Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with
Bhaskar Sankara he's a Democratic
Socialist a political writer founding
editor of Jacobin president of the
nation former Vice chair of the
Democratic Socialist of America and the
author of the Socialist Manifesto the
case for radical politics and an era of
extreme inequality
as a side note let me say that this
conversation with Bhaskar Sankara who's
a brilliant socialist writer and
philosopher represents what I hope to do
with this podcast I hope to talk to the
left and the right to the far left and
the far right always with the goal of
presenting and understanding both the
strongest interpretation of their ideas
and valuable thought-provoking arguments
against those ideas
also I hope to understand the human
being behind the ideas
I trust in your intelligence as The
Listener to use the ideas you hear to
help you learn to think to empathize and
to make up your own mind
I will often fall short in pushing back
too hard
or not pushing back enough
of not bringing up topics I should have
of talking too much of interrupting too
much or or maybe sometimes in the rare
case is not enough of being too silly on
a serious topic or being too serious on
a silly topic I'm trying to do my best
and I will keep working my ass off to
improve
in this way I hope to talk to prominent
figures in the political space even
controversial ones on both the left and
the right for example I hope to talk to
Donald Trump and Alexandria
ocasio-cortez
Toronto Santos and Barack Obama and of
course many others across the political
Spectrum
I sometimes hear accusations about me
being controlled in some way by a
government or an intelligence agency
like CIA FSB Massad or perhaps that I'm
controlled in some way by the very human
desire for money Fame power access
all I have is my silly little words
but let me give them to you
I'm not and will never be controlled by
anyone there's nothing in this world
that can break me and force me to
sacrifice my integrity
people call me naive
I'm not naive I'm optimistic and
optimism isn't a passive state of being
it's a constant battle against a world
that wants to pull you into a downward
spiral of cynicism to me optimism is
freedom
freedom to think to act to build to help
at times in the face of impossible odds
as I often do please allow me to read a
few lines from the poem If by Roger
Kipling
if you can keep your head when all about
you are losing theirs and blaming it on
you
if you can trust yourself and all men
doubt you but make allowance for their
doubting too
if you can wait and not be tired by
waiting or being lied about don't deal
in lies or being hated don't give way to
hating and yet don't look too good don't
talk too wise
even this very poem is mocking my over
romantic Ridiculousness as I read it the
meta irony is not lost on me my friends
I'm a silly little kid trying to do a
bit of good in this world
thank you for having my back through all
of it all of my mistakes
thank you for the love
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description and now dear friends
here's Bhaskar senkara
let's start with a big broad question
what is socialism how do you like to
Define it how do you like to think about
it well there's so many socialists out
there and we can't seem to agree about
anything so my definition I'm sure is
you know really just my definition but I
think at the minimum socialism is about
making sure that the core necessities of
life
food housing education and so on are
guaranteed to everyone just by virtue of
being born so that those people can
reach their potential and I think that's
a that's a minimum requirement of
socialism beyond that I think socialism
especially Democratic socialism the type
of socialism that I believe in is about
taking democracy from just the political
Democratic realm and extending it into
economic and social spheres as well so
if we think that democracy is a good
thing why do we allow our workplaces to
be run in autocratic ways so economic
political social
in all those Realms the the ideas the
philosophical ideas apply like what what
are if you can put words to it what are
some
philosophical ideas about human beings
that are at the core of this
I think at the core it's the idea that
we have intrinsic value we are
individuals that have unequal talents of
course we're individuals that want
different things but this unique
individualness can only Truly Come to
light in a society in which there are
certain Collective or social guarantees
so we could think just like Stephen J
Gould the scientists and socialist used
to say about how many thousands of
potential Einsteins or Leonardo da
Vinci's that died you know in sweatshops
and on plantations and never got the
chance to cultivate what was unique and
human about themselves and also never
got a chance to have families and in
part what was special and important to
them to Future generations and to
posterity my own grandmother
I was born in Trinidad and Tobago she
was illiterate till her dying days she'd
been in East Orange New Jersey she never
had the chance to write down her
memories of her life in Trinidad as a
young woman and what it meant um she of
course had lots of children she was able
to impart some stories to her children
and grandchildren but I often think
about what someone with her with an
intelligence could have done with with a
little bit more support
but if all human beings have intrinsic
value you don't have to be an Einstein
for the application some of the ideas
that you're talking about is there a
tension or a trade-off between
our human civilization our society
helping the Unlucky versus rewarding
the skillful and the hard-working I
think you could do both there's always a
balance between the two I think you
could reward people who make Innovations
and and and we would improve lives for
everyone for their Innovations by giving
them let's say even more consumption
even that level of inequality while
still making sure that there's not
people in in poverty and suffering and
while making sure that hey we're gonna
give these people who want to work that
extra 10 hours or 20 hours or want to
apply their their hard work
um some some extra benefits but that
these benefits would be not the extreme
disparities that you have today
so at the core of socialism and maybe
Democratic socialism is a maybe a
reallocation of wealth reallocation of
resources I think it's wealth and
resources yes but it's also power and I
guess one way to think about this is
some thinkers on the right like Hayek
they would say in their most generous
moments talking about socialists and
socialism they would say socialists want
to trade some of your freedom for
equality
and that's them trying to just
accurately describe what socialism is
trying to do the way that I would put it
is a little bit different socialists are
proposing a trade-off but it's really a
trade-off between freedom and freedom
and by that I mean let's say you set up
a successful business
and you set up a business right here in
Austin Texas some sort of firm it's
producing some widget or or whatever and
it's producing
a good that people really want and
demand but you have some competition
um you uh decide to hire 20 30 people to
help you you entered into a free
contract with these people
who under capitalism of course we're not
living in feudalism have the option to
join any other firm but they like you
and they like this firm and they like
your offer and you're paying them let's
say twenty dollars an hour for
um 40 hours of work per week now if the
government comes along and says
okay there's now a new minimum wage the
minimum wage is 22 an hour and also
there's a maximum work week 35 hour work
week and if you work someone over 35
hours even if they agree you have to pay
them time and a half
now that of course is now an abridgement
of your freedom as an entrepreneur your
freedom to set certain terms of
employment to engage in a contract with
free people but now your workers and
other workers in the sector because if
you did it unilaterally you just get
undercut by your competition now these
people now have a few extra hours a week
they can do whatever they want with you
know they could watch more NFL with it
they could you know spend more time with
their friends or family or whatever else
and they're still getting paid the same
if not better because because the wages
also went up so it's really a question
often of trade-offs between who whose
freedom and autonomy are you going to
prioritize the freedom and autonomy of
the entrepreneur
um or the capitalist in this case or the
freedom of autonomy of ordinary workers
now you could create a society that
swings so far in the direction of
um prioritizing the freedom of one group
or one class or whatever else compared
to another that you end up in some sort
of tyranny now if the state said
you know you Lex you're you're a
capitalist so you don't get the right to
vote or we're going to take away your
private home or your ability to to do
um things that we think are intrinsic
human rights now this would be tyranny
this would be an abridgement of of your
your rights but shaping your ability in
the economic sphere to be in an economic
actor is I think within the realm and
scope of democratic politics
yeah so those are the extremes you're
referring to and uh
one perspective I like to take on
socialism versus capitalism is
under each system the extremes of each
systems and the moderate versions of
each system
how can people take advantage of it
so it seems like no matter what part of
human nature is whatever the rules
whatever the framework whatever the
system somebody's going to take
advantage of it and
that's the kind of pragmatic look at it
in practice what actually happens also
the incentives and the human behavior
what actually happens in practice under
these systems so if you have a higher
and higher minimum wage and people watch
more and more NFL how does that change
their actual Behavior as a productive
member of society and actually at the
individual level
as somebody
as somebody who could be an Einstein and
chooses not to because NFL is so awesome
to watch so like it's both how do people
malicious people that want to take
advantage maybe not malicious but
people that like me are lazy and want to
take advantage uh and people that
also I think like me like I I tend to
believe about myself that I have
potential
and if I let my laziness naturally take
over which it often does I won't
materialize the potential
so if you
um if you make life too easy for me I
feel like I will never get anything done
me personally of course there's a giant
set of circumstances of The Unlucky and
the overburdened and so on okay so how
can people take advantage of each system
socialism capitalism so for one thing
people are going to take advantage of
systems they're going to find loopholes
they're going to find ways around
they're going to find ways to to at
times Dominate and chorus others even in
systems meant to get rid of domination
and coercion that's why we need to
design our systems in our such a way
that that it eliminates as many of these
things as possible and also that's why
we need democracy we need Freedom so in
a Soviet system for instance you have
the rise of this authoritarian
bureaucracy that dominated of course
others in the name of socialism
now
that system desperately could have used
some political democracy and some checks
on what people were doing and some
ability to reverse the power right and
as soon as of course little elements of
democracy was brought to that system
um the system you know collapsed uh
because there started to be outlets for
for Dissent and for dissatisfaction so I
think we can't design our priori a
perfect system we need to be committed
to certain principles that allow systems
to be perfected and for me that's the
importance of democracy so even a few
years ago not to go on a pension but
um people were allowing Chinese
authoritarianism and they're saying
China is building this efficient system
the state runs so well there's
technocratic Excellence plus there's
just productivity and they're just
working harder than Americans and and
whatever else but look at in practice
what really happened with coven both the
initial the suppressing of information
about what was happening and and Wuhan
and the outbreak were many ordinary
Chinese workers and doctors and others
were trying to get the word out and they
were suppressed
um by by Communist Party officials
locally and move on properly with the
collusion naturally nationally and now
now with zero covert policies and
whatever else so I think that that often
we find that even though it seems like
these are are weak systems and and
democracy makes us less uh competent
technocratically and otherwise I think
it's kind of a necessity for systems to
grow and evolve to have that freedom in
Civil Society but as for individuals now
the first part of it is yeah I think
people should be free to make their own
choices you might have tremendous
potential but you might choose to spend
it in Leisure and Leisure doesn't only
mean doing you know sitting around at
home drinking a bunch of beers kind of
wasting your life away that way Leisure
might mean spending more time with their
friends and family
building these sort of relationships
that are gonna maybe not change the
world and some some medicines but we'll
change the lives of the people around
you and we'll change your community for
the for the better I'm taking notes here
because I for me at least you're just
about playing a lot of Skyrim this whole
family relationship then I'm gonna have
to work on that I didn't realize that's
also including Leisure because I'm gonna
have to reconsider my whole life here
hey you know Leisure should mean Civic
activity too right I mean there's that
famous book The the Robert Putnam won
bowling alone or whatever we described
it for now I mean I'm I was born in 1989
I like you know um video and computer
games you know
um so I definitely do that type of
leisure too but uh I found a lot more
richness in my life when in the last you
know decade a lot of my leisure has
returned to like going to the local bar
for like the couple drinks I have a week
instead of doing it at home alone
watching TV or something you know
because you get that random conversation
that sense of a place and and belonging
but
I guess what's the undercurrent maybe of
your question was
now if you have a system with lots of
carrots but not the whip of hey you
might be destitute you might be
unemployed you you might not be able to
support yourself unless you're you're
working a certain amount would we still
be as productive would we still be able
to generate enough value for society
um and I think that that's a question
that that is is quite quite interesting
I think that we're living in a society
now with enough abundance that we could
afford
more people deciding to opt out of the
system out of production
and that the carrots of staying in you
know more money for consumption more
ability to do cool things more just
social rewards it comes from being
um successful or from from providing uh
would be enough but that's another thing
that would have to be balanced in a
system so if we're seeing mass
unemployment by choice in a Democratic
Socialist system
then you might need to reconfigure the
incentives you might need to encourage
people to go back into production but
that's something that again you could do
through democracy and through good
governance
um you don't have to set the perfect
blueprint I'm in in motion
um you know write up a Treatise now in
50 years from now you know try to follow
it like it's scripture
so by the way I do like how you said
whip instead of stick in the carrot and
stick that's putting a weight on the
scale of which is better but yes
um
but I would actually argue to push back
that the wealthier we get as a society
as a world that the more comfortable the
social Nets become
the so the less of a whip or stick they
become
because one of the negative consequences
even if you're on welfare is like well
life is not going to be that great
but
the the wealthier we become
the better the social programs become
the easier life becomes at the bottom
and so you might not have this
motivation financially to get out from
the bottom that said the push back and
the pushback is that there's something
about human nature in general money
aside that strives for greatness that uh
strives to provide
um a great life a great middle class
life for your family so that's the
motivator to get off from the bottom
well I think a lot of people who are
stuck at the bottom of the labor market
today
um one these are people who are kind of
are are true philanthropists because a
lot of them are the ones who are working
two jobs and are working 60 plus hours
and are providing
um in this country it's such a such a
bargain for their labor because they're
so underpaid
um so many of the things that the rest
of us use uh to to enjoy life and
consumption or whatever else like I I
got here from downtown
um Austin and I think my lift you know I
did tip but I think my lift was like
eight bucks base or whatever whatever
else you know it's it's it's it's it's
it's the
um I think that we are all indebted to
people who are are working and we don't
see it at various stages of the the
production process from you know the
workers in China and Taiwan producing
um you know technological things that
we're recording this on to
um you know Growers and and and and and
workers and agriculture in the U.S so so
I think that one
um Working Class People are already
working but as far as you know getting
out from under poverty and and
Desperation we're in a society that
doesn't give people a lot of tools so if
you uh don't have access to good Public
Schools uh from you know age five until
you know 12 13. it's gonna be really
hard to move from generations of of your
your family being involved in manual
labor to doing other forms of of Labor
you're going to be stuck at a certain
part of our of our labor market as a as
a result
um if you don't have access to decent
Healthcare you know throughout your life
uh you might be already preordained to
an early grave by the time you that
something kicks in you really want to to
change something in your life and then
the your your mid-20s obviously it's a
combination of agency and all these
other factors there's still something I
think innately human innately striving
than a lot of people have but we don't
really give people in our current
Society the tools to really be full
participants in our society we just take
for granted for example you know for the
Northeast so I give like excessively
Northeast examples we take for granted
that that someone from you know Hartford
Connecticut is going to have
um your average working-class person
Hartford is going to have a very
different life outcome than someone born
on the same day the same hour have in in
Greenwich Connecticut you know we we
take for granted that accidents of Earth
are going to dictate outcomes so you
mean like depending on the conditions of
where you grew up there's going to be
fundamentally different experience in
terms of Education in terms of the
resources available to you to allow
yourself to flourish yes if you do a
poor City in a rich city and Connecticut
is is great it's highly highly
underrated both New Yorkers and people
from Boston kind of have a colonial
feeling about Connecticut where we make
fun of it and we try to carve it up you
know the West belongs to Newark the east
of Boston but you know I'm I'm here for
you know Connecticut nationalism I think
it's it's a great place okay
can we actually step back a little bit
on definitions because you said that
some of the ideas practically that
you're playing with is democratic
socialism
we talked about the higher level the
higher kind of vision of socialism the
ideals the philosophical ideas
but how does it all fit into the big
picture historically of ideas of Marxism
communism
uh and socialism as as it was defined
and experienced and implemented in the
20th century so what's your key
differences maybe even just like
socialism communism yeah well I hate the
no true Scotsman sort of response to
this which is oh that socialism is bad
so it wasn't really socialism and my
socialism is good so it is socialism
um but I think that socialism and
communism share a common ancestor which
is they both emerged out of the turmoil
and development of late 19th century
capitalism and the fact that there was
all these workers parties that were
organizing across the capitalist World
um so in Europe for instance
you had this Mass party called the
German Social Democratic party
um in the uh that became probably the
most important the most vibrant party in
Germany in the 1880s and 1890s but they
were locked out a power because Germany
at the time was was still mostly a
Target you know it had a parliamentary
democracy but it was a very undemocratic
democracy the Kaiser is still still
ruled these movements took Route across
uh the capitalist world but including in
Russia and in conditions of illegality
so it was assumed for many many years
and the workers movement across Europe
and among socialists of Europe they call
themselves social Democrats then
that
the revolution would first probably
happen in Germany and this developed
growing Hub of industrial uh capitalism
and not in semi-futal Russia
but then World War one came the workers
movement was split between parties that
decided to either keep their head down
or to implicitly support the war
um and then you know support the war for
now or keep your heads down don't get
banned don't get arrested then we'll
just take power after the war is over
and those like Russia and also in the
United States for that matter they chose
the path of resistance to the war
and it was the Bolshevik faction of the
the uh of the Russian movement
um but Landon's Bolshevik party that
took power in Russia after a period of
turmoil where it didn't seem well was it
going to go to the fascist right or was
they going to go to the far left there
was a period of flux and turmoil in in
Russia but definitely the old regime was
not able to to stand and these Russian
social Democrats these Bolsheviks
said social democracy has so betrayed
the idea of internationalism and
Brotherhood and progress it was supposed
to stand for that we can't call
ourselves social Democrats anymore we're
going to go back to this old term that
Marx used we're going to call ourselves
communists
and that's where official kind of
Communism out of Russia emerged in other
parts of Europe parties were actually
able to take power some in the interwar
period but most in the post-war period
And they also came out of this old
Social Democratic movement and these
parties mostly just call themselves
socialists and a lot of them still on
paper wanted to go beyond capitalism but
in practice they just manage capitalism
better in the interests of workers
um but they all had the same common
ancestor
and in practice to me social democracy
means trying to insert doses of
socialism within capitalism but
maintaining capitalism communism meant
this attempt to build a socialism
outside of capitalism and often
authoritarian ways in part because of
the ideology of these Communists but in
part because of the conditions in which
they inherited you know they were
inheriting a democracy they were
inhering a country that had been uh
ruled by the tsars for you know for
centuries
um and with very little condition like a
very weak working class you know very
you know poor and devastated by War and
so on where authoritarianism kind of
landed itself uh to those conditions
um and then there's me you know then
there's Democratic socialists and the
way I would Define it is we like a lot
of what the social Democrats
accomplished but we still believe in
going Beyond capitalism and not just
building socialism within capitalism but
we believe in this ultimate vision of a
world after capitalism
what is that world look like and how is
it different from communism actually
maybe we can linger before we talk about
your vision of democratic socialism
what was wrong with Communism stalinism
implementation of Communism in the
Soviet Union why did it go wrong
so and in what ways did it not go wrong
in what ways did it succeed let me start
with the second part of that question
and that's a very difficult one to
answer in part because
I morally and ethically am opposed to
any form of authoritarianism or
dictatorship and often when you talk
about the successes of a government or
what it did developmentally that might
have been positive we have to abstract
ourselves from what we morally believe
and just just kind of look at the record
right
I would say that the Soviet experiment
started off by in Lenin's time as the
attempt to kind of just hold a holding
action
hey we don't really have the conditions
to rule this country we have the support
of the working class or most of it but
the working class is only you know three
percent of the the population you know
the peasantry is really against us a lot
of this three percent of the population
has died in war and half of them
supported the mensheviks and the more
moderate socialists anyway but
the alternative in their minds was going
to be a far-right reaction you know some
sort of General taking power in a coup
or whatever else or just them ending up
back in prison because a lot of them
were in prison on the Czar or just
killed so they figured
all right we're gonna have a holding
action where we maintain as much of this
territory of the old Russian Empire as
possible we'll try to slowly Implement
changes restabilize the economy through
something called a new economic program
which was kind of a form of social
democracy if you if you will because it
allowed market exchange for the peasants
um combined with State ownership of
Industries in the cities and
for a while it seemed to be working the
revolution never came that they were
expecting in Western Europe but in
Russia itself they were able to
restabilize things by the middle or end
of the the 1920s and they were able to
build more of a popular base for some of
their policies because people who had
seen the chaos of World War One and
Revolution and then Civil War kind of
just wanted stability and after a decade
plus a war if you had a government that
was able to give you enough to eat and a
job you know that was good enough for
them
then Stalin came into power and he
wanted to rapidly industrialize in his
logic was the revolution's not going to
come in the west we need to build
socialism in one country and we need to
catch up with the West we need to turn
ourselves into industrial Powerhouse as
quickly as possible
and that's where you got forced
collectivization to try to increase the
productivity of Russian agriculture
through State ownership of previously
fragmented agricultural Holdings and
through the
implementation of mechanization so bring
in more machines to make agriculture
more productive all under State
ownership
plus more ambitious attempts to build
heavy industry through five-year plans
now
I say this kind of coolly but we know in
practice what that meant you know forced
collectivization was a disaster I mean
first of all I think was built on the
faulty premise that scale always equals
more productivity when in fact
especially in agriculture but in any
field it's a little bit more complicated
than that and it led to millions of
deaths you know it led to famine it let
a host of other problems
um industrialization uh in the way that
it happened under Stalin also kind of
unbalanced the Soviet economy to lean
too heavy towards heavy industry not
enough for medium or Light Industry
um but
this did mean especially the um The
Five-Year Plan in industrialization did
manage to put Russia on a different
developmental trajectory
so
by the time the post-war period came
the one it might have gave them the
ability to survive the Nazi invasion to
begin with it was a complicated question
and then by the time the post-war period
came uh Russia had kind of jumped ahead
of its developmental trajectory in a way
that a lot of other countries didn't do
there are a few examples like Japan is
one to manage to if you kind of ran a
scenario where Japan would be in the
1870s 1880s and ran it 100 times the
Japan of the post-war period is kind of
one of the best outcomes right and I
think that that you could say that about
Russian Economic Development its ability
to catch up at a certain level to the
West
and then after that of course um
later on
um as economies got more complex as they
kind of moved Beyond uh regular heavy
industry and as as the main stable of
the economy the Russian economy in its
command system was unable to adapt and
cope and ended up falling back behind uh
the West Again by the by the 1970s so
all this is a very long story to say
that a lot went wrong and Russia the
economic picture is actually a little
bit more complicated politically
um I I think it's just a small party
without much popular support but with
real popular sport in a couple cities
but a lot without a lot of popular
support Empire wide
um took power and they felt they
couldn't give back power
and they kept holding on to power and
eventually among their ranks in these
conditions uh one of History's great
tyrants took power and was able to
justify what he was doing
um in the context of the Russian nation
and development but also all the threats
that came from abroad through you know
the Civil War wasn't just a civil war it
was really an invasion by by many um
Imperial Powers all around the world
um as well so I think a lot of it was
conditions and Circumstance
um and I guess the the question really
is to what role ideology played is there
something within the Socialist tradition
that might have lend itself to
authoritarianism and that's that's
something we should you know talk about
and that's really complicated human
question it does seem
that the rhetoric the populism
of Workers Unite
we've been fucked over for way too long
let's Stand Together
somehow that message allows
um flawed or evil people to take power
it seems like the rhetoric the idea is
so good
maybe the utopian nature of the idea is
so good that allows a great speaker to
take power
uh is it's almost like
if the mission
um like come with me friends be on the
horizon a great land is waiting for us
uh that encourages sort of yeah
dictators authoritarians to take power
is there something within the ideology
that allows for that for the sort of uh
for lying to people essentially
well I might surprise you with my answer
because I would say yes maybe but I
think that it's not just socialism
any sort of ideology that appeals to
the collective and appeals to our
long-term
Destiny either as a species or as a
nation or as a class or whatever else
can lend itself to authoritarianism so
you can see this in many of the
nationalisms of the 20th century now
some of these nationalisms used
incredibly lofty Collective rhetoric
like in in Sweden the rhetoric up we're
going to create the people's home we're
going to make this a country with
dignity for all swedes we're going to
make this a country that's more
developed more free and so on if they
manage to build a pretty excellent
Society in my estimation from that you
know in
countries like fascist Germany and Italy
they managed to do horrendous things in
Japan and horrendous things with that in
the U.S with national popular appeals uh
FDR was able to unite a nation
um to elevate
um ordinary Working Class People into a
position where they felt like they had a
real stake in the country and I think
did great things with the New Deal in
Russia of course
this language was used to trample upon
individual rights and to justify uh
hardship and abuses of ordinary
individual people in the name of a
collective Destiny a destiny of course
that was just decided by the party in
power and during the the 30s and 40s by
just Stalin himself really
um
no
I think that that that's really the case
for
making sure that we have a Bedrock of
civil rights and democracy and then on
top of that we can debate we can debate
different
um
of national Destinies we could debate
different appeals different visions of
the world but as long as people have a
say and what sacrifices they're being
asked to do and as long as those
sacrifices don't take away what's
fundamentally ours uh which is our life
you know which is our
um you know our our basic rights
and voice our voice so this this
complicated picture
because uh helped me understand
you mentioned that
social democracy
is trying to have social policies within
a capitalist system
in part but your your vision your hope
for a social democracy
is one that goes beyond that
how do you give everybody a voice
while not becoming the Soviet Union
while not becoming where
um
basically people are silenced either
directly through violence or through the
implied threat of violence and therefore
fear
so I think you need to limit the scope
of where the state is and what the state
can do and how the state functions first
of all
um now for me a social democracy was
like the equivalent of
um I'll give a football analogy
um
it was the equivalent of you know
getting to the Red Zone and then kicking
a field goal you know you'll take the
three points but you would have rather
got a touchdown and for me socialism
would be the touchdown it's not a
separate different playing field some
people would say socialism will be an
interception sure sure no and they would
have they would have the right to to
again
um to say that and to say we shouldn't
go go further and most coaches would
take would take the safer out right
so you're going you're going against the
decision anyway yeah yeah but I
understand I understand so but so for
you the goal is
full socialism but I'll take the three
points of you know it's it's a part of
well I just want to March down the field
I want to get get within scoring
position the reason why um we should
really move from this analogy but the
reason why uh I call myself a socialist
is looking through
um history and these examples of social
democracy you saw that they were able to
give Working Class People lots of Rights
and income and and Power in their
society but at the end of the day
capitalists still have the ultimate
power which is the ability to withhold
investment
so they could say in the late 1960s and
early 70s
listen I was fine with this Arrangement
10 years ago but now
I feel like I'm gonna you know take my
money and I'm gonna go move to a
different country or I'm just gonna not
invest because my workers are paid too
much I'm still making money but I I feel
like I could be making more I need more
of an upper hand right so their economic
power
is then
challenging the Democratic Mandate of
Swedish workers that were voting for the
Social Democratic party and we're behind
this this advance so to me what
socialism is in part is taking the means
of production right where there's
capital's Power is coming from and
making it socially owned so that
ordinary workers can control their
workplaces can make investment decisions
and so on
um now does that mean total State
ownership of everything or a planned
economy I don't think that makes any
sense you know I think that we should
live in a society in which markets are
harnessed and regulated and and so on my
main problem is capitalist ownership in
part on normative grounds just because I
think that it doesn't make sense that we
celebrate democracy and all these other
spheres but we have workplaces that are
just
treated like tyrannies
um and in part because I think that
ordinary workers would much prefer a
system in which over time they you know
accrued shares in ownership where they
got in addition to a base kind of ways
they got um dividends from their firm
being successful
and that they figured out how to you
know large firms they're not going to be
making day-to-day Decisions by
Democratic vote right but maybe you
would elect representatives of elected
managements
um once every year or two depending on
your operating agreement and so on
that's kind of my my vision of a
socialist society and this sounds I hope
like agree or disagree like it would not
be a crazy leap into year zero right
that this could be maybe a way in which
we could take a lot of what's existing
in society but then just add this on top
but what it would mean is a society
without a capitalist class this class
hasn't been you know individually these
people uh you know haven't been taken to
re-education camps or or or whatever
else but they're just no longer in this
position and they're now part of the
economy in other ways like they'll
probably be the first set of Highly
competent uh technocrats and managers
and and so on they'll probably be very
well compensated for their for their
time and expertise and whatever whatever
else but to me both the Practical end of
things like uh taking away this ability
to withhold investment and I'm
increasing our ability to democratically
and shape investment priorities and to
continue down the road of social
democracy and on normative grounds by
kind of egalitarian belief that that
Ordinary People should have more stake
in their in their lives in the workplace
um leads me Beyond social democracy to
socialism so there's a tricky thing here
so in in uh Ukraine especially but in
the Soviet Union there's the cool ox
the possible trajectory of fighting for
the beautiful message
of respecting workers rights
has this Dynamic of making an enemy of
the capitalist class
too easily making an enemy of the
capitalist class with a central
leader populist leader that says
the rich and the powerful they're taking
advantage of you
we need to remove them we need to put
them in camps perhaps uh not said
explicitly until it happens it can
happen overnight but just putting a
giant pressure on that capitalist class
and again the Stalin type figure takes
hold so I'm trying to understand how the
mechanism can prevent that
and perhaps I'll sort of reveal my bias
here as I've been reading a
I was going to say too much maybe not
enough but a lot about you know books
like Stalin's war in Ukraine and just
I've been reading a lot about the 30s
and the 40s
um for for personal reasons related to
my travels in Ukraine and all that kind
of stuff so I have a a little bit of a
focus on the historic implementations of
Communism currently without kind of an
updated view of all the possible future
implementations so I just want to lay
that out there but I worry about the
slippery slope into the authoritarian
figure that takes this sexy message
destroys everyone who's powerful in the
name of the working class and then fucks
the working class afterwards
so first of all I think it's worth
remembering that the Socialist movement
had different outcomes across Western
Europe and and Eastern Europe and in
some of these countries in Western
Europe there wasn't actually democracy
before the workers move in and for the
Socialist movement so
the battle in Sweden for instance was
about establishing political democracy
establishing troop representation for
workers and that's how the parties
became popular same thing in Germany too
uh then it was the social Democrats who
were able to build political democracy
then on top of that add layers of
economic
um democracy
um social democracy
the Swedish social Democrats are ruled
basically uninterrupted from the early
1930s until
1976. it's kind of crazy to think about
but they were just in government they
were the leading member of government
that a few different Coalition Partners
would shift sometimes they were with
their agrarians sometimes they were with
uh the the Communists briefly but they
ruled uninterrupted and they lost an
election in 1976 and they just left
power and then they got back into power
in the 80s so so in other words like
they created a democratic system of
course with mass support of Working
Class People then they truly honored the
system because when they lost power they
lost power they left left power there's
plenty of cases like that across
um Europe and the world and in other
countries like Korea and elsewhere where
the workers movements the most militant
the most class Centric workers
um South Africa is the same way uh
created democratic systems
now Russia I think a lot of what
happened had to do with the fact that it
was never a democratic country it was
ruled by a party and the party itself
was very easy to shift from a somewhat
Democratic party in London's day to an
authoritarian one in Russia and there
was no distinction then between the
party and the state so your
authoritarian party then became
authoritarian total control over the
entirety of the state now the fact that
the Soviet system involved total State
ownership of production meant that the
authoritarianism of the party State
could go even deeper into the lives of
ordinary people compared to other
horrific
um dictatorships like pinochets Chile
and so on when maybe you could find some
Solace like just at home or whatever
else you didn't have the same sort of
totalitarian you know
um uh like control of people's lives
um but I would say that that that
socialism self has yield different
outcomes now in the question of
polarization
I guess that implies that this
polarization this distinction
is a distinction that isn't real in
society and that is kind of being
manufactured or generated so you mean
the capitalist class and the working
class just to clarify yeah okay so in
certain populist distinctions
the
the division is basically arbitrary or
made up the US versus them polarization
depending who the US and who the them
are you know it's it's truly a a a
something that's manufactured but
capitalism itself as a system as a
system based on class division whether
you're supported or oppose it I think
you should we should acknowledge it's
based on class division
that is the thing creating that
polarization now I think what a lot of
what socialists try to do is we try to
take bits of working class opposition to
capitalism to their lives to the way
they're treated at work and so on and
yes we do try to organize on those bases
to help workers take Collective action
to help them organize and political
parties and someone to represent their
their interest economic and otherwise
but the contradiction
exist to begin with and if anything this
system which I'm proposing Democratic
socialism would be kind of a resolution
of this this this conflict this dilemma
this thing that has always existed since
you know Chieftain and follower and and
so on we've had class division since the
Neolithic Revolution you know I think
this is a democratic Road out of that
that tension and that division of
humanity into people who own and people
have nothing to give but their ability
to work so that sort of that idea is
grounded in uh is all going all the way
back to Marx that all of human history
can be told through the lens of class
struggle is there some sense can you
still man the case that this class
difference is over exaggerated
that
there's a difference
but it's not the difference of the
abuser and the abused
it's more of a difference of
uh people that were successful and
people that were less successful so I'll
play Devil's Advocate which is a that
maybe
one could argue that it's purest
earliest stage capitalism is based on a
Stark
difference but then since then two
things have happened one a bunch of
socialists and workers have organized to
guarantee certain rights for Working
Class People certain protections so then
our system now there are certain safety
nets Less in the U.S than in other
countries but in a lot of countries are
pretty extensive safety nets even like
40 Hour Work Week minimum wage
safety regulations all that kind of
stuff yeah and all those things are
in my mind doses of socialism within
capitalism because what you're doing is
you are taking the autonomy of
capitalists to do whatever they want
with the people contracted to them
and the only thing stopping them is you
know them potentially being able to go
to another employer but even then it's
kind of a potentially a race to the
bottom if you know you you can't get
more than uh two dollars an hour from
any employer in your in your Market
you're gonna have to you know live with
it so one factor is we have built in
those Productions so we've taken enough
socialism into capitalism that you could
say that at a certain point maybe it
makes a qualitative difference and not
just a quantitative difference in
people's lives the other thing is over
time we've gotten wealthier and more
productive as a society
so maybe at some point the quantitative
difference of just more and more wealth
means that even if in the abstract the
division between a worker and a
capitalist is real if that worker is
earning you know a quarter million
dollars a year and has a good life and
only has to clock in 35 hours a week 30
hours a week
and has you know four weeks of vacation
then like isn't it just like an abstract
or philosophical
um difference so I think you could level
those two arguments what I would say is
that one
um
a lot of these rights that we have
fought for are constantly being eroded
and they're under attacked in part
because the economic power the
capitalists have bleeds into our
political democracy as well there's
constant lobbying for all sorts of labor
market deregulations and and so on
um I fundamentally believe
that
if tomorrow all those regulations went
away capitalists would fight to pay
people as little as possible and we'll
be back in 19th century capitalism and
not because they're bad people because
if I'm running a firm and all of a
sudden my competition is paying is is
able to find a labor pool and is paying
people less than me I'm going to be
undercut because they'll be able to take
some of that extra savings and invest
into new technology or whatever else and
they'll gobble up my market share before
long
um and then also beyond that I do think
there's a normative question here which
is
now do we believe that ordinary people
have a capacity
to be able to make certain decisions
about their work do we believe they know
more about their work than their bosses
um now I don't think that's not true at
every level but I think there's no doubt
that in workplaces workers know how to
productively do their tasks in ways that
their manager might not know I think
we've all been in workplaces where we've
had managers who kind of don't know what
you do or what what whatever else
um and I think that collectively if
incentivized we could uh have them one
instead of hoarding or that information
um since they're getting a stake in in
production and and so on they'd be able
to more freely share it and be able to
reshape how their day-to-day work
happens
and also with with elect demanders you
kind of take it up the the chain I think
you would have perfectly efficient uh
market-based firms
um that that could exist without
capitalists so there's a I mean there's
a lot of uh things to say
maybe within just very very low level
question of if the workers are running
the show
there's a brutal truth to the fact that
some people are better and the workers
know this
that's the Steve Jobs a players you want
to have all the a players in the room
because one B player can poison the pool
because then everybody gets demotivated
by like uh
by the nature of that
lack of excellence and competence this
is just to take sort of a crude Devil's
Advocate perspective
are the workers going to be able to
remove the incompetent from the pool
in the in the name in the goal of
towards the mission of succeeding as a
collective so I think that any
successful model of socialism that
involves the market you need two things
one is the micro level you need the
ability to uh fire people and for them
to exit firms which might be a slower
process in a Cooperative based firms
than it is in a capitalist firm without
a union but if you're probably akin to
the process that would happen in a
capitalist firm of which there are many
with unions
um
so you need that and then at the macro
level you need firm failure you need to
avoid a dilemma that happened in Soviet
style economies which was soft budget
you know constraints and
um firms basically not being allowed to
fail because the government was
committed to Full Employment the firms
employed people so even inefficient
firms were at the end of the day they
knew they were going to be propped up by
the government and they would be given
all the resources they would need no
matter how efficient inefficiently they
were using those resources to maintain
employment so I think you need you need
both do you worry about this idea of
firing people
man I'm uncomfortable with the idea I
hate it but I also know it's extremely
necessary
so is there something about a collective
a socialist system that makes firing you
said it might be slower might it become
extremely slow too much friction isn't
there a tension between respecting the
rights of a human being and saying like
you need to step up uh maybe sort of
deposit the carrot like you really like
to really encourage fellow workers know
when they're there's a person that's not
pulling their side of the do doing as
great of a job as they could be like
they
but isn't the person that's not doing a
great of a job going to start to
manipulate the system that slows the
firing in their self-interest
well I think there would be certain so
maybe another way to to put it is think
about like if you're a partner at a law
firm right
um I don't really know how law firms
work so I probably shouldn't use this
analogy but but correct me if I'm wrong
but let's say your partner