Latest / The Real News Podcast / Capitalism is destroying the world. Can socialism save it?

Transcript

Capitalism is destroying the world. Can socialism save it? · The Real News Podcast

0:00
Speaker 1: So we're here at Red Emma's Cooperative Bookstore and Coffee
0:03
Speaker 1: House in Baltimore, and I am really excited to be
0:07
Speaker 1: sitting with two of the three co-authors of the vital
0:10
Speaker 1: new book, The Blueprint, How Socialism Can Work in the
0:14
Speaker 1: Real World, Ben Burgess and Mike Beggs.
0:17
Speaker 2: Give it up, everyone. Hell yeah.
0:23
Speaker 1: Welcome to Baltimore, guys. So let's talk about the S word, right?
0:28
Speaker 1: I mean, we're here. The world's on fire. Life continues
0:34
Speaker 1: to get harder and scarier year after year for working
0:38
Speaker 1: people everywhere. The masked, jackbooted thugs that we were warned
0:45
Speaker 1: about are in our streets, hunting and disappearing our neighbors.
0:51
Speaker 1: Endless war and genocide and profiteering are ripping our world
0:58
Speaker 1: and our people apart. And everything is being run or
1:02
Speaker 1: taken over by these you know, psychopathic, self-serving, greedy, society-destroying, profit-seeking,
1:12
Speaker 1: you know, oligarchs, end-times fascists, authoritarians, and fanatical nutjobs who
1:20
Speaker 1: are all so openly weird and corrupt and evil that
1:25
Speaker 1: it makes your head spin. I think it's time we
1:27
Speaker 1: start talking about doing things differently, don't you agree? Yeah?
1:31
Speaker 2: Yeah? So let's talk about it.
1:33
Speaker 1: Let's get all the good faith discussions and questions about
1:37
Speaker 1: like what socialism is, what it isn't, and how it
1:39
Speaker 1: can work for us in the real world on the table.
1:43
Speaker 1: And so Ben and Mike, I wanted to start things
1:46
Speaker 1: off this way with the big question. Like you guys
1:48
Speaker 1: co-wrote this with Bhaskar Sankara, founder of Jacobin Magazine, right?
1:52
Speaker 1: Like what is your ideal social Like, in writing this
1:58
Speaker 1: book together and publishing it now, like, what would be
2:01
Speaker 1: the ideal definition of success for this book?
2:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you so much for all that. And I
2:08
Speaker 3: should also say that our third co-author, Bhaskar, would be
2:12
Speaker 3: here tonight, but he has a month-old baby at home,
2:15
Speaker 3: so he is on paternity leave from non-New York City
2:19
Speaker 3: events for a couple months at least.
2:22
Speaker 1: Congrats, Bhaskar.
2:23
Speaker 4: But.
2:26
Speaker 3: I think the way that we would see it is
2:28
Speaker 3: just this. All of those things that you were saying
2:31
Speaker 3: earlier are downstream of the fundamental way that our society
2:35
Speaker 3: is organized, the fundamental relationships of power at the heart
2:39
Speaker 3: of how things are produced in a capitalist society. And
2:44
Speaker 3: to us, the fundamental difference between capitalism and socialism is
2:49
Speaker 3: a question of whether we should have a society where
2:52
Speaker 3: some people can spend all day giving orders because they
2:55
Speaker 3: have money and some people have to spend all day
2:57
Speaker 3: taking orders because they don't. And right now we're having
3:02
Speaker 3: this conversation in a small island of a different way
3:06
Speaker 3: of organizing things at a worker-owned bookstore, but right now
3:11
Speaker 3: the fundamental institutions of our economy aren't set up to
3:14
Speaker 3: support that. That's not an option for most people, that
3:17
Speaker 3: they get to work someplace where they have a democratic
3:20
Speaker 3: say in the way that it would work. So what
3:24
Speaker 3: we want to think about is how we would have
3:26
Speaker 3: to reorganize our economy on a fundamental institutional level so
3:31
Speaker 3: that everybody can have that experience.
3:35
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I guess I would add that our brief
3:38
Speaker 4: for this book or what we set out to do
3:40
Speaker 4: was to kind of bracket off the question of how
3:44
Speaker 4: we get there, right? Strategy is a very important question, absolutely,
3:49
Speaker 4: but it's also one that kind of holds a lot
3:52
Speaker 4: of your potential model to, holds it hostage, right? I mean,
3:58
Speaker 4: the short answer to how do we get there from
4:00
Speaker 4: here at the moment, quite honestly, is I wouldn't start.
4:04
Speaker 1: From here, right?
4:05
Speaker 4: But so we are bracketing off that question. Once you
4:09
Speaker 4: have to start thinking from what is politically realistic right now,
4:13
Speaker 4: it limits what you can say. I mean, where are
4:15
Speaker 4: we starting? I mean, are we starting from current American
4:18
Speaker 4: political reality, Australian reality, reality somewhere else? So we set
4:23
Speaker 4: out to kind of, we wanted to draw a realistic
4:27
Speaker 4: vision of how a society might work, how people could,
4:31
Speaker 4: you know, what is a plausible way that socialism could work,
4:36
Speaker 4: that avoids a lot of the problems that people are
4:39
Speaker 4: familiar with. And the point is not so much to,
4:43
Speaker 4: you know, set down a plan that people are going,
4:45
Speaker 4: you know, we expect people to follow in the future,
4:48
Speaker 4: and if they don't, they're doing it wrong. That's not
4:50
Speaker 4: the point at all. The point is really to try
4:53
Speaker 4: and be part of a project of building confidence in
4:56
Speaker 4: the present that there actually is a realistic alternative solution.
