Rethinking Social Equity Through the Lens of Historical Materialism with Ridhiman Balaji

Embark on an intellectual exploration with Ridhiamn Balaji, whose insights into the welfare state and socialism challenge the status quo. This episode traverses the European origins of welfare policies, the cautionary stances of Marxists towards state intervention, and the contentious use of the term 'welfare state' in American politics. Balaji, an economist with a deep understanding of Marxology, invites us to reconsider the implications of welfare systems from Bismarck's Germany to FDR's New Deal, while also deconstructing the nebulous concept of neoliberalism and its real-world applications.

Unpack theories of capital with a discussion that dives into income inequality and the intricate web of wealth distribution. As we sift through the works of Piketty, Saez, and other luminaries, tax policies and their impact on inequality come to the forefront, offering a fresh lens on the persistent gaps in healthcare, racial wealth, and the overall social welfare landscape. Balaji challenges us to decode socialism's relationship with welfare policies, prompting a critical reevaluation of how we address societal disparities. The dialogue doesn't shy away from the hard-hitting topics, questioning the viability of the welfare state amidst capitalism's evolution and the internal contradictions within leftist movements.

Concluding our journey, we navigate the ideological battlegrounds from Marxism to anarchism, scrutinizing their influences on global politics and the complex dynamics within the left. Balaji's upcoming publication in 'Capital and Class' is set to incite further debate, but until its release, listeners can access his thought-provoking work on ResearchGate and Academia.edu. Join us for this episode where we not only challenge your perspectives but also arm you with the intellectual tools to engage in the pursuit of a more equitable society.

Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to Bitterlake

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History of Welfare State and Socialism

Speaker 1 0:47

Hello , I'm here with Ridd Balaji , economist , student of economics and Marxologist . Marxologist anarchologist you hear a lot of things these days Is anarchologist a word . So anyway , it is now because I just used it All right . It is now because I just used it All right . So today we're talking about the welfare state , its anti-socialist history . We're going to focus primarily on Europe and the US , although it is important to note that Bismarckian politics and the Bismarckian welfare state and's kind of devil's deal with La Salle and national socialism . And I put that in quotation marks to make sure people know I'm not talking about Nazis , I'm talking about German socialist in the 19th century . But you know , so we might touch on that . But the bigger stuff we're going to be primarily focusing on today is British and American politics .

Speaker 1 1:57

You've written a couple of things on neoliberalism and on the welfare state . Yes , you go after David Harvey , which is a beast out of my heart . I've been going on to shows talking about how if you read David Harvey's history of neoliberalism , you're actually not going to understand neoliberalism that well , and telling people that the best person to read on that is probably Philip Mirowski , while not a Marxist where David Harvey nominally is , a Marxist where David Harvey , nominally , is a Marxist . I think Murawski's work is better , but I wanted to get into your concerns about this . So , first off , I think it's really important to get an idea of where this concept of welfare state even comes from , and then we can kind of parse this relationship to socialism and neoliberalism . So , uh , red , where did welfare state come from ? Where this term ?

Speaker 2 3:00

yeah , so the the idea , the term welfare state comes from actually british politics , and , um , there was something called the beverage report , report which was formalized after World War II , written after World War II , and it talked about transitioning from a warfare state to a welfare state . And it was written by a liberal economist , beverage , I think . I don't know his first name , and then , but if you , you that's where the term comes from . But the actual practice of providing social assistance predates this beverage report . Um , you can , as you mentioned , uh , with bismarck , who was not a socialist or a liberal or anything like that , you had a pretty substantive uh , welfare , what we would call a welfare step , except we wouldn't the term wasn't used at that time where he provided social assistance to the needy and uh , but even before that I mean uh , you had uh , um kind of public social assistance programs in , let let's say , the Roman Empire . So this idea of providing social assistance has a long history , but the term welfare state itself comes from British politics .

Speaker 1 4:25

I think Marxists are often surprised to learn that Marx himself was skeptical of these kinds of patronage systems . In fact that was one of his critiques of Bonapartism and the French imperial project was that it was buying off elements of the poor , moving them basically from the reserve , army and labor into the lumpen because they were from quote decayed social forms . I mean , I'm not going to get into Marx's theory of lumpen around here , but it is pertinent . And that he actually opposed giving the Prussian government money . So he would get mad at the socialists around Livnik when they would vote for taxes to fund anything , even if it helped workers , because he was like this is not in the fundamental interest of the workers .

