Kind: captions
Language: en
slaves produce a surplus which the
master gets surfs produce a surplus
which the Lord gets employees produce a
surplus which the employer gets it's
very simple these are
exploitative class structures because
one class produces a surplus
appropriated distributed by another
group of people not the ones who
produced it which creates hostility
enmity Envy anger resentment and all of
the problems you can lump under the
heading class
struggle the following is a conversation
with Richard
wolf one of the top Marxist economists
and philosophers in the world this is a
heavy Topic in general and for me
personally given my family history in
the Soviet Union in Russia and in
Ukraine today the words Marxism
socialism and communism are used to
attack and to divide much more than to
understand and to
learn with this podcast I seek the
latter I believe we need to study the
ideas of Karl Marx as well as their
various implementations throughout the
20th and the 21st centuries and in
general we need to both steal man and to
consider seriously that the ideas we
demonize and to challenge the ideas we
dogmatically accept as true even when
doing so is unpleasant and at times
dangerous this is the Lex Freedman
podcast to support it please check out
our sponsors in the description and now
dear friends here's Richard wolf let's
start with a basic question but maybe
not so basic after all what is Marxism
what are the defining characteristics of
uh Marxism as an economic and political
Theory and ideology well the simplest
way to begin a definition would be to
say it's the tradition that takes its
founding inspiration from The Works of
uh KL
Marx um but
because these ideas that he put forward
spread as fast as they did and as
globally as they did literally it's 140
years since Marx died and in that time
his ideas have become major types of
thinking in every country on the earth
um if you know much about the great
ideas of human history um that's an
extraordinary spread in an
extraordinarily short period of
historical time and what that has meant
that speed of spread and that Geographic
diversity is that the marxian ideas
interacted with very different cultural
histories religious histories and
economic conditions so the end result
was that the ideas were interpreted
differently in different places at
different
times and therefore Marxism as a kind of
first flush definition is the totality
of all these very different ways of
Coming to Terms uh with it for the first
roughly 40 50 years um Marxism was a
tradition of thinking critically about
capitalism Marx himself that's all he
really did he never wrote a book about
communism he never wrote a book really
about socialism either his comments were
occasional fragmentary dispersed what he
was really interested in was a critical
analysis of capitalism and that's what
Marxism was more or less in its first 40
or 50
years um the
only qualification of what I just said
was something that happened in Paris for
a few weeks uh in
1871 there was a collapse of the French
government uh consequent upon losing a
war to bismar Germany
and in the result was something called
the Paris commune the working class of
Paris rose up basically took over the
function of running the Parisian economy
and the Parisian society and Marx's
people people influenced by Marx were
very active uh in that commune in the
leadership of the commune and Marx
wasn't that far away he was in London uh
these things were happening in Paris you
know that's an easy transport even then
and for a short time very
short Marxism had a different quality in
addition to being a critique of
capitalism it
became a theory of how to organize
Society differently before that had only
been implicit now it became explicit
what is the leadership of the Paris
commune going to do and why and in what
order
in other words governing organizing a
society but since it only lasted a few
weeks the French army regrouped uh and
under the leadership of people who were
very opposed to Marx they marched back
into Paris took over killed a large
number of the of the communards as they
were called and deported them to islands
in the Pacific that the that were part
of the French Empire at the
time the really big change happens in
Russia in
1917 now you have a group of marxists L
in trosy all the rest who are in this
bizarre position to seize a moment once
again a war like in
France uh disorganizes the government
throws the government into a very bad
reputation because it is the government
that loses World War I to withdraw as
you know uh breast Lov and all of that
and the government collapses and the
Army revolts and in that situation a
very small political party Russian
Social Democratic Workers Party um
splits under the pressures of all of
this into the Bolshevik and menic
divisions lenon trosy and the others are
in the Bolshevik division and to make a
long story short he's an exile uh his
position Lenin's position makes him gets
him deported because he says Russian
workers should not be killing German
Workers I mean this is a war of
capitalists who are dividing the world
up into colonies and Russian working
people have no don't should not kill and
should not die for such a thing as you
can expect they arrest him and they
throw him out interestingly in the
United States the the comparable leader
at that time of the Socialist Party here
as you know there was no Communist party
at this point that comes later um the
head of the Socialist Party a very
important American figure named Eugene
Victor Debs makes exactly the same
argument to the the Americans should not
fight in the war uh he's independ he has
nothing to do with Lon I don't even know
if they knew of each other but uh he
does it on his own he gets arrested and
put in jail
here in the United States by the way
runs for president from jail and does
very well really very well it's
remarkable um and he's the inspiration
for Bernie Sanders if you if you see the
the
link um although he had much more
courage politically than than Bernie has
that's really interesting I'd love to
return to that link maybe later yes
history Rhymes yes the complicated story
anyway what the importance in terms of
Marxism is that now
this seizure of Power by a group of
marxists that is a group of people
inspired by Marx developing what you
might call a Russian uh even though
there were differences among the
Russians too but a Russian
interpretation this now has to be
transformed from a critique of
capitalism into a plan at least what are
you going to do in the Soviet Union and
a lot of this was then trial and error
Marx never laid any of this out probably
wouldn't have been all that relevant if
he had because it was 50 years earlier
in another country Etc so what begins to
happen and you can see how this happens
then more later in China and Cuba and
Vietnam and Korea and so on is that you
have kind of a
bation much of Marxism remains chiefly
the critique of capitalism ISM but
another part of it
becomes a set and they differ from one
to the other a set of Notions of what an
alternative post capitalist Society
ought to look like how it ought to work
and there's lots of disagreement about
it lots of
confusion um and I would say that that's
still where it is that you have a
tradition now that has these two major
Wings critique of capitalism
notion of the alternative and then a
variety of each of those and that would
be the framework in which I would answer
that's what Marxism is about its basic
idea if you had to have one is that
Human Society can do better than
capitalism and it ought to try and then
we can start to talk about what we mean
by capitalism
fine so we'll look at the critique of
capitalism on one side but maybe maybe
stepping back what do you think Marx
would say if he just looked at the
different implementations of the ideas
of Marxism throughout the 20th century
where his ideas that were implicit were
made
explicit
um would uh would he shake his head
would he enjoy some of the parts of the
implementations like what how do you
think he would analyze it well he had a
great sense of humor I don't know if you
had a chance to take a look at his
writing but yeah an extraordinary sense
of humor so my guess is he would deploy
his humor in answering this question too
he would say some of them are inspiring
some of the interpretations of his work
and he's very pleased with those others
are horrifying and he wishes somehow he
could erase the connection between those
things and the lineage they claim from
him which he
would uh there's a German word I don't
know if these Lang if you speak the
other languages there's a wonderful
German word called
f and it's stronger than the word refuse
it's if if you want to refuse something
but with real strong
emphasis is a German way of saying I I
don't want to have anything to do with
that and he would talk then you know in
philosophical terms because remember he
was a student of philosophy he wrote his
doctoral thesis on Ancient Greek
philosophy and all the rest he would wax
philosophical and say
you know that that the ideas you put out
are a little bit like having a child you
have a lot of influence but the child is
his own or her own person and will find
his or her own way and these ideas once
they're out there go their own way and
as you said there's a particular way
that this idea spread the speed at which
it spread throughout the world made it
even less able to be sort of
stabilized and connected back to the
origins of where the idea came from the
only people who ever really tried that
were the Russians After the Revolution
because they occupied a position for a
while not very long but they occupied a
position for a while in which I mean he
was exalted right they had been all
these people criticizing capitalism for
a long time even the marxists ever since
midcentury and these were the first guys
who pulled it off they made it and so
that there was a kind of presumption
around the world their interpretation
must be kind of the right one because
look they they did it and so for a while
they could enunciate their
interpretation and it came to be widly
grasped as something which by the way
gets called in the literature official
Marxism the very idea that you would put
that adjective in front of Marxism or
Soviet Marxism or Russian more there
were these words that who where the
adjective was meant to somehow say kind
of this is the cannon you can depart
from it but this is the cannon before
the Russian Revolution there was no such
thing and by the
1960s it was already disp it was gone
but for a short time know 30 40 years it
was a kind of and the irony is
particularly here in the United States
where the taboo against Marxism kicks in
right after World War II is so total in
this country that I for example through
most of my adult life have had to spend
a ridiculous amount of my time simply
explaining to American
audiences that the Marxism they take as
canonical is that old Soviet Marxism
which wasn't the Canon before 1917 and
hasn't been since at least the
1960s but they don't know it's not that
they're stupid and it's not that they're
ignorant it's that well the ignorance
may be but I mean it's not a mental
problem it it's the taboo shut it down
and so all of the reopening that in a
way recaptures what went before and
develops it in New Direction they just
don't know they nevertheless it's a
serious attempt at making the implicit
ideas explicit the the
Russians the the Soviets at the
beginning of the 20th century made a
serious attempt at saying okay beyond
the critique of capitalism how do we
actually build a system like this and so
in that
sense not at a high level but at a
detailed level it's interesting to look
at those particular uh schools maybe
right because for example let me just to
take your point one step further you
really cannot understand the Cuban
Revolution the Chinese Revolution uh
Vietnamese and and the others because
each of them is a kind
of response let's call it to the way the
Soviets did it are you going to do it
that way well yes and no is the answer
this we will do that way but that we're
not going to do and the differences are
huge but you could find a thread I can
do that for you if you want in which all
of them are in a way
reacting to The Originals yes very much
so like maybe most of rock music is
reacting to The Beetles and the stones
that's something like
that can you speak to the unique
elements of the various schools of that
Soviet Marxism so we got leninism trism
stalinism maybe even let's expand out to
uh maoism so um maybe I could speak to
sort of leninism
and then please tell me if I'm saying
dumb things there's a I think for Lenin
there was an idea that there could be a
small so of Vanguard party like a small
controlling entity that's like wise and
is able to do the central planning
decisions then for um stalinism one
interesting so Stalin's implementation
of all of this one interesting
characteristic is to move away from
International aspect of the ideal of
Marxism to uh make it all about Nation
nationalism the strength of nation and
then um so maoism is it's it's different
in that it's focused on uh Agriculture
and
Rural um and then trism I don't know
except that it's anti- Stalin right I
mean I don't even know if there's unique
sort of philosophical elets there anyway
can you maybe from those or something
else speak to different unique elements
that are interesting to think about
about implementation of Marxism in the
real world probably the best way to get
in into this is to describe something
that happened in Marxism that then
shapes the answer to your
question in the early days of Marx's
writings and you know he his life spans
the 19th centuries born in 1818 dies in
1883 so literally he lives the 19th
century and you might I mean to make
things simple you might look at the
first half of the first two-thirds of
his life as
overwhelmingly Gathering Together the
precursors to his own work Marx was
unusually scholarly in the sense that
partly because he didn't work a regular
job and partly because he was an exile
in London most of his adult life he
worked in the library I mean he had a
lot of time he got subsidized a little
bit by Engles whose family were
manufacturers and you might say the
first half to two-thirds of his life are
about the critique of
capitalism and that was what in a broad
sense the audience for his work Western
Europe more or less uh was interested in
that's what they wanted and he gave that
to them he wasn't the only one but he
was very very effective at it um by the
last third of his
life he and the other producers of a
anti- capitalist movement people like
the chartists in England that's a whole
another movement um the anarchists of
various kinds like prudon in France or
katkin or bakunin in Russia and so on uh
you you P all these together and there
was a shift in what the
audience let's call it a mixture
of militant Working Class People on the
one hand and critical or radical
intelligencia on the other they now
wanted a different question they were
persuaded by the analysis they were
agreeable that capitalism was uh a phase
they would like to do better than and
the question became how do we do this
not anymore should we why should we you
could we maybe fix capitalism no they
had gotten to the point the system has
to be fundamentally
changed but they got they didn't go you
might imagine they didn't go and say
well what will that new system looks
like they didn't go that way what they
did was ask the question
how could we get Beyond capitalism it
seems so powerful it seems to have
captured people's minds people's daily
lives and so on um and the focus of the
conversation became this was already by
the last third of the 19th century the
question of the agency the mechanism
whereby we would get Beyond and again
make a long story short the conversation
focused on seizing the
government see before that it wasn't
that the government was not a major
interest if you read Marx's Capital the
great work of his maturity three volumes
there's almost nothing in there the
state I mean he mentions it but he's
interested in the details of how
capitalism Works Factory by factory
store by store office what's the
structure the government's secondary for
him but there's also humans within that
capitalist system of there's the working
class right it's it's about struggle but
he's interested in each in the work
think of it almost mechanically like the
workplace in the workplace there some
people who do this and other people who
do that and they accept this division of
authority and they accept this division
of what's going on here particularly
because he believed that the core
economic objective of capitalism was to
maximize something called profit which
his analysis located right there in the
workings of the Enterprise not the
government was not the the the key
factor here and he was looking at ideas
of value yes how much is the how much
value does the labor of the individual
workers provide and that means how do we
reward the workers in an ethical way so
those are the questions of uh right well
we'll get that yeah okay okay but the
government was not part of that picture
okay so it's very significant that
towards the end of the 19th century Marx
is still alive when this begins but it
it really gets going after he dies is
this debate among
marxists about the role of the state
they all agree nearly all of them agree
that you have to get the state the
working class has to get the state
because they see the state as the
ultimate guarantor of capitalism when
things get really out of hand the
capitalist calls the police police or he
calls the army or both of them and so
the government is in a sense this key
institution captured in Marx's Lang
Marxist Language by the Bourgeois by the
by the other side the
capitalist and yet vulnerable because of
suffrage if suffrage is universal or
nearly so if everybody gets a vote which
in a way capitalism brings to Bear part
of it's rejection of feudalism in the
French American Revolution is to create
a place where elected represented so the
the government being subject to suffrage
creates the notion aha here's how we're
gonna we have to seize the state and
then the the that gets agreed upon but
there's a big split as to how to do it
one side says you go with the election
you you you mobilize the voter
that gets to be called reformism within
Marxism and the other side is
Revolution don't do that this system if
I may quote Bernie again is rigged uh
you can't get there they they've long
ago learned how to manipulate uh
parliaments they buy the politicians and
all that and therefore Revolution is
going to be the way to do it
Revolution gets a very big boost because
the Russians they did it that way they
didn't do I mean they fought in the Duma
in the in the parliament but they didn't
and that this focus on the state I would
argue goes Way Beyond what The Debaters
at the time uh and if you're interested
in the great names there was a great
theorist of the the role of the state in
a reformist strategy to get power uh in
Germany named Edward Bernstein
very important his opponents in Germany
were Carl kowsky and Rosa Luxembourg the
two other huge figures in Marxism at the
time and they wrote the articles that
everybody reads but it was a much
broader uh debate by the way that debate
still goes on reformism versus
Revolution and in in terms not all that
different I mean it's adjusted to
history but in terms that AR different
can you comment uh on where you lean in
terms of the mechanism of progress
Reformation versus I'd rather tell you
the historical story over and over and
over again in most cases the reformists
have always won because Revolution is
frightening is scary is
dangerous um and so most of the time
when you get to the point where it's
even a relevant discussion not a
abstract thing for conferences but a
real strategic issue
the reformists have won I mean
and I give you an example from the
United States in the Great Depression of
the
1930s you had an extraordinary shift to
the left in the United States the
greatest shift to the left in the
country's history before or since
nothing like it suddenly you created a
vast left wi composed of the labor
movement which went crazy in 1930 we we
organized more people into unions in the
1930 than at any time before or any time
since it is the explosion and at the
same time the explosion of two socialist
parties and the Communist party that
became very powerful and they all worked
together creating a very powerful
leftist presence in this country they
debated in a strategically real way
reform or revolution the reformers were
the Union people by and large and the
the Communists were the revolutionaries
by and large because they were
affiliated with the Communist
International with Russia and all of
that and in between you might say the
two socialist parties one that was trist
and inspiration and the other one more
moderate Western European kind of
socialism and they had this intense
debate and they ended up the reformists
won that debate there was no revolution
in the 19 30s here uh but there was a
reform that achieved unspeakably great
successes which is why it was as strong
and remains as strong as it does because
it achieved in in a few years in the
1930s starting around
19323 Social Security in this country we
had never had that before it's the same
one we have now unemployment insurance
never existed before that you have till
today minimum wage for the first time
time still have that today and a federal
program of employment that hired 15
million people I mean these were
unspeakable gifts if you like to the
working class so that's the 30s and the
40s 30s not much in the 40s anymore but
in the 30s and here's the best part it
was paid for by taxes on corporations
and the rich so when people today say
well you can tax the Corp the the joke
is I have to teach American history to
Americans
uh because it has been erased from
Consciousness we'll return to that but
first let's let's take a stroll back to
the beginning of the 20th century with
the Russians with the Russians so their
interpretation goes like
this everybody was right the state is
crucial we were right we were the
revolutionaries we seized the state here
in Russia now we have the state and
socialism is when the working class
captures the state either by reform a
revolution and then uses its power over
the state to make the transition from
capitalism to the better thing we're
going
toward and again make a long story short
in the interest of time what happens
which is not unusual in human history is
that the
means becomes the end in other words
Lenin who's crystal clear before he you
know he doesn't live very long he dies
in 23 so he's only in power from 17 say
at 22 but that time he has his brain
trouble 1923 by the way not at age 23
just people who are listening 1923 yeah
he's only there for four or five years
uh he's very clear he even says and I've
done work on I've published so I mean I
know this stuff he says in a famous
speech Let's Not fool ourselves we have
captured the state but we don't have
socialism we have to create that we have
to move towards that
um with Stalin you know Lenin dies and
there's a fight between Stalin and
trosky trosky loses the fight he's
exiled he goes to Mexico Stalin is now
alone in power and does all the things
he's famous or inFAMOUS for um and by
the end of the 20s
Stalin makes a decision I mean not him
it's not that he makes it alone but
things have evolved in Russia so that
they do the following they declare that
they are socialism in other words
socialism
becomes when you capture the state not
when the state capture has enabled you
to do XYZ other things no no the state
itself once you have it is socialism so
when a socialist cap the state that's
socialism exactly and H that's exactly
right and I feel like that's
definitionally confusing well it
shouldn't be because I give get an
example yeah if you go to many parts of
the United States today and you ask
people what's socialism they'll tell you
they'll look you right in the face and
they'll say the post
office and you you know when I first
heard this as a young man what the post
office it took me a while to understand
the post office Amtrak the Tennessee all
the examples in the United States where
the government runs something this is
socialism see capitalism is if the
government doesn't run it if a private
individual who's not a a government
official runs it well then it's
capitalism if the government takes it
then it's socialism so what is wrong
with that reasoning so the idea I think
there's nothing wrong with it's a way of
looking at the world it's just got
nothing to do with marks well there's
Marx there's Marxism let's try to pull
this apart so what
role uh does central planning have in
Marxism so Marxism is
concerned with the class
struggle with respecting the working
class right
what is the connection between that
struggle and Central planning that is
often Central planning is often
associated with Marxism right so
centralized power doing Russia did that
allocation so that's a that's that has
to do with a very specific set of
implementations initiated by the Soviet
Union has nothing to do with Marx how
else can you do I don't think you can
find yes anywhere in Marx's writing
anything about Central planning or any
other kind of planning again
fundamentally then uh Marx Marx's work
it has to do with um with factories with
workers with with the Bourgeois with and
and the uh the exploitation of of the
working class exact you still have to
take that leap what is beyond capitalism
right so maybe we should turn to that
exp focus on that okay yes what okay
we've already looked historically at
several attempts to go beyond capitalism
how else can we go beyond capitalism let
me push a little further they didn't
succeed in my judgment as a Marxist and
I'm now going to tell you why they
didn't succeed because they
didn't understand as well as they could
have or should have what Marxist was
trying to do I think I would have been
like them if I had lived at their time
under their circum this is not a
critique of them but it's a different
way of understanding what's going on all
right so give you an example most of my
adult life I have taught marxian
economics I'm a professor of Economics
I've been that all my life I'm a
graduate of American
universities as it happens I'm a
graduate of what in this country passes
for its best
universities that's another conversation
you and I can have so I went to Harvard
then I went to Stanford and I finished
at Yale I'm like a poster boy for Elite
Education they tried very hard by the
way I had I I spent 10 years of my life
in the ivy league 20 semesters one after
the other no break mhm in those 20
semesters 19 of them never mentioned a
word about
Marxism that is no critique of
capitalism was offered to me ever with
one one professor in Stanford in the one
semester I studied with him he gave me
plenty to read but nobody else so that's
really interesting you you've mentioned
that in the past and that's very true
which makes you a very interesting
figure to hold your
ground
intellectually through this idea space
where just
people don't really even talk about it
no um perhaps we can discuss
historically why that is but never Le
that's the case so moxian economics did
KL Marx come up in conversation as a
kind of
dismissal the best example yeah he came
up only as an object of dismissal for
give you an example the major textbook
in economics that I was taught with and
that be was for many years the canonical
book it isn't quite anymore um was a a
book authored by a professor of
Economics at MIT named Paul Samuelson
and people kind of you know a whole
generation or two were trained on his
textbook if you open the cover of his
textbook he has a tree and you know and
the tree is Adam Smith and David Ricardo
at the at the root and then the the
different branches of it he's trying to
give you an idea as a student of how the
thing developed and it's a tree and
everybody on it is the Bourgeois and
then there's this one little branch that
goes off like this and sort of starts
heading back down that's Carl Marx in
other words he had to have it complete
cuz he's not a complete Faker but beyond
that no there was no nothing in the book
gives you two
paragraphs of an approach but that's
Cold War I mean that that's really
that's really neither here that that's
the craziness yeah that's the Cold War
in this country my professors were
afraid anyway let me get to the to the
core of it what I think will help
Marx was interested in the relationship
of people in the process of production
that he's interested in the factory the
office the store what goes on and by
that he means what are the
relationships among the people that come
together in a
workplace and what he analyzes is that
there is something going on there that
has not been adequately
understood and that has not been
adequately addressed as an object
needing
transformation and what does he mean the
answer is exploitation which he defines
mathematically in the following
way whenever in a society any society
you organize people such adults not the
children not the sick but you know
healthy
adults in the following way a big block
of them a clear majority work that is
they use their brains and their muscles
to transform nature a tree into a chair
a sheep into a Woolen sweater whatever
in in every human Community marks argues
there are the people who do that work
but they always produce more chairs more
sweaters more hamburgers than they
themselves consume whatever their
standard of living does have to be low
could be medium can be high but they
always produce more than they themselves
consume that more by the way ger Marx
when he writes this uses the German word
me mehr which is the English equivalent
of more it's the more that more got
badly translated into the word
Surplus shouldn't have been but it was
by by the way by German and English
people doing the translations what's the
difference between more and surplus is
there a nuan yeah because Surplus has a
notion of its discretionary it's sort of
extra he's not taking a he's not making
a judgment that it's extra it's a simple
math equation yes very simple oneus the
other yes
xus X is the total output Y is the
consumption by the producer therefore x
- y equals s the Surplus exactly exactly
now markx
argues the qu the minute you understand
this you will ask the following question
who gets the
Surplus who gets this extra stuff that
is made but not consumed by those who
made it and Marx's answer is therein
lies one of the great Shapers of any
society how is that organized for
example who gets it what are they asked
if anything to do with it in in exchange
for getting it what's their social role
for example here we go now if you get
this and you get the core of it anyway
um and I don't charge much
um the workers themselves could get it
less than lawyers right that's right uh
the workers themselves could get it yes
that's the closest marks comes to a
definition of communism communism would
would be if the workers who produce the
Surplus together decide what to do with
it so this has to do not just with who
gets it but more importantly who gets to
decide who gets it well who gets it and
who gets to decide what to do with it
right because you can't decide it if you
don't have disposition over it so the
the lot this the logic of the word
sequence it's produced it's Marx uses
the word approp prated in other words
whose property who who gets to decide if
you like what happens all that property
ever meant is who gets to decide and
who's excluded that's a clean definition
of communism for right and that's the by
the way it's not just clean the only one
so what's uh can we just Linger on the
definition of exploitation in that
context easy becomes very easy there
exploitation exists if and when the
Surplus that's produced
is taken and distributed by people other
than those who produced it slaves
produce a surplus which the master gets
surfs produce a surplus which the Lord
gets employees produce a surplus which
the employer gets it's very simple these
are
exploitative class structures because
one class produces a surplus
appropriated dis distributed by another
group of people not the ones who
produced it which creates hostility
enmity Envy anger resentment and all of
the problems you can lump under the
heading class struggle I use a metaphor
simple metaphorical story you have two
children let's assume and you take them
to Central Park a few blocks from here
it's a nice day and the children are
playing and in comes of those men with a
ice cream truck comes by Dingle Ling
lingling your children see the ice cream
daddy get me an ice cream so you walk
over you take some money and you get two
ice cream cones and you give them to one
of the
children the other one begins to scream
and yell and howl obviously what's the
issue and you realize you've just made a
terrible mistake so you order the one
you gave the two ice cream cones to give
one of those to yourself sister or your
brother or whatever it
is and that that's how you solve the
problem until a psychologist comes along
and says you know you didn't fix it by
what you just did you should never have
done that in the first
place my response so you understand all
of the efforts to deal with inequality
in economic political cultural these are
all giving the ice cream comb back to
the kid you should you should never do
this in the first place there a
reallocation of resources creates
bitterness in the populace look at AR
we've this country is tearing itself
apart now in a way that I have never
seen in my life and I've lived here all
my life and I've worked here all my
life it's tearing itself apart and it's
tearing itself apart basically over the
redivision the
redistribution of wealth having so badly
distributed in the F but that's all in
marks and notice as I explained to you
what is going on in this tension filled
production scene in the office the
factory the store I don't have to say a
word about the government I'm not
interested in the government the
government's really a a very secondary
matter to this core question and here
