, yeah, it gives people more time.

02:15:04.480 | So Marx was a big advocate in his day

02:15:06.680 | of a 10-hour bill in the UK

02:15:11.680 | that would have reduced the hours of working time

02:15:15.000 | and reduced child or eliminated,

02:15:18.200 | or reduced child labor and other things as well.

02:15:21.240 | And part of it was, this is a radical demand

02:15:24.240 | because it's reducing the sphere,

02:15:25.880 | as you saw, of exploitation.

02:15:27.880 | So it's putting limits on how much time

02:15:30.840 | the capitals can take from ordinary workers

02:15:32.800 | and how much freedom they would have.

02:15:35.000 | With healthcare, one, I just think it's a,

02:15:39.840 | a government healthcare system.

02:15:42.160 | You could tell me that you don't want it in the US,

02:15:44.720 | but you can't tell me it doesn't work

02:15:46.240 | 'cause we've seen it work

02:15:47.440 | in every other major industrial system in different forms.

02:15:51.080 | - So what does that usually involve?

02:15:52.520 | What does universal healthcare involve?

02:15:54.680 | - So there's different varieties.

02:15:55.920 | In the UK, for instance,

02:15:58.240 | they have a national health service

02:16:00.440 | in which medical personnels and hospitals

02:16:03.680 | are run directly by the state.

02:16:06.520 | It's almost like a mini Soviet system, to be honest,

02:16:08.360 | but just for healthcare.

02:16:09.640 | And it works pretty well just for healthcare.

02:16:12.120 | And I think it's one example of the way

02:16:16.120 | in which you could actually take the market.

02:16:18.080 | So I give you a vision of socialism

02:16:19.440 | that involves a lot of market,

02:16:20.840 | but I think there's certain spheres

02:16:22.240 | where you could remove the market from

02:16:24.400 | and still have an efficient system,

02:16:27.760 | in part because this is a area in which we,

02:16:32.760 | people don't have, obviously for cosmetic procedures

02:16:39.280 | or whatever, they have preferences,

02:16:40.960 | but for most routine things that people do in healthcare,

02:16:44.360 | they just need to see a doctor.

02:16:46.760 | They need to get diagnosed.

02:16:48.160 | Some of these systems have had trouble

02:16:51.240 | with wait lists for specialists or whatever.

02:16:52.960 | That's more of like an allocation problem of

02:16:55.000 | if you want more specialists, you pay specialists more.

02:16:57.680 | Like this is just problems that could be solved by,

02:17:00.080 | like through the mechanisms of planning

02:17:03.040 | and government run healthcare.

02:17:04.840 | So that's kind of the most left wing that you could get

02:17:08.240 | is the system in the United Kingdom.

02:17:10.360 | Beyond that, you have a system like Medicare for All

02:17:14.240 | where you say, all right, most of the doctors,

02:17:16.840 | besides for public hospitals that already exist,

02:17:19.880 | are gonna be privately employed by hospitals.

02:17:23.600 | The hospitals are gonna be private.

02:17:26.440 | But instead of having all these different insurance carriers

02:17:30.800 | we're just gonna have one national insurance carrier

02:17:34.520 | that we're all gonna pay into.

02:17:36.080 | That national insurance carrier is going to negotiate

02:17:39.840 | the price of healthcare with doctors,

02:17:41.880 | the price of drugs with pharmaceutical companies and so on

02:17:45.800 | to hopefully reduce prices and to implement

02:17:50.800 | a different little bit of planning into the system.

02:17:54.920 | 'Cause if there's only one big national insurance company,

02:17:58.840 | that company has a lot of weight and power,

02:18:02.000 | but you could still visit your same doctor

02:18:05.080 | and there's still some, it's not as radical

02:18:09.440 | of a shift in that direction.

02:18:11.280 | And that's the dominant demand of Bernie Sanders

02:18:14.440 | and the left right now.

02:18:16.120 | There's 30 plus million people in the US

02:18:18.520 | that would be insured that currently aren't insured.

02:18:21.000 | If we move to this system, there's a lot of other people

02:18:23.240 | that are underinsured or worried about how to pay co-pays

02:18:26.760 | or premiums involved.

02:18:28.160 | I think it would be a net benefit

02:18:29.720 | for the vast majority of the US population,

02:18:33.040 | even if it was offset with certain taxes.

02:18:35.120 | 'Cause we spend a lot of money out of pocket

02:18:37.560 | with health insurance.

02:18:39.080 | And it's a demand also that's widely popular.

02:18:41.400 | So for me, it's almost like if you're trying to build

02:18:44.200 | support for something like socialism,

02:18:47.200 | we were talking this lofty vision of socialism

02:18:49.120 | after capitalism or what worker ownership

02:18:52.680 | or the means of production would look like in practice

02:18:54.600 | and so on.

02:18:55.720 | And by the way, you're one of the few interviewers

02:18:57.440 | who ever asked me any of the details.

02:18:59.840 | So it's good that I had, I've been thinking

02:19:02.120 | of a rough sketch in my head for the last,

02:19:04.080 | whatever, 16 years I've been a socialist.

02:19:07.080 | But we have to start in the here and now.

02:19:11.760 | And if you can't convince people that the state

02:19:15.320 | should play a bigger role in their health insurance,

02:19:17.760 | and you can't convince Americans

02:19:19.240 | and a whole host of other sectors

02:19:21.280 | that they should be living in something closer

02:19:22.720 | to a social democracy, how are you gonna convince

02:19:25.440 | those people that there should be worker ownership

02:19:27.160 | of the means of production?

02:19:28.280 | It's kind of a ridiculous leap

02:19:31.360 | if you don't have the credibility

02:19:33.120 | as the group of people organizing for universal healthcare,

02:19:36.600 | organizing for a $15 minimum wage and able to get the goods.

02:19:40.680 | And also in practice, as we fight for these reforms,

02:19:44.280 | ordinary people will have a better sense,

02:19:47.560 | at least my hope is, of what it means

02:19:49.800 | to be involved with politics and what politics can do

02:19:53.240 | for their lives that's positive.

02:19:55.280 | 'Cause right now, when we talk about politics,

02:19:57.400 | it often just seems that we're talking about

02:19:59.840 | like a very glib cultural conflict removed

02:20:05.960 | from the things that are important in our lives.

02:20:08.920 | Whereas in truth, I think politics can be a tool

02:20:11.760 | for us to make our lives better.

02:20:13.960 | - Yeah, and there's like deep ideas here

02:20:17.520 | where in some sense, universal healthcare

02:20:19.640 | and worker collectives are not so radically different,

02:20:23.480 | that there's philosophical ideas to explore and accept.

02:20:27.880 | And also from my perspective, at least,

02:20:30.000 | maybe I'm wrong on this, but it seems like

02:20:33.800 | with a lot of things at the core of politics,

02:20:37.320 | the right answer from an alien perspective is not clear.

02:20:42.320 | Like everybody's very certain of what's the right answer.

02:20:45.600 | Everyone's certain universal healthcare is terrible

02:20:47.800 | or in the case of universal healthcare,

02:20:49.840 | majority of people think it's a good idea,

02:20:52.120 | but I don't think anyone knows.

02:20:53.680 | 'Cause I think that depends on cultural history,

02:20:57.520 | on the particular dynamics of a country,

02:20:59.760 | of a political system, on the dynamics

02:21:02.120 | of the economic system in this country,

02:21:04.200 | of the changing world.

02:21:06.200 | The 21st century is different than the 20th century.

02:21:09.960 | Maybe the failures of communism in the 20th century

02:21:13.000 | will not be repeated in the 21st century.

02:21:15.520 | Or the flip side of that, maybe capitalism

02:21:17.800 | will actually truly flourish with the help of automation

02:21:21.920 | in the 21st century.

02:21:23.320 | I don't think anyone knows.

02:21:25.000 | So people like you are basically arguing for ideas

02:21:29.480 | and we'll have to explore those ideas together.

02:21:31.780 | Why do you think if universal healthcare is popular,

02:21:36.640 | why don't we have universal healthcare in the United States?

02:21:41.200 | - Well, democracy is a great thing.

02:21:43.840 | Political democracy is wonderful.

02:21:45.520 | It came from the struggles of ordinary people

02:21:48.000 | to expand suffrage and so on.

02:21:50.560 | But the economic sphere, entrenched power

02:21:53.600 | in the economic sphere,

02:21:54.800 | bleeds into our political democracy.

02:21:57.120 | So I think there's a lot of people with a vested interest

02:21:59.720 | in not having universal healthcare.

02:22:01.440 | There's large industries with a vested interest

02:22:04.600 | in not having universal healthcare.

02:22:07.040 | They pay for ads, pay lobbyists, they influence government,

02:22:12.200 | and they have made it very difficult.

02:22:13.960 | So you can't get universal healthcare done

02:22:17.760 | without the bill, even if you pass something

02:22:19.840 | and you're trying to make a change.

02:22:20.880 | Like Obamacare was supposed to have a public option.

02:22:22.760 | Everybody's been running on a public option

02:22:24.520 | in the Democratic Party for 12, 13 years.

02:22:26.920 | Why don't we have a public option?

02:22:29.160 | People know that if people have the choice

02:22:31.240 | of buying into a government plan,

02:22:32.720 | that might be the slow road

02:22:35.560 | to really having universal healthcare.

02:22:38.280 | So I think a lot of it's opposition.

02:22:40.400 | - Do you like that idea, the public option?

02:22:42.760 | Maybe you can, like, 'cause isn't there complexities,

02:22:46.240 | like preexisting conditions?

02:22:48.200 | So isn't a public option mean you can not have any insurance

02:22:54.120 | until you get to trouble?

02:22:56.880 | And then you can, if it covers preexisting conditions,

02:22:59.520 | just start paying for insurance then.

02:23:01.160 | Therefore, young people don't pay for insurance.

02:23:03.280 | Isn't it better to go full in?

02:23:06.880 | - I don't support a public option in part

02:23:08.600 | because I think if we allow politicians

02:23:10.320 | to just say, "Hey, I support a public option,"

02:23:12.520 | well, it's just kind of a way to signal your support

02:23:15.880 | for universal healthcare, but give us nothing.

02:23:17.720 | And I think that's what we saw with Biden

02:23:20.360 | and a lot of other politicians

02:23:21.560 | that have supported a public option.

02:23:23.880 | I think in practice, if a public option is defined

02:23:26.200 | in such a way that it just means you, by default,

02:23:31.200 | can just opt in to a public plan,

02:23:34.800 | and let's say, hypothetically,

02:23:35.760 | you don't even have to pay for it,

02:23:37.240 | then it's just a backdoor

02:23:38.480 | to universal healthcare really quickly

02:23:40.560 | 'cause I think the vast majority of people

02:23:42.440 | who aren't currently covered,

02:23:43.440 | and also a lot of employers, to be honest,

02:23:45.360 | would probably drop their private coverage

02:23:47.400 | if they knew their employees can just get a public option

02:23:50.440 | and maybe would only provide supplemental insurance

02:23:52.800 | or whatever else.

02:23:54.080 | But I think the broad overarching point

02:23:58.840 | of all these demands is to say

02:24:00.280 | that socialists need to be really connected

02:24:04.320 | to the day-to-day struggles of people

02:24:06.120 | to just improve their lives.

02:24:08.080 | So if you're feeling like you're paying $400, $500

02:24:12.040 | on the Obamacare market for health insurance,

02:24:14.280 | and that's hampering your ability

02:24:15.720 | to do what you wanna do in your life,

02:24:17.600 | then maybe you would support a candidate

02:24:19.120 | who's for universal healthcare.

02:24:21.960 | If you feel like you're struggling to find work

02:24:26.000 | that you could afford to pay your rent with

02:24:28.000 | or whatever else,

02:24:28.840 | maybe you'll support a candidate committed

02:24:30.800 | to all sorts of mechanisms to reduce housing prices

02:24:36.160 | or increase your power as a tenant and whatever else.

02:24:41.160 | So I think it's like these day-to-day concerns

02:24:44.360 | need to be connected to the more abstract

02:24:46.480 | and lofty vision of change.

02:24:48.480 | Otherwise, our politics just becomes

02:24:50.360 | like this fantasy world thing

02:24:53.600 | that's nice ideas to think about or debate,

02:24:57.760 | but really won't make much of a difference in people's lives.

02:25:01.160 | - What do you think about free college?

02:25:04.360 | Should college be free?

02:25:06.560 | - So I would say free college is not at the top

02:25:09.880 | of my list of priorities,

02:25:12.240 | but it definitely should be free

02:25:13.280 | in my vision of a just society.

02:25:16.280 | - What is at the top, just to clarify,

02:25:18.520 | is the universal healthcare up there?

02:25:20.320 | - Yeah, universal healthcare is probably far higher

02:25:22.240 | in my priorities than free college.

02:25:24.040 | I think right now, the way our system is built,

02:25:27.200 | when someone goes to college,

02:25:28.600 | they're given credentials,

02:25:30.000 | they're given a decree they carry with them

02:25:31.640 | for the rest of their life.