5:00
Speaker 4: one that is feasible, one that people can imagine working in,
5:04
Speaker 4: living their daily lives in, one that they think would
5:07
Speaker 4: be a lot better than the way things currently work.
5:11
Speaker 4: And really that sort of confidence in a very different
5:14
Speaker 4: society is, I think, something that we have lost even
5:17
Speaker 4: on the left, right? We talk a lot, a lot
5:19
Speaker 4: of us call ourselves socialists, but there really is a
5:23
Speaker 4: lot of sign that a lot of people are not
5:25
Speaker 4: fully confident in articulating exactly what a realistic society alternative
5:31
Speaker 4: might look like. And that's what we're trying to do
5:33
Speaker 4: with this book.
5:35
Speaker 1: Well, it's like, you know, that, that, you know, real
5:39
Speaker 1: politic of, you know, how the fuck do I get
5:43
Speaker 1: through the day in this shitty system, let alone have
5:47
Speaker 1: time to think of what could be, you know, is
5:49
Speaker 1: the kind of trap space that so many.
5:51
Speaker 2: Of us are in.
5:53
Speaker 1: But the only way out of that is through it together,
5:56
Speaker 1: I think. And so like, let's, Let's kind of like
5:59
Speaker 1: take that in here, now, this space, Red Emmas, to
6:03
Speaker 1: sort of, I'm gonna take a page from your book, Ben,
6:05
Speaker 1: like I'm gonna like set this up kind of debate.
6:07
Speaker 2: Style, right?
6:08
Speaker 1: Like I wanna kind of toss you guys some, you know, thoughts, claims,
6:14
Speaker 1: things we've all heard about socialism First, I'm gonna give
6:17
Speaker 1: you the softballs, right? Let's talk about the straw man
6:20
Speaker 1: claims that are made about socialism. We grew up in America,
6:24
Speaker 1: like we all heard these things, but I wanna toss
6:26
Speaker 1: them to you guys and see you knock them out
6:27
Speaker 1: of the park. And then I want us to also
6:31
Speaker 1: talk about the steel man concerns that like, you know,
6:35
Speaker 1: people who are not Fox News dipshits, people who still
6:39
Speaker 1: have genuine questions about socialism and how it can work
6:42
Speaker 1: in the real world, right? So like with that, I
6:46
Speaker 1: was going to start with kind of just the biggest
6:49
Speaker 1: and most obvious one.
6:52
Speaker 2: Capitalism, this is the straw man. Capitalism is great.
6:57
Speaker 1: Capitalism gives us freedom, individual choice, you know, personal security.
7:05
Speaker 1: And socialism is bad. It's bread lines. You know, it's non-individual.
7:10
Speaker 1: Like no room for the individual. Everything's dictated to you
7:13
Speaker 1: by the state. capitalism's great, why would I want socialism?
7:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say that the book is primarily written
7:23
Speaker 3: for people in that second category, the ones who might
7:27
Speaker 3: have some level of understanding about what's wrong with capitalism,
7:31
Speaker 3: but are a bit skeptical that anything else is possible.
7:34
Speaker 3: But we do certainly want to address the first set
7:37
Speaker 3: of concerns too, we do a fair amount of that
7:39
Speaker 3: in the book. And I would just say that If, obviously,
7:46
Speaker 3: when it comes to the kind of democratic rights that
7:48
Speaker 3: we already have, the advanced liberal capitalist democracies, freedom of speech,
7:53
Speaker 3: trial by jury, all that stuff, we like all of that.
7:56
Speaker 3: We wanna keep all of that. We are sometimes terrified
8:02
Speaker 3: that the current administration is trying to take away a
8:04
Speaker 3: lot of that. But then the other half of that
8:08
Speaker 3: is what it takes to make those rights meaningful in
8:11
Speaker 3: people's day-to-day economic lives. If you say, hey, legally you
8:15
Speaker 3: can do whatever you want to, but also if you
8:17
Speaker 3: want to eat, you better sign on the dotted line
8:21
Speaker 3: and agree to work for half of the day. half
8:24
Speaker 3: the time that you're awake most days of the week
8:26
Speaker 3: and only half because of past worker struggles for a
8:30
Speaker 3: boss who is going to have dictatorial power over you
8:34
Speaker 3: at the workplace and you better not piss them off
8:37
Speaker 3: or else you're going to lose that job and you'll
8:39
Speaker 3: be in a much worse position, then that doesn't sound
8:41
Speaker 3: to me like somebody who has meaningful control over their life.
8:47
Speaker 3: I think that having meaningful control over your life means
8:49
Speaker 3: that you should have a say in the place that
8:53
Speaker 3: you have to spend the most of your life as
8:55
Speaker 3: an adult. And ultimately also that means that we could
8:59
Speaker 3: all spend less time there anyway, because if workers are
9:02
Speaker 3: in charge, when we have productivity gains, when technology advances,
9:08
Speaker 3: and we have the choice, okay, do we capture those
9:10
Speaker 3: productivity gains in more stuff, or do we want to
9:13
Speaker 3: work fewer hours? Then right now, that decision is dictated
9:18
Speaker 3: by this class of private capitalists who aren't doing the
9:21
Speaker 3: work themselves, and it's a very easy decision for.
9:23
Speaker 2: Them, right?
9:23
Speaker 3: Produce more stuff, make more money, right? That's why the
9:27
Speaker 3: Fair Labor Standards Act in this country set the 40-hour
9:30
Speaker 3: work week in 1938, and it has not gone down
9:32
Speaker 3: one minute since then.