comes the big point if you make a
revolution and all you do is remove the
private exploiter and substitute a
government official without changing the
relationship you you can call yourself a
Marxist all day long but you're not
getting the point of the Marxism the
point was not who the exploiter is but
the exploitation per se you got to
change the organization of the workplace
so there isn't a group that makes all
the decisions and gets the Surplus V Vis
A another one that produces it if you do
that you will destroy the whole project
you will not only will you not achieve
what you set out to get but you'll so
misunderstand it that you the Germans
again have a phrase is get Chief it goes
crooked it it doesn't go right the
project gets off the rails because it
can't uh it can't understand either what
its objective should have been and
therefore it doesn't understand how and
why it's missing its objective it just
knows that this is not what it had hoped
for mean there's a lot lot of
fascinating questions here so one one
is to what degree so there's human
nature to what degree does
communism uh a lack of exploitation of
the working class naturally emerge if
you leave two people together in a room
and come back a year later if you leave
five people together in a room if you
leave a 100 people and a thousand people
it seems that humans form hierarchy
uh naturally so the the clever the
charismatic uh the sexy the the muscular
the powerful what however you define
that uh starts start you know becoming a
leader and start to do um maybe
exploitation in a non- negative sense a
more generic sense starts to become an
employer not in a capitalist sense but
just as a human here you go do this and
in exchange I will give you this just
because comes the leadership role right
uh so the question is yes okay it would
be nice the idea sort of of Communism
would be nice to to um nice in theory
but it doesn't work in practice because
of human nature because of human nature
that's thank you so what C what can we
say about leveraging human nature to
achieve some of these ends there's so
many ways of
responding in no particular order here
here are some of them
um the history of the human race as best
I can tell is a history in which a
succession of social forms forms of
society
arise and as they do
they rule out some kinds of human
behavior on the grounds that they are
socially disruptive and
unacceptable the argument isn't really
then is there a need or an instinct is
there some human
nature that makes people want to do this
well whatever that is this has to be
repressed or else we don't have a
society you know and Freud helps us to
understand that that repression is going
on all the time and it has consequences
it's not a finished project you repress
it it's gone it doesn't work like that
so for example when you get a bunch of
people together at some point they may
develop animosities towards one another
that lead them to want the other person
or persons to disappear to be dead to be
gone but we don't permit you to do that
we just
don't every economic system that has
ever
existed has included people who defend
it on the grounds that it is the only
system consistent with human nature and
that every effort to go beyond it has to
fail because it contradicts human nature
I can show you endless documents of
every tribal Society I've ever studied
every
anthropological community that has ever
been studied slavery wherever it's
existed I can show you endless documents
in which the Defenders of those system
not all of them of course but many
Defenders used that argument to
naturalize a system is a way to hold on
to it to prevent it from going to to
counter the argument that every system
is born every system evolves and then
every system dies and therefore
capitalism since it was born and since
it's been developing we all know at the
next stage of capitalism is what can
infer you're if you're saying the burden
is on the people who think it isn't
going okay so it doesn't mean they're
wrong but what you're saying is if we
look at history you're deeply suspicious
of the argument this is going against
human nature because we keep using that
for basically everything including toxic
relationship toxic systems destructive
systems that said uh well let me just
ask a million different questions so so
one what about the the argument that
sort of the
employer uh the capitalist takes on risk
so the yeah versus the employee who's
just there doing the labor the the
capitalist is actually putting up a lot
of
risk what's uh uh are they not in sort
of aggregating this organization and
taking this giant effort hiring a lot of
people aren't they taking on risk that
this is going to be a giant failure so
first of all there's
risk almost in everything you undertake
any project that begins now and in the
future that takes a risk that between
now and that future something's going to
happen that makes it not work out I mean
I got into a cab before I came here
today in order to do this with you yes I
took a risk I could the cab could have
been an accident lightning could have
hit us a bear could have eaten my left
foot who the hell knows shouldn't I
reward you for the risk you took no hold
it a second let's do this step by step
so everybody's taking a risk I always
found it Wonder beautiful you talk about
risk and then you imagine it's only some
of us who take a risk let's go with the
worker in the with the capitalist that
worker he moved his family from Michigan
to Pennsylvania to take that job he had
he made a decision to have children they
are teenagers they're now in school at a
time when their friendships are crucial
to their development you're going to
yank them out of the school because his
job is gone he took an enormous risk to
do that job every day to foro all the
other things he could have done he was
taking a risk that this job would be
here tomorrow next month next year he
bought a house which Americans only do
with mortgages which means he's now
stuck he has to make a monthly pay if
you make a mistake you
capitalist he he's the one who's going
to you're a capitalist you got a lot of
money otherwise you wouldn't be in that
position you got you've got a cushion he
doesn't if you in investigate you'll see
that in every business I've ever been in
and I've been involved in a lot of them
so you you think it's possible to
actually measure risk or is your basic
argument is there's risk involved in a
in a lot of both the working class and
the bouro the capitalist right and it's
diff work the worker would never come
and say cuz he's been taught right um
I want this payment a wage for the work
I do and I want this page this payment
for the risk I take well there's some
level of communication like that you you
have acknowledgement of dangerous jobs
but that's probably built into the
salary all those kinds of things you you
UND but you're not incorporating the
full spectrum of risk you don't believe
that this country is now being literally
transformed From Below by an army of
workers who work at Amazon uh fast food
joints you know what their complaint is
it's killing us we get paid shit and
it's killing us there is no relationship
except in the minds of the Defenders of
capitalism between the ugliness the
difficulty the danger of labor on the
one hand and the wage let me give you
just a couple of examples cuz this is my
this my job this my life what I do right
the median income of a child care worker
in the United States right now as we
speak is $111.22 an hour median so 50%
make less 50% make more the median
income for car park
attendant is several dollars per hour
higher than that what does the car park
attendant do he stares at your car for
many hours to make sure that nobody
comes and grabs it mhm maybe he Parks it
and he moves it around to get it in and
out by any measure that I know of that
makes any rational sense being in charge
of of toddlers two three four year olds
who are at the key moment of mental
formation the first five years to do to
give that a lower salary than you give
the guy who watches your car come on I
know how to explain it gender explained
all kinds of issues the the car park
people are are males and the they
childcare people are females and that
that in our culture is a very big marker
of what but the one who said only the
economics professor nobody else says
this stuff because in economic I don't
know if you were familiar with our
profession but we have something which
we call marginal product this is a this
is a fantas I I was a mathematician
before I became an economist I loved
mathematics I I specialized in
mathematics so I know mathematics pretty
well what economists do is is silly is
childish but they think it's mathematics
it's very sophisticate it is but think
for a minute what it means to suggest
that you can identify the marginal
product of a factor of production like a
worker
in in the textbook when when it's taught
I've taught this stuff I hold my nose
but I teach it then I explain to
students what I've just taught you is
horeshit but I first I teach it what is
the marginal product if it might be
useful to say the notion is if you take
away one worker right now from the pile
what will be the diminution of the
output that's the marginal product of
that worker measured by the amount of
the output that diminishes
output of the raw product of the product
usually in real terms so physical not
not the value you could do a value but
it's really more the physical you're I
mean I there is a transformation thing
we'll I'd love to talk to you about
about value it's so interesting what
isue I'd be glad to talk to you about
value and price and all of that but I
just want to get to
the Hegel who is Marx's teacher has a
famous line you can't step in this in
the same river twice
and the argument is you and the river
have changed between the first and the
second time so it's a different you and
it's a different you can choose not to
pay attention to that just you can't
claim you're not doing that you can't
claim that you can actually do that
because you can't there is no way to do
that oh so the the the meaning that you
can't just remove a worker and have a
clean mathematical calculation of the
effect that it has on the output that's
right because too many other things are
going on too many things are changing
and you cannot assume much as you want
to that the outcome on the output side
is uniquely determined by the change you
made on the input side can't do that
even in the even in the average it's
it's not going to work out you can take
look mathematics is full of abstractions
you can abstract you can say as as we do
in economics kerus parbus you know
everything else held constant but you
have to know what you just did you held
everything you know why you do that
because you can't do that in the real
world that's not possible you better
account for that otherwise you're
mistaking the abstraction from the messy
reality you abstracted from to get the
abstraction as a quick tangent if we
somehow went through a thought
experiment or an actual experiment of
removing every single Economist from the
world would be better off or worse off
much better off okay economics and I'm
you know I'm talking about myself see
economics got we're going to ship ship
all the economist to Mars and see how
well Works off no but the serious part
of this is that
economics you know it's really about
capitalism economics as a discipline is
born with capital there was no such
thing when I teach I teach courses at
the University for example call history
of economic thought right and I begin
the students with Aristotle and Plato
and I say you know they talked about
really interesting things but they never
called it economics there was no it NE
it made no sense to people to
abstract something as Central to daily
life as economics broadly defin it made
no sense that's a creation much much
later that's capitalism that did that
created the feel of so when I give them
Plato and Aristotle I have to give them
particular
passages by the way footnote cuz you're
audience will like it Plato and
Aristotle talked about markets because
they lived at a time in ancient Greece
when Market relations were beginning to
intrude upon these societies so they
were both interested in this phenoma
that we're not just producing goods and
then Distributing among us we're doing
it in a quidd proquo you know I'll give
you three oranges you give me two shirts
a market exchange and both Aristotle and
Plato hated markets denounced them and
for the same reason they destroy social
cohesion they destroy Community they
make some people rich and other people
poor and they set us against each other
and it's terrible and here's what that's
they agreed on that here's what they
disagreed on one of them said okay there
can be no
markets that was Plato Aristotle comes
back and says no no no no no no too late
for that the disruption caused it in
society by getting rid of this
institution that has crawled in amongst
us would be too devastating so we can't
do that but what we can do is control it
regulate it get from the market what it
does reasonably well and prevent it from
doing the destructive things it does so
badly so the the fundamentally the
destructive thing of a market is it's
the engine of capitalism and so it
creates exploitation of the worker it
facil I wouldn't create that's too
facilitates it facilitates it and it is
an institution that Plato and Aristotle
feel is a terrible danger to community
is there which by the way is a way of
thinking about it that exists right now
all over the world look the medieval
Catholic church had a Doctrine the
prohibition of
usury you know and this was that God
said M if there's a person who needs to
borrow from you then that's a person in
need and the good Christian thing to do
is to help
him to demand an interest payment rather
than to help your fellow man is God
hates you for that that's a sin Jesus is
crying all the way to wherever it is he
goes but would Jesus be crying when you
try to scale that system so that has to
do with the intimate human interaction
the idea of markets is you're
able uh to create a system that involves
thousands millions of humans and there
be some level of um safe self regulating
fairness there might be but it's hard to
imagine that charging interest would be
the way to do that I wonder what so I
guess suppose suppose you were
interested in having uh uh suppose you
took us your problem we have a set of
funds that can be loaned
out people don't want to consume it they
they're ready to lend it
okay to whom should they lend it well we
could say in our
society um we're going to run this the
way professors in institutions like MIT
work this MH they write up a project
they send the project in to some
government off office where it is looked
at against other projects and this
office in the government decides we're
going to fund this one and that one
because they're more needed in our
society we we're in Greater need of
solving this problem than that problem
and so we're going to lend money to
people working on this problem more
readily or more money than we lend over
here because we're going to but instead
what we do is who can pay the highest
interest rate
whoa what what what do you do it why why
what ethics would justify you do it it's
like a market in general something is in
shortage all markets are about how to
handle shortage that's one basic way to
understand
it and so if if the demand is greater
than the supply which is all the word
shortage means has no other meaning if
the demand is greater than the supply
okay now you got a problem you can't
satisfy all the demanders
because you don't have enough Supply you
have a shortage okay now how are you
going to do it in a market you allow
people who have a lot of money to bid up
the price of whatever's short and that
solves your problem because as the price
goes up the poor people can't they drop
out they can't buy the thing at the
exalted price so you've got a way of
Distributing the shortage it goes to the
people with the most money at this point
most human beings confronted with this
explanation of a market would turn
against it because it contradicts their
Christian judaic Islamic all of them
would what you know what that means it
means that a rich person can get the
scarce milk and give it to their cat
while the poor person has no milk for
their five children there it is you want
to Market why the the fundamental thing
that seems unfair there's the resulting
inequality
now or death or death well that's the
ultimate inequality yes it is what about
and we're going to jump around from the
philosophical from the economics to the
sort of uh debate type of
thing what about sort of the lifting
ties raise all boats meaning if we look
at the 20th century
right A lot of people maybe disagree
with this but they attribute a lot of
the innovation and the average
Improvement in the quality of
life uh to capitalism right to
inventions and Innovation to engineering
and science
developments um that resulted from
competition and all those kinds of
forces um so not looking at the
individual unfairness of exploitation as
it's specifically defined but just
observing historically looking at 20
Century we came up with a lot of cool
stuff that seem to have made life easier
uh and better on average what do you say
to that I have several responses to that
um but I do disagree pretty F
fundamentally with what's going on there
but but let me give you the arguments so
you that you can hear them and then you
can evaluate them uh as can anybody
who's listening or watching um
Marx was a student of Hegel and one of
hegel's central arguments was that
everything that exists exists quote in
contradiction uh in simple English
there's a good and bad side if you like
to everything and you won't understand
it unless you accept that proposition
and start looking for the good things
that are the other side of the bad ones
and the bad things that are the other
side of the good ones Etc so the
dialectic yes exactly marks very
attentive to that explicitly agrees with
this on many occasions and applies it of
course to the central object of his
research capitalism so this is not a
simple-minded fellow who's telling you
all the bad things about capitalism as
if there were nothing that this system
achieved or accomplished and one of the
things he celebrates a lot is the
technological dynamism of the system
uh which Marx takes to be profound
because you know he lived at the time
when major breakthroughs in in textile
technology and Mining uh and chemistry
and so on were
achieved um but as to the notion that
that capitalism is therefore responsible
for the Improvement in in the quality or
the standard of living of the mass of
people Marx now comes back and says oh
way way a minute here number
one capitalism as a
system has been mostly represented by
capitalists which makes a certain
sense and those capitalists with very
few exceptions some but very few have
fought against every effort to improve
the lives of the mass of
people the goal of a capitalist is to
minimize labor costs what that means is
replace a worker with a machine move the
production from expensive us to cheap
China uh bring in Desperate immigrants
from other parts of the world because
they will work for less money than the
folks that you have here at home uh
every measure to help the standard of
living of American workers had to be
fought for for decades over the
opposition of capitalists from the
beginning
to right now the reason we have a
minimum wage which was past 19 middle of
the 1930s when it was proposed it was
blocked by capitalists they got together
they don't want and
today just a factoid for you the last
time the minimum wage was raised in the
United States federal minimum wage was
in 2009 when it was set at the lofty sum
of
$725 an hour power which you cannot live
on over the last 12 years or so whatever
it is now 11 12 13 years since then we
have had an increase in the price level
in this country every year and in the
last year eight and a half% during that
time that the prices went up the minimum
wage was never
raised what this is a time of stock
market boom of growing inequal this is a
you
know the nerve of the defender of
capitalists who wants now to get credit
for the Improvement in the standard of
life of the workers that was fought by
every generation you know it takes your
breath away it's an argument
whoa but I take my hat off if I had one
because that is one of the only ways to
justify this system long ago let me get
it the heart of it long ago capitalism
could
have overcome hunger could have overcome
disease could have I mean Way Beyond
what we have now but it didn't yeah and
that's the worst moral condemnation
imaginable how do you
justify that when you could you didn't
look I look let me get at it another way
cuz this may may interest you
anyway the issue is not that capitalism
isn't technologically Dynamic it is and
along the way it has developed things
that have helped people's lives get
better no question but the notion that
the the mass enjoyment of a rising
standard of living is somehow built into
capitalism is factually nuts and is such
an
outrageous and I can give you a because
you do math you'll understand it think
of it this way imagine a production
process in which you have
um $100 that the capitalist has to lay
out for tools equipment and raw
materials and $100 that he has to lay
out for workers hire the workers and he
puts them all together and he has an
output and let's say the output is 100
units of something or whatever the price
is and that's his
revenue and when he when he takes his
product and sells it and gets the
revenue let's say the revenue is it
doesn't really matter it's 120 for like
of a better word and he t uh 220 sorry
and he takes 100 of it and replaces the
tools equipment and raw materials he
used up another 100 to hire the workers
for the next shift and the other 20 is
his profit and he puts that aside
now Along Comes A technological
breakthrough a machine a new machine and
the new machine is so
effective you can get the same out the
same number of units of output with half
the workers so you don't need to spend a
100 on workers you only need to spend 50
you can do it with half the workers and
so the capitalist goes to the workers by
the way this happens every day and he
says to half of them you're fired don't
come back Monday morning I don't need
you it's nothing personal I just I got a
machine why does he do that because the
50 he now no longer has to spend on
labor because don't need half of them he
keeps everything else is the same the
machine everything else is the just to
make the math easy so he he keeps as his
own profit the 50 that before he paid
for those workers yeah right cuz when he
sells it for 220 that 5050 don't have to
give to the next J because he has a new
machine so that's what he does the
technology leads he's happy he's become
more profitable he's got an extra 50
which is why he buys the machine the
workers are
screwed half of them just lost their job
have to go home to their husband and
wife tell them I don't have a job
anymore I didn't do anything wrong the
guy was nice and enough to say it was
nothing wrong with me but he doesn't
need it so I'm I'm completely screwed
here I don't know what I'm going to do
about the debts we have the house on
mortgage my children's education or
whatever else he's got going for himself
all right now now the point there was of
course an alternative
path the alternative path would have
been to keep all the workers pay them
exactly the same that you did before for
half a day's
work you would have got the same output
same Revenue same profit as
before but the gain of the technology
would have been a half a day of Freedom
every day of the lives of these workers
the majority of workers would have been
really
helped by this
technology but instead they were
screwed so that one guy the employer
could make a big bundle of more money
you want to support a system like this
well uh to go back to hego yes the good
and the bad yes so you just listed the
bad and you also first listed The Good
the technological innovation of this
kind of system the question is the
alternative uh whatever as we try to
sneak up to ideas of what the
alternative might look like right what
are the good and the bad of the
alternative so you just kind of as a
opposite the Contra by contrast showed
that well a nice alternative is you work
less get paid the same you have more
Leisure Time right opportunity to to
pursue other interests other interests
the creative interest family right
flourish as a human being uh basically
uh strengthen and uh embolden the basic
Humanity that's under all us yes but
then what cost does that have on the um
the deadline fueled competition fueled
machine of technological innovation that
is the positive side of capitalism slows
it down it slows it down and the
question
is which is more important for the
flourishing of humanity I'd love I agree
with that and I'd love there to be a
democratic mechanism so let's let's
discuss it let's debate it and then
let's uh side what mixture cuz it's not
either or the math problem I gave you is
either or we could mix it you could have
a third less of a working day instead of
a half less and then the other part
would be extra profit for our employer
Etc ET so let's have a democratic
discussion of what is the mix between
the positive and we have no such thing
all of this is decided by one side in
this debate which not only we know what
they do they always choose the one that
maximizes their profit cuz that's what
they were told to do in business school
where I've taught right um so we not
only is it an undemocratic decision but
it's lopsided to boot so we don't have
the opportunity but I would love for us
to be good heelan marxists and say let's
take a look at the plus and the minus
and make the best decision that we can
we'll make mistakes but we'll all make
them together it won't be one of us
making a dictatorial decision
you know Marx developed the notion of
the dictatorship of the proletarian not
as a notion of how government is not I'm
sorry not Marx lenon did that not as a
notion of how the government works but
as a notion of what the Practical
reality is the dictatorship and these
key decisions is not made by some
sitting Council it's made by each little
capitalist in his her relationships with
the workers in the workplace which is
why Marx focused his analysis on that
that point and by the way I can sketch
for you right now so it doesn't lurk in
the background what the alternative is
yeah let's go there okay it goes right
back to what I said earlier the workers
themselves the collection of
employees together appropriate their own
Surplus and decide democratically what
to do with it which includes the
decision of whether or not to buy a
machine
and whether or
not to use the machine and the savings
it might allow to be handled by more
Leisure for themselves or as a fund for
new
developments in technology or new
products or whatever they want and you
know this this is an old idea in human
Marx loved that toward the end of his
life he he started re ing extensively in
anthropology and one of the reasons he
did that toward the end of his life was
because he kept discovering that in this
society and that including here in the
United States that there were
examples of people who organized their
production in precisely this way as a
collective Democratic
community in which everybody had an
equal voice so we all together decide
democratically what to produce how to
produce where to produce and what to do
with the output we all help to produce
so let's do it in you know in this
country where democracy is
a value nearly everybody subscribes to
think about it this way the stunning
contradiction that there is a place in
our society where democracy has never
been allowed to enter the workplace
in the workplace a tiny group of people
unaccountable to the rest of them the
the employer whether that's an
individual a family a partnership or a
corporate board of directors tiny group
of people controls economically a vast
mass of employees those employees don't
elect those people have no nothing there
is no accountability it is the most
undemocratic Arrangement imaginable
and this Society insists on calling
itself Democratic when it has organized
the minor matter of producing everything
in a in a way that is the direct it's
autocratic so to push back on on on a
few things so one is the idea of this
Society calling itself Democratic is
that the government is elected
democratically and the government is
able to pressure the workplace through
the process of Regulation you pass laws
of the boundaries of how you know
minimum wage all those kinds of things
that's the one idea the other is there
is a natural force within the capitalist
when there's no
monopolies uh of competition being the
accountability so if you're a shitty
boss the EMP the employee in the capital
system has the freedom to move to
another company work for a better boss
so that that creates pressure on the
employer and the bosses that's at least
the idea that you uh there's two
boundaries of you not misbehaving one is
the law so regulator regulations by
passed by the government Democratic and
the second is because there's always
Alternatives in theory then that puts
pressure on everyone to behave well
because you can always leave uh so I
mean that's kinds of accountability but
what you're saying is that does not
result in any in a significant enough
accountability where the
employer uh that avoids exploitation of
the worker absolutely I mean whatever
accountability you get in those
mechanisms and let me respond to that
and then I'll the
counterargument um first
competition here again we have to be
hegelians just a little competition
destroys itself it doesn't need any out
the whole point of competition is to
beat the other guy if I can produce the
same product as the other guy either a
better quality or a lower price or maybe
both then I win because the customers
will come to me cuz my price is lower or
my quality is better and they'll leave
the other guy he'll go out of business
now let's follow when he goes out of
business cuz I won the
competition he fires his
workers I hire them because I'm now
going to be able to to serve a market he
can't serve anymore so I'm going to I'm
going to buy the used equipment I'm
going and thereby
many become
few Monopoly is the product of
competition it's not the antithesis it's
the product well let's see that's where
it comes from well there's another
there's another element to the system
where there's always a new guy that
comes in uh there isn't there isn't well
that's the that's the dream the
entrepreneurial spirit of a free uh you
know of of the of the United States for
example of a capitalist system is uh you
can be um broke and one day have a
strong idea and build up a business that
takes on Google and Facebook and Twitter
and uh all the different car Ford GM
which is what you know you look at Tesla
for example right that's the American
dream uh one of the many ideals of the
American dream is you can uh
uh move from dirt poor to being the
richest person in the world right and um
it can happen it can happen but you're
you know what that's like that's like
you can win a lottery no that's not
quite no the lottery is complete luck
here you can work your ass off if you
have a good idea odds are better in the
lottery that's not that's not true
there's a lot of new businesses how many
Teslas do you do you notice Tesla is a
really bad example cuz a car company
the automotive sector is so difficult to
uh they operate as such a thin margin of
profit that they're probably a good
example of like capitalism just
completely coming to a halt in terms of
lack of innovation BEC You know that's a
very complicated industry because of the
supply chain so much come on they have
their uniquenesses you're quite right
but so does every other industry the one
that's common is that many become few
what you can also have is when you have
a few they jack up the price they make
an enormous profit and in the irony of
capitalism Marx would love this they
begin to incentivize people to break
into this industry because the few
remaining are making a wild amount of
profit because they are a few and can
Jigger the market to make it work like
that for them but the reason every every
small capitalist is trying to build
market share that's a polite way polite
way of saying they want to become a
monopolist or to be more exact an
oligopolist one of a a handful of firms
that dominates that's what they're there
for but yeah to push back a little bit
also because that's could be this is a
question also do you think we're in
danger of
oversimplifying capitalism that
completely removes the basic decency of
human beings so if you give me a choice
to press the to press a
button to get rid of the competition and
that but that's going to lead to a lot
of suffering there's a lot of people at
the heads of companies that won't press
that button that it's not in the
calculation is not just money it's human
well-being too so like the think I yes
you and I don't live in the same place
then so you're saying that the forces of
capitalism take over the minds of the
people at the top you got and then they
they seize Being Human ense the basic
okay I wouldn't I would depending on
your model of humans but they they they
lose track of the better angels of their
nature and they just become cogs in the
machine but they're just happen to be
the C I would put it differently that
the system is so set up it's a little
bit like natural selection the guys who
may I could say the women too matter the
people who make it up through the layers
of the bureaucracy and get to the top in
these things have had to do things along
the way that becomes selective if they
can't stand it because they have that
human quality and there are people like
I've known them they're the ones running
an Airbnb in in Vermont they CH they
went there and they said I'm not doing
this anymore I'm not going to treat
people like that I'm going to make a
lovely place in Vermont with my husband
or my wife or whatever and I'm going to
be you know enjoying the people that
come by and be a decent human of course
of course but the system
selects The Firm you know if you don't
do what has to be done to make the
profit go up you're toast there anyway
then the rest of the people who vote for
you are going to kick you out you can
tell them all day long what a lovely
person you are then they're going to
look at you and wonder what happened to
you how did you even get this far with
the lovely person hor it's not okay okay
it's not necessarily just lovely person
so
maybe my I'll just say my bias is the
people I know
are especially at the top of companies
or in the tech sector where
Innovation is such an a big part of it
so I think a lot of the things we're
talking about is when there's not much
innovation in the
system so uh Innovation usually comes in
the history of capitalism Innovation
comes in spurts there's the electric
period the chemistry period the nuclear
period there's now whatever you want to
call it the artificial intelligence or
robotics or computer it doesn't it comes
and then there's a flurry as everything
is
reorganized around whatever the newest
technology is and then you have a period
where you can get excited about that and
the very rich people who come to the top
can talk endlessly as they always do
about innovation
but again you know it it really is this
is a recurring kind uh of debate and a
recurring kind of issue for
me how do I put this in a way that you I
don't mean to offend please please no no
no I don't I don't want to
but the problem with capitalism is
and maybe you'll like this the problem
with capitalism is not that it is the
one thing that's consistent with human
nature that's what its Defenders would
like to have us believe but if anything
I would argue the opposite that it is
such a
contradiction to parts of our nature not
other parts that there it can never
quite make it there's always going to be
the people who don't go along with it
people you're talking about who do quit
along the way or maybe a few of them
actually make it to the top by God knows
what hook or what crook that they did it
but most of them go and you know why
because their humanity is
contradicted by what it is they're being
asked to do I mean the the corporate
sector this year just to give you an
idea CEOs uh are
jacking up their their wage package
they're already out of whack I mean the
average CEO pay is now three 300 times
what what the average worker pay is but
they're jacking it up even more why
because that's what's happening in their
universe that's what they're all doing
it and they have to do each one of them
justifies that I have to do that
otherwise I'd lose my guy to the next
one which of course is true but is no
comfort for the mass of people who
aren't CEOs for whom this argument isn't
very exciting uh so there are they're
doing that at a time when the American
people can't cope they've just gone
through the covid disaster they've gone
through the worst second worst economic
crash of capitalism in our
history after two years of this onew
punch they got an inflation a third
punch and we are now predicting Rising
interest rates in a recession at the end
of the year or early next year you can't
do this to a working class when this was
done to the German worker class in the
1920s Hitler was the result you keep
doing that in this country we're already
watching it you're going to get that too
you're already getting bits and pieces
you can't keep quiet suffering amidst
the working class that's growing taking
out on that can turn to anger some
little 18-year-old kid who has to go 3
hours in his car and blow away people in
a supermarket huh what it happens every
day in this country every day so that
that anger Rises up in those little ways
now and bigger big
potentially by the way there's one more
thing on the rationality and this goes
to Elon
Musk if you're
interested 49,000 people were killed in
automobile uh accidents this last year
the number was just released yesterday
49,000 Auto Moes are the single largest
pollutant in the country they use up an
enormous amount of energy they uh they
use up enormous amount of
resources there is a way to make
Transportation much more rational and
we've known it for decades it's called
mass transportation it's a really
beautifully maintained Crystal Clear
clean frequent system of buses trains
Street Ro trolleys uh Vans it could
easily be done in this
Society in fact I once did a a project
that I estimated cost $30
billion that's less than we're sending
to Ukraine to do this to reconfigure it
uh a public transit system where
everywhere in this country all the major
Metropol this country is overwhelmingly
metropolitan area well it surely has to
be more than 30 billion but but well it
was a few years ago okay sure you're
saying it's that's insane right it's not
crazy stuff it's a reasonable number Hey
listen but there's a and we let me just
finish the point sure yes okay
so I'm trying to be rational
here if we have a climate crisis which
everyone tells me we do if it's got a
lot to do with fossil fuels which
everybody tells me it has to do and and
with the use of the fossil fuel
particularly for the automobile then the
solution to the problem would be mass
transit we don't we're doing nothing to
make that happen nothing well there's
you know on um you could argue that
autonomous vehicles is a kind of public
transit because it's going to be
reusable Vehicles it will end in theory
um car ownership so you just have a more
kind of distributed public transit
system if it happens but you know that
that's a side effect his major goal and
the major goal of the other companies
that are busy squeezing to get his share
the pie smaller so they have some for
General Motors Toyota all of them are
making electric cars though so what
they've done is they've replaced the
individual car with fossil fuel with
another individual car yeah that's
fucking nuts what are you doing one
that's one of the things they're doing
but automation is also another one but
on the Elon side there's also
hilariously named boring company which
is working on tunnels which is is
actually expanding the the the the
flexibility you might have to start
playing with ideas of public transit I
think listen I'm now partially living in
Austin Texas that I don't know if they
know what a public transit system is
period yes um there's pickup trucks
there well there's this is an
interesting so the the older by the way
footnote the older this city the more
likely it has public transportation
so you're saying Boston is the best
example yes you have you been well you
yeah yeah of course yeah I have a place
in Boston Boston with the street Railway
Boston is your case study of how to do
this because they've been doing it all
along New York's pretty good too there's
a trade out yeah New York I would say is
better than Boston because so there's
you know their technology also helps you
out to do the public trans
better it's almost like Boston's a
little too old but yes I get your point
uh but there is a
the the Ford F-150 pick truck symbolizes
something about America and and there is
a practical nature to the
fact that in order to do public transit
in order to do some of these things that
you're talking about with uh the working
class there has to be a central planning
component or there has to be a
centralized component and America is
very
much u based on the idea of at least in
recent times well I would say from the
founding of individualism of respecting
individual Freedom are you worried that
in order to bring some of these ideas of
Marxism to life you would trample on
individual freedoms no can you respect
both sure for me Marxism is a a way to
enhance the individual freedom of the
mass of people who have had that freedom
eroded on of the capitalist that's a a
motive for my Marxism it was for Marx 2
he loved the French Revolution he loved
the
liberal the great three and then
democracy the American contribution if
you like he believed in all of that his
critique of capitalism was it promised
it and then never delivered it and the
reason you have to go beyond it is
because it didn't deliver what it had uh
promised so for me um it is the
Fulfillment of of a but I again I'm a
heelan Marxist so if you
want
individualism for me is not the way it's
set up in this Society some sort of
antithesis to the government I think an
immense con has been pulled on the
American people and the con works like
this you know know what's bad and what's
dangerous and threatens you it's the
government the government's going to
come in and tell you what to do the
government's going to run your life the
government's the problem there really is
no other way to explain the following in
American
politics large numbers of people lose
their homes in a downturn like the
so-called Great Recession of 2008 who do
they blame the government large numbers
of people go unemployed and what are the
media all about the
government if I were a capitalist I'd
love this I kick the workers by throwing
them out of their home and they don't
get angry with me they get angry with
the government I fire large numbers of
people I have no responsibility for what
happens to them as a result of having no
job and no income and they get angry at
the
senator I'm laughing all the way to the
bank this is a genius stroke in theory
but there if you look at government cuz
you said accountability and the
capitalist system has no accountability
there's some push back I give on the
accountability I think there is some
accountability we can discuss in a
heelan way who there's more
accountability uh for I would say that
in theory government is perfectly
accountable that's the whole point of a
democratic system is you vote people in
in practice there's a giant growing
bureaucracy that is accountable only on
the surface there's two parties
that seem to are the same media is
somehow integrated into making the the
the same two parties that are just
wearing different colored shirts uh to
seem like they're very opposed and are
arguing and bitterly arguing calling
each other's spouses n nasty names and
all those kinds of things okay but
that's government so uh who exactly is
worse here government or or company well
why are we asking that question well
these are twins look what what you were
what you were able to say about
Republicans and Democrats just now with
which I agree yeah I would say the same
thing about corporations and the
government this is the same people
literally the let's go to church which
one is the which one is worse let's go
to Churchill like democracy is the worst
form of government except all the other
ones or whatever so this kind of same
idea which one exactly is worse cuz to
me it seems like which between what and
what government and uh industry and
companies it's because government is
plagued by um I I would call it
corruption because the corruption
of bureaucratic paperwork and then
because but they're not account there
doesn't seem to be a serious
accountability again we're not see we're
not living on the same Planet okay the
greatest practitioners of central
planning are
corporations Elon has an an operation
like General Motors Ford IBM or any of
the other Mega Corps they have to plan
they buy up companies because they don't
want to deal in the market they don't
want the insecurity the uncertainty of
having to buy their inputs or sell their
outputs to somebody they don't
control they want the professor to teach
the Genius of a market they hate the
market and when they grow to be big they
keep buying whoever they were dealing
with before so they could better control
them which requires them then to plan
the production and distribution of goods
inside rather than buying them in the
market the model of the government is
the private Corporation I have spent my
life give you an example in American
universities big ones famous not just as
a student but as a professor I been a
half a dozen school I teach now at a new
school here it's another one right they
all model themselves after businesses
they model their you can attack the
bureaucracy of universities good reason
it's a mess but they're proudly modeling
themselves on organizing their B
bureaucracy in a businesslike manner
uhhuh so you're looking at a difference
which isn't there the government and the
private sector are partners and both of
them wouldn't have it any other way the
corporations want that from the
government and the government now knows
that to please the corporations is the
number one objective they have because
that's how they keep their jobs and keep
their system going and so for all
practical purposes this is this is the
same people but there's a important
differences
that uh I don't know if they're
fundamental or just consequence of
history but if you have government
they're account in a different way than
companies companies are accountable by
especially if you have a consumer
they're accountable by sort of the
consumer spending or not spending their
money on whatever the heck the company
is selling the the government is
accountable by
votes and it seems
like government unlike companies for
most of company's history are is always
too big to fail meaning it can always
just print money it can always save
itself and that creates a bureaucracy
you never you rarely pay the cost of
having made bad decisions if you're in
government you distribute the blame and
it's very unclear who's responsible for
bad decisions so bad decisions in
government accumulate so you become more
and more and more inefficient
and more and more poor in your decision-
making in terms of you said public
transit should we build a public transit
system in this city or not that's a
difficult decision that's an interesting
decision uh I would say it's very often
a very good decision but whoever makes
that decision should be accountable for
a good or bad decision and it seems like
companies are more accountable they pay
the they feel the pain of having made a
bad decision more because they can go
bankrupt they I mean there there's much
more day-to-day pressure to make good
engineering decisions government doesn't
seem to be under the same level of
pressure I is do do you disagree with
that I disagree with that everything in
my history pushes me you may be living I
may be living in a different uh who
knows you know a
planet or or taking a different sort of
drug I won't I won't mention the name
but
I my personally had a lot to do with a
very large company here in the United
States here in the New York area and
um it involved two brothers and a family
who built it up into a huge
corporation one of the brothers
was kind of the
Dynamo of the family and he was more
responsible than anybody else building
it up
but he took care of his brothers he had
a nice feeling about his brothers so the
one brother who could not you know
without help tie his shoes became a vice
president got an enormous salary got a
beautiful office in a
skyscraper uh not that many blocks from
where I'm sitting right
now and that was the way that family
handled that
company and all of his relatives were
somewhere in this company doing a
variety of whatever because and my
experience with this and because I went
to the schools I told you all my
experiences with that group of people
corporate EXA full of those stories you
know they made mistake after mistake
which they would tell you about didn't
didn't undermine their they were always
able to blame
somebody else something else that
scraped them through and had they not
been able to they would have been
replaced by another person who did the
same thing for as long as they could and
they knew it they would talk about it at
Family EV that's how I
know yeah that's I mean that I
understand that you want the outside
world to look at it this way but it's
not my experience interest but again
what's that kind of thing thing uh at
the risk of saying human nature again I
wonder what kind of system allows for
that more versus versus less this is the
question of I would call that let's put
that under the umbrella term of
corruption okay um which system allows
for more corruption but remember that
the way I defined the different system
is not more or less government it's more
or less allowing a democratic workplace
yeah reconfiguring it what what happens
when everybody
has a vote when you have to explain what
the strategies are what the alternatives
are to a larger number of people than a
board of directors or a major
shareholders or whoever it is that most
companies are responsible to and now you
got a whole different Universe it's not
a small group of people can't be hidden
the way it's normally hidden most of it
and on and on and on this is you know
worker co-ops is what this is called in
many parts of the world so it's not that
I'm advocating something that's never
been seen before not at all the Marxism
I understand is to pick from historical
precedents the things that we think will
work better and I think if all the
people in an Enterprise just to drive
the point home democratically decided
they would never give two or three
individuals hundred million doar while
everybody else can't send their kid to
college I mean he's not going to do that
uh so just to return just to address
this uh point about the particular
implementation of Marxism that was the
early days right in the Soviet
Union why did stalinism for example lead
to so much Bloodshed do you think and
human suffering is there any elements
within the ideas of
Marxism that
catalyzed the kind of government the
kind of system that led to that
Bloodshed I don't think so I think there
were many things that led to the
Bloodshed and to all that Stalin's
regimes did and you know I spent 10
years of my life uh with another
Economist writing a
book uh about that to try to explain
from a Marxist position the rise and
fall of the Soviet Union um you might
you might want to take a look at it
sometime but
there I'm going to say a few things now
but all of those things are spelled out
in great detail with loads of empirical
evidence Etc um in that uh in that work
so let me start with you know playing a
little bit with with Hegel
um the biggest impact that Marxism had
on the Soviet Union was really not so
much what the Soviet Union did but but
what the rest of the world did I mean
you had a really interesting
move uh and I'll give you a parallel
from from
today the move
was that the old Russian regime
collapsed World War I just it fell apart
the Zar and all of that it couldn't it
couldn't survive it had already been in
trouble there was a revolution in 1905
there was the loss of the war to Japan I
mean if you know Russia history which I
assume you do um you'll know that there
was a lot leading up to the collapse in
in
197 and in some ways it was fortuitous
that the political group very small that
could seize the opportunity of that
collapse happened to be marxists you
know earlier on with kensy the first
government that tried it wasn't people
were all that impressed by Mar ISM it
was people were more skeptical and would
not have been called Marxist probably in
by history they couldn't they tried they
couldn't lenon and his associates were
able to take over from them later in
that same year um the rest of the world
though was horrified the rest of the
world saw Marxism having taken this
immense sleep from being a political
party a movement critical of capitalism
yes but still not challenging the power
now it had the power and in a big
country and they freaked
out uh if you know American history uh
this country the leadership of this
country went completely berserk I mean
we had a repression of the left the
likes of which we had not seen before s
the 20s were a time of Palmer Raids in
in Boston the sacko venetti uh trials I
mean really Grim hostility and you had
the four countries agreeing to invade
the Soviet Union to try to crush the
revolution the US Britain France and
Japan all attacked 10,000 American
troops so what you had right away was a
notion in the west that this was this
was Unthinkable this was there was a a
great professor at Princeton um Meer I
forget his first name who wrote this
wonderful book about all American
foreign policy since 1917 has been
obsessed with Russia even now this this
fight with Ukraine is half about Russia
as if Russia still was the Soviet as if
people haven't figured
out that was a big change back in 1989
and 90 you know yelson and and Putin are
not what what you had before or at least
they're not lenon um they may not be so
different from some of the other but in
any case um so you had one factor was
the utter isolation the utter
condemnation the global I mean Rosa
Luxembourg is I mean I assume you know
the Rosa Luxenberg is hunted down in the
streets of Berlin she's a Critic of
Lenin by the way but she's a leftist
hunted down and hacked into bits killed
so you're attributing
some he's surround some of the Bloodshed
to the fact that basically the rest of
the world turned away turned against
turned against sort of you turn against
is the better way very yeah I mean not
in order of importance but it's it's a
very important part of the psychology of
being you
know it's what you would call paranoid
if there weren't quite as much evidence
that indeed there was a lot to be afraid
of at that time nobody had ever done it
look you could see the effects of it by
Stalin inventing the idea which had no
support at first that you could have
socialism in one country that was
thought to be ridiculous that socialism
was internationalism Marx was a Marx was
against capitalism everywhere it was you
know uh workers of the World Unite not
workers of Russia unite were workers of
the he he had to go through a procedure
of kind of coming to terms with the fact
that the revolution he had in Russia
which was tried in Berlin was tried in
Munich was tried in Budapest was tried
in Seattle here they all failed they all
fa and he's
left s the French would say toot s right
yeah all alone um that's one the second
thing is economic isolation Russia's a
poor country and it needed
what it got before the war which were
heavy investments from the French and
the Germans particularly but others too
now this was all cut off and you can see
the replay with the sanctions program
it's we're do we're going to do it again
we're going to do it again we we have to
do we we have the world is different and
the sanctions don't work but they're
going to try them they're going to try
them because it's the history but that
culture was it's today is completely
different Russia's a different place
today but Russia has China and that
changes everything and they don't get
that here yet but they will yeah there's
a very complicated Dynamic with China
even with India yep um but or turkey
Brazil yeah sorry to say human nature
may change at a slower Pace that that
that does that has occurred to me as
well I I get that point I get so is
there a can you Steel Man the case or
consider the case that there's something
about the implementation of Marxism
maybe because of the idealistic nature
of focusing on the working class and the
Workers Unite that naturally leads to
formation of a dictatorial force a
dictator that says let us
temporarily give power to this
person to manage some of the details of
how to run the Democracy uh of giving
voice to the workers so that they get to
choose and then that naturally leads to
a dictator and there's naturally in
human nature power and absolute power as
the old adage goes corrupts absolutely
is it possible that whenever you focus
on Marxist ideals you're going to end up
with a dictator and often when you give
too much power to anyone human a small
number of people you're going to get
into huge amount of
trouble you you've ped things together
there that I would I think if you if
give ped as a good word yeah uh it's
German um the uh if you remember I told
you my mother was born in Germany and
and then your dad is French yeah but he
was born in Mets if you know European
it's a city on the border of France in
Germany if you come from the AL Alan Al
alas in German so they're German
speaking fren to do both it's a
bilingual because it's been back and
forth so many times in medieval days
already that it literally you go from
one store to another the proprietor here
is French and the proprietor there is
German but they all speak both languages
because you don't speak either of them I
speak Russian Russian but not German
Ukrainian no uh it took French for four
years in high school but I forgotten all
of it I I remember the romance and the
spirit of the language but not the
details I'm sure I can remember um if
you allocate
power unequally
undemocratically and you do it for a
very long period of
time and you do it on many levels of
ideology it is not surprising that it
sticks and it stays and you can make a
political revolution or even an economic
Revolution and you will Discover it has
a life of its own and it's going to take
a long time before people don't if you
have a religious tradition
Christianity that Prides itself on its
monotheism and that it doesn't want to
have anything to do with the old Greek
mythologies when there were Zeus and
Diana and all the others and they were
very humanlike but instead we have one
who is the absolute beginning and yeah
what are you doing you're teaching
people an authority line that comes from
the individual if you have a sequence of
Kings if in your feudal manner the Lord
sits called the landlord he has
unspeakable power over everything that
goes on and you do this for thousands of
years yeah you can make a Russian
Revolution in 1917 but if you imagine
you've gotten away from all that people
assume without ever thinking about it
you're going to have
trouble Stalin is figured here the
originator of his situation he wasn't he
didn't never had that power he may have
thought that but I don't he's the
product look the Cuban people made Fidel
who really wasn't that kind of guy you
know he was a baseball playing lawyer
that's what he was but they made him
into tal so it's not uh it's not the
you're the product of history no no no
it's it was the systems feudalism the
the church it was the structure and
institutions that cultivated in people a
mentality that has its own Rhythm and
doesn't take doesn't follow the calendar
of a political revolution that's the
fundamental question is there something
about communism that creates a mentality
that enables somebody like Stalin or ma
no I think it's the social issues and
problems the society has that make them
then go to what they find femin amiliar
to what seems to make sense and he's the
guy look let me give you an example from
American history the Republican party
has traditionally in this country been
the party of private Enterprise and
minimum government incomes Trump runs
for office in 2016 is elected okay what
does he do he commences the most massive
tax increase and the most massive
government intervention in the worlds of
of Economics that we've had for DEC
nobody says anything the
Republicans cave and the Democrats
largely too they cave he can he can he
can throw a tariff on anything he gets
up in front of the American people and
he says the Chinese will pay the Tariff
that that's not what a tariff is it's
not how a tariff Works he he would flunk
a a freshman course in economics which
everybody knows
everybody who teaches these courses no
it doesn't matter he's still calling the
shots what is going on here is that a
society has come to a point where it
can't solve its problems and it begins
what to tap into older forms and all of
the less aair and all of the
individualism for and suddenly the
Republican party is G and now they're
going to make abortion illegal the
government is telling you what you can
do with your
uterus what what the government is being
given more and more and more and more
power they're hoping what do they like
the government no they're desperate this
is not a pro government and it wasn't in
Russia either they were in a desperate
fix and
so and he took advantage
to which degree did would you say Marx
Marx's ideas led to the creation of
the uh national socialism party of
German Workers hence the Nazi party the
fascist party in the 30s and the 40s at
the head of whom was uh Hitler which I
just recently learned he was uh employee
number seven of the party or whatever
this seventh person to have joined the
party and have created one of the most
uh consequential and Powerful political
parties in the history of the 20th
century what degree did Marx ideas
Marxism ideas have to play it is the
National
Socialist Party of German Workers right
workers
not
the German worker party worker party
National Socialist German worker party
so but here's the history and did he
care about the workers or did he just
use the workers as a populist message
the only thing that Marxism did for Mr
Hitler was provide him with his stepping
stone to power but it had nothing no
other he didn't know anything about it
didn't care anything about it nor did
the people around him here's the story
of what happened there uh which I know
largely through my own family and plus
my own history the work that I did um
the most successful socialist party in
Europe was the German party it started
around 1870 Marx was still alive some of
his own family were leaders fand lassal
and other his daughters um by the end of
the century it was the second most
important party in Germany nobody
understood it it was overwhel it was
almost as big a shock to the Europeans
as was the Russian Revolution in 1917
here was a political party that was now
in every German City in every German
Town powerful and enjoying its rise up
uh that's my family is involved in this
so I mean I really do know the story it
meant that
starting around
19678 if you wanted to have any kind of
presence in the German working class you
had to use the word socialist you had to
otherwise they wouldn't pay attention
the other parties call themselves
Catholic that uh Germany is divided the
upper two the northern two-thirds is
Protestant the southern third is
Catholic Munich and Bavaria is Catholic
and every other part of Germany
basically is Protestant um you could be
in the Catholic party that was the South
uh or you could be in various
conservative Prussian and other but if
you wanted to have a presence in the
working class which was growing every I
mean Germany very powerful capitalist
country expanding like crazy at this
time you know Germany was the major
competitor to Britain for the Empire the
United States was was coming up too but
it was Germany and us taking over from
Britain's Empire so the German working
class was it so anybody who wanted to
approach the working class in whatever
way had to come to terms and be friendly
to
socialism other parties did this too
just like Hitler they put the word
socialist in their party but they wanted
to make it clear that they
weren't uh anything to do with the
Soviet Union or anything to do with
Marxism so they put the word naal Nazi
is the first four letters of national
naal in German n a zi is how you spell
National in the German national
socialism but definitely not Communists
that's right they killed they they
fought Communists in the street they
they had pitched battles they literally
threatened each other's existence and
their life and the first people had he
arrested and put in jail were not Jews
and Gypsies and all the other people he
eventually killed it was Communists they
were the the number one and socialists
right behind IND him why because up
until he takes power January of 1933
that's when Hitler takes power the last
elections two of them in
1932 the Socialists and Communists the
vote together 50% of the vote in Germany
so he appealed to the the German uh
manufacturers the German capitalist and
he said the Communist and socialists are
going to
win you want and you you're just the
capitalist you have too few people
you need a mass base and I'm the only
one that can do
that it was just a populist message that
he used that's right but it was
explicitly done as a deal the the the
ruling group said to Hindenberg the old
Prussian man who was in charge of the
German government at the time you have
to invite Hitler to form a new
government otherwise he would never have
done he had called Hitler nasty names
before the Prussian aristocracy looked
down on Hitler as an a little funny man
with a mustache who who was Austria
wasn't even German you know for them
that mattered so he he comes in as the
enemy the Smasher of socialism and
communism which he immediately
does only people who don't know or care
about the history pick up on the
word you know it's like there are people
here in the United States who like to
say we are not a democracy we are a
republic which is like saying I'm not a
banana I'm a fruit you have to explain
to these people a banana is a kind of so
you have to explain to people yes we're
a republic but we have a commitment to
democracy as the way to govern the
Republic because to say you're a
republic doesn't imply what kind of
government you you have to go through
that with people so they kind of get it
and and certain words
have power beyond their actual meaning
they're used in in communication whether
it's negative like racist or positive
like freedom of speech or democrat or
Dem with a d yeah and then you use that
to mean something who knows or negative
uh what stop Donnie stop being a
socialist or some whatever what whatever
that means that's not even used as any
kind of philosophical economic sense so
let's fast forward to today you
mentioned Bernie Sanders right uh
there's another popular figure that
represents some of ideas of maybe let's
call it Democratic socialism and maybe
let's try to start sneak up on a
definition of what that could possibly
mean but AOC Alexandria Ocasio Cortez
she's from uh these parts yes
Queens uh so maybe if you can comment on
Bernie Sanders or
ALC um are they open to some ideas and
and Marx M are they representing those
ideas well in both the economic and the
political
sense okay
um where do I begin yeah the social the
Socialist movement predates Marx was
always larger than Marx and has gone on
to develop separately after Marx's death
so can we pause on that actually can you
is there a nice way to to delineate draw
a line between marxis and Socialism or
or if if Marxism is kind of a part of
socialism can can you speak to like
maybe def try to Define once again what
Marxism is and what socialism is Right
Marxism is a
systematic
analysis heavily focused on
economics and as I said earlier devoted
to mostly a critique
of
capitalism and that's its strength how
it does that how it poses the questions
how it analyzes the way capitalism works
that is really the Forte of the Marxist
tradition socialism is a bigger broader
tent within which Marxism uh Figures
it's there so that people who aren't
marxists are nonetheless aware of
Marxism
uh like it more or less study it more or
less uh but it's a broader notion that I
like to use this sentence to describe
it's a broad idea that we can do better
than so than capitalism that really
there are all kinds of things about
capitalism that are not what we as
modern citizens of the world uh think
are adequate that we are in a tradition
that goes back to all the people who
thought they could do better than
slavery and all the people who thought
they could do better than
feudalism uh We've made progress
feudalism was a progress over slavery
capitalism was a progress over both of
them and progress hasn't stopped and we
are the people who in a variety of ways
want the progress to go forther further
and are not held back by believing that
capital Capal ism is somehow the best
Beyond which we cannot go or even think
we find that to be in the worst sense of
the word a reactionary way of thinking
and we're that large community many of
us are not interested in economics all
that much we don't think that's the
focal area we are socialists for example
because we want to do something to deal
with climate change to to with think the
world is about to kill itself um uh
physically and we want to take steps
with other people to stop that to to to
fix that etc etc so that that's for me
uh a kind of difference is a little
difficult to say because there's no
other figure like Marx that has an
equal um impact an equal place within
the broad socialist tradition and the
only tradition that comes close might be
the anarchist tradition but that's very
specialized and that's a whole another
kind of conversation and whatever you
say the influence of the great Anarchist
thinkers uh katkin
bakunin um sorell in Fran and others
still doesn't amount to the impact that
Marx and Marxism have had so far that
could change but I mean up to to this
point um that's the um I think that's a
way of understanding the relationship
yeah that's an interesting that the some
of the ideas within anarchism and of
course it's a one of the more
varied um disciplines right because
there's such Maybe by definition such
Variety in their thinkers but they kind
of stand for a
u a dismantling of a power center and
that if not equates tends to rhyme with
some of the ideas of socialism
absolutely so where you have the you
know there's a whole train of thought in
socialist ideas and in Marxist ideas uh
that uses the phrase quote the withering
away of the state that's a quotation
from
Lenin uh people should understand that's
a quotation from Lenin and it was made
by Lenin positive in other words Lenin
was saying that's a good thing that's
something we stand for we want to create
the conditions under which there is a
will because you remember the the the
Communists or whatever they weren't call
that at first in Russia before the
Revolution they were just socialists
they were hunted down and persecuted by
the government left and right they had
no love for the government the
government was their literal everyday
enemy and uh being critical of
government didn't just mean this
particular government but of the whole
being a Marxist you always ask the
questions of the social constitution of
whatever it is you're struggling against
so there was this interest why is the
state so important especially because if
you understand feudalism particularly
early feudalism it didn't have powerful
states one of Lennon's greatest books is
called the economic history of Russia
and he goes back centuries it's a huge
book 3 or 4 inches thick uh and I'm one
of the few people who've read it um and
uh he's very good about the absence of a
strong central government in many parts
of fud including inside Russia but also
in other parts of Europe the development
of a powerful Central State comes
towards the end of feudalism as it is
desperate to hold on which ought to be
suggestive that maybe the turn to
powerful governments here in the United
States or in Europe and is maybe also
because this system is exhausted and
can't go on and has to Marshall every
last bit of power it can not to be lost
in history it would be interesting to
see what the Soviet Union would look
like if lenon never died right A lot of
people have asked that question over the
years a lot of people there Stalin
sliding in in the middle of the night
erasing the withering away of the state
part yes exactly uh so just to return
briefly back to AOC and Bernie Sanders
what are your thoughts about these
modern political figures that represent
some of these ideas and they sometimes
refer to those ideas as Democratic
socialism right The crucial thing about
Bernie and about AOC and this
particularly true about Bernie uh
because AOC is much younger and Bernie
is an older man um
Bernie being roughly my age um has been
around formatively as a student as an
activist then coming up through the
ranks in in Burlington Vermont as a
mayor and all the rest um he lived
through what for lack of a better term I
would call Cold War America and the
Taboo in Cold War America running from
around
19456 to the present I mean really never
stopped
um was a
Manan worldview the United States is
good it defines democracy and the Soviet
Union is awful it defines whatever the
opposite of democracy should be called
um good here evil there it it was taken
so
far that even in among the ranks of
academic
individuals it was impossible
to talk have a conversation I mean I
can't tell just make it very personal
the number of times I would raise my
hand in my classes at Harvard or
Stanford or
Yale um and I would ask a question that
had something to do with Marxism because
I was studying it on my own there there
were no courses to teach this to me
except by people who trash that you know
that other than that and I didn't want
that um so I would ask ask a question
and I would see in the faces of my
teachers both those I didn't much care
for and those who were good teachers
that I liked fear it was just fear they
didn't want to go there they didn't want
to answer my question and I after a
while I got to know some of them and I
found out why because you don't know how
the rest of the class is going to
understand this either they would have
to say I don't know which would be the
honest truth for many of them but a
professor does not want to say and
classroom I don't know that's just not
cool MH or they'd have to if they knew
they'd have to say something that
indicated they didn't know really much
and they weren't even going to do that
or they would know something and maybe
that would be because they were
interested they did not want the rest of
the students to begin to say oh you know
Professor Smith um well you know he's
interested in this is not good for your
career you don't know how this is going
to play out who's going to say what to
whom and I could see in their faces what
I later learned because they told me
don't come to my office hours you're
we're in the office we can talk about it
but I'm not that's how bad it was is it
is it not still pretty much in my field
the great so-called debate I mean I find
it boring but the great debate for my
colleagues is between what's called
neoclassical economics and Kan in
economics neoclassical the government
should stay out of the economy it work
let's say fair or old liberalism and the
Kian saying no you you crazy
neoclassical if you do that you'll have
great depressions and the system will
collapse you need the government to come
in to solve the problems to fix the
weaknesses and they hate each other and
they throw each other out of their jobs
one of the very few things they can do
together that they agree on is keeping
people like me out
that they can find Common Ground uh to
do so I had to learn it all on my why am
I telling you this
because this taboo means that all of the
complicated developments within Marxism
and within socialism of the postor War
II period the vast bulk of all of that
is
unknown not just just to the average
American person but to the average
American academic to the average
American who thinks of himself or
herself as an intellectual I mean I I
have had to spend ridiculous amounts of
my time explaining Soviet history they
have no
idea or saying there's this man lukach a
Hungarian Marxist he really had
interested or to explain that gromi was
not a great literary critic he was head
of the Communist Party of Italy for most
of his adult life what does that mean
what you like grami as a literary critic
but um uh were and they didn't even know
they don't even know it's been erased
it's a little bit like stories I've
heard about trosky and his influence
kind of erased in the Soviet Union
because he he obviously fell out of
favor and so somehow all of his writings
many of which are very interesting and
complicated uh anyway so what you're
going to have in this country is a slow
Awakening of socialism from a long
hibernation called the Cold War I never
expected to be very honest with you that
I would live to see I knew it would come
because these things always do but I
didn't expect to see it so I have been
surprised as have a lot of us that when
it starts to happen it happens fast
so the you see Bernie is an early sign
of the Awakening absolutely from the
Cold War to to accept the idea ber was
always a social we all knew and
everybody who paid attention he didn't
hide it but 2016 he go he makes a
decision momentous to run for president
he's just a senator from Vermont Vermont
is one of the smallest states in the
union people who live in Vermont love to
tell you that they're More Cows than
people in Vermont etc etc uh so here
from this little State this elderly
gentleman with a New York City accent
runs for all and says I'm a socialist
and when they attack him he doesn't run
away I'm a socialist I'm a socialist now
he had been it wasn't that it wasn't a
secret that suddenly got out but the
great question and I don't mind telling
you because I went to the right schools
I know a lot of people you you know
Janny enen was my classmate at Yale and
stuff like that so I was speaking with a
high official of the democratic party
and I said well what do you think about
Bernie uh entering the race makes no
difference is they get 1% of the vote
right he was wrong he they had no idea
what was coming but the truth is I
didn't either it wasn't just that he
didn't get it I thought his 1% was
probably right so we were both wrong
yeah change can happen fast do you think
AOC might be president one day yeah
possible possible and but two things
number
one it's fast number
two it's going to go in the following
Direction I would guess you begin with
the most
moderate
calm
non-confrontational socialism you can
imagine so not AOC or Bernie no no they
they are not confrontational in my
judgment oh in terms of the ideas of
socialism I mean they're both very
feisty they're feisty personally but not
but not
ideologically you know she is Bernie is
also you know in in honest moments and
they both really are pretty honest Folks
at least in my experience um in honest
moments Bernie will tell you that his
what he Advocates is democratic
socialism is pretty much what FDR was in
the
1930s it was a kind of popular
government tax the rich a lot more than
you do now to provide a lot more support
for the working class than you do now
that's not a fundamental change that's
what he means by socialism when he talks
about it and he's asked for examples he
mentions Denmark a lot okay that that
that's consistent that that's the soft
softest kind of socialism and that's
where we're going to start in a country
coming out of hibernation pretty soon
it's already happening there'll be
people who need and want to go further
in the direction of socialism than
Bernie and AOC are comfortable with you
can already see the the shoots of it now
you know AOC
voted together with most of the others
to support the money for Ukraine okay
that a lot of people in the in the
Socialist movement do not support
uh and that's going to I don't know
exactly how that's going to work out but
that should give people an idea there
are disagreements and they're going to
fester and they're going to grow
interesting they don't the people in the
so people in the Socialist sphere don't
support money from the United States in
the large amounts that it is being sent
to Ukraine is it because of it's a
fundamentally the military industrial
complex is a capitalist institution kind
of thing no I wonder what the I mean
there are some people for whom that's
the issue then there are people for whom
this is you know it's guns and butter
and what why are we why are we over
there when we have such needs at home
that are being neglected yeah and then
there are people
who well to go back to what we talked
about at the beginning who are more like
Lenin and
Debs this is this is a fight between
Western capitalism and Russian oligarchs
and and and want to be oligarchs in
Ukraine and what are we doing here we
have to insist that these forces sit
down at the bargaining table and
negotiate a settlement don't kill large
numbers of ukra I mean everybody's
willing to fight to the last Ukrainian
is a little strange yeah what are you
doing you're supposed to be in favor of
Peace you know and for the United States
which just finished invading and
occupying Afghanistan and Iraq to be
against another country invading I mean
who in the world is going to take this
seriously this is crazy you know I
invade it's good and you invade it's
terrible what you know what are you
doing what why are you doing that what
what what's what's going on here all of
these questions are being active by the
way not just by socialists by lots of
other people too inside the Democratic
party and also inside the Republican
party you watch that Tucker Carlson or
people like that they are against the
stuff in in Ukraine they don't want the
money spent there they don't want the
weapons sent there they don't like the
whole policy it's and and Trump wble so
Mr Biden's policy has got all kinds of
Critics on the left and the right and
every day that this thing lasts these
criticisms get bigger anyway the point
is that AOC and uh Bernie should be I
think evaluated as the early shoots
after a long winter of Cold War uh
isolation from the whole you know when I
explain to people the the the
contribution made for example to Modern
Marxism I'll give you an example by the
the French philosopher Luis alus I don't
know if the name means anything to you
okay he was the Rector of the EOL normal
Superior in Paris that's the equivalent
imagine in this country if there were a
university that combined Harvard Yale
Princeton and MIT I mean it would be the
university well the EOL normal in France
in Paris is the he was a tenured
professor who became the Rector the
Rector is like the president of the
University an active member of the
French Communist Party most of his adult
life that was possible in France during
the Cold War that was Unthinkable in
this country you could not in a million
years right so I aler as a philosopher
tried to bring a version of
postmodernism into Marxism with enormous
impact all over the world where he
traveled uh not just in Europe all over
all right so if you want to look him up
I'll spell it out for you sure a l t h u
SS e r Louis the Lou is spell l uis Luis
alus look him up you'll see tons of
stuff by the way MIT press is a a major
publisher if I remember of his Works in
English
um by the way the textbook I wrote in
economics in case you're ever interested
was also published by the MIT press and
the title of contending economic
theories neoclassical Keynesian and
marxian that's an MIT marxian yeah
that's right uh and by the way when we
think I don't know if there's an
interesting distinction between marxian
economics and Marxist
is the I suppose Marxism is the umbrella
yeah of everything that's I only use it
because Marxist I use as a noun a person
is a Marxist marxan I use as an
adjective to qualify but other I don't
mean some great different there's a last
point I would like to make about AOC and
Bernie that's also
General I'm a historian too and I know
that the transition out of fism in
Europe to capitalism was a transition
that took centuries and that occurred in
fits and starts so for example uh a
feudal Manor would start to disintegrate
surfs would run away then' run into a
town how would they live in the town
they had no land anymore because they
had run away from the feudal
Manor a deal was struck out the people
involved in the deal understanding what
they were doing a merchant would say to
one of these
surfs I'm in the business of buying and
then reselling stuff and living off the
difference but you know I could make
more money if I produce some of this
stuff myself rather than buy it from
somebody else so I'm going to I'm going
to make you a deal I'm going to give you
money once a week I'll give you a money
what we would later call a wage and you
come here and under my supervision you
make this crap that I'm going to then
sell and this all works out in other
words there were there were
efforts unconscious not
self-aware to go out of feudalism to a
new
system some of them lasted a few days
and then fell apart some of them lasted
weeks or months or years but it took a
long time
before the conditions were ready for a
kind of a General Switch and once that
was done it grew on itself and became
the Global capitalist system we have
today that's the only model we have so
for me that's what I see when I look at
socialism I see the Paris commune was an
event an
attempt it lasted a few weeks I see
Russia that was an attempt lasted 70
years then I see and you fill in the
blank I see these are all early
experiments these are all you learn
things to do learn things never to do
again The Good The Bad what do you build
on how do you learn and that's what the
Socialist and Marxist tradition when
it's serious that's what it does so in
your ideas sort of capitalism was a
significant improvement over the
feudalism yes uh and we are coming to an
age in over slavery and we're coming to
an age where capitalism will die out and
make it's it's not that capitalism is
somehow fundamentally broken it's it's
better than the things that came before
it but there's going to be things yet
better and they will be grounded in the
ideas of Marxism and
socialism is there just just to linger
briefly on um the way Marxism is used as
a term on
Twitter uh there's something called I'm
sorry if I'm using the terms incorrectly
but uh cultural Marxism one the
criticisms of
universities uh being infiltrated by
cultural
marxists I'm not exactly sure I don't
pay close enough attention no no no I do
but it's woke it's there's a there's a
kind of woke ideology that I'm not
exactly sure right what it's not you
that what is the fundamental text yeah
who's the Carl marks of of wokeness
uh all I do know is that there's certain
characteristics of um what ideology
which is hard lines are drawn between
the good guys and the bad
guys and uh and basically everyone is a
bad guy except except the people that
are very loudly non-stop saying that
they're the good guy and that applies AC
for for racism for sexism for uh
gender um all gender politics identity
politic all that kind of stuff is there
it is there any parallels
between marxian economics and Marxist
ideology and whatever is being called
Marxism on Twitter no not much mostly
Marx you have to one of the consequences
of the taboo after World War II is that
Marxism like socialism and communism
become swear words it's like calling
somebody well I won't use bad language
but using a four-letter word to describe
somebody so instead of calling them you
know this or that you call them a
Marxist in many circles this is even
worse than whatever other adjective you
might have used but it it doesn't have a
particular meaning uh that I can assess
the closest you get is your little list
it is somebody who is concerned
about uh race and sex and sexual
orientation gender and all of those
things and wants there to be
transgendered bathrooms and that and I
don't like any of these people so I slap
the word Marxism or the phrase cultural
Marxism because it isn't Marxism about
getting more money or controlling the
industry or all those things that dimly
we know marxists somehow are concerned
about so this is odd since they don't
know much about Marx I've always been
interested in culture I mean lukach the
man I mentioned to you before grami
that's what they're famous for the
analysis of what Marxism particularly
has to say about culture grami writes a
great length about the Catholic church
about theater and painting in in Italy
and on and on I mean this is just
ignorance talking they don't know
anything about that they wouldn't know
what the names are it's a it's a label
that summarizes kind of a shorthand I'm
against all of this I don't want to be
told that there's ugly racism in this
country and it always has been or sexism
or um uh phobia against gay people
whatever it is that's agitating them and
Marxism or socialism I mean it's just
it's like socialism is the post office
it it is it is a mental well but I don't
blame them I mean it's childish it's
mean-spirited but it comes out out of
the fact no one ever sat them down and
said You know here is this tradition
it's got these kinds of things that
people kind of share and these big
differences look an intelligent
society which this country is could have
and should have done that it was fear
and a kind of Terror that made them
behave in the way they did and we're now
seeing it having said that there is such
a thing as cultural Marxism
what that is is simply those
marxists who devoted
themselves to analyzing how it is that a
particular culture is on the one hand
shaped by capitalism and on the other
hand becomes a condition for capitalism
to survive and grow in other words how
do we analyze the interaction
between uh the class struggle on the job
job an attitude towards sexuality
or movements in music or whatever else
culture and there are gor lukach this
Hungarian great name in there the
greatest of all the names Antonio gromi
and a modern name just died a couple
years ago a British intellectual named
Stuart Hall h you want to if you want if
if I were teaching which I have done a
course in cultural Marxism those would
be three major blocks on the syllabus I
would give you articles and books to
read of their stuff because it has been
so seminal in provoking many many others
so there is something to be said and
understood about the kind of culture
that capitalism creates and the kind of
culture that enables capitalism yes and
and marxists are particularly those who
like to look at that interaction in
other words they're interested in how
capitalism shapes culture and how
culture shapes capitalism there's
another name I forgot um Stuart Hall is
British grami is Italian lukach is
Hungarian um the German is Walter
Benjamin b n j a m i n he was a member
of the Frankfurt School which is a huge
School of Marxism that developed in
Frankfurt Germany and that has a lot of
people many of whom were interested in
cultural questions it was a bit of a
reaction against the narrow Marxism that
was so focused on economics and politics
there were people who said you're
leaving out very important parts of
modern society that are shaping the
economy as much as they are shaped by it
and it was that impetus to open Marxism
to be more inclusive in what it deemed
to be important to understand that this
cult and they call themselves cultural
Marx but they had a completely different
meaning from this this is just uh you
know just bad mouthing that's all this
let me ask a more personal question so
for most of the 20th century No not most
but a large many decades in the United
States as a consequence of the Cold War
and before being a Marxist is one of the
worst things you could
be have you had dark periods in your own
life where you've gone to some dark
places in your mind where it was
difficult like
self-doubt difficult to know like what
the hell am I doing when you're
surrounded by colleagues and people you
said prestigious universities both
personal interest of career but also as
a human being when
everybody you know kind of looks at you
funny cuz you're studying this thing um
did that ever get you real low no I know
people who had exactly what you said I
mean your question's perfectly
reasonable uh if I were you I'd be
asking me that question too um and
what's wrong with you no nothing wrong
with the question uh yeah and here's the
honest truth I don't know how anomalous
I am I really don't but the truth is no
I have if my wife was sitting here she'd
tell you what she tells me which is I
have been tremendously Lucky in my life
which is true um but then again luck
never is the only explanation for things
it's part of it
um what can I say I didn't choose the
time of my birth I didn't choose the
communities in which I grew up or the
schools I attended or anything else no
but the fact that there was no courses
or extensive courses on marks and
economics but you know again it's I'm
hegle on the one hand I was denied good
instruction on the other hand I had to
go out and learn it on my own and the
motivation when you do that is very
different I'm not the student who sits
there with my notebook taking notes of
what the great professor says and
reading the text and getting ready for
the exam I don't have an exam I have and
I I'm doing something slightly risque
you know kind of
romantically different and
oppositional um I was able to mind
always one or two professors that I
could talk to outside of the classroom
situation other students who felt enough
similar to me that we could get together
and read these books and talk about them
I had a number of of really fortuitous
people who were kind to me and and gave
me of their time and their effort to
teach me along the way um and I've had
the benefit that because I went to all
these fancy schools
I do know a lot of people who are in
high places in this culture and when I
have been put in difficult positions I
often wave my pedigree and it works like
garlic with the devil they back away
they back
away cuz Americans are very differential
to yes that kind of academic Prestige
but there's a personal psychological
thing that seems that you have never
been shaken by this you have uh uh just
naturally
somebody um who just has
perseverance well I would put it I mean
I understand what you're saying but I
would put it little differently I think
capitalism struck me early on in my
life as not that great a system and
nothing has happened to change my mind
in other words the
development uh
just just kept giving me more and more
evidence yeah that this and I must say
over the last 10 years what's really
changed the last 10 years I mean I can't
describe to you how big that change is
and that and that may be more important
than anything else we've
discussed up until 10 years ago I would
do a public
event an interview on television or a
radio thing or uh give a talk at some
conference or something once every two
or 3 months I'd be invited and I would
do it like academics often
do I now do two to three to four
interviews every
day so uh there's a hunger wow is there
hunger it's F and you know and I want to
be honest with you as I say at the end
of some of my talks I allow there to be
kind of a pregnant pause from the podium
you know that I lean into to the
microphone and I say with as much Smile
as I can get I'm having the time of my
life and that's the truth yeah that's
the truth I never expected look I'm used
to teaching a classroom a seminar for
graduate students with eight or nine or
10 students or a A or a regular
undergraduate class with 30 or an
occasional introductory course with a
few hundred I've done all of those
things many
times but
an audience you
know that I can count in the hundreds of
thousands on YouTube and all of that no
that that's new that's new is there
advice you can give given
your bold and nonstandard career and
life advice you can give to high school
students uh college students about how
to have a career like that or maybe how
to have a career or a life they can be
proud of
yeah
um first of all my advice is go for it
the conditions for doing that now are
infinitely better than they were when I
had to do it and I could do it and I can
I'm happy I did it becoming a teacher is
one of those decisions I made that I've
never
regretted
um and I've never regretted being a
Critic of this Society
never I find it edifying I find
it I mean the Gratitude people expressed
to me for helping them see kind of
what's going on is unbelievably
encouraging I mean what what can I tell
you so that feels you that feels you
with joy pointing out that the emperor
has no clothes feels you it's that's
that's a life not just important is
because most of the people who say
something like that to me are people who
if they had the vocabulary and some of
them do would say you know I thought I
was seeing through that outfit that
Emperor was wearing I thought it and
they did and all they needed was a
little extra this information or that
factoid or this logic I and they have
that and I remember having that too when
I had a teacher who made something clear
that had been murky I always felt
gratitude and now I get that that
gratitude a good bit and yes it is
enormously gratifying and I I'm not sure
I could could get it any other way and
it
it I have learned and I'm walking proof
that being a Critic of society and doing
it systematically and sharing it with
other people makes for very good life
very good
life speaking of which however one one
other aspect of human nature is that
life comes to an
end do you think about your death are
you afraid of it afraid of it no think
about it yes
yes I'm not
afraid I've always thought you know
death is hard for the people that are
left when you're dead you know it's not
to bother you very much so it's I worry
more about my wife I'm very attached to
my wife my mentioned to you I got
married when I was 23 years old and
that's my wife to this day um so I'm
lucky because that's if you get married
to anybody in an age 23 it's either luck
or it isn't um what has uh what role has
love played in your life
enormous because I came from a family
you know if if your family is political
refugees which mine were who had to
interrupt their lives moved to another
continent learn another language find
another life income and job and it's the
disruption goes real deep for any
Refugee so so my mother and father were
both
refugees they met as
refugees
um so I had to in a
way make it up to them I had to be I was
the first child of their I have a
younger sister but the first child
and you know there's a lot of
psychological pressure on you if you're
in that situation nobody means you harm
but you've got to do what they couldn't
what was shut off to them in a way they
want you to do it's the closest they're
going to get to what they had hoped and
my parents were both University students
my father was a lawyer my mother had to
leave the university to run for her life
um so I had to perform you know I went
to high school here in the United States
I I had to get all A's I had to be on
the football team I had to play the
violin the orchestra I had to do all
this because everything had to be
achieved so I'm an achievement crazy
person that way and but that's
functional in this dysfunctional Sy
Society but on top of that that's an
achievement within the game of this
particular society but then love seems
to be a thing that's greater than that
game is that something that made you a
better person oh God how is it how is it
a better marxian and a better everything
because my wife my wife by profession is
a
psychotherapist excellent I love it and
I needed it yeah and so I married it I
didn't know what I was doing at the time
but I think as I look back on it that
was more more than a little what was
going on and she has tuted me all my
life about a whole range of aspects of
life that my family never talked about
never dealt with
never um at least
explicitly engaged in any of that cuz it
was all about survival The Immigrant
challenge is survival survive survive
and so
busy that you tell yourself you can't do
that you of course you can and there are
other reasons why you're not going to
look at those problems but the survival
is so urgent that you can fool yourself
this way and my parents uh did that one
last question what's the meaning of life
Richard
wolf why why are here I will quote you
Mr
Marks let's
go life is struggle and uh for me I have
found that to be true that the
struggle whether it is to build a
relationship with your child I have two
children uh whether it's to build one
with your spouse whether it's to
understand a complicated argument and
simplify it so that you can share the
pleasure of understanding this
relationship to a student or to an
audience these are it's a struggle to do
all those things but that that network
of
struggles that makes
life interesting
intriguing and satisfying and meaningful
and very meaningful and that latter
thing I got to say you do masterfully
you're one of the great communicators
and Educators good out there today and
it's a huge honor that you would sit
with me for so many hours thank you this
is awesome thanks for listening to this
conversation with Richard wolf to
support this podcast please check out
our sponsors in the description and now
let me leave you some words from Carl
Marx the philosophers have only
interpreted the world in various ways
the point however is to change
it thank you for listening and hope to
see you next time