02:25:32.720 | It gives them a chance to join

02:25:35.440 | kind of a privileged part of the labor market, right?

02:25:39.280 | It's not a zero-sum game.

02:25:40.400 | I don't want college-educated people

02:25:42.680 | to think that non-college-educated people

02:25:45.600 | are their enemies and vice versa,

02:25:47.720 | 'cause a lot of them are just ordinary working-class people

02:25:50.080 | trying to survive, and they're in different areas,

02:25:52.520 | they're in different sectors.

02:25:54.680 | Some of them are in nursing sectors

02:25:57.240 | where they need a college degree and so on.

02:26:00.240 | But if you just make college tuition free,

02:26:03.920 | but you don't also make trade skills and other things free

02:26:08.600 | for someone to learn how to become an electrician

02:26:12.440 | or a plumber or whatever else,

02:26:14.760 | then to some degree, you're privileging one sector

02:26:18.200 | of the labor market over another.

02:26:19.960 | So I would advocate just,

02:26:23.560 | if you're gonna make something like that free,

02:26:25.080 | you just have to make sure

02:26:26.000 | that you're doing it in an egalitarian way,

02:26:27.960 | and that one, the options, the routes to college

02:26:31.440 | are more equal.

02:26:33.240 | So there's more investment in K-12 education

02:26:37.560 | so that more kids in rough neighborhoods

02:26:40.600 | have the chance to go to college,

02:26:42.480 | and for those that choose the trade route

02:26:44.280 | from any part of the country,

02:26:47.200 | that they're given the skills and resources

02:26:50.360 | for vocational trainings, and those are also free.

02:26:54.920 | And it just feels like, in terms of order of operation,

02:26:57.240 | I would just start with K-12 education,

02:27:00.240 | improving it, and whatever else,

02:27:03.120 | then college after, but I'm not opposed to it.

02:27:06.440 | - So does that, improving K-12 education,

02:27:09.200 | does that mean investing more into it?

02:27:11.400 | Is it as simple as just increasing the amount of money

02:27:13.960 | that's invested in public education?

02:27:17.240 | - In general, when it comes to the public sector

02:27:19.040 | or any sphere that you're investing in,

02:27:21.200 | obviously it's not just as simple

02:27:22.400 | as throwing money at a problem.

02:27:25.080 | I do think we have a lot of schools that are underfunded,

02:27:29.800 | but we have other schools that are adequately funded,

02:27:32.040 | but the conditions in which those schools are,

02:27:34.600 | like the neighborhoods they're in

02:27:35.720 | and what's going on in society,

02:27:37.440 | the problems are so deep that it's impossible

02:27:40.880 | for just education to solve everything,

02:27:42.840 | and I think especially a lot of liberals

02:27:44.520 | think that education should be the panacea.

02:27:46.840 | Invest in education, you'll help people.

02:27:49.320 | If kids are living in poverty,

02:27:51.800 | if they go into school hungry or whatever else,

02:27:55.880 | education's not gonna give them

02:27:58.040 | everything they need to succeed.

02:28:01.640 | So sometimes we, I think,

02:28:03.160 | put too much weight on education.

02:28:06.400 | - And of course you could define education more broadly,

02:28:08.640 | which is like the care of the flourishing of the young mind,

02:28:13.640 | whatever that is, whatever you call it.

02:28:17.840 | - Early, yeah, a lot of it starts with,

02:28:19.640 | so New York City at least, we do have universal pre-K,

02:28:24.120 | so from age three onward, you have the option for that.

02:28:27.360 | I mean, it's important for kids' socialization.

02:28:30.920 | Their parents are now able to know

02:28:34.120 | that they could go to work or do something else

02:28:36.040 | and have their kids taken care of.

02:28:39.120 | There's a lot of measures like that

02:28:40.560 | that we could do to equalize things,

02:28:43.240 | and again, for libertarians in the audience,

02:28:46.960 | some of this stuff is scary

02:28:48.440 | because it's obviously more state-involved,

02:28:51.400 | state-involved in pre-K,

02:28:53.680 | state is already very involved in K through 12,

02:28:56.360 | more investment into state institutions

02:28:58.360 | like our state universities and in college,

02:29:02.920 | but for me, it's not a question of state versus non-state.

02:29:06.120 | It's a question of good outcomes for people,

02:29:11.120 | and it just happens to be that for working-class people,

02:29:16.920 | having the collective power to elect representatives

02:29:19.920 | that will build a broader safety net is in their interest.

02:29:23.680 | For upper-middle-class people, for others,

02:29:25.880 | they could afford to pay for their own provisioning

02:29:27.880 | either directly or through Obamacare-like schemes

02:29:30.960 | where you just get a subsidy

02:29:32.080 | and you pay the rest yourself and whatever.

02:29:34.680 | This is for really the bottom 40%-plus of the population.

02:29:38.160 | They really don't have any options,

02:29:39.480 | so they prioritize other things,

02:29:41.360 | and they end up with some sort of injury

02:29:43.600 | or health problem or whatever else,

02:29:44.960 | and it's bad for everyone in society,

02:29:47.080 | but it's especially bad for the people

02:29:48.400 | at the bottom of the labor market.

02:29:50.440 | - So I saw various estimates for socialist programs

02:29:53.000 | like Social Security expansion, free college,

02:29:55.440 | Medicare for All will cost upwards of $40 trillion

02:30:00.280 | over 10 years for zero.

02:30:02.880 | Okay, they could argue with those numbers and so on,

02:30:05.120 | but so there's a cost.

02:30:07.360 | There's a taxpayer cost.

02:30:09.400 | What are, given the weight of the cost,

02:30:14.600 | the weight of that cost,

02:30:16.000 | can you still make the case for these programs,

02:30:19.360 | and then can you try to make the case against them

02:30:22.040 | that the cost is too high?

02:30:23.560 | - So I will not argue with you on the numbers

02:30:26.920 | 'cause you just threw out random numbers.

02:30:28.040 | I do think universal health care, if done right,

02:30:30.680 | can be basically cost-neutral.

02:30:32.120 | I think it's an exception

02:30:33.560 | because we spend a tremendous amount of money

02:30:35.680 | on health care, a huge percentage of our GDP,

02:30:38.600 | so I think it can be done in a way

02:30:40.240 | that's close to cost-neutral.

02:30:43.240 | - So actually, can you argue on the numbers

02:30:45.840 | without arguing on the numbers?

02:30:46.960 | So you're saying just your gut says

02:30:48.880 | that there's a lot of,

02:30:50.320 | depending on how these programs are done,

02:30:52.680 | there's a lot of variance in how much it will actually cost.

02:30:55.720 | - There's a lot of bureaucracy and billing right now

02:30:57.360 | in our health care sector, for example,

02:30:58.840 | that would be eliminated.

02:31:01.300 | There's a lot of costs that are spiraling upward,

02:31:04.960 | a provider cost from both doctors, hospitals,

02:31:07.480 | but also pharmaceuticals to drug costs

02:31:09.880 | that insurance companies shoulder

02:31:11.880 | 'cause their market share is too fragmented

02:31:14.280 | to really negotiate hard.

02:31:16.240 | Medicare can sometimes negotiate better rates,

02:31:19.840 | but a Medicare for all would negotiate even better rates.

02:31:21.920 | So I think there's a cost spiral

02:31:23.240 | that we can adjust with more government involvement,

02:31:26.760 | and there's a reason why we spend a bigger share of our GDP

02:31:29.320 | on health care than other places.

02:31:32.000 | But let me just accept the broad premise

02:31:34.440 | that social programs cost money.

02:31:38.640 | Now, I think that one, for ordinary people,

02:31:43.640 | most of them, the trade-off of,

02:31:47.720 | even hypothetically, if taxes on lower middle class

02:31:52.240 | and working class people in certain cases go up,

02:31:56.000 | the trade-off would still be in their benefit

02:31:58.400 | because they're the ones who currently,

02:32:00.600 | who would be consuming more of those goods,

02:32:03.580 | and also our tax system and whatnot is progressive.

02:32:07.760 | So the rich will pay more,

02:32:10.760 | the majority will consume more of them.

02:32:14.800 | Also, I think a lot of these programs

02:32:16.520 | are the bedrock of a healthy society.

02:32:18.680 | So one reason, for example,

02:32:22.320 | that we have so much crime and violence in the US,

02:32:26.160 | there's lots of cultural and other causes

02:32:29.440 | with our level of gun ownership,

02:32:31.280 | American history, and so on.

02:32:33.180 | But one really important factor

02:32:36.440 | is just the level of poverty and inequality in the US

02:32:39.720 | compared to other countries

02:32:41.360 | that combine with guns and other factors.

02:32:44.360 | So we live in more violent, unequal societies.

02:32:47.440 | A European would be shocked by the fact

02:32:50.320 | that in even some of our nicest areas,

02:32:53.280 | and cities and elsewhere,

02:32:55.440 | 'cause there's a lot of rural violence too,

02:32:57.440 | it's just normal to have gun violence.

02:33:00.480 | It's normal to have drug-related violence.

02:33:04.760 | We have, what, like 400 or 500 people some years

02:33:08.240 | in Baltimore, a city of under a million getting killed.

02:33:12.180 | These are all recipes for a society

02:33:15.680 | in which, one, the public sphere is drunk like crazy

02:33:20.400 | because you're not gonna go wander out

02:33:22.440 | for an evening stroll in a park

02:33:24.040 | if you live in a dangerous area or whatever else.

02:33:26.760 | The rot goes very deep,

02:33:28.600 | and a welfare state is one way

02:33:30.080 | to live in a better society for everyone.

02:33:34.320 | There's been plenty of studies.

02:33:36.560 | There's one book called "The Spirit Level"

02:33:38.320 | on inequality that was quite popular

02:33:41.480 | that just notes that inequality is really terrible

02:33:43.860 | for the psyches of the rich too, not just for the poor.

02:33:48.860 | So I think spending some more money

02:33:51.600 | living in a more just society is doable.

02:33:54.400 | There's different ways to address certain cost spirals.

02:33:58.840 | One reason why our welfare states

02:34:00.640 | are getting more and more expensive

02:34:03.160 | is in part just 'cause our population is aging.

02:34:06.640 | But many of the same people who say

02:34:07.920 | we can't afford more in our welfare states

02:34:11.360 | because we're already spending so much on Social Security

02:34:14.400 | and all these other entitlements are the same people.

02:34:16.900 | Also for, one, closing borders so immigrants can't come in

02:34:21.900 | to help build the economy and to fill gaps in the economy.

02:34:27.200 | And also who aren't for things

02:34:29.680 | that'll make it easier to have kids.

02:34:31.440 | I'm 33 years old.

02:34:33.680 | I have a lot of friends who have been putting off

02:34:37.520 | having kids until they save up X amount of dollars,

02:34:40.600 | even though they have someone

02:34:41.600 | they could raise children with,

02:34:45.260 | because they can't afford the cost of childcare.

02:34:48.720 | Their job probably won't give them

02:34:51.640 | more than four, six weeks of family leave or whatever else.

02:34:55.560 | This is not the case in other countries.

02:34:58.000 | So I think there's all sorts of benefits

02:34:59.840 | from having a bigger welfare state.

02:35:03.480 | But yes, there are costs

02:35:05.400 | and there are gonna be certain trade-offs.

02:35:07.240 | It's not a magical thing where you could just

02:35:10.320 | have everything without trade-offs.

02:35:12.360 | - So in a progressive tax system,

02:35:14.460 | is there, to push back on the costs here,

02:35:20.560 | is there a point at which taxing the rich

02:35:24.920 | is counterproductive in the long term?

02:35:28.000 | So in the short term, there might be a net benefit

02:35:30.080 | of increasing taxes, because the programs

02:35:34.000 | the middle class, the lower middle class gets

02:35:36.200 | is more beneficial.

02:35:37.500 | Is there a negative side to taxing the rich?

02:35:42.180 | - In theory, yes, of course.

02:35:44.280 | So one would be, if you tax the rich so much,

02:35:47.960 | they change their consumption patterns

02:35:50.240 | and that has negative impacts on the economy as a whole.

02:35:53.160 | You would have to kind of really model it out,

02:35:56.600 | but there would be a certain point

02:35:57.760 | in which the consumption changes

02:36:00.920 | might have net detrimental effects.

02:36:04.240 | I think that's more unlikely.

02:36:06.600 | And the more likely scenario is you tax corporations

02:36:10.800 | and other wealthy people in society

02:36:15.800 | to the point that they have potentially less money

02:36:20.560 | for productive investment,

02:36:22.480 | 'cause you're in a capitalist society,

02:36:24.200 | so you're relying on capitalists to invest.

02:36:26.940 | So you kind of don't wanna be in the worst of both worlds

02:36:29.720 | where you've gone too far for capitalism,

02:36:31.900 | but not far enough for socialism.

02:36:33.560 | In my vision, of course, of socialism,

02:36:37.460 | that's one reason why we'd have to take

02:36:39.260 | the investment function away from capitalists.

02:36:42.480 | There has to be, if you're gonna make it so hard for them

02:36:45.680 | that they can't invest or they can't employ labor

02:36:48.840 | the way they're employing now,

02:36:50.160 | you have to create another mechanism

02:36:52.320 | for supply to be created.

02:36:54.080 | And that's why, that's a transition point.

02:36:56.600 | - Yeah.

02:36:57.440 | - What about longer term, de-incentivizing young people

02:37:01.800 | that are dreaming of becoming entrepreneurs

02:37:04.920 | and realizing that there's this huge tax on being wealthy?

02:37:08.680 | So if you take these big risks,

02:37:10.400 | which is what's required to be an entrepreneur,

02:37:13.280 | and you are lucky enough to succeed

02:37:15.600 | and good enough to succeed,

02:37:17.680 | that the government will take most of your money away?

02:37:20.380 | - I think realistically,

02:37:22.200 | that's not a disincentive for most people.

02:37:26.280 | First of all, we already have

02:37:27.440 | a progressive taxation system.

02:37:29.480 | The government does take a bunch of the money away

02:37:32.080 | and people are still striving to become rich.

02:37:35.000 | A lot of what people want when they dream of success

02:37:38.920 | is they want accolades, they want respect,

02:37:41.400 | and of course they want some more wealth.

02:37:45.960 | Wealth to consume luxury goods with or whatever else.

02:37:49.840 | But at a certain point, it becomes better for the state

02:37:54.200 | to tax and either redistribute directly

02:37:58.920 | or through social programs,

02:38:00.720 | or redirect that money through tax credits

02:38:04.480 | and other ways to shape investment

02:38:06.560 | towards productive investment.

02:38:07.960 | We don't want a society in which a bunch of rich people

02:38:11.040 | fly around in helicopters going from club to club

02:38:13.440 | while the productive economy kind of does nothing.

02:38:17.920 | At that point, I think a lot of ordinary rich people

02:38:21.040 | might prefer the government to come in to tax them

02:38:25.240 | and to try to spur investment in certain productive sectors.

02:38:29.600 | So it really just depends.

02:38:32.400 | But I honestly believe that most people

02:38:36.280 | don't necessarily wanna be rich

02:38:37.940 | for the sake of being rich.

02:38:39.560 | They wanna be successful

02:38:40.880 | and there's many different dynamics to that.

02:38:42.960 | And accolades and social respect

02:38:45.680 | is an important one of them.

02:38:47.320 | It's also why people who just become filthy rich often,

02:38:51.920 | the first thing they do is start out philanthropic trusts

02:38:55.680 | and try to give away their money

02:38:56.760 | because they want the social respect and accolades

02:38:59.040 | and whatever else.

02:39:00.000 | They don't want just their money.

02:39:01.740 | - On that topic, sort of a little bit of a tangent.

02:39:06.040 | There's a lot of folks in the left community,

02:39:10.320 | far left community, socialist community

02:39:13.480 | that I think are at the source

02:39:15.520 | of a kind of derision towards the B word, the billionaires.

02:39:20.480 | Does it bother you?

02:39:21.720 | Or do you think that's in part justified?

02:39:24.760 | A kind of using the word billionaire as a dirty word?

02:39:28.760 | - I think it's perfectly justified

02:39:30.040 | in that it's a populist shorthand, right?

02:39:32.960 | So obviously when I talk about inequality,

02:39:35.360 | I often talk about power dynamics, right?

02:39:37.760 | Between workers and bosses and so on.

02:39:42.640 | Billionaire is just the 99, 1% version of it.

02:39:45.400 | It's just a populist shorthand to just explain the fact

02:39:49.440 | that there's a lot of people

02:39:53.600 | who have accumulated obscene wealth.

02:39:57.520 | These people aren't in my mind, parasites,

02:40:02.520 | in the kind of very, very old school socialist rhetoric.

02:40:07.520 | And that of course, capitalists provide employment,

02:40:15.060 | take entrepreneurial risks,

02:40:16.600 | come up with new ideas sometimes themselves,

02:40:18.440 | like sometimes directly manage work and whatever else.

02:40:23.100 | But they exert so much power over the lives

02:40:28.280 | of not just their workers, but society as a whole.

02:40:31.840 | Taking away some of their wealth and power

02:40:34.640 | is a way to just empower others.

02:40:37.660 | And again, these things have policy trade-offs.

02:40:42.240 | If you just snap your fingers and say,

02:40:45.960 | Elon Musk, all your wealth is gone,

02:40:50.640 | you're now on food stamps or whatever else

02:40:53.160 | in that kind of arbitrary way,

02:40:54.760 | you'd be a totally disincentivized people

02:40:57.380 | from trusting the rules of the game

02:40:59.440 | as they've been set up in a capitalist society.

02:41:01.560 | And I think that would have negative consequences

02:41:03.200 | for workers.

02:41:04.320 | But saying that, hey, this person has too much power

02:41:07.400 | and too much wealth and has too much ability

02:41:10.740 | to dictate things about the lives of others,

02:41:13.920 | I think is just simply a fact.

02:41:16.740 | And I think it's true in the cases of people

02:41:20.080 | who are good people and have risen to this position.

02:41:23.080 | And it's true in the cases of people

02:41:24.440 | who are maybe not so good people

02:41:26.360 | and who have risen to these positions.

02:41:28.560 | - So I agree with you in part, but I have to push back here.

02:41:31.840 | So one of the problems I see is using billionaires

02:41:35.640 | as shorthand to talk about power inequality

02:41:38.520 | and wealth inequality.

02:41:40.900 | Often dismisses the fact that some of these folks

02:41:45.360 | are some of the best members of our society.

02:41:48.860 | So outside of the, however the system

02:41:51.820 | has created inequalities, a young person today

02:41:55.500 | should dream to build cool stuff, not for the wealth,

02:42:01.140 | not for the power, the fame,

02:42:04.340 | but to be part of building cool stuff.

02:42:07.260 | Now there's a lot of examples of billionaires

02:42:09.340 | that have gotten there in shady ways and so on.

02:42:12.620 | And you can point that out.

02:42:14.100 | But in the same way we celebrate great artists

02:42:18.260 | and great athletes and great literary icons

02:42:22.980 | and sort of writers and poets and musicians

02:42:25.940 | and engineers and scientists,

02:42:28.540 | we should sort of separate the human creator

02:42:33.540 | from the wealth that the system has given them.

02:42:38.520 | That's what I worry about is like in our system,

02:42:42.520 | some of the greatest humans are the ones

02:42:45.420 | that have become rich.

02:42:46.300 | And so we sometimes mix up the,

02:42:48.980 | if you want to criticize the wealth,

02:42:52.720 | we sometimes criticize the human and the creator

02:42:56.460 | while that should actually be the person we aspire to be.

02:42:59.500 | - So I would agree with that.

02:43:02.580 | LeBron James, if he's not already in his lifetime,

02:43:05.820 | will be a billionaire.

02:43:08.040 | And he got his money largely through

02:43:10.700 | just being an incredible athlete,

02:43:13.300 | excelling in his field more than anyone,

02:43:16.720 | besides for Michael Jordan.

02:43:17.780 | I think he's my number two.

02:43:18.700 | He might be my number one.

02:43:19.860 | We'll see.

02:43:21.140 | Yeah, I'm willing to keep an open mind

02:43:23.340 | about the LeBron versus Jordan conversation.

02:43:26.340 | But he got that through his merit and he's been rewarded.

02:43:31.340 | And in part he's getting rewarded

02:43:33.980 | because he's created vast amounts of wealth

02:43:35.860 | beyond what he's getting.

02:43:36.760 | This is just his share.

02:43:37.900 | He's in a salary cap league.

02:43:39.640 | Whenever he's doing an endorsement,

02:43:41.380 | obviously that company is thinking that he's worth more

02:43:44.300 | than what they're paying him for that endorsement and so on.

02:43:47.440 | And to the extent with Elon Musk,

02:43:50.200 | people see innovation and they see someone

02:43:53.360 | who will put himself out there with sometimes crazy ideas

02:43:58.200 | because he's trying to think about the future

02:44:00.720 | and trying to just push things forward

02:44:03.680 | instead of just sitting on whatever money he has now

02:44:05.680 | and just investing it, earning 6% return

02:44:09.760 | for the rest of his life.

02:44:11.600 | I think that that's a positive thing.

02:44:14.120 | But I think it doesn't get to the broader policy question.

02:44:17.860 | When people invoke billionaires,

02:44:19.240 | they're invoking the specter of inequality and power.

02:44:22.700 | It's not normally the rhetoric that I use

02:44:27.640 | 'cause I propose and I use more traditional

02:44:30.840 | socialist rhetoric and terms.

02:44:34.840 | But I think it gets at something real.

02:44:36.560 | So often with these sorts of shorthands we use in politics,

02:44:39.560 | they're imperfect, but they speak to a real thing.

02:44:47.440 | - Yeah, and they feed a little bit of fun

02:44:49.960 | that folks like AOC and Elon have with each other.

02:44:52.600 | Great.

02:44:53.440 | It inspires, it serves as a catalyst

02:44:56.840 | for productive discourse.

02:44:59.960 | Okay, speaking of which,

02:45:01.460 | you said you're a fan of Bernie Sanders.

02:45:04.120 | Would you classify yourself as a Bernie bro?

02:45:05.840 | What's the technical definition of a Bernie bro?

02:45:07.600 | Is that a very, it's a subset?

02:45:09.200 | No, no, no, I'm sorry.

02:45:10.200 | You're a sophisticated philosopher, writer,

02:45:14.720 | economic and political thinker.

02:45:16.280 | Of course you would not call yourself a Bernie bro.

02:45:18.160 | - I'm fine with calling myself a Bernie bro.

02:45:20.600 | 'Cause it was made up by liberal journalists

02:45:22.320 | to smear Bernie and his supporters

02:45:24.680 | during the 2016 campaign,

02:45:28.960 | even though disproportionately his supporters

02:45:31.120 | were young women in their 20s.

02:45:34.120 | But whatever, I think I'll ride for Bernie.

02:45:39.120 | There's worse things in the world than being called a bro.

02:45:41.320 | So it's fine.

02:45:42.400 | - What do you like about Bernie Sanders

02:45:44.640 | and to what degree does he represent ideas of socialism?

02:45:48.220 | To what degree does he represent

02:45:52.040 | the more traditional sort of liberal ideas?

02:45:54.560 | - I love Bernie.

02:45:55.620 | Most of all, I like his clarity.

02:45:58.360 | He's by far the best communicator we have on the left.

02:46:01.600 | He speaks with a moral force.

02:46:04.880 | He's relatable.

02:46:06.680 | And he has taken a lot of socialist rhetoric from academia

02:46:11.600 | and brought it down to its core

02:46:13.440 | in a way that's comprehensible for ordinary people

02:46:15.600 | and speaks to their daily lives.

02:46:17.720 | So when Bernie does a speech,

02:46:19.040 | people can finish his lines

02:46:20.360 | 'cause they know what he's gonna say.

02:46:22.120 | They know what points he's gonna hit.

02:46:24.720 | Because socialism, in my mind,

02:46:27.920 | should not be a complicated thing.

02:46:29.560 | Now, when we get to more abstract discussions

02:46:31.800 | about what a future system would look like,

02:46:33.760 | when we get to the policy trade-offs today,

02:46:35.600 | I think we need to put on a different hat.

02:46:37.620 | We should embrace all sorts of nuance

02:46:41.120 | and contradiction and complication.

02:46:43.360 | When it comes to the core moral and ethical appeal,

02:46:46.860 | I think Bernie grasps that and how to communicate it.

02:46:50.880 | Now, Bernie Sanders was politicized

02:46:54.520 | a very long time ago.

02:46:56.200 | I actually once told him, I've only met him a few times,

02:46:58.760 | but one time I joked that in his book,

02:47:02.980 | he mentioned that one politicizing moment in his life

02:47:06.640 | was when the Brooklyn Dodgers left town

02:47:10.320 | and he was devastated 'cause he was a Dodgers fan

02:47:12.680 | from Brooklyn.

02:47:13.800 | And I said, this is like 2020 campaign, this may be 2019.

02:47:17.160 | I said, Bernie, you're running for president.

02:47:18.480 | You do not need to keep reminding people of your age.

02:47:20.640 | - Yeah. (laughs)

02:47:22.600 | - But he was politicized

02:47:27.200 | through the Young People's Socialist League,

02:47:29.960 | which was an old offshoot

02:47:31.280 | of the Norm Thomas Socialist Party of America.

02:47:33.440 | So very old school socialist tradition.

02:47:36.120 | Then he was engaged in labor struggles in the '60s.

02:47:39.920 | He was engaged in the civil rights movement.

02:47:42.120 | So he came from this old left generation

02:47:45.880 | that I think just had a more plain spoken,

02:47:48.200 | more rooted way of understanding change and socialism.

02:47:51.640 | It wasn't in my mind polluted by academia

02:47:54.720 | and by some of the turn towards issues of culture

02:47:59.120 | and excessive focus on representation or whatever else.

02:48:02.640 | It was really rooted in something economic in a way.

02:48:06.440 | Then obviously he had all his ideas

02:48:09.360 | and he was also a product of the left

02:48:10.960 | in that he went to Vermont.

02:48:12.340 | He kind of did the back to the land thing.

02:48:14.160 | He was basically like not quite a hippie and an affect,

02:48:17.400 | but he was out there trying to farm or whatever.

02:48:20.440 | And cold as hell, Northern Vermont.

02:48:24.600 | And then he decided to do politics, do electoral politics.

02:48:29.600 | And he failed for a long time.

02:48:30.880 | He did third party politics.

02:48:32.160 | He kept losing races.

02:48:33.800 | Eventually he became by savvy and luck and things he learned

02:48:37.720 | the mayor of Burlington, Vermont.

02:48:40.120 | And he just kept with the same message.

02:48:42.640 | And in my book, I talk about,

02:48:45.480 | I quote, I think a Bernie speech from the 1970s,

02:48:49.840 | one of his early campaigns.

02:48:51.240 | And I compared it to a Bernie speech

02:48:54.240 | during his 2016 campaign.

02:48:55.880 | It was virtually identical.

02:48:57.640 | Millionaires were swapped with millionaires and billionaires

02:49:00.280 | speaking of billionaires, which is beautiful.

02:49:02.860 | I think there's something great

02:49:06.560 | to what he offered American politics.

02:49:08.360 | And also all around the world,

02:49:09.960 | there's a socialist poll in politics,

02:49:11.960 | whether you agree with it or not.

02:49:13.320 | And all these countries in Europe and any rich country,

02:49:16.760 | Japan and so on.

02:49:18.280 | And the US really didn't have that.

02:49:19.640 | The furthest left you could go was like,

02:49:22.160 | Chris Hayes and MSNBC or whatever.

02:49:24.980 | I'm very glad that there's a socialist poll.

02:49:29.720 | And I think we have Bernie to thank for it.

02:49:33.360 | To the extent that a lot of self-described socialists

02:49:36.660 | don't think Bernie is a real socialist.

02:49:38.680 | It's in part because he stays grounded

02:49:40.840 | in people's day-to-day lives and struggles.

02:49:43.320 | I don't think he thinks often the way that I do

02:49:47.360 | and other people more disconnected or step or move

02:49:49.880 | from day-to-day politics.

02:49:51.680 | Think about the future contours of a socialist society

02:49:56.140 | and so on.

02:49:56.980 | But I think he's morally committed

02:49:58.900 | to a egalitarian different sort of future.

02:50:03.080 | - And I don't think he, at least I haven't heard him

02:50:06.320 | talk about sort of this big, broad history and future.

02:50:09.640 | So the Marxist ideology and so on.

02:50:12.280 | Not that he's afraid of it or something.

02:50:13.640 | It's just not how he thinks about it.

02:50:15.280 | - Yeah, I think he's a practical thinker

02:50:17.200 | and also, yeah, he is running.

02:50:18.280 | Even if he, he should be afraid of it too

02:50:20.920 | because he is a major politician running for president.

02:50:25.640 | I think what people want is they want,

02:50:28.640 | they want the left wing of the possible.

02:50:32.760 | And I, or at least the segment of the party

02:50:34.800 | that was voting for him,

02:50:35.640 | the Democratic Party that was voting for him.

02:50:37.360 | They wanted something that was a step or two removed

02:50:40.400 | from what they had now and was visionary.

02:50:43.200 | But not so far removed that it seemed like a scary leap.

02:50:46.960 | And I think we lost a chance in 2016

02:50:51.080 | to elect someone that I think would have beaten Trump

02:50:54.440 | or at the very least would have been close.

02:50:58.360 | - Do you think the Democrats screwed him over?

02:51:01.120 | - Yes, not in the way of deliberate or direct vote rigging,

02:51:04.740 | but they put their thumb on the scale for sure.

02:51:08.840 | I mean, there's, it's not even conspiracy theory.

02:51:11.380 | There's all this stuff in the debates about Clinton,

02:51:14.960 | you know, being Clinton's people being fed questions

02:51:17.600 | and whatever else.

02:51:18.680 | And just the tone of the media,

02:51:20.120 | the media was extremely dismissive and hostile to him.

02:51:23.840 | I love that Bernie still does the Fox News town hall

02:51:26.880 | with his, they're just him speaking to the people

02:51:29.520 | and he's not afraid of going on, you know,

02:51:32.360 | any sort of outlet and making his case.

02:51:35.960 | But I think a lot of the liberal media in particular

02:51:39.520 | always had it out for Bernie Sanders.

02:51:41.400 | - What was the, 'cause that was really annoying.

02:51:43.800 | That was really annoying how dismissive they were.

02:51:46.720 | I've seen that in some other candidates,

02:51:48.560 | like they were dismissive towards Andrew Yang

02:51:52.160 | in that same way.

02:51:53.000 | So forget the ideology.

02:51:54.900 | Why are they so smug sometimes towards certain candidates?

02:51:58.800 | What is that?

02:51:59.620 | 'Cause I think that's actually at the core to a degree

02:52:02.200 | if Democrats or any party fails, that it's that smugness.

02:52:06.640 | 'Cause people see through that.

02:52:08.600 | - I think a lot of these people are friends,

02:52:10.920 | even if they don't know each other, they're friends

02:52:12.520 | 'cause they went to the same schools.

02:52:15.160 | They know the same people.

02:52:16.520 | They have the same broad just ideology and worldview.

02:52:20.200 | So they had a sense of what the Democratic Party should be

02:52:22.560 | and who should be running and who is gonna win

02:52:25.240 | and also what was serious and unserious.

02:52:28.000 | So Bernie would say some things about the world

02:52:30.920 | that objectively to a lot of people seemed correct

02:52:34.760 | or at least pretty close to correct.

02:52:37.420 | And a journalist would just look at him

02:52:38.840 | like he was from outer space.

02:52:40.160 | To some extent, this also happens to people on the right.

02:52:43.440 | People on the right often say things that I find repulsive

02:52:48.080 | or just wrong, but there's parts of the media

02:52:53.080 | that would describe their certain views as illegitimate

02:52:57.360 | or outside this boundaries of acceptable conversation.

02:53:00.880 | I think there should be a few things outside the boundary

02:53:03.440 | of acceptable conversation, hate speech and so on.

02:53:08.080 | But like there's this attempt to say

02:53:11.440 | their views are illegitimate

02:53:13.680 | and therefore anyone who votes for them

02:53:15.120 | for any reason is illegitimate too.

02:53:17.300 | And that's one reason why I think it's fueled

02:53:19.120 | a lot of resentment and ultimately end up fueling

02:53:22.960 | the extremes of American politics

02:53:25.720 | and people feel like they're not being listened to.

02:53:29.000 | - Yeah, and some of it is also style of speaking

02:53:31.920 | and personality, where if you're not willing

02:53:35.000 | to sort of play kind of a game of civility,

02:53:38.480 | or there's like a proper way of speaking

02:53:40.640 | if you're a Democrat, if you're not doing

02:53:42.880 | that kind of proper way of speaking, people dismiss you.

02:53:45.600 | I think in certain sense, whatever you feel about him,

02:53:49.460 | people dismiss Donald Trump for the same reason,

02:53:52.400 | where it's the style of speaking,

02:53:54.980 | the personality of the person,

02:53:56.560 | that he's not playing by the rules of polite society,

02:54:00.280 | of polite politician society and so on.

02:54:03.640 | And that's really, that troubles me

02:54:06.280 | because it feels like solutions,

02:54:08.440 | the great leaders will not be polite.

02:54:13.440 | In the way, they're not going to behave

02:54:16.200 | in the way they're supposed to behave.

02:54:18.360 | And I just wish the media was at least open-minded to that.

02:54:21.680 | Like, which I guess gives me hope about the new media,

02:54:25.100 | which is like more distributed citizen media, right?

02:54:28.240 | That they're more open-minded to the revolutionary,

02:54:32.100 | to the outsiders, right?

02:54:34.940 | I actually first, I really like Bernie Sanders.

02:54:39.160 | I first heard him in conversation with Tom Hartman.

02:54:45.320 | He had these like weekly conversations

02:54:50.480 | and just the authenticity from the guy,

02:54:53.400 | I didn't even know any context.

02:54:54.800 | I didn't even know, honestly,

02:54:55.820 | he was a Democratic socialist or anything.

02:54:57.800 | The authenticity of the human being was really refreshing.

02:55:00.600 | And when he, I guess, decided to run for president,

02:55:04.100 | that was really strange.

02:55:05.500 | I was like, surely this kind of, this person has no chance.

02:55:09.420 | Just like he seemed too authentic.

02:55:11.340 | He seemed too, like he's not going to be effective

02:55:15.100 | at playing the game of politics.

02:55:16.380 | So it was very inspiring to me to see that

02:55:18.460 | you don't necessarily need to be good

02:55:19.740 | at playing the game of politics.

02:55:21.540 | You can actually have a chance of winning.

02:55:23.380 | Yeah, that was really inspiring to see.

02:55:27.920 | What about some of the other popular candidates?

02:55:31.880 | What do you think about AOC?

02:55:33.960 | I don't know if she self-identifies as a socialist or not.

02:55:36.760 | She does self-identify as a democratic socialist.

02:55:40.760 | I think she was a very inspiring figure

02:55:43.200 | for a lot of people.

02:55:45.440 | She was kind of out of this Bernie wave

02:55:47.720 | of the first set of Bernie candidates in 2018

02:55:50.800 | that identified with him

02:55:51.840 | instead of the Democratic Party establishment.

02:55:54.920 | I think that she's still developing as a politician.

02:55:59.540 | And it's very difficult when you're in a deep blue district

02:56:03.980 | and when you don't often have to worry about re-election

02:56:08.980 | or talk to, but modulate your rhetoric

02:56:13.740 | to win over swing voters in your district,

02:56:15.860 | but then you're immediately a national and cultural figure.

02:56:19.340 | So AOC basically goes from her views,

02:56:23.340 | which are compelling in my mind,

02:56:25.280 | a lot of her programmatic views are compelling,

02:56:28.360 | wins her district, and then has her own rhetoric,

02:56:31.600 | which to me, compared to Bernie,

02:56:33.020 | owes itself more to the academic left

02:56:36.960 | and the way that a lot of the left has learned to talk.

02:56:40.040 | I don't mean academic in the sense

02:56:41.080 | that she's a Marxist or whatever else,

02:56:42.960 | but academic in the way that she may be using at times

02:56:47.960 | confusing language to convey basic points

02:56:50.680 | when she gets into the language of intersectionality

02:56:55.060 | and whatever else.

02:56:56.340 | - Especially in the context of cultural issues

02:56:58.700 | and stuff like that.

02:56:59.540 | - Exactly, instead of just a plain spoken Bernie,

02:57:01.420 | like yeah, discrimination is wrong.

02:57:03.380 | If you ask me about a cultural issue,

02:57:04.660 | I'll come down on the same side as AOC,

02:57:06.620 | I'm sure nine times out of 10,

02:57:11.220 | but I'll try to root it into just basic,

02:57:14.300 | like yeah, treat people with respect,

02:57:16.580 | and they'll treat you with respect,

02:57:17.820 | and that's the way we should govern our civic sphere.

02:57:20.380 | And we don't need to talk about intersectionality

02:57:23.260 | to I think get that.

02:57:24.900 | So there's that rhetoric.

02:57:28.140 | But she's not just a regular congressperson

02:57:30.340 | in a deep blue district,

02:57:31.340 | she's also a national and international,

02:57:34.700 | cultural and political figure.

02:57:36.500 | So she's now a spokesperson

02:57:38.860 | because of largely like a media event

02:57:40.660 | of her surprising upset election

02:57:43.460 | and her being young and being really connected

02:57:48.140 | to this post-Bernie moment.

02:57:50.900 | And I think amid these constant attacks on her

02:57:54.500 | from the right and also this media attention

02:57:57.820 | and this notoriety,

02:57:59.920 | she hasn't really modulated or adjusted her audience,

02:58:04.280 | her rhetoric, and how do you win over someone

02:58:07.100 | who really hates a lot of your ideas

02:58:10.600 | but might actually believe in some of your policies?

02:58:14.740 | And I think she's been ineffective, quite frankly,

02:58:19.740 | in the last year making that transition.

02:58:22.900 | Whereas I think other politicians who are not so far left

02:58:25.740 | who don't identify as socialists,

02:58:28.020 | but let's say a John Fetterman,

02:58:29.540 | has managed to become more effective.

02:58:31.940 | And I don't think it's a question of character

02:58:33.620 | or whatever else.

02:58:34.740 | And I like AOC, so I don't wanna put it so harshly.

02:58:38.600 | But I think a lot of it has to do

02:58:39.780 | with her being a congressperson in a deep blue district

02:58:42.900 | and Fetterman running for statewide office

02:58:46.020 | in a quote unquote purple state.

02:58:49.080 | But at her best, she does it, but it's like glimmers.

02:58:53.820 | It's kind of like, I don't know,

02:58:55.820 | what sport are you biggest fan of?

02:58:57.500 | I'll give you a sports analogy.

02:58:59.500 | - I like the NFL.

02:59:00.380 | I mean, NFL is up there, soccer is up there,

02:59:03.340 | but probably UFC.

02:59:04.780 | - Okay, well, I can't give you a good analogy

02:59:06.620 | for any of those, but it's like a raw prospect.

02:59:09.560 | Like someone who shows glimmers of hope,

02:59:12.840 | so they were drafted really high

02:59:14.440 | and then they bounce from team to team.

02:59:15.920 | And you're like, I'm clinging on to my AOC stock,

02:59:18.720 | but I think that she needs to be self-critical enough

02:59:23.720 | and her team needs to be self-critical enough

02:59:25.380 | to know that the goal is not merely

02:59:27.160 | to be a national cultural figure

02:59:30.200 | and win a re-election in your deep blue district.

02:59:32.220 | The goal has to be to become

02:59:33.760 | truly a national political figure,

02:59:36.120 | which will require changes.

02:59:38.800 | - A unifier and inspiring figure

02:59:41.720 | about the ideas that she represents.

02:59:43.760 | - Definitely, and she has other things against her.

02:59:45.680 | Like I'm obviously class focused,

02:59:47.600 | but there's no denying, I think,

02:59:49.640 | that some of the hostility to her is like sexism.

02:59:52.440 | You know, it's rooted in, I think,

02:59:53.480 | people wanting to see her fail or whatever else,

02:59:56.840 | but that's only some of it.

02:59:58.120 | You know, I think some of it otherwise

02:59:59.800 | is her struggling to relate to people

03:00:02.840 | who don't have a lot of her, you know,

03:00:05.720 | starting points as far as moral and ethical beliefs.

03:00:08.560 | - Yeah, but she's actually great at flourishing

03:00:12.040 | in all the attacks she's getting.

03:00:15.280 | She's doing a good job with that.

03:00:16.920 | And a lot of those attacks would break me,

03:00:18.640 | if I'm being honest.

03:00:19.880 | - Yes, that's fantastic.

03:00:21.040 | - The amount of fire she's under.

03:00:22.980 | But you don't want that to become a drug

03:00:26.560 | to where you just get good at being a national figure

03:00:29.520 | that's constantly in the fights

03:00:31.280 | and are using that for attention and so on.

03:00:33.240 | You still wanna be the unifier.

03:00:35.000 | And that's the trickiest switch.

03:00:36.680 | Do you think there's a chance there's a world

03:00:39.360 | in which she's able to modulate it enough

03:00:42.240 | to be a unifier and run for president?

03:00:44.440 | And win?

03:00:47.400 | - I think she's very far away from being able to do that.

03:00:51.080 | I think that even other politicians

03:00:55.420 | that are also polarizing within the squad

03:00:58.600 | in terms of what they say or their ideas,

03:01:00.400 | whatever else, are very effective communicators,

03:01:03.640 | like Ilhan Omar and others.

03:01:05.140 | I think AOC, I mean, that's my hope, right?

03:01:09.960 | My hope is that someone like AOC could.

03:01:13.600 | The last year plus has not been extremely promising

03:01:18.600 | in my mind, in part because she's become,

03:01:21.560 | or she's continued to position herself

03:01:23.400 | as a lightning rod cultural figure.

03:01:27.460 | Whereas I think a national political figure

03:01:31.280 | needs to pick their spots and also pick their moment

03:01:35.320 | for changing their rhetoric and adjusting to their audience.

03:01:39.520 | And I think she does it in certain environments,

03:01:41.320 | but that needs to be your national message

03:01:43.560 | when you're out there.

03:01:45.280 | You need to be speaking towards the not already converted.

03:01:50.280 | And I think Bernie does that.

03:01:51.660 | Bernie strips his politics down to the basics.

03:01:54.500 | - So I agree with you spiritually,

03:01:58.760 | but we also have an example of Donald Trump

03:02:01.960 | winning the presidency.

03:02:03.260 | Isn't some of the game of politics

03:02:08.880 | that's separate from the policy,

03:02:11.680 | being able to engage in rhetoric that leads to outrage

03:02:16.680 | and then walking through that fire with grace?

03:02:19.240 | - First of all, I think Trump

03:02:21.940 | is kind of a unique personality in American history.

03:02:24.760 | So it's hard to compare anyone to Trump.

03:02:29.760 | - But don't you think AOC is comparable

03:02:32.400 | in terms of the uniqueness

03:02:34.460 | in the political system we're in or no?

03:02:36.880 | - I think Trump is much more of a firebrand

03:02:40.320 | anti-establishment force in that,

03:02:44.840 | and I mean this negatively for what it's worth,

03:02:46.760 | because I disagree with Trump,

03:02:49.040 | but he was willing to set fire

03:02:50.720 | to the Republican establishment, right?

03:02:55.480 | He was able to self-fund largely his campaign

03:02:58.160 | and he already was a media figure without them.

03:03:01.080 | AOC has been much more cautious

03:03:03.400 | for the Democratic Party establishment

03:03:05.120 | in part because she's not trying to run

03:03:06.880 | a national political campaign right now for the outside,

03:03:10.200 | like a 5% chance they're gonna be president,

03:03:11.760 | let me set fire to everything.

03:03:13.160 | She's trying to help people and help her constituents

03:03:16.340 | through the game of getting committee appointments

03:03:18.880 | and getting wins in the margins.

03:03:21.800 | And I think that's understandable for what it's worth.

03:03:25.040 | But in the process, I think what's the difference

03:03:28.200 | between AOC and a progressive Democrat?

03:03:32.000 | During 2016, it used to be pretty easy to say

03:03:34.120 | the difference between the Berniecrats

03:03:35.400 | and a progressive Democrat, right?

03:03:37.000 | 'Cause we were establishing our own outside third force

03:03:40.960 | in American politics where you could knock on the door

03:03:44.360 | of a lot of people who would end up voting for Trump

03:03:46.160 | and they would say, "Oh, I have a lot of respect

03:03:47.760 | "for Bernie," or whatever.

03:03:49.440 | They were still gonna not vote for him.

03:03:51.400 | But he wasn't considered part

03:03:53.880 | of the Democratic Party milieu.

03:03:56.300 | I think now with AOC, there's a much closer association

03:04:01.480 | of AOC in our policies with ordinary Democrats

03:04:06.120 | where she needs to draw stronger distinctions.

03:04:08.600 | She doesn't need to do it like Trump did

03:04:10.840 | with just, man, I forgot all of them,

03:04:12.800 | though I found some of them amusing in the moment,

03:04:14.520 | like all his nicknames about, oh, Ryan Ted Cruz

03:04:17.080 | and then the rest, you know?

03:04:18.580 | But I do feel like she needs to, yes,

03:04:23.720 | differentiate herself a bit more,

03:04:25.860 | but then also just keep her language simple.

03:04:29.000 | Trump was more complex than Bernie in his literal language,

03:04:34.000 | but he was repetitive and there was kind of a rhythm

03:04:38.360 | and a cadence to Trump's speech.

03:04:40.280 | I think AOC needs to, like Bernie,

03:04:43.080 | reduce her rhetoric down to a couple key lines

03:04:47.200 | and signatures and focus her politics not on 20 issues,

03:04:50.920 | but on three or four most important issues

03:04:53.560 | and have that message discipline.

03:04:55.480 | Bernie will do an interview with you and he'll write down,

03:04:58.960 | hope you do interview Bernie,

03:05:00.400 | but he'll write down like five things.

03:05:04.480 | And I'm like, yeah, I'm only gonna talk

03:05:05.600 | about these five things.

03:05:06.720 | You ask me about this?

03:05:07.720 | Okay, I'm talking about these five things.

03:05:09.160 | - So that's a message discipline

03:05:10.500 | that Bernie has been exemplary on, yeah, for sure.

03:05:14.240 | But I think that's learned, that could be developed.

03:05:15.880 | - I think she could develop it.

03:05:17.080 | Listen, I hope, I'm answering your question,

03:05:19.200 | I think not the way I should answer it,

03:05:21.360 | being someone broadcasting to people on the left

03:05:26.360 | and elsewhere.

03:05:30.580 | I hope AOC goes in that direction.

03:05:33.760 | I just think that she has a lot going against her

03:05:36.880 | just 'cause she's already a national figure

03:05:41.120 | and she's in a deeper blue district.

03:05:43.440 | But we need to root our politics then

03:05:45.800 | in working class people and a lot of districts

03:05:48.400 | that I don't know, the type of kitchen table conversations

03:05:52.960 | are, I hate that cliche, but I just used it.

03:05:55.260 | But a lot of these conversations are just different

03:05:58.200 | in their tone and cadence.

03:06:00.300 | And it's not just a question of,

03:06:02.420 | Fetterman or Tim Ryan in Ohio

03:06:05.320 | and kind of just white working class voters.

03:06:07.320 | I mean, working class voters of any race.

03:06:09.360 | Their day-to-day needs and the day-to-day things

03:06:13.300 | they wanna talk about is just at a different plane

03:06:17.460 | than a Met Gala cultural statement.

03:06:22.460 | - Yeah, I mean, it's clear that you respect and love her

03:06:25.080 | and would like to see different ways.

03:06:28.560 | I mean, she's young, so the different trajectories

03:06:30.800 | that she could develop that would ultimately

03:06:33.500 | make her a good candidate.

03:06:34.400 | I'm just looking at odds here for,

03:06:36.600 | and I disagree with them.

03:06:37.640 | I'm buying AOC stock here, given these odds.

03:06:40.800 | So in terms of Democratic,

03:06:43.860 | who's gonna win the 2024 election?

03:06:46.000 | So that includes running and winning.

03:06:48.300 | On the Democrat side is 18% chance for Biden,

03:06:51.920 | so 7% chance for Kamala Harris,

03:06:54.720 | Gavin Newsom at 6%,

03:06:56.680 | Michelle Obama at 3%,

03:06:59.560 | Hillary Clinton at 2% and AOC at 1.5%.

03:07:04.200 | And then Bernie at 1%.

03:07:05.880 | So--

03:07:07.320 | - I would not buy AOC at that mark.

03:07:09.040 | I would buy Biden like crazy though.

03:07:11.360 | I'm not a gambling man,

03:07:12.520 | but I would totally toss a G at Biden at that amount.

03:07:17.520 | - AOC at 1.5% chance?

03:07:19.960 | - I think it's, I don't think she runs.

03:07:23.120 | - You don't think she runs, yeah, okay.

03:07:25.400 | - I don't think Bernie will primary Biden either.

03:07:27.800 | I mean, if Biden doesn't run,

03:07:29.900 | then obviously it's an open field.

03:07:31.200 | But I just feel like--

03:07:33.040 | - Do you think Biden runs?

03:07:34.800 | - Yes, I think Biden probably runs.

03:07:37.540 | - Oh man, oh boy.

03:07:40.600 | - He's an incumbent president.

03:07:42.880 | So it's just, it's very hard to imagine

03:07:44.520 | another Democrat being able to do better than him.

03:07:47.320 | - All right, what about the competition?

03:07:50.560 | - I think Donald Trump is the best thing

03:07:52.780 | for the Democrats, period.

03:07:54.800 | Just 'cause it would create this turnout mechanism,

03:07:57.080 | this excitement around, we have to stop Donald Trump.

03:08:00.200 | He's attacking DeSantis.

03:08:01.620 | I mean, already he's trying to,

03:08:04.360 | the sanctimonious thing.

03:08:06.860 | But yeah, I kind of like, yeah,

03:08:11.360 | Trump's kind of like the Don King of American politics.

03:08:14.160 | - Yeah, it's interesting what kind of

03:08:18.400 | dynamic chaos he's created.

03:08:20.400 | It probably led to more people being interested in politics.

03:08:26.440 | Well, almost guaranteed it led to more people

03:08:28.760 | being interested in politics,

03:08:29.800 | but maybe not in a healthy way.

03:08:32.120 | Maybe it created an unhealthy relationship with politics

03:08:35.360 | where it's created more partisanship.

03:08:38.120 | - For me, I don't have a problem with partnership.

03:08:40.680 | It's what kind of partnership.

03:08:42.680 | So I think Trump has cultivated a lot of right populists,

03:08:45.960 | a relationship with his supporters.

03:08:48.860 | It's almost like a leader-follower relationship

03:08:52.020 | in a way that doesn't actually enhance

03:08:54.340 | people's knowledge of politics and the issues,

03:08:56.780 | but actually just leads them to follow the party line.

03:08:59.920 | Ideally, I think socialist politics and politics on the left

03:09:03.660 | should be something different.

03:09:05.180 | Eugene Debs, the great American socialist leader

03:09:09.060 | of the late 19th and early 20th century,

03:09:11.260 | used to say, "I'm not your Moses.

03:09:14.260 | "I can't promise to lead you to the promised land

03:09:18.760 | "because if I can lead you there

03:09:20.080 | "and you just follow me there,

03:09:21.140 | "someone's just gonna lead you straight out

03:09:22.840 | "as soon as I'm gone."

03:09:24.480 | And I think there's something nice

03:09:26.180 | about that kind of anti-blind following,

03:09:31.060 | leader-follower kind of dynamic on the left at its best.

03:09:35.120 | - That said, in the way at least the political race

03:09:41.060 | in the United States has turned out,

03:09:43.160 | it seems like it's turned into a bit of entertainment.

03:09:47.280 | And there, having personalities and characters

03:09:51.540 | is really important.

03:09:53.260 | So in terms of policy and actual leadership,

03:09:56.380 | yes, maybe having a leader,

03:09:58.700 | like an authoritarian big leader is not good,

03:10:03.940 | but maybe for the race it is.

03:10:05.620 | For the drama of it,

03:10:07.900 | you just want to have drama and attention

03:10:11.620 | on people who are actually going to turn out

03:10:13.260 | to be good leaders.

03:10:14.460 | That's a weird balance to strike.

03:10:16.700 | - Earned media is what they always talk about, right?

03:10:18.860 | In political campaigns,

03:10:20.060 | like the more you can get on TV,

03:10:23.300 | the better.

03:10:24.900 | Even like, I really like Federman.

03:10:27.540 | He just won his campaign.

03:10:29.100 | But a good part of his early campaign,

03:10:31.100 | he had pivoted from talking about issues

03:10:33.300 | to just talking about Dr. Oz living in New Jersey

03:10:36.060 | and kind of having the troll campaign against him,

03:10:38.100 | which I found amusing,

03:10:39.980 | but also it was effective, obviously, he won.

03:10:43.420 | But it's a bit depressing

03:10:45.320 | 'cause I would have rather a whole campaign cycle

03:10:48.180 | about healthcare and jobs and other issues.

03:10:52.600 | - Yeah, yeah, and the hope is that people just get better

03:10:58.300 | at that kind of social media communication.

03:11:00.720 | So I do actually think there's something

03:11:03.280 | about doing political speeches

03:11:05.720 | that makes you sound less authentic

03:11:08.240 | because you have to do so many of them.

03:11:12.040 | It must be exhausting to day after day after day

03:11:16.140 | make the speech.

03:11:17.700 | You're going to start sort of replaying the same stuff

03:11:21.260 | over and over as opposed to actually thinking

03:11:23.140 | about the words that are coming out of your mouth.

03:11:25.100 | And then the public will know

03:11:26.820 | that you're not really being that authentic.

03:11:28.980 | Even though you believe those things, it's just tough.

03:11:31.920 | I just wish they didn't have to constantly do speeches.

03:11:35.100 | - So I think that the fact that Bernie's speeches

03:11:38.980 | very clearly came out of, if not directly his own pen,

03:11:41.800 | but his own rhetoric over the years,

03:11:43.320 | and he kind of wrote it, seemed authentic.

03:11:45.420 | Even if he was repeating it.

03:11:47.500 | And then Trump has just wild improvisation.

03:11:50.140 | I think people found real in a certain way.

03:11:53.860 | And I would love for the left more generally

03:11:56.180 | to tap into some of that anti-establishment sentiment,

03:12:00.340 | but obviously do it in a way that's productive,

03:12:02.020 | that doesn't blame immigrants

03:12:03.380 | or whatever else for problems,

03:12:05.220 | but it's kind of built on a different basis.

03:12:08.500 | But people are fed up for good reason

03:12:11.100 | with a lot of conventional politics,

03:12:12.740 | and we need to speak to that.

03:12:15.500 | Otherwise it'll only be the right

03:12:17.400 | that is taking advantage of those people's anger.

03:12:21.700 | - Well, I almost forgot to ask you about China.

03:12:24.460 | So both historically, we talked about the Soviet Union,

03:12:27.480 | but what lessons do you draw

03:12:28.780 | from the implementation of socialism and communism

03:12:31.680 | in Maoist China and modern China?

03:12:35.740 | What's the good and the bad?

03:12:37.980 | - Well, I think it's very similar to the Soviet case,

03:12:41.500 | in that socialism came to China

03:12:45.580 | through not a base of organized workers

03:12:49.980 | and a capitalist country

03:12:51.900 | to a certain level of development and so on,

03:12:54.100 | but it came through the countryside

03:12:56.460 | and in conditions of civil war, strife,

03:13:01.460 | Japanese invasion and whatever else.

03:13:03.860 | And Mao built his base in the peasantry,

03:13:06.300 | then came down to the city to govern

03:13:09.220 | and try to build a base and rule over workers.

03:13:13.020 | So it was kind of an inversion

03:13:14.500 | of classic socialist theory.

03:13:18.540 | Now, the same thing that I said before about Stalin

03:13:21.220 | and assessing the Soviet Union has to apply here,

03:13:23.380 | 'cause obviously I oppose authoritarianism

03:13:25.980 | and I obviously do all sorts of moral condemnations,

03:13:30.260 | I should do.

03:13:32.580 | But to look at what the Chinese Communist Party

03:13:37.140 | actually accomplished,

03:13:39.100 | I think we kind of need to take a step backwards

03:13:42.380 | from our moral opposition

03:13:44.100 | to the means in which they accomplished it

03:13:45.500 | and just look at it developmentally.

03:13:47.420 | China benefited greatly

03:13:51.980 | from the Communist Party's implementation

03:13:54.860 | of basic education and healthcare.

03:13:58.060 | So in a lot of China,

03:14:00.380 | you had one of the conditions of women

03:14:02.300 | were absolutely terrible.

03:14:03.420 | There was still foot binding

03:14:04.580 | and all sorts of like terrible backward practice.

03:14:08.140 | You had a huge vast majority of the population

03:14:11.340 | that was illiterate without any access to basic education

03:14:14.140 | and you had no health access,

03:14:16.260 | especially in the countryside.

03:14:17.860 | So those are the three good things that China did,

03:14:20.420 | improve the status of women,

03:14:23.540 | get everyone into primary education

03:14:27.740 | and improve the lot of healthcare.

03:14:30.060 | Besides for that,

03:14:32.060 | their agricultural campaign was a failure,

03:14:36.820 | just like Stalin's for many of the same reasons

03:14:38.700 | I mentioned before.

03:14:41.140 | The great leap forward

03:14:42.660 | and crash industrialization didn't really work either.

03:14:47.660 | In a way, is China better than India or other countries

03:14:54.300 | that didn't have the basic education

03:14:59.260 | and the strong state authority

03:15:00.580 | and the health improvements and whatever?

03:15:05.340 | I think maybe,

03:15:06.780 | but I think that's why we need to sometimes go beyond

03:15:09.780 | just economic measures of success.

03:15:13.820 | 'Cause if you told me tomorrow,

03:15:15.220 | the US will grow at 3% if we maintain democracy,

03:15:20.060 | but it'll grow at 8, 9%,

03:15:21.980 | everyone will be wealthier

03:15:23.060 | if we move to some sort of authoritarian government.

03:15:26.020 | I think you're asking the wrong question

03:15:28.380 | if you're gonna make your decision based on growth, right?

03:15:30.260 | 'Cause it has to be based on some sort of principle.

03:15:33.260 | But the same dynamic of,

03:15:35.420 | from the beginning of the Chinese Communist Party,

03:15:37.540 | ruling over people,

03:15:39.020 | emerging from the outside through armed conflicts

03:15:41.260 | and ruling over ordinary Chinese people have continued.

03:15:45.260 | Since Deng Xiaoping,

03:15:47.300 | the policies have been better economically.

03:15:49.220 | And often at times, not always,

03:15:52.060 | the technocratic governance has been quite good.

03:15:55.660 | But that doesn't mean that the party

03:15:58.340 | has a democratic mandate

03:16:00.020 | or should have the right to govern as they see fit.

03:16:05.300 | 'Cause clearly, it doesn't have that mandate

03:16:08.460 | in swaths of the country

03:16:09.540 | or in places like Hong Kong or elsewhere.

03:16:12.540 | But to me, nothing the Chinese Communist Party does

03:16:18.940 | has anything to do with socialism.

03:16:20.540 | I think even by their own definition today,

03:16:22.500 | it really doesn't.

03:16:24.100 | It's a sort of nationalist authoritarian developmental state

03:16:29.100 | that has done some good things

03:16:31.500 | to improve the living standards of the Chinese people.

03:16:34.420 | Other things that were counterproductive.

03:16:36.580 | And as a democratic socialist,

03:16:39.820 | I certainly don't support that state,

03:16:43.380 | but I also hope that the US and Biden

03:16:46.260 | will find a way to avoid intense rivalry

03:16:51.260 | and competition economically,

03:16:52.860 | spilling over into something worse.

03:16:55.660 | - From a democratic socialist perspective,

03:16:58.700 | what's one policy or one or two ways

03:17:02.540 | you could fix, if you could fix China,

03:17:04.540 | if you took over China,

03:17:06.020 | what would you like to see change?

03:17:07.580 | - Well, the democratic part comes before the socialist part.

03:17:10.580 | So I would say there needs to be

03:17:11.980 | multi-party elections in China

03:17:14.860 | and state censorship and control over the press,

03:17:19.140 | in other words, needs to be done with.

03:17:22.300 | As far as their immediate economic policy,

03:17:26.700 | I think the idea of maintaining strong state control

03:17:30.500 | of certain commanding heights of the economy

03:17:32.940 | while liberalizing other spheres

03:17:35.020 | has done quite well in China's case,

03:17:38.540 | lifting people out of poverty.

03:17:40.060 | But again, there's something really lost in society,

03:17:45.660 | even if it's getting wealthier,

03:17:47.580 | if ordinary people don't have the ability

03:17:52.180 | to participate in dissent freely.

03:17:57.180 | And the Chinese authorities have allowed some,

03:18:00.140 | it's not North Korea,

03:18:01.420 | it's not a totally totalitarian state.

03:18:03.940 | There's been workplace protests,

03:18:05.380 | there've been all sorts of local anti-corruption protests

03:18:09.220 | and things like that,

03:18:10.420 | but the government decides what's permitted

03:18:12.500 | and what's not at what particular moment.

03:18:14.900 | And I think the long run, even if it can survive,

03:18:19.500 | there's a better way to do things,

03:18:23.260 | which is just quite simply a democracy.

03:18:26.020 | - The thing is though, the lessons of history

03:18:29.580 | that China is looking at,

03:18:31.540 | this is dark aspect.

03:18:33.260 | So building on top of the fact

03:18:35.860 | that it seems like under Stalin and under Mao,

03:18:39.020 | under Stalin, the Soviet Union and under Mao,

03:18:41.700 | China has seen a lot of economic growth.

03:18:45.100 | And then one dark aspect of that,

03:18:48.620 | while under the Great Leap Forward,

03:18:50.820 | you have upwards of 70 million people dead.

03:18:57.180 | Today, I think there's a large number of people

03:19:00.020 | who admire Stalin and admire Mao.

03:19:02.740 | - What they admire is the stability

03:19:06.180 | and the strong leadership.

03:19:07.660 | So there's a lot of people who miss the Soviet Union.

03:19:10.580 | The reason why they miss it

03:19:12.940 | is that it was a system they knew.

03:19:15.380 | It provided the basics of their livelihood.

03:19:18.660 | Then afterwards, like look at Russia in the '90s,

03:19:20.540 | people were in chaos.

03:19:21.660 | The Communist Party had a huge amount

03:19:23.540 | of support democratically.

03:19:25.460 | Anti-democratic measures had to be taken,

03:19:27.300 | ironically, against the Communist Party

03:19:29.900 | to keep it from regaining more of a foothold in Russia.

03:19:34.580 | But we don't need that trade-off.

03:19:38.580 | We could have a form of,

03:19:41.100 | imagine if Russia went to a system

03:19:45.460 | closer to social democracy

03:19:47.540 | that maintained the stability that people wanted,

03:19:51.500 | the welfare state that people wanted,

03:19:53.860 | but restructured the economy in not a shock way,

03:19:56.540 | but in a way that made sense

03:19:58.980 | and that ordinary people felt ownership of

03:20:00.820 | instead of just oligarchs

03:20:01.900 | who were former Communist Party bureaucracy

03:20:03.820 | just dividing up the country for themselves.

03:20:06.020 | I think the same thing in China.

03:20:09.420 | First of all, certainly from the West,

03:20:12.100 | the US government and people in the US

03:20:16.220 | should have no say over what should happen in China.

03:20:20.900 | The Chinese Communist Party has more authentic authority

03:20:24.420 | than any of us do in the country.

03:20:26.860 | But I think that the fears and stability

03:20:31.420 | that a lot of Chinese people have,

03:20:33.180 | why I would imagine that even in a democratic election,

03:20:36.660 | the Communist Party might have majority support

03:20:41.580 | is because they fear the unknown, they fear collapse.

03:20:44.140 | That was one of the big lessons of the Soviet collapse.

03:20:48.100 | Do you want China divided into five, six states?

03:20:52.020 | Do you want economic turmoil?

03:20:54.700 | Do you want mass immediate privatization?

03:20:57.380 | Do you want whatever welfare state you have

03:21:00.100 | destroyed and so on?

03:21:03.060 | I think people are right to have those fears,

03:21:05.580 | but there's a different route towards democratization

03:21:09.380 | that maintains stability.

03:21:10.660 | There's different routes that you could have democracy.

03:21:16.140 | Not every country had to go down the route of Yugoslavia

03:21:19.700 | and the USSR and so on.

03:21:21.940 | - You are the founder of the magazine Jacobin,

03:21:28.540 | of which I am a subscriber.

03:21:31.060 | I recommend everybody subscribe,

03:21:32.660 | whether you're on the left or the right.

03:21:35.340 | The magazine does tend to lean left.

03:21:38.860 | Does it officially say it's socialist?

03:21:40.940 | - We're a socialist publication.

03:21:42.340 | We try to be interesting.

03:21:43.420 | So we try to have articles that have debates

03:21:47.180 | and contestation and whatever else,

03:21:48.660 | but we're definitely, we're all socialists.

03:21:50.940 | - Well, it's a lot of really interesting articles.

03:21:54.500 | So I definitely recommend that people subscribe, support.

03:21:57.460 | The product of the 21st century,

03:22:03.580 | only subscribe to the digital version,

03:22:05.620 | but I guess there's also paper version.

03:22:07.220 | - Yeah, there's like 70,000 subscribers in print.

03:22:10.460 | - In print? - Yeah.

03:22:11.660 | - Does it come on a scroll?

03:22:12.940 | I don't even know, it's a paper.

03:22:13.980 | Do they even publish paper magazines anymore?

03:22:15.900 | - I'm gonna mail you a bunch of copies.

03:22:17.780 | No, it's perfect bound, it's long issues.

03:22:20.260 | Our Jacobin's publisher, Remy K4,

03:22:23.500 | just recently did a redesign of the publication.

03:22:26.940 | So it looks really good.

03:22:28.020 | It's up there in the design award competition range.

03:22:32.460 | - Nice, it's sexy.

03:22:34.460 | I can show it off to all my friends, look.

03:22:37.180 | - Put it in your coffee table.

03:22:38.140 | You don't even have to read it.

03:22:39.140 | - First I need to get a coffee table, but yes, I'll get both.

03:22:41.900 | That's what a respectable adult, listen,

03:22:43.660 | I've upgraded my life.

03:22:45.900 | I haven't had a couch, I don't think ever.

03:22:48.300 | So I got a couch recently 'cause somebody told me

03:22:50.380 | that serious adults have a couch.

03:22:52.420 | And I also got a TV because serious adults

03:22:55.140 | have a couch and a TV.

03:22:56.260 | And as you can see, it's been here for many months

03:22:58.540 | and I still haven't like unboxed it.

03:23:00.060 | So I'm trying to learn how to be an adult,

03:23:04.020 | looking up on YouTube how to be an adult

03:23:06.860 | and learning slowly.

03:23:08.500 | After that, I'll look into this whole leisure thing.

03:23:10.980 | - Anyway, what's the origin of Jackman?

03:23:13.020 | What was the idea?

03:23:14.220 | What was the mission and what's the origin story?

03:23:16.180 | - So I started Jackman when I was between my sophomore

03:23:20.100 | and junior year of college.

03:23:21.660 | Basically, I was already a socialist.

03:23:23.580 | I was involved in the Democratic Socialist of America.

03:23:25.700 | I was in the youth section,

03:23:28.340 | the young Democratic Socialist.

03:23:30.180 | I was editing their kind of youth online magazine

03:23:33.460 | called The Activist back then.

03:23:35.980 | And to be honest, I had my ideology, I had my views.

03:23:39.500 | I had a group of people around me

03:23:41.180 | that we would debate together and occasionally write

03:23:44.300 | for this other publication, The Activist and so on.

03:23:47.580 | And yeah, just a product of creative ignorance

03:23:51.060 | in the sense that I knew I had the capacity

03:23:53.740 | to maybe pull off an issue or two.

03:23:55.180 | I just had no idea how long I would keep doing it.

03:23:58.260 | And it just eventually consumed my life slowly but surely.

03:24:01.620 | Like I had different plans for my future,

03:24:04.620 | I kind of, but I ended up just being a magazine publisher.

03:24:09.380 | I literally didn't know what a magazine publisher was,

03:24:12.100 | but it just kind of happened.

03:24:13.540 | - What's the hardest part about running a magazine?

03:24:16.100 | - Well, the hardest part is obviously the things,

03:24:19.060 | just like any enterprise, right?

03:24:21.460 | The things beyond your control.

03:24:22.620 | Like you could put out something

03:24:24.540 | that you think is great or interesting,

03:24:27.500 | but then you need the feedback

03:24:29.180 | of people actually subscribing to it.

03:24:32.300 | And you occasionally encounter periods

03:24:34.180 | where you feel like you're doing your best work,

03:24:35.740 | but you're not getting the audience response.

03:24:39.020 | And I think you just need the kind of,

03:24:41.020 | the self-confidence to just keep doing it.

03:24:45.900 | And obviously, if you're totally obscure and crazy

03:24:49.860 | and way off the mark,

03:24:50.700 | you're never gonna build that audience.

03:24:53.460 | But I think a lot of publications have tried to,

03:24:56.580 | same thing, I guess, goes with YouTube shows,

03:24:58.300 | whatever else, they try to adapt

03:24:59.620 | to what everyone else is doing right away

03:25:01.380 | when they don't achieve success.

03:25:03.780 | Whereas for me, the early issues of "Jackman"

03:25:05.620 | got very little resonance and took a while

03:25:07.420 | for it to build into something.

03:25:09.780 | But a lot of it was just the confidence

03:25:11.740 | to just keep going and keep publishing

03:25:13.820 | what I would wanna read

03:25:14.940 | and just hope that I'm not so much of a weirdo,

03:25:17.060 | that I'm the only one.

03:25:18.220 | - Is there some pressure that you could speak to

03:25:22.900 | of audience capture?

03:25:24.820 | Because it is a socialist publication,

03:25:27.660 | you have a fan base, a readership base.

03:25:31.540 | Is there times you feel pressured

03:25:33.420 | not to say a certain thing, not to call out bullshit?

03:25:37.260 | Not to criticize certain candidates,

03:25:40.700 | all that kind of stuff?

03:25:42.460 | - Yes, definitely, of course.

03:25:43.980 | I myself am looser on the self-censorship than other people.

03:25:49.260 | That's only because I've gotten this far

03:25:53.060 | just shooting from the hip or whatever.

03:25:56.340 | And occasionally, you'll come to a rash judgment.

03:25:59.700 | You'll speak too soon or complain about something too soon

03:26:02.780 | and you'll have to either apologize

03:26:05.860 | or reconsider or whatever else.

03:26:08.140 | But on a host of issues,

03:26:09.580 | I have views that maybe not all of the left has,

03:26:13.700 | but I know that the core of my politics

03:26:15.940 | is a politics against oppression, against exploitation,

03:26:19.860 | against all the things that we talked about.

03:26:22.180 | And if you know that's at the core of your politics,

03:26:24.380 | then you could maybe say,

03:26:26.260 | you know what, I don't think the left

03:26:28.380 | should respond to the real racist

03:26:32.020 | and the still right in the world

03:26:33.060 | by adopting an excessively racialized rhetoric.

03:26:35.740 | If that makes sense.

03:26:36.900 | Like I fundamentally just am a universalist

03:26:39.900 | and I believe that people,

03:26:42.140 | no matter where their backgrounds are and so on,

03:26:44.940 | kind of want the same things for themselves

03:26:46.980 | and for their families.

03:26:49.380 | And I feel like a lot of the left or some of the left,

03:26:54.380 | not even the far left, more like the center left,

03:26:57.060 | has adopted kind of a stance saying,

03:27:00.180 | oh, we need to talk about white privilege

03:27:01.940 | or white Karen's or white guys

03:27:06.220 | or old white guys doing this or whatever else.

03:27:08.420 | And to me, it's not only wrong in a moral sense,

03:27:11.540 | but it's counterproductive.

03:27:12.940 | 'Cause the last thing I want is a young white teenager

03:27:17.260 | who feels unrepresented politically

03:27:21.780 | and wants to be a part of maybe even the left

03:27:24.500 | to feel like, oh, I should think more about my identity.

03:27:29.180 | No, the whole point of anti-racist politics

03:27:31.140 | is that we want to live in a world where,

03:27:33.140 | me and you can go around the corner and get a beer

03:27:37.860 | and we're not people of two different races getting a beer,

03:27:41.580 | we're just two guys in America getting a beer.

03:27:44.700 | We're trying to have the type of society

03:27:47.900 | in which there's less of that sort of communal

03:27:50.860 | or racialized identity.

03:27:52.980 | And that was a whole point of a whole generation

03:27:54.820 | of anti-racist struggle.

03:27:56.460 | But now we seem to be kind of reifying it in the media

03:28:01.460 | and in culture and in politics.

03:28:04.100 | And that's one issue where I've been kind of

03:28:06.140 | banging the drum on this to the point that it's annoying

03:28:08.540 | in certain parts of the left.

03:28:09.620 | I don't think there's maybe extreme opposition

03:28:13.380 | among socialists, but it's more like,

03:28:15.340 | why do you keep focusing on this?

03:28:17.420 | Let's focus on our real enemy, the right,

03:28:19.460 | instead of criticizing this part of-

03:28:22.180 | - No, I think it's really, I'm really glad you exist.

03:28:25.300 | I'm really glad you're beating that drum

03:28:27.140 | because I think that's one of the reasons

03:28:32.140 | that the left has not had a broader impact

03:28:35.500 | or is not heard by more people that could hear its message

03:28:39.780 | is because the othering, the othering of,

03:28:43.460 | like as if there's two teams, as if it's black and white,

03:28:48.460 | as opposed to having, there's a common humanity

03:28:50.780 | and a common struggle amongst all of us.

03:28:53.500 | You also wrote the book that we mentioned a few times,

03:28:57.860 | "The Socialist Manifesto,"

03:28:59.940 | the case for radical politics

03:29:01.780 | in an era of extreme inequality.

03:29:03.620 | What's the framework?

03:29:04.460 | What are the key ideas of the book?

03:29:06.300 | - So a lot of it's a look at socialism's past,

03:29:09.820 | present and future, basically.

03:29:12.140 | So a lot of it is historical.

03:29:14.420 | The opening chapter uses a pasta sauce factory

03:29:19.300 | as a way to explain certain Marxist concepts,

03:29:21.600 | but also a theory of change,

03:29:22.900 | like how we get from, let's say, pure capitalism

03:29:27.260 | to more regulated, unionized and social democratic systems,

03:29:32.100 | and then beyond social democracy

03:29:33.860 | into my vision of socialism.

03:29:35.980 | That's kind of the first little bit.

03:29:37.300 | It's like a visionary kind of like look

03:29:39.380 | at the future of socialism.

03:29:42.540 | But then I try to explain

03:29:43.780 | why some of the past socialist movements have gone wrong.

03:29:46.740 | 'Cause I think we can't take for granted,

03:29:48.580 | I think a lot of people want to live

03:29:50.300 | in a different or better society,

03:29:52.340 | but they look at past examples and they're skeptical.

03:29:54.620 | And I think there's good reason for skepticism.

03:29:57.140 | So I try to explain both the successes of certain systems,

03:30:02.140 | like social democracy, but also what happened in Russia,

03:30:04.880 | China, and kind of more of a historical overview.

03:30:09.660 | Then the book kind of ends in the present.

03:30:13.100 | It ends with looking at the Bernie Sanders campaign,

03:30:15.460 | why it resonated, looking at some of the problems

03:30:17.820 | facing the US, the UK, other advanced economies,

03:30:22.820 | and why I think the socialist message is still relevant.

03:30:27.820 | 'Cause for the longest time, I'm 33,

03:30:30.620 | I became a socialist as a teenager.

03:30:33.500 | And for the longest time, it seemed like I was just a member

03:30:35.860 | of a historical society, keeping alive an idea

03:30:38.700 | that nobody was interested in anymore.

03:30:40.860 | And now it's heartening to see more young people

03:30:44.060 | interested in the idea, but we actually need to,

03:30:47.620 | I think, have a clearer sense of what we stand for

03:30:51.860 | and how we make our movement, like it used to be,

03:30:54.500 | more rooted in the working class.

03:30:56.180 | So if anyone rewinds the tape,

03:30:58.980 | they go to when we first started talking

03:31:00.540 | about early socialism, when I was talking about

03:31:03.900 | the German social democratic workers movement

03:31:06.620 | or all these different early parties.

03:31:10.340 | I think at various points, I use the word worker

03:31:13.700 | and socialist movement interchangeably,

03:31:16.740 | because in fact, at the time, it was pretty interchangeable.

03:31:19.900 | Socialism was the ideology that had the appeal

03:31:24.340 | of the working class movement.

03:31:25.860 | You couldn't really separate between the two.

03:31:29.860 | Now, obviously, socialism is like a fringe ideological

03:31:33.700 | concurrent among a very small minority

03:31:36.100 | of the working class, which is fine,

03:31:38.460 | but we need to get to the point, I think, ideally,

03:31:41.220 | where when people talk about unions and people protesting

03:31:44.260 | and social movements and socialism,

03:31:46.100 | they all kind of are one in the same

03:31:48.660 | as part of the same broad movement.

03:31:51.060 | - How did you become a socialist?

03:31:52.820 | What was the personal story

03:31:54.900 | or the idea that took hold in your mind?

03:31:56.980 | - So I'm the youngest of five.

03:31:58.300 | I was the only one in my family born in the United States.

03:32:02.140 | So it was very obvious to me that my life outcomes

03:32:05.460 | were very different than the life outcomes of my siblings.

03:32:08.220 | So my three oldest siblings didn't go to college

03:32:11.980 | after high school.

03:32:13.580 | Some of them got their degrees much later on as adults,

03:32:17.620 | but I was from a pretty young age,

03:32:21.900 | had access to a great public school district

03:32:23.860 | and was put on the track that you're gonna go to college.

03:32:28.860 | This is kind of the outcome.

03:32:31.060 | And like I said, even my grandmother was illiterate.

03:32:34.020 | My mom didn't have a lot of educational opportunities early

03:32:38.660 | in her life.

03:32:41.700 | She actually graduated from college the same year

03:32:43.560 | I did.

03:32:44.400 | So she later got her kind of degrees and whatever else.

03:32:48.260 | But to me, it was obvious that so much of my life outcomes

03:32:53.580 | weren't just a product of hard work or my family sacrifices.

03:32:57.020 | 'Cause of course I had the same family as my siblings,

03:33:02.020 | but the product of state institutions helping out,

03:33:05.460 | evening things out, public school district, public library,

03:33:09.700 | like all sorts of afterschool programs,

03:33:11.580 | all that was the domain of the state

03:33:14.520 | and I really benefited from it.

03:33:16.120 | So in essence, my core was a social democratic belief.

03:33:20.800 | The state should redistribute a bit,

03:33:23.460 | build public institutions, be an equalizer.

03:33:26.220 | Now, how I became a Marxist and a socialist

03:33:28.480 | was much more random.

03:33:29.320 | I was just intellectually interested in it.

03:33:31.580 | And eventually I kind of merged the two together

03:33:34.120 | where I merged together my more pragmatic

03:33:37.840 | and practical interest in day-to-day concerns

03:33:41.040 | and reforms and so on,

03:33:42.760 | with my loftier intellectual interests in Marxism

03:33:45.720 | into the politics I have today,

03:33:47.320 | which I try to kind of balance and do both.

03:33:50.520 | And I think a lot of socialists in the organization

03:33:53.560 | that I joined as a teenager,

03:33:54.740 | the Democratic Socialists of America and elsewhere,

03:33:58.200 | try to do the two,

03:33:59.240 | try to maintain some sort of balance between here

03:34:02.040 | and our vision of the future.

03:34:04.800 | - What do you think Marx would say

03:34:06.080 | if he were to read your book,

03:34:08.440 | "Socialist Manifest" and do a review?

03:34:10.680 | - So I think Marx would say that

03:34:14.000 | my vision of a socialism after capitalism

03:34:18.200 | maintains key elements of what he would,

03:34:22.340 | the commodity form.

03:34:25.760 | So a lot of what Marx was concerned about was

03:34:28.000 | what markets do to human relationships

03:34:33.520 | in a negative sense.

03:34:34.360 | His early writings especially focus a lot

03:34:36.320 | on the alienation of labor.

03:34:38.400 | My vision of socialism, at least in the near term,

03:34:43.200 | a lot of that is about de-commodifying certain sectors,

03:34:46.280 | so reducing the market in certain sectors

03:34:48.440 | and reducing alienation, but not eliminating it.

03:34:52.000 | It is about eliminating exploitation and oppression.

03:34:55.300 | So knowing Marx and knowing how critical he was

03:34:59.360 | of certain other socialist strands and tendencies,

03:35:02.160 | and he would often write very snarky notes

03:35:04.000 | and letters to people like Engels being like,

03:35:06.280 | this guy, LaSalle, he's a total asshole.

03:35:09.600 | Then he would send a separate note to LaSalle saying,

03:35:11.920 | hey, can I borrow five grand?

03:35:13.680 | This is actually true.

03:35:14.720 | He did the both, I think the same month.

03:35:19.400 | - So he would be really good at Twitter is what you say.

03:35:21.600 | - Oh, he would be the best at Twitter.

03:35:23.120 | And also he used to be, he was a journalist before

03:35:25.720 | with his work for the New York Tribune.

03:35:28.340 | He was very clever, very snarky.

03:35:30.560 | He would be awesome at Twitter.

03:35:32.560 | I think him and Elon would have good back and forths,

03:35:35.240 | but I think it would be critical in some parts,

03:35:37.080 | but I think the strangest part for him

03:35:41.000 | would be reading the historical sections

03:35:42.800 | and seeing the way in which his ideas,

03:35:45.740 | which was fundamentally ideas about human emancipation

03:35:48.480 | were used for evil, for hardship,

03:35:53.720 | in ways that did the opposite of emancipated,

03:35:56.580 | but in some cases, enslaved people.

03:35:58.680 | And I think he would have definitely

03:36:00.680 | not want to be associated with them.

03:36:02.800 | He probably would rather be associated with me than them,

03:36:05.480 | but even then only begrudgingly.

03:36:08.240 | (Lex laughing)

03:36:12.280 | - What advice would you give to young folks

03:36:15.080 | in high school, in college,

03:36:19.480 | how to have a career they can be proud of

03:36:21.800 | or how to change the world?

03:36:23.760 | - I think be intellectually curious,

03:36:25.740 | read outside your current beliefs

03:36:29.680 | and understand or read authors on their own terms.

03:36:33.640 | So the worst thing in the world to do is to read anything,

03:36:36.000 | especially work of fiction, but anything,

03:36:37.940 | and try to deduce the author's backgrounds

03:36:42.200 | or politics or whatever else.

03:36:43.400 | Read it on its own terms first,

03:36:45.640 | then you could reread it

03:36:46.760 | and kind of do other examinations or whatever else.

03:36:50.000 | And also read a lot of history.

03:36:51.360 | So I started off reading books like Eric Hoppesbaum's

03:36:56.960 | four books on history going from the 1700s

03:37:01.960 | all the way to 1994.

03:37:03.800 | The last book is "The Age of Extremes."

03:37:06.000 | But I think understanding history

03:37:08.200 | gives you a bird's eye view of everything,

03:37:10.480 | sociology, economics, everything.

03:37:14.440 | So these big sweeping historical books

03:37:16.800 | are really useful to know.

03:37:18.760 | Like everybody should know basically

03:37:21.000 | what year or at least like what decade,

03:37:24.400 | serfdom was abolished, what decade,

03:37:26.440 | slavery was abolished, what century Magna Carta was,

03:37:30.480 | when the Roman Empire fell,

03:37:32.000 | even though that's kind of debated

03:37:33.360 | when the Roman Empire fell.

03:37:34.960 | All these, I think like being a person

03:37:37.280 | with a general knowledge and general sense of history

03:37:40.160 | and whatever else just makes you more eclectic

03:37:41.960 | and interesting.

03:37:42.800 | And it's way better than just,

03:37:44.520 | like especially a lot of my Indian friends,

03:37:46.680 | the, not just Indians, but the hyper-focus on like,

03:37:50.160 | you got to specialize and you got to like focus on math

03:37:53.760 | or engineering, whatever you want to do.

03:37:55.400 | You just know your field really well, but nothing else.

03:37:57.440 | Like, I think there's something really too,

03:38:00.200 | whether you're getting in school

03:38:01.160 | or you're just going to do it by yourself,

03:38:02.320 | giving yourself kind of a liberal arts education.

03:38:05.960 | - I think there's a lot of power to sort of

03:38:07.760 | having the facts of history in terms of in time,

03:38:09.880 | when stuff happened, but also really powerful

03:38:12.480 | is knowing spatially, like the geography,

03:38:15.680 | that we're a point on a map

03:38:18.000 | and there's interesting dynamics

03:38:19.800 | that happened throughout history

03:38:21.280 | of all the different nations in Europe,

03:38:22.920 | of all the different military conflicts

03:38:24.680 | and the expansions and the wars and the empires

03:38:29.680 | and all that kind of stuff.

03:38:30.840 | It really puts into context how human history

03:38:34.920 | has led to the place we are today.

03:38:36.640 | 'Cause all the different geopolitical conflicts

03:38:39.000 | we have today, even the politics of the day

03:38:41.000 | is grounded in history.

03:38:42.680 | Maybe less so for the United States,

03:38:44.440 | 'cause it has a very young history,

03:38:46.640 | but that history, even for the United States,

03:38:48.280 | is still there, right?

03:38:49.400 | From the civil war and understanding that

03:38:53.040 | gives you context to when you tweet random stuff

03:38:55.920 | about this or that person or politician and so on.

03:39:00.920 | Yeah, very true.

03:39:03.480 | Very true.

03:39:05.280 | One of the regrets I have currently is

03:39:07.040 | I have perhaps been too focused on the 20th century

03:39:10.880 | in terms of history, the present and the 20th century.

03:39:14.720 | A lot of people write to me that

03:39:17.720 | there's a lot of lessons to be learned

03:39:19.360 | in ancient history as well.

03:39:21.280 | So not just even American history,

03:39:22.880 | but just looking farther and farther and farther back.

03:39:25.600 | Yeah, that feels like it's another time,

03:39:30.640 | it's another place, it totally has no lessons.

03:39:33.080 | But then you remind yourself that

03:39:34.680 | it's the same human beings, right?

03:39:36.720 | Yeah, and also we're no smarter than them.

03:39:38.360 | We just have more crude knowledge in part 'cause of them.

03:39:41.200 | But they were just as clever as us.

03:39:44.240 | What do you think is the meaning of this whole experiment

03:39:48.320 | we have going on on Earth?

03:39:50.440 | What's the meaning of life?

03:39:53.000 | Well, I think there's no broad meaning of life.

03:39:55.800 | There's, you know, it was an accident,

03:39:57.600 | but we ourselves need to make our own meaning.

03:40:00.360 | And for me, a lot of it is about posterity,

03:40:05.240 | trying to do something worthwhile while on Earth,

03:40:08.760 | but also leaving something behind.

03:40:10.800 | It could just be relationships with friends or family.

03:40:14.320 | In the future, maybe having a family

03:40:15.880 | and kind of like leaving behind that sort of legacy,

03:40:19.960 | like little bits of yourself, but also, you know,

03:40:22.960 | like them being able to learn the same way

03:40:24.920 | I have little bits of my parents

03:40:26.560 | and my grandparents in me.

03:40:29.320 | And then also, I think in a social sense,

03:40:32.040 | zooming out from just the individual and the family,

03:40:34.840 | leaving the world behind a little better.

03:40:39.840 | You know, I would love to be a part of a movement

03:40:43.760 | that created a world with a little bit less suffering,

03:40:46.200 | a little bit less oppression or exploitation

03:40:49.120 | or whatever else.

03:40:51.440 | That's really why I'm a socialist.

03:40:53.520 | You know, it's not about snapping your fingers

03:40:56.360 | and curing the world of everything in one go,

03:40:59.640 | but it is about, I think, putting our lives,

03:41:02.840 | giving our lives some sort of meaning and purpose.

03:41:04.880 | And you don't have to be a socialist to do that.

03:41:06.760 | You could just do it at the, you know,

03:41:08.800 | at the micro level in your own day-to-day interactions.

03:41:13.000 | But I just feel like life has no good meaning

03:41:15.960 | without thinking of posterity in the future.

03:41:20.560 | - And I have to say, thank you for doing so.

03:41:24.080 | Thank you for caring about the struggle

03:41:26.000 | of the people in the world through ideas that are bold

03:41:30.280 | and I think challenging for a lot of people.

03:41:32.960 | In a time when socialism is something

03:41:36.200 | that can be attacked aggressively

03:41:37.960 | by large numbers of people,

03:41:39.480 | still persevering and still exploring those ideas

03:41:42.720 | and seeing what of those ideas can make

03:41:45.240 | for a better world, that's beautiful to see.

03:41:47.520 | Bhaskar, thank you so much for talking today.

03:41:49.040 | Thank you for all the work you do.

03:41:50.280 | I can't wait to see what you do next.

03:41:52.400 | - I appreciate it.

03:41:53.240 | And yeah, thanks for keeping an open mind

03:41:55.160 | with these conversations and to your audience too.

03:41:57.440 | You know, it's nice to have a space where, you know,

03:42:00.720 | people can debate and think at length

03:42:02.960 | and don't have to worry about soundbite culture.

03:42:05.280 | - Thank you, brother.

03:42:07.120 | Thank you for listening to this conversation

03:42:08.680 | with Bhaskar Sankara.

03:42:10.400 | To support this podcast,

03:42:11.520 | please check out our sponsors in the description.

03:42:14.160 | And now, let me leave you with some words from Karl Marx.

03:42:18.000 | Democracy is the road to socialism.

03:42:21.400 | Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.

03:42:25.360 | (upbeat music)

03:42:27.960 | (upbeat music)

03:42:30.560 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Bhaskar Sunkara: Socialism and Communism | Lex Fridman Podcast #349

Chapters