9:34
Speaker 2: Minimum wage ain't been raised either.
9:35
Speaker 3: That's certainly not because technology stopped in 1938, right? So
9:42
Speaker 3: I think that a society where you can have a
9:44
Speaker 3: say in what happens where you work and where you
9:47
Speaker 3: have to work less and you have more time and
9:49
Speaker 3: more material stability to do whatever the hell you want
9:51
Speaker 3: with the rest of your life sounds like much more
9:54
Speaker 3: meaningful freedom to me.
9:57
Speaker 2: Yeah.
9:58
Speaker 4: I mean, I would say as we put it in
9:59
Speaker 4: the book, that there's a lot of goals that socialists
10:03
Speaker 4: share with liberals, right? And that we don't want to
10:05
Speaker 4: give up some of the benefits of the modern complex
10:09
Speaker 4: division of labor, personal freedom, which, as Ben says, is
10:14
Speaker 4: not only partially met under capitalism, But personal freedom is
10:19
Speaker 4: an important one. Efficiency, we make a case for efficiency
10:22
Speaker 4: as a socialist value in the book, mainly for the
10:25
Speaker 4: reason Ben's just talking about, because efficiency means not just,
10:29
Speaker 4: it's not about more and more stuff, but about more
10:31
Speaker 4: time free of instrumental labor. But socialists also have extra goals, right?
10:35
Speaker 4: Of course, egalitarianism, care, making sure that everybody is secure
10:39
Speaker 4: and looked after, ecological sustainability. And The difficult task that
10:47
Speaker 4: socialists have that we're trying to address in this book
10:50
Speaker 4: is making the case that those social, specifically socialist goals,
10:55
Speaker 4: are compatible, can be made compatible with broad liberal and
10:59
Speaker 4: personal freedom with the efficiency of the modern division of labor.
11:06
Speaker 4: And that's a challenge because there's very good reasons why
11:10
Speaker 4: people think that socialism as it has been attempted in
11:14
Speaker 4: the past, has failed on that account. And so we're
11:17
Speaker 4: trying to make the case that they can be brought together.
11:23
Speaker 1: Well, I want to pick up on that last point,
11:25
Speaker 1: because here comes the sort of steel man.
11:28
Speaker 2: Concern, right? You know, some of the greatest....
11:37
Speaker 1: Crimes in human history were committed by people or regimes
11:41
Speaker 1: that called themselves socialists or that attached that word to
11:45
Speaker 1: their movement.
11:47
Speaker 2: People, regular people, working people, poor.
11:49
Speaker 1: People, people who didn't do anything wrong or mean any
11:53
Speaker 1: harm were hurt in the course of a 20th century
11:57
Speaker 1: in which the word socialism.
12:01
Speaker 2: You know, like was a big thing.
12:03
Speaker 1: And so for people who come from those family lineages
12:08
Speaker 1: or who are worried about those kinds of things, how
12:13
Speaker 1: do we learn from the.
12:14
Speaker 2: Past without getting bogged down in it? Yeah.
12:19
Speaker 3: So I think there's a lot you can learn from
12:21
Speaker 3: the failures of those earlier socialist experiments, both the moral
12:25
Speaker 3: failures that you're talking about, the failures to live up
12:29
Speaker 3: to socialist ideals and also just the design failures, the
12:34
Speaker 3: economic dysfunctions that led to the empty grocery store shelves,
12:39
Speaker 3: even managers of state enterprises having to rely on black
12:42
Speaker 3: markets to get the inputs they needed to make their quotas,
12:46
Speaker 3: all that stuff. I mean, that's why we wrote the book,
12:49
Speaker 3: to try to show that there is a better way
12:52
Speaker 3: of organizing this. I'm sure to the extent that time allows,
12:56
Speaker 3: we'll get into that, you know, what we think that
12:58
Speaker 3: better way looks like. But I would also just say
13:01
Speaker 3: on the bigger picture question, right? It's like, yeah, it
13:04
Speaker 3: is absolutely true that there are all kinds of regimes
13:08
Speaker 3: that did all kinds of things that I find abhorrent
13:10
Speaker 3: that use the socialist label justify that. On the other hand,
13:16
Speaker 3: the war in Vietnam was justified by Lyndon Johnson and
13:20
Speaker 3: Richard Nixon in the name of defending freedom and democracy
13:24
Speaker 3: and the knowledge of the millions of Southeast Asian peasants
13:31
Speaker 3: who were shot or burned alive with napalm or dislocated
13:35
Speaker 3: from their villages doesn't make me like freedom and democracy
13:37
Speaker 3: any less. It just makes me hate the hypocrites who
13:41
Speaker 3: claim to stand for it more.
13:44
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I guess I'd emphasize that this is
13:47
Speaker 4: very much a democratic vision of socialism, but also a
13:50
Speaker 4: socialism that has a lot of room for personal freedom.
13:55
Speaker 4: Our model still involves most people having an income. I mean, everybody,
13:59
Speaker 4: not most people, but everybody having an income to spend
14:03
Speaker 4: on goods and services and things like that. And not
14:07
Speaker 4: just making trivial consumer choices, but that allows, of course,
14:10
Speaker 4: for all kinds of freedom in terms of lifestyle choices.
14:14
Speaker 4: where you want to live. But it also adds to
14:16
Speaker 4: that freedoms that we do not have under capitalism. Democracy
14:20
Speaker 4: is extended from the political realm to the workplace in particular.
14:25
Speaker 4: And there's a lot of points in our model where
14:28
Speaker 4: we try and find real points of leverage for effective
14:33
Speaker 4: democratic deliberation. All the way through, it's not something that
14:37
Speaker 4: just happens at the political level, it's something that happens
14:40
Speaker 4: at multiple points in the system. Sometimes it's democracy of
14:46
Speaker 4: workers at a particular workplace, sometimes it'll involve the community
14:50
Speaker 4: along with workers, et cetera, et cetera. So I would
14:53
Speaker 4: say that our model is one of liberalism.
14:59
Speaker 2: Plus, right?
15:00
Speaker 4: It's a liberalism socialist with all the egalitarianism security, et cetera,
15:08
Speaker 4: that gives people real freedom in their lives. And that's
15:11
Speaker 4: really at the center of our model.
15:12
Speaker 1: All right, I got another straw man for.
15:17
Speaker 2: You.
15:18
Speaker 1: So capitalism and the dynamics of the free market are
15:25
Speaker 1: the most efficient way for society to organize a system
15:31
Speaker 1: of production.
15:32
Speaker 2: That meets the needs of all.
15:37
Speaker 1: Why would we want socialism, which is, sorry, I didn't
15:40
Speaker 1: finish the question. Why would we want socialism that's central
15:43
Speaker 1: planning and not adaptive as the market can be?
15:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, great news for you. The kind of socialism
15:52
Speaker 3: that's advocated in the book is not one where everything
15:55
Speaker 3: is centrally planned. You know, we would make a distinction
15:59
Speaker 3: between saying, OK, are there certain things about capitalist markets
16:02
Speaker 3: that do make it efficient at doing the things that
16:05
Speaker 3: capitalism is good at? It's not good at producing material equality.
16:10
Speaker 3: It's it's not good at producing stability in people's lives.
16:14
Speaker 3: It's not good at empowering most citizens, but it is good.
16:17
Speaker 1: Right.
16:18
Speaker 3: And it's importantly good. at things that earlier modern socialism
16:22
Speaker 3: were bad at, right? Having full grocery store shelves, all
16:25
Speaker 3: that stuff.
16:25
Speaker 1: I mean, like selling your apples at a farmer's market
16:28
Speaker 1: is fucking fine, right? We don't have to turn that
16:30
Speaker 1: into like this monstrosity that we have today.
16:33
Speaker 3: No, exactly. And we think that there's nothing magic about
16:36
Speaker 3: the act of buying and selling. So like there are
16:40
Speaker 3: the same way that there are some libertarians who think
16:42
Speaker 3: that the least little bit of social democratic interference with
16:46
Speaker 3: the free market and before you know it, you're down
16:48
Speaker 3: on the road to, you know, Stalin. There are some
16:53
Speaker 3: people who come, as we do, out of the Marxist tradition,
16:56
Speaker 3: who say that the least little bit of buying and
16:59
Speaker 3: selling going on in your society before you know it,
17:02
Speaker 3: you're right down the slippery slope to capitalism. And we
17:04
Speaker 3: don't buy that either. There have been markets, there have
17:08
Speaker 3: been buying and selling in human societies for thousands of years.
17:12
Speaker 3: Capitalism is something much more recent. Capitalism is a society
17:16
Speaker 3: where the majority of the population have to sell their
17:18
Speaker 3: working hours to private owners of the means of production.
17:21
Speaker 3: So we can still have markets, you can still have,
17:26
Speaker 3: in sectors of the economy where we think you still
17:30
Speaker 3: need them, you can still have firms setting prices based
17:35
Speaker 3: on what they think can sell, all of that stuff,
17:38
Speaker 3: but Those firms are owned by the workers, they're internally democratic,
17:43
Speaker 3: and financing can be done through the public sector, through
17:48
Speaker 3: public banks, so people aren't forced to risk their own
17:51
Speaker 3: personal savings, which obviously for most working people under capitalism
17:57
Speaker 3: is not a rational risk. And the last thing about
18:00
Speaker 3: this before I throw it to Mike is just oftentimes
18:03
Speaker 3: people think of markets and planning as being, you know,
18:06
Speaker 3: as being opposed to each other. We'd say, look, these
18:08
Speaker 3: are just tools you can use, right? What, you know,
18:09
Speaker 3: to us, the core of socialism is who runs things. Do,
18:13
Speaker 3: you know, working people themselves get to run their own workplaces,
18:17
Speaker 3: or do you have this separate class of capitalists do?
18:19
Speaker 3: Everything else is just the engineering details to make that
18:22
Speaker 3: core right. So in terms of those engineering details, yeah,
18:25
Speaker 3: you can have markets, you can have planning. We think
18:27
Speaker 3: that they, we think that subcontracting out certain tasks to
18:31
Speaker 3: markets where markets make sense makes the job of planners
18:34
Speaker 3: easier where planning makes sense if we want you know
18:37
Speaker 3: if we want a socialist state to worry about things
18:39
Speaker 3: like full employment it'd be better if they didn't also
18:41
Speaker 3: have to worry about exactly how many toothbrushes are going
18:43
Speaker 3: to be produced in the next five years like soviet
18:46
Speaker 3: planners did.
18:47
Speaker 4: Yeah, we spend a lot of time in the book
18:50
Speaker 4: going through the debates about planning and markets in the
18:54
Speaker 4: 20th century.
18:55
Speaker 1: Right.
18:55
Speaker 4: So the socialist calculation debate, people are familiar with that
18:58
Speaker 4: of the mid 20th century between the sort of the
19:01
Speaker 4: Austrian libertarian argument that socialists, you know, you can't have
19:06
Speaker 4: rational planning of a very complex economy with countless resources
19:13
Speaker 4: and countless squared ways of combining those resources for sort
19:18
Speaker 4: of countless cubed possible products that people have preferences, wants,
19:22
Speaker 4: and needs about. And one of the guys that made
19:26
Speaker 4: the strongest reply to that argument, a Polish economist called
19:29
Speaker 4: Oskar Lange, in the late 30s, and he kind of argued,
19:34
Speaker 4: he was replying to von Mises, who people may have
19:37
Speaker 4: heard of, one of the Austrian libertarians. And Lange said
19:41
Speaker 4: up front, he said, you know, the in the future
19:45
Speaker 4: socialist republic, we're gonna wanna erect a statue of von
19:48
Speaker 4: Mises in front of our planning board because he did
19:52
Speaker 4: us a great service in actually making sure that we
19:54
Speaker 4: took this problem seriously. Because I think it is a
19:57
Speaker 4: serious problem. And it's obvious, the experience of the 20th
20:01
Speaker 4: century is that this is not an easy problem to solve.
20:04
Speaker 4: Our particular solution is different from Lange's. It does, like
20:09
Speaker 4: Ben says, involve some market production, some commodity production. It
20:15
Speaker 4: also has a non-commodity sector. Because we've learned not just
20:19
Speaker 4: from the theoretical debate, but also from all kinds of
20:22
Speaker 4: experience in the Eastern Bloc, but also under capitalism and
20:25
Speaker 4: social democracy over the latter half of the 20th century.
20:29
Speaker 4: And though we have a role for markets, I think
20:31
Speaker 4: it's really important to be clear. I don't think we've
20:33
Speaker 4: said it up front yet, but the means of production, wealth,
20:36
Speaker 4: social wealth is entirely held publicly in our model. There
20:41
Speaker 4: is no private accumulation of wealth or private accumulation of
20:46
Speaker 4: control over the means of production. People may have some
20:49
Speaker 4: private savings, but for the most part, because of the
20:52
Speaker 4: retirement system, the housing system, There's not a huge need
20:55
Speaker 4: to even save in that way. So we see savings
20:59
Speaker 4: as being a pretty minor thing. So it's a society
21:03
Speaker 4: with some role for markets, but one where wealth is
21:07
Speaker 4: absolutely publicly owned and democratically managed at every level.
21:13
Speaker 2: It makes me think of the great Fred Hampton.
21:16
Speaker 1: And I guess to paraphrase Brother Hampton.
21:20
Speaker 2: Theory's great.
21:21
Speaker 1: But theory without tangible examples ain't shit, right? And it
21:25
Speaker 1: is important to remember that there are examples all around us.
21:31
Speaker 2: We are literally sitting in one right now.
21:33
Speaker 1: Red Emma's is a worker-owned cooperative business. And other co-ops
21:41
Speaker 1: in Baltimore exist because of the workers who make all
21:45
Speaker 1: the decisions.
21:46
Speaker 2: Everyone back there is a worker-owner.
21:48
Speaker 1: And they have institutions like Bread, which provides loans to
21:55
Speaker 1: other co-ops that can't get them from a regular bank.
21:58
Speaker 1: And that's how you see the system set up to
22:00
Speaker 1: prioritize certain businesses and kill ones like this. But organic
22:05
Speaker 1: institutions can grow and create something different.
22:08
Speaker 2: And if we participate in them, we can make it work.
22:11
Speaker 2: different and stick.
22:13
Speaker 1: But I also like want to bring that into a
22:17
Speaker 1: steel man concern here, right? Because whether it's great worker
22:22
Speaker 1: cooperatives like Red Emma's or, you know, in like the
22:26
Speaker 1: world of my reporting, like labor unions, right? These are
22:29
Speaker 1: all essential, you know, examples of what like you guys
22:33
Speaker 1: are talking about, what we talk about on a day-to-day
22:36
Speaker 1: level when we're trying to tell people about this stuff.
22:39
Speaker 1: But you guys know as well as I do, they're
22:41
Speaker 1: not perfect. Right? I mean, like, labor unions in this
22:45
Speaker 1: country have a lot of problems with them. Like, labor
22:48
Speaker 1: union presidents have been thrown in jail for corruption.
22:52
Speaker 2: And racketeering and, like, all that stuff.
22:55
Speaker 1: And, like, it associates in people's minds with the same
22:58
Speaker 1: kind of corruption they see in, like, the Politburo and Soviet.
23:03
Speaker 2: you know, times and all that stuff, right?
23:05
Speaker 1: So human systems will always be susceptible to human foibles, right?
23:11
Speaker 1: And so what do we do about, like, the kind
23:14
Speaker 1: of day-to-day concerns people have over corruption, you know, ways
23:19
Speaker 1: that this is going to be.
23:20
Speaker 2: You know, like, still just.
23:23
Speaker 1: you know, a change in title, but like still a
23:25
Speaker 1: kind of shitty reality.
23:27
Speaker 2: Like how do we tussle with that?
23:28
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a really good question. And maybe one we
23:31
Speaker 4: can answer by talking about, since we're here in a
23:34
Speaker 4: workers' cooperative, how that actually works in our system and
23:39
Speaker 4: how it involves a whole lot of checks and balances, right?
23:41
Speaker 4: That it kind of are, you know, designed to deal
23:44
Speaker 4: with that very real problem. And it also relates to
23:47
Speaker 4: another question people ask, which is, if workers' co-ops are
23:51
Speaker 4: so great, if democratic workplaces are so great, there's nothing
23:54
Speaker 4: stopping people from forming them under capitalism. Why doesn't that
23:57
Speaker 4: happen more often? And the answer to that, I think,
24:00
Speaker 4: for the most part, is that there's certain things about
24:03
Speaker 4: capitalist society that makes them difficult, but particularly financial arrangements, right?
24:08
Speaker 4: It's very difficult... for cooperative arrangements to work, because if
24:13
Speaker 4: you don't have an outside owner, which a cooperative cannot,
24:17
Speaker 4: it's a collective of its worker members, if you can't
24:21
Speaker 4: have an outside owner, you can't have equity financing. And
24:23
Speaker 4: that means you gotta get your finances from somewhere. So what,
24:27
Speaker 4: is that supposed to come from the individual members? So
24:30
Speaker 4: people kinda, at the same time as they take a job,
24:33
Speaker 4: they have to take a mortgage to bring their finance
24:35
Speaker 4: with them. Alternatively, you have to borrow from a bank,
24:39
Speaker 4: And that's a very risky thing to do because bank
24:41
Speaker 4: loans come with very fixed payments on fixed dates, leaving
24:45
Speaker 4: the business very exposed to those ups and downs, uncertainties
24:49
Speaker 4: of running a business. So in our model, the financial
24:52
Speaker 4: system is not made for capitalist businesses, but specially designed
24:59
Speaker 4: around workers' cooperatives. And this connects back to your question
25:02
Speaker 4: about you know, corruption, how do we actually stop that
25:07
Speaker 4: kind of thing from happening? Because in this model, like
25:11
Speaker 4: we said before, the capital, the means of production, the
25:15
Speaker 4: wealth of society is publicly owned, right? The businesses are
25:18
Speaker 4: run by their workers, but they are running it in
25:20
Speaker 4: partnership with the public banks who are essentially almost renting,
25:25
Speaker 4: effectively renting part of society's wealth, part of society's means
25:31
Speaker 4: of production, to that workers' collective. And so it's always
25:34
Speaker 4: gonna be done in partnership between those institutions. So that
25:39
Speaker 4: means that the workers who are running the business democratically
25:44
Speaker 4: are kind of custodians for part of social wealth. And
25:47
Speaker 4: so they're never gonna, they don't have complete control, as
25:50
Speaker 4: it should be, right? They're custodians of public wealth. So
25:52
Speaker 4: that's one of the checks and balances, right? The public
25:55
Speaker 4: is represented in this case through the bank, through the
25:59
Speaker 4: public bank, but also through the need to maintain the
26:02
Speaker 4: confidence of your customers and the need to actually, that's
26:05
Speaker 4: one of the reasons why we keep some commodity protection
26:08
Speaker 4: there because it gives direct communication, direct back and forth
26:15
Speaker 4: between the humans who are on both sides, the people
26:18
Speaker 4: who are producing, the people who are using. And so
26:22
Speaker 4: in those cooperatives, that's the checks and balances. The other
26:26
Speaker 4: side of the economy, and I'll pass back to Ben
26:27
Speaker 4: in a second, that we haven't talked about yet is
26:30
Speaker 4: we also have a very large non-commodity sector where those
26:33
Speaker 4: checks and balances have to work out differently in the
26:36
Speaker 4: directly state-funded sector. Then you've got all kinds of different ways.
26:43
Speaker 4: The checks and balances are still there. It might be
26:45
Speaker 4: that community members are there on the board of your
26:48
Speaker 4: local aged care center or daycare center or whatever. It
26:53
Speaker 4: works differently in different spots. But there's always those kinds
26:57
Speaker 4: of public oversight, democratic public oversight, and freedom of information
27:03
Speaker 4: about everything that's happening with the finance, with people's wealth.
27:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, and to circle and underline that point, just to
27:11
Speaker 3: make sure nobody missed that last part, part of the
27:15
Speaker 3: setup about public banks includes a constitutional mandate for transparency.
27:20
Speaker 3: The books are always open to any member of the
27:22
Speaker 3: public who wants to look. That's an example of an
27:26
Speaker 3: institutional safeguard. There are several, you know, layers of, you know,
27:30
Speaker 3: kinds of institutional safeguards that we imagine. But I want
27:33
Speaker 3: to be really clear on this because I think otherwise
27:35
Speaker 3: it's going to seem evasive, right, to anybody who's paying attention,
27:38
Speaker 3: that we're not claiming that corruption will cease to exist, that,
27:43
Speaker 3: you know, embezzlement will wither away, right, you know, with
27:47
Speaker 3: the end of capitalism, that, you know, nobody's going to
27:51
Speaker 3: try to find loopholes or commit crimes because people are people.
27:55
Speaker 3: And we didn't want to make it easier for ourselves
27:58
Speaker 3: in writing the book by assuming either that there's going
28:01
Speaker 3: to be some amazing technological progress that means that we
28:04
Speaker 3: can just have, you know, supercomputers plan the economy perfectly,
28:08
Speaker 3: or that there's going to be some sort of amazing
28:10
Speaker 3: cultural or psychological process, you know, progress to remake human nature.
28:14
Speaker 3: We're assuming all of the same things. technological, psychological limitations
28:19
Speaker 3: that we have right now, which means that, yeah, you
28:23
Speaker 3: still need systems to police corruption, to curb corruption, people
28:31
Speaker 3: trying to take advantage of loopholes to self-enrich. But I
28:35
Speaker 3: think the question is always a comparison. If you're really
28:41
Speaker 3: worried about corruption, here's an example of something that would
28:45
Speaker 3: be super corrupt. Actually, kind of similar to your union
28:48
Speaker 3: example earlier, union presidents who end up in jail and
28:52
Speaker 3: all that stuff. Because in some ways, the sort of
28:57
Speaker 3: basic units of production in our commodity sector would work
29:00
Speaker 3: a lot like unions work now, the same way you
29:04
Speaker 3: could vote in a union contract. You could vote in
29:06
Speaker 3: an operating agreement, which basically is structurally exactly like a
29:09
Speaker 3: union contract, except there's no separate boss to negotiate with, right?
29:14
Speaker 3: It's unilateral. And And of course, you vote for leadership,
29:20
Speaker 3: for the committee that's running the place. So here's an
29:23
Speaker 3: example of something super corrupt that could happen. Somebody could
29:27
Speaker 3: rig an election for that committee to make sure that
29:32
Speaker 3: they got the spot, even though most people didn't try
29:35
Speaker 3: to vote for them. Or somebody could try to do
29:38
Speaker 3: that on behalf of their son or something. Yeah, that
29:40
Speaker 3: would be terrible. Now let me tell you about capitalism,
29:44
Speaker 3: where it's entirely legal.
29:47
Speaker 4: For.
29:48
Speaker 3: people to continue to be the boss, even though most
29:51
Speaker 3: people who work for them don't want them to be
29:53
Speaker 3: because they don't get a vote in the matter. And
29:56
Speaker 3: where it's entirely legal to just leave the business to
30:01
Speaker 3: your son as property inheritance, the same way that you'd
30:06
Speaker 3: leave your car to them. And that's not even considered corruption.
30:09
Speaker 3: That's just the way it's supposed to work.
30:11
Speaker 4: Yeah.
30:12
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, it's real fucking rich for the most
30:15
Speaker 1: corrupt people in the... whole of human history to be
30:20
Speaker 1: like saying, oh, socialism's corrupt, right? I mean, like we
30:24
Speaker 1: know better and we got to like call it out
30:26
Speaker 1: when we see it.
30:27
Speaker 2: Like we have to be each other's sort.
30:30
Speaker 1: Of like sense of sanity and, you know, like social responsibility.
30:35
Speaker 1: And like it starts by calling out bullshit wherever you
30:38
Speaker 1: see it, whoever's saying it.
30:40
Speaker 2: Doesn't matter whose side they're on. The truth is the truth. Right?
30:44
Speaker 1: You know, Mother Jones famously said, I will tell the
30:47
Speaker 1: truth wherever I please. We all got to have like
30:50
Speaker 1: a little bit of that moxie right now. And we
30:52
Speaker 1: got to take it as a duty to go and
30:54
Speaker 1: tell the truth wherever we can.
30:57
Speaker 2: Together.
30:58
Speaker 1: So that we crowd out all these fucking liars and
31:01
Speaker 1: all these self-serving fascists and all this AI slop they're
31:05
Speaker 1: trying to throw into our faces to get us to
31:07
Speaker 1: forget what is right in front of us. So there
31:11
Speaker 1: is a real social participation element to all this that
31:15
Speaker 1: I really appreciate in your guys' book because it's so
31:18
Speaker 1: needed with everything. I think one of the benefits of capitalism,
31:24
Speaker 1: and I can say this as kids who grew up
31:27
Speaker 1: in America post-Cold War, it felt like the capitalism had
31:32
Speaker 1: won and it was all right. The future was pretty bright.
31:36
Speaker 1: The pie was going to be big enough for all
31:38
Speaker 1: of us to get some if we worked hard enough.
31:40
Speaker 1: My immigrant family felt like we made sense in that narrative.
31:44
Speaker 1: And boy, oh boy, did capitalism show over the next
31:48
Speaker 1: 25 years that.
31:50
Speaker 2: All of that will be consumed.
31:53
Speaker 1: Under like this kind of monstrous cycle of expansion and
31:57
Speaker 1: domination and consolidation, corruption, and now.
32:02
Speaker 2: We've got what we've got here in 2026.
32:04
Speaker 1: So I wanted to kind of like end there, like
32:08
Speaker 1: kind of bring us back to where we are here, right?
32:11
Speaker 2: Because like in the.
32:13
Speaker 1: 20th century, when you had the surge of socialism and
32:17
Speaker 1: left thinking At the same time, you had the surge
32:21
Speaker 1: of fascism and far-right.
32:25
Speaker 2: Movements.
32:26
Speaker 1: We are in a very similar moment. It's not the same.
32:29
Speaker 1: History doesn't repeat itself, but it's rhyming pretty hard right now, right?
32:33
Speaker 1: And so we're seeing the surge of far-right governments, movements,
32:39
Speaker 1: this authoritarian international network that is now targeting the Brazilian.
32:44
Speaker 2: Elections, yada, yada, yada.
32:46
Speaker 1: But there are examples in Brazil parts of the world
32:52
Speaker 1: where that authoritarian message is making a better case to
32:56
Speaker 1: your average working person for why they should support the
33:00
Speaker 1: authoritarians and not listen to the people who call themselves
33:05
Speaker 1: Democrats or liberals or what have you, right? If it
33:07
Speaker 1: keeps the violence off their streets, if it keeps the
33:11
Speaker 1: normalcy in their day-to-day life, the sad reality is a
33:15
Speaker 1: lot of people will say it's worth it to me
33:17
Speaker 1: to sacrifice the civil rights of others and lock people
33:21
Speaker 1: away in Bukele's Salvadorian prisons if I don't have to
33:28
Speaker 1: worry about gangs walking down the street, right? So that
33:31
Speaker 1: is happening at the same time you guys are writing
33:33
Speaker 1: this book. So the stakes couldn't be fucking higher. So
33:37
Speaker 1: how do we make the case for socialism work in
33:40
Speaker 1: the real world now and win with this message?
33:48
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, I think that ultimately, if everything you
33:54
Speaker 3: were just talking about, right, when you're talking about Bukele
33:58
Speaker 3: and Trump and sort of a global wave of authoritarianism,
34:05
Speaker 3: if that's going to be beaten back, right, it's going
34:09
Speaker 3: to take obviously a lot of people who come from
34:11
Speaker 3: a lot of different perspectives to come together to do it.
34:15
Speaker 3: But if history is any guide, the people who are
34:18
Speaker 3: going to be the best fighters against all of that
34:20
Speaker 3: stuff are people who are motivated by this North Star
34:25
Speaker 3: of a vision of a qualitatively better world because those
34:28
Speaker 3: have always been the best fighters against whatever horrible authoritarian
34:33
Speaker 3: nonsense was going on at any given time for civil rights,
34:38
Speaker 3: for labor unions, for all of that stuff. And I
34:42
Speaker 3: think that right now it's a problem It's not the problem,
34:48
Speaker 3: but it is a problem that right now, even so
34:51
Speaker 3: many people who want to be socialists have lost their
34:54
Speaker 3: confidence in that qualitatively better world. During the 20th century,
35:00
Speaker 3: a lot of people thought it was being built in
35:01
Speaker 3: the Soviet Union. Even a lot of people who are
35:04
Speaker 3: on the anti-Stalinist left, there are critiques of the Soviet Union.
35:08
Speaker 3: you know, still thought that the economic core of that
35:11
Speaker 3: system was functional and it still gave them hope that,
35:15
Speaker 3: you know, some sort of socialism was possible. And right
35:19
Speaker 3: now that's been lost. And so I think that trying
35:25
Speaker 3: to restore confidence in the possibility of something better is
35:30
Speaker 3: important always, right? Because we don't want to be stuck
35:34
Speaker 3: in this system forever, but I think it's more important
35:36
Speaker 3: than ever in circumstances like the one you're describing. I
35:39
Speaker 3: often think, I guess the last thing I'll say before
35:41
Speaker 3: I throw the mic to finish this up, but I
35:44
Speaker 3: often think about Manufacturing Consent. That's a book from several
35:50
Speaker 3: decades ago by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, and basically
35:53
Speaker 3: what they're talking about is the way that the borders
35:55
Speaker 3: of acceptable debate were policed. That in the American corporate media,
36:01
Speaker 3: you had this appearance of thriving debate, but it was
36:04
Speaker 3: happening within painfully narrow parameters. For better or for worse,
36:09
Speaker 3: those parameters have pretty much been blown up lately, right?
36:12
Speaker 3: You know, that you have, you know, you have people like,
36:19
Speaker 3: you know, Nick Fuentes, you know, have become like... you know,
36:24
Speaker 3: he had dinner with the president, right? And you have
36:33
Speaker 3: a DSA guy, right? Who's the mayor of the most
36:36
Speaker 3: important city in the capitalist world. And so it seems
36:40
Speaker 3: to me that we are at a time when better
36:45
Speaker 3: things are possible than they were for most of our lifetimes,
36:49
Speaker 3: but also much worse things are possible. And I would
36:52
Speaker 3: like to bolster people's confidence that there is a long-term
36:56
Speaker 3: vision of much better.
36:58
Speaker 4: Yeah, all I would add to that is that, you know,
37:00
Speaker 4: even though there's a lot of, there's economics and some
37:04
Speaker 4: theory in the book, but we also tried to paint
37:06
Speaker 4: a vision of a society that would be really broadly
37:09
Speaker 4: appealing beyond the left, right? We tried to paint a
37:12
Speaker 4: model that most people could imagine themselves living in and enjoying, right?
37:17
Speaker 4: We built it around the kinds of aspirations that people
37:21
Speaker 4: in general have today. I mean, it's a model that
37:23
Speaker 4: makes room for all kinds of social experimentation, but it
37:27
Speaker 4: also is one that guarantees people security of livelihood. It
37:32
Speaker 4: guarantees income to people and services to people as they
37:38
Speaker 4: need it, not whether they can pay for it in
37:41
Speaker 4: some way or other. It's a vision that takes a
37:45
Speaker 4: lot of things that people, it could be communicated as
37:47
Speaker 4: something that takes a lot of people's frustrations and anxieties
37:51
Speaker 4: in life, especially in the working world, and says, here
37:55
Speaker 4: are some solutions to them. They don't involve you sitting
37:57
Speaker 4: in meetings all day or anything like that. The way
37:59
Speaker 4: that we have workplace democracy is not something that would
38:03
Speaker 4: involve people in having meetings all the time, but it
38:06
Speaker 4: is something that means you're not going to have in general,
38:09
Speaker 4: a boss that you hate. You're not gonna have a
38:12
Speaker 4: day-to-day existence where you fear being arbitrarily fired or you're
38:17
Speaker 4: worried about your retirement or anything like that. So I
38:21
Speaker 4: think that the vision that we present is one that
38:25
Speaker 4: is really broadly appealing and could actually be something that
38:29
Speaker 4: is used to reach well beyond the kinds of people
38:32
Speaker 4: who currently think of themselves as on the left.
38:34
Speaker 1: Let's give it up for Ben Burgess and Mike Beggs, everybody!
38:43
Speaker 2: Hell yeah.