Speaker 2 5:23

It's going to make them dependents on a quasi-imperial or at at best a bourgeois state , and I think to add to that , I think under Bismarck , socialists in Germany at that time opposed the welfare state , or they were actually highly critical of it because they were concerned that it would discourage people from joining unions . So you have a history of socialists opposing the welfare state .

Speaker 1 5:56

So yeah , I think that's really crucial and I think things . You know , I've been doing this very long series on the interpretive history of the notes , which later got called the critique of the draft of the notes , which later got called the Critique of the Draft of the Bergertha Program . If we get real technical and I have been talking about that because if you don't understand that a lot of the stuff in that book doesn't well , in that letter that is later turned into a key text for marxist by by both daniel de leon and by lenin , um , that , uh , if you don't understand that , you don't understand the context for that text , all right , um , and this also was why people like paul m um senior were very critical of any alliance um between the socialist and welfare status in the Roosevelt program after the popular front and also socialists participating in what he called the Keynesian international system , Um , so I think that's very interesting to me . But let's kind of go into this Like we've talked about Bismarck , We've talked about it's discouraging unionism .

Speaker 1 7:24

The other thing that it does that's largely been forgotten is that it also encourages class collaborationism with , with upper classes so yeah , you know , necessarily , because it's their tax dollars , are their social programs that fund these services , are their production , um , and so this brings us to you . You know , really , I think we should focus on US and Canadian politics here a little bit , but like people misunderstand , the other thing I just want to add really quickly .

Speaker 2 8:03

I believe in US politics the term welfare state was used as a pejorative against FDR as I understand it . Right , pejorative against FDR , as I understand it , because under the Great Depression Herbert Hoover , as you know , had a more laissez-faire approach , fdr kind of like , enacted several social insurance programs , and he was the term . His opponents accused him of wanting a welfare shirt . So I think in that in in us politics , that's kind of how also the term was popularized .

Speaker 1 8:37

So in British politics it was used as a transitional term between the warfare state into , uh , you know , a modern modernization project , uh kind of a , a British liberal modernization project , and in the U S it started out as a slur , basically . Yeah .

Speaker 2 8:55

That's yeah . And in terms of how it entered socialist politics in the U S ? I think for that you have to look at Michael Harrington , at least unless you have more information on this , but Michael Harrington , I think he , from what I understand , he criticized Lyndon Johnson for not going far enough with his Great Society programs and he wanted more of more an expanded welfare state .

Speaker 1 9:35

I suspect that's where it enters socialist politics . I've been reading a lot of both Christopher Lash and Hal Draper's debates with Harrington .

Speaker 2 9:45

I do want to add also that I believe the Fabian Society was also in favor of an expanded welfare state . So it's different in different countries , I think .

Speaker 1 9:58

Well , this is the interesting thing .

Speaker 1 9:59

So I will say this is not in American history .

Speaker 1 10:02

But if you look at the Austrian economist , joseph Schupenter , who worked with the German historical school a lot and also with , like , uh , with Turgenev , uh , I can't remember his name Um , the Russian , uh economist who was kind of a Narodnik and then kind of a Menshevik later , um , tugan Baranovsky , yeah , tugan Baranovsky , yep , um , that Schupinter worked with that and he had this theory that the tendencies of the welfare state and democracy in would lead to a , a socialism developing out of the necessity of checking what he thought was the good tendencies of creative destruction in , uh , the economic system so that , like , as a political balance to that , that , you'd have something like a soft socialism that call itself that developing out of democracy , actually partly even led by corporations themselves as they got scared of the creative destruction cycle you know , the business cycle , what we call crisis , but what he thought was good , the creative destruction cycle and capital call crisis , but what he thought was good , the creative destruction cycle and capital .

Speaker 1 11:14

So this also has a , a pretty long history as a transitionary view . Even amongst what are effectively uh , schupender was kind of considered a marx-friendly right winger , um uh in in the austrian school , and one of the interesting things about the development of neoliberalism is actually what they're trying to do is you know , in Hayek's view is actually step in and pick up on some of these tendencies that lead to socialism , but gear them towards .

Speaker 2 11:54

Like a liberal state . Right , but the socialism they're talking about is not a Marxian socialism .

Speaker 1 12:02

It's more like a German historical school welfarism .

Speaker 2 12:07

You bring up Hayek . Hayek was actually in favor of a welfare state . He was in favor of a welfare state , yep , and he was in favor of what do you call it ? Public health care . And this is an important aspect of advocacy for a welfare state . To recognize , because you have libertarians who are in favor of a welfare state . Um , to recognize because , um , you have libertarians who are in favor of a welfare state I mean , uh , mountain freeman is famously an advocate for ubi and for expanded tax credits .

Speaker 1 12:42

He was like , well , just make it look like it's not a handout but it's a tax return . Um , but they , they , they were , they were pro this . And in fact , one of the reasons why it's erroneous to call Ludwig von Mises a neoliberal and this will get us to some of the relationship to neoliberalism here is that he called Hayek and Friedman communists and refused to continue participating in the Mount Pelerin society because they favored government intervention in the creation of private markets and some welfare status as a kind of way to stabilize those markets .

Speaker 2 13:22

Yeah , right , and that I mean I think I'm not a fan of either , but I think Hayek was probably more reasonable .

Speaker 1 13:34

Right .

Speaker 2 13:36

I mean , I mean Hayek in general favored government intervention as long as it was in the , in the , in the public interest .

Speaker 1 13:44

Yeah , and what do we mean by public interest , like , like , I think that's one of the questions , like his yeah , that I think is the big question .

Speaker 2 13:54

Um , but uh , I mean , of course he was like he wasn't like in favor of central planning , obviously , but and uh , he was in , he was kind of like uh , in favor of free markets and all that . But he , he did have a welfarist aspect to his political orientation , which is an important thing to recognize .

Speaker 1 14:15

Yeah , I think that's a crucial thing to look at .

Speaker 1 14:19

So we see , in the history of the 20th century , I mean particularly in the great society of programs .

Speaker 1 14:24

But even I think you know I talk about this all the time , I've talked about it for 10 years but I read Naomi Klein's shock doctrine book , which is which , as I get older I am even more convinced is a terrible book Like , but it actually does go through the history of social democratic welfare systems in Latin America and Nordic Europe , systems in Latin America and Nordic Europe , and she basically has to invent a conspiracy to explain why they neoliberalized all the time , where the more obvious answer is it was really convenient for them to do so .

Speaker 1 15:02

And it was really easy for them to do so because neoliberalism actually still involves a lot of state involvement and a lot of public-private partnerships . And then you have a scholar like Gabriel Renat who points out that not only is that true , but that Fordism for all that the current left has a nostalgia for it and for defending it was actually setting the transitionary phase for neoliberalism by encouraging more and more levels of public-private partnership yeah , I think this speaks to like a broader issue , um , regarding what do we even mean by neoliberalism ?

Speaker 2 15:46

and I think what I and other people have noticed is that it's used very cheaply , in a way that has no real analytical value .

Debating the Start of Neoliberalism

Speaker 2 15:59

And in the context of my paper , what I'm looking at is the so-called neoliberal period , which is just a way of classifying capitalist history , of classifying capitalist history and , yeah , I mean you were saying how some people just equate neoliberalism with deregulation , and I think that is kind of a very crude way of understanding what neoliberalism is .

Speaker 1 16:31

Well , this is why I support the work of Philip Murawski so much , because he goes up and shows up . No , it's not just deregulation . Deregulation is part of it , Privatization is part of it , but privatization is misleading because it's not actually turning these . It's not removing the government from the market and in fact , as your studies prove , there's more resources and more government involvement at more levels of society than during either classical social democracy well , classical mid-20th century social democracy , Keynesian social democracy or forwardism in America today than there was then .

Speaker 1 17:13

So there , is a myth that you actually attribute to David Harvey on the left , and I think it's generally also maintained on the like center left .

Speaker 2 17:23

Yeah , and I think the the works that I look at is by Dumanil and Levy , and I think they come from the French Regulation School , which was started by Aglietta and Robert Boyer , and they're basically saying that the welfare state started to contract during the start of the neoliberal period . And this also gets to the issue of where does the neoliberal period even begin ? And people who categorize capitalist history into these periods they don't seem to find it a problem that it starts in different places at different times . So in Britain it starts with Margaret Thatcher , but then in the US it starts with Ronald Reagan , but they got into office at different periods . So there's some discrepancy there . And then another way to categorize it which I think is more consistent is to look at the peaks and troughs of the rate of profit , which is what I look at . But what I noticed was that there is kind of some ambiguity regarding where the start of the neoliberal period is .

Speaker 1 18:38

So yeah , I have always thought that it actually started . Okay . So my actual reading of history is that in America in specific , it did . Actually it's the fucking Kennedy family that kind of tries to start it by their first massive tax cuts after the war . This gets stalled out by Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs , and then the transition from Ford into Carter is where a lot of it actually starts as policy , but as an ideological set it starts in the fifties .

Speaker 2 19:21

Well , you can even go , excuse me , you can even say well , if you read a , a Quince LeBodian's book , you can make a case that even starts after world war one , with the collapse of the austrian hunger hunger empire in switzerland and with hayek and mises at the montpelier society . So there is some uh I , and I don't think there's a right answer to this , but in in the context of my paper , uh it , it's like what I have it as starting at 1979 in the us so so basically the end of the carter administration .

Speaker 1 20:03

That's right . Yeah , so again , that kind of complicates the story told by david harvey and co .

Speaker 2 20:09

Yeah , yeah , yeah . And because they're saying that the welfare spending started to decline . And I think this is a complicated issue because if you look at their public discussion , it doesn't quite line up with the policies that they're enacting . So , for example , you have something like the earned income tax credit , which , uh , by definition , fits , uh , it counts as a uh uh welfare policy , but they're not presenting it as a welfare policy . So this complicates the picture because in public they're saying they want to cut welfare but then in practice they're enacting welfare .

Speaker 1 21:09

So I mean , if welfare is any kind of direct transfer , it's welfare . And it's . Another thing you point out is like , basically the working poor in the united state pay negative income tax .

Speaker 2 21:18

Right that's correct , yeah , and I think that is . There's significant empirical evidence for this . I would say , um , uh , especially with the uh we can talk about this later with the distributional national accounts that the BEA is publishing and if you look at the data set correctly from 2000 to 2020 , they are receiving more in benefits relative to how much they're paying , and that kind of contradicts the entire narrative that they're getting less and less and less in in terms of social benefits okay now .

Speaker 1 21:57

So we talked about the regulation school and this tendency to divide capitalism in the periods . You and I've talked about how there's one , there's one kind of marxist , uh , that that says we should just throw that out . It's just capitalism . Those kinds of Marxists are , admittedly , pretty rare today .

Speaker 2 22:16

Yeah , I mean I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other . What do you think ?

Speaker 1 22:25

Well , my thought is , if you talk about the management of how to handle the business cycle and government interventions and how they intervene , because the government in all periods , including like classical entrepreneurial period of the 19th century , is highly involved in the market , like that's , that's one thing , that that , that uh , is correct , um , but how they intervene does change dramatically . Um , yes , what I find interesting about this tendency of marxism plus the regulation school is that a lot of marxists use it to argue that , like certain kinds of quote contradictions of capitalism are over , and then , lo and behold , the business cycle starts again after . After , you know , everything works through , so it just seems like it was stalled .

Speaker 1 23:17

So like for example , from the 50s to the late 60s , that's the

Debating Theories of Capital and Inequality

Speaker 1 23:21

period of the . The theories of like monopoly capital as the end of the contradiction of capital are the administrative uh , the administrative state apparatus theory , or um are the managerial state theory , which was a more right-wing theory from james burnham , but all of them posit basically the same thing um , and I think with the regulation school , they're also saying that , uh , production relations have changed um , during the start of the neoliberal period , which , which is I'm not sure .

Speaker 2 23:51

I don't know if they've changed .

Speaker 1 23:55

I think they have changed to the extent that there's been deindustrialization , but I do not think it fundamentally changes the exploitation relationship , and so that I believe the regulation school also disputes the falling rate of profit hypothesis .

Speaker 1 24:15

Right , they do and and this this also like aligns with monopoly capital theorist like Paul Sweezy , who also dispute the following rate of profit hypothesis and there's kind of there are two people who , there's two groups of people who believe in the farm , where there's more than two , but there's two broad tendencies of people who believe in the fall rate of profit , those who think you're edging towards the final crisis and those who think that no , this is the structural incentive that explains both the why we have to talk about periods of and um , and that it's what explains the business cycle like so , so this crisis and it will change and get worse or better , um , so they don't really disagree with um every part of the theory , but there's so there's , there's the climbing school and then there's like maybe the gross men , um , paul Maddox school , uh , you know , final crisis versus uh driving crises .

Speaker 1 25:21

But they get reset um by war , by some certain return to profitability , something that reduces uh overproduction , overproduction , et cetera . So , although logically I , as I pointed out the climbing uh once and he didn't like this um that there could like that his logic actually uh would actually imply there could be a final crisis , because that was not just a socialist revolution , because eventually you would exhaust means to easily reset social production without risk of human uh , human extinction . So , for example , war already is much more dangerous of a way to get rid of surplus production . Um , just because the , the even though , like , the amount of people in modern societies that are affected by war has actually gone down , the destructive capacity in war is exponentially higher . Right like so you can't theoretically just wipe out a whole country , so yeah , yeah , I don't know , I don't , I don't really have like a strong opinion .

Speaker 2 26:38

I do think I I guess I'm kind of a soft defender of the falling rate of uh profit , but I I think what people seem to miss is that it's a tendency and it can go up , which it did during the neoliberal period , and I think people are kind of saying , oh well , it went up . So therefore Marx is wrong and I think that kind of misses the tendency aspect of it .

Speaker 1 27:14

Right , which is I think that's in Marx after the 1850s . I think in the 1850s Marx realizes that you're not going to get a linear final crisis all the time in a straightforward decline way . Yeah , straightforward decline way , yeah . My reason for this is he kind of did seem that and there are people who disagree with me , enemy of the show . Andrew Kleinman strongly disagrees with me on that and I say enemy of the show just because he has a whole article about how I'm a McCarthyist which is real funny , but strongly disagrees with me on on that .

Speaker 1 27:57

He thinks that Marx always thought that . It's not that we disagree on the interpretation . He thinks that that that Marx is consistent throughout that throughout his life . I , having looked at some letters and mega uh and mega two research that have been translated into English by Marcel Musto , think that he pretty clearly believed in the immiseration thesis until the mid 1850s and then gave it up . Now I also don't think it's that important Like that , like we know exactly when Marx thought something . But the reason why I bring it up is for people who think that Marx was a miseration thesis . I think . I think there is early Marxist work that is actually in that vein , so they're not coming from nowhere , like yeah , I mean the idea of a like a falling rate of profit .

Speaker 2 28:48

It , it . It's there in Smith and Ricardo too . Oh , absolutely so this is not .

Speaker 1 28:56

It's there in Ibn Kundun . Ibn Kundun mentions that in his work . Like it's actually interesting , like from what I can tell Ridd , it's there all the way back in Thomas Aquinas . There's just an assumption that profits fall over time because market competition drives profitability down . The only person I've seen who's tried to really answer that argument seriously are MMTers , who argue that profitability rates just don't matter because you can increase the money supply , and then Steve Keen , who argues that machines actually produce value because the distinction between constant and variable capitals are official Like so .

Speaker 2 29:49

I mean Steve Keen . We've criticized steve keen before , but his knowledge of marx is very poor yeah , I , uh , I've criticized .

Speaker 1 30:00

I mean steve keen came on my show um , not varm blog , but an earlier show called systematic redness , and this was like a decade ago . He's one of my first guests and , um , uh , if people go back and listen to what he predicts about seriza and whatnot , he gets almost every single thing wrong , like about what was going to immediately happen .

Speaker 1 30:22

So I don't know oh , he said that they were going , they were going to be able to pull a grexit , that um , that that that fear would lead the , the troika , into actually um , negotiating with them more fairly , that verifocus's scheme would be able to , you know , would work , because there was , there was a consistency in syriza . Every single one of those things . It turned out to be true , you know , it's's uh , sometimes I do sort of think like you need to hold people accountable for their bad predictions , right , like um . But this brings us to uh , to inequality , and I , because part of the argument about why the welfare state has declined is the is like the extremity of inequality over time , and and so you have done a lot of studies on on modern stuff , including , you know , paketti , but also um , uh kuznets and um and smeeding .

Speaker 1 31:26

so let's , let's talk a little bit about that . So , so , yeah , so uh .

Debating Income Inequality Trends

Speaker 2 31:34

So prior to Piketty and Saez , you had a couple of different studies that looked at income inequality in the U S . Kuznets was one of them and Kuznets used tax data . So the usage of tax data wasn't all that new . It was the fact that Piketty and Saez they looked at a very long historical series . That was new . But you also had Timothy Smeeding and Gotrick , I think , and they had a very large data set with multiple countries that built their data using national surveys and census data and they did like a cross-country comparison .

Speaker 2 32:27

So fast forward to 2003 , piketty and Saez come out with their first paper and that one uses tax data and they were reporting something called the U-curve , which they weren't the first one to report .

Speaker 2 32:46

That Kuznets was also reporting a U-curve , which is the idea that inequality decreases , then it increases , and so I think they were under the impression that their findings were consistent with Kuznets and what they were basically saying was that you had a sharp uptick in inequality with the start of the uh . Well , uh , when the Reagan administration uh enacted the tax reform act of 1986 . And uh , there has been significant pushback on this by Republicans , but also just in general , because of how they're measuring income . When you look at inequality within a society , it matters significantly how fast inequality is growing at the top end of the income distribution , because that's basically determining how much inequality is growing throughout the entire society . So what they were saying was that inequality grew rapidly . There was a U-turn since the Tax Reform Act of 1986 . And I think that has and even they've acknowledged this is that they have overstated those rising trends . So maybe we can pause here and um talk about that yeah .

Speaker 1 34:32

Well , what are the trends that you saw there ? So uh .

Speaker 2 34:36

Well , what they were saying was that , so they , so you , I think they . You have to look at , uh , how top marginal tax rates have changed over time . You need some context for this . And what happened with Reagan was that there was a significant decline in top marginal tax rates . And I think what they were saying was that that contributed to inequality . That contributed to inequality and top marginal tax rates did decline . But it's important to recognize that top marginal like people weren't paying those tax rates . So , for example , uh , under eisenhower and under jfk , top marginal tax rates were 90% , 70% , but no one was paying that because there was significant income sheltering .

Speaker 2 35:32

And if you use tax data , that is not capturing , first of all , your true income . Because if you use tax data , all you're looking at is taxable income , which is a narrow subset of your entire income that you're receiving , because you're receiving all kinds of different income . That's non-taxable . And I think this gets into the broader issue of what do we even mean by income ? Because what Piketty and Saez's critics have pointed out is that they have a very narrow measure of quote-unquote income trends at the top end of the distribution , because they are , first of all , they're underreporting how much people there are in the bottom end of the distribution and then also the top end of the distribution is using all kinds of legal mechanisms to avoid paying taxes , and I think you have to count that .

Speaker 2 36:52

And if you don't do that , you are not going to have a comparable series to , let's say , if you have a study that looks at income on that measures income using household data , income on a that measures income using household data . So , for example , uh , let's say you have two individuals who would be low income , but if you use household data , that it would count as one high income household . So these are like , and so it's all these little things that if you adjust for , then you get a totally different trend . And again , it is important to note that we're talking about trend because it's not that they're disputing , it's not that their critics are disputing that inequality is not rising , it's how much it's rising by , and that's also another important aspect .

Speaker 2 38:13

So , yeah , no , I was just gonna say uh , I was just gonna say uh here , for example , if you look at , there's an interesting paper by david splinter who looks at tax progressivity over in the us over a long period of time and he's basically he makes a convincing case that actually , if you include things like , for example , the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit , things like that , there's been a significant increase in how much tax . The tax system has become progressive over time . And , um , I think those things are important to consider when you look , when you are asking like , is the , does the us have a progressive tax system or not ? Because if you don't , then you're not really measuring . Uh , you're not really have a progressive tax system or not , because if you don't , then you're not really measuring , you're not really , you have a biased estimate .

Speaker 1 39:13

So , so , and what ? What parts of the income you know is normally excluded , like what , what is not , what is non taxable income ?

Speaker 2 39:22

Well , let's say social . Uh , what do you call it ?

Speaker 1 39:28

uh , uh , oh my god employer employee benefits for employer benefits , for example , are not taxed like the cost , yes , but also like uh , medicare I believe it's medicare , medicare benefits aren't taxed .

Speaker 2 39:43

Food stamps , you know ? Let me actually . So there's two different types of programs . There's means tested and then there's social insurance . So means tested , you have to apply for them . You don't get them automatically . And then social insurance , you get them . They're universal . So you have the temp , the temporary assistance for needy families , the supplemental nutrition assistance program , which is food stamps . I was thinking of supplementary security income , medicaid , earned income , tax credit , and then some minor ones with housing and job training . Those are all , all means tested . And then social insurance , you have social security , social disability , unemployment insurance and Medicare . So all of those you wouldn't be taxed for it , but they're income and they're improving the livelihoods of people . But if you use tax records to measure inequality , you are not able to capture that as part of your broader measure of income .

Speaker 1 41:00

All right in the early aught teens in his book about the 2007 crisis , that a lot of this idea that neoliberalism was , was , was sapping income , was was misleading because of all the things that you mentioned about certain kinds of benefits not showing up in the data , I do think . I mean , I do think Piketty's data is more interesting on wealth Like and that's where I take him a lot more seriously and wealth inequality , and you have seen talks about that . But again , I think to some ways that that confuses things because wealth does compound over time . So , like wealth , wealth inequality could be the result of policies that are like 80 , 100 years old .

Speaker 1 42:00

That may not , that may just be . Have may just have nothing mitigating against them now that may just have nothing mitigating against them .

Speaker 2 42:08

Now , I mean , I think , with wealth . For me , I think what it boils down to is how much land you own , frankly , and I think the most wealthy people own a lot of land . So I think data on that is very hard to come by . So there's a lot .

Wealth and Inequality Analysis Discussion

Speaker 2 42:33

This is beyond the scope of my paper , but it is important to distinguish between wealth and income and , uh , wealth it , it , yeah , I don't know . I mean , with wealth , I think , uh , you get into kind of historical factors , as you say .

Speaker 1 42:44

Right , um , I mean , and this is the most obvious . For example , as you say , right , this is the most obvious , for example , when you're talking about stuff like racial wealth gaps , which are explained by two things in the United States One , slavery , removing the accumulation of capital once the start of the country , like you know , you're cut out of like 150 years of any accumulation . And two , jim Crow and redlining laws Limiting the ability for homeownership . And then three , the wealth that was gained and there was a lot of wealth gained In relatively poor minority communities from homeownership between the 60s and 2007 uh disproportionately hit them in the way things were resettled after uh , 2007 , because allowing people to lose their homes actually cost uh a lot of wealth in the black community .

Speaker 1 43:47

And if you look at the like , if you look at the wealth gap , for example , between black and white families in the united states , it's basically half the cost of a house , like so then all of a sudden you start seeing how this happened and what statistical patterns are playing in there , and and then you also realize , like if you , if you , fix housing policy in the United States , it would actually almost immediately go away . Like that , that like income differences , which are also real , are actually a very minor part of what's causing the wealth gap . So those things are things to look at and consider when talking about these issues . And of course no one does , and I think you know we're focusing on Thomas Harvey , but everybody has kind of dishonest statistical narratives about this stuff dishonest statistical narratives about this stuff .

Speaker 2 44:49

Yeah , and I think it's also important to , because I think inequality is a much more broader concept than income inequality , because if you look at inequality , you can talk about access to healthcare , and what kinds of people are receiving healthcare versus aren't , and in what parts of the world . You know what ? What are the working conditions like in , let's say , india or Africa versus in the in the first world ? And I think that also is a form of inequality .

Speaker 1 45:23

Absolutely . Yeah absolutely yeah , or I'd even go to say so . One thing I've talked about that , uh , people don't talk about , about , like , why there's so much bitterness between red states and blue states . Social welfare within the united states follows similar patterns to the kind of thing not as extreme as between , like , say , bangladesh and the us , but alabama and new york . A poor person in new york has a lot more resources than a poor person in alabama does .

Speaker 2 45:52

Definitionally , like yeah there , welfare . I think there is a kind of a bipartisan aspect to it , because you can even make a case that clinton was , uh , more um anti-welfare than Reagan and there was a significant kind of effort under the Clinton administration to roll back welfare , which is not . But again , that's also just one aspect of it . But I do think I'm just saying that there's a bipartisan effort , I think , to remove the number of people who are receiving , reduce the number of people who are receiving welfare .

Speaker 1 46:55

Yeah , so , and in some ways that backfired too , because you know what happened after the removal of welfare the explosion of disability . Yes , happened after the removal of welfare the explosion of disability . I think when you look at all this together , this gives you a interesting picture that welfareism has not declined and it is not really affecting inequality that much . Which then leads me to another question why have so many leftists picked up on this otherwise liberal narrative ? Why do you think this ? Because , because we haven't talked about this , but you know , one of your contentions is this is an anti-socialist narrative .

Speaker 2 47:37

Ultimately , yeah , I think this , this , uh , I think boils down to the fact that people have different understanding of what people mean by quote unquote socialism , because if you look at the public discourse , people generally tend to equate socialism with welfarism , and this is a problem , because it's not to say that welfare spending is not on an issue . It is , but it is not addressing some of the fundamental issues of how commodities are produced under the capitalist system . What is your relationship like with your boss ? Do you like the work that you do ? What I ? I mean , there's a whole range of questions that welfare spending isn't able to address . And , yeah , and I mean , um , there's a kind of an amnesia , uh , because people uh don't know the history of um socialists opposing the welfare state . And you have this young generation who is in favor of the welfare state , which , again , I am also , but , uh , we do need to look at the history , I think . Yeah .

Speaker 1 49:15

So I think this

Marxism and Bonapartism in Ideology

Speaker 1 49:16

is a kind of crucial point . My point with you about the history is that we have seen that there's been a tendency of large powers to want to stabilize the social instability caused by the business cycle , and we've seen that there's a history also of wanting elites to control elites by actually playing resentments of , and this , I think , is a larger than a capitalist phenomenon we talk about this in ancient Rome , right than a capitalist phenomenon . We talk about this in ancient rome , right . Um , we can talk about this in the like sung chinese period or something too , uh , that you have are in in medieval england , um , that you have the king , are the royal families playing off the resentment of peasants against other elites . So being having a patronage system where those peasants can appeal to a larger authority is an , is a way to balance out powers within elites . I don't know , and that's that's . That's a tendency that emerges in several different systems . I will say that marxism only deals with it directly when talking about bonapartism . That's when marx really deals with it . What ?

Speaker 2 50:26

do you mean ?

Speaker 1 50:26

by that ? Well , what does Marx say ? The social basis of Bonapartism is Taking classes that are being pauperized and giving them handouts so that they are loyal to a particular political figure .

Speaker 1 50:42

Yeah , and then also usually being backed up by the petite bourgeoisie so so this leads to um , you know , because marx sees artisans and some forms of petite bourgeoisie as being , um , kind of aligned with workers , but that you could buy them off pretty easily with patronage systems . So that's where marx talks about it , but it's not like really in capital , for example , it's not there right , uh , whereas , but it does seem like something he was really concerned about in his letters to leave nick and babel and um into the , you know , into the proto-sp day , and then , when they were the , when marx and engels were in the international representation and observers of the spd when it was formed after , against their own protests , actually um , that that if they started , uh , allowing people to take these measures , it would get them out of unions and it would get them dependent on the capitalist state and us on capital productivity and buy them into um , into the system .

Speaker 1 51:58

that's clear in the letters , that marx was really concerned about that and what I find interesting to me in a kind of not totally transhistoric way , but if you look at the way like complicated systems deal with middle elites by by like using patronage as a way out so that you can yeah , and I mean again like with , even .

Speaker 2 52:18

Like this applies to , like , marxist , leninist governments as well , as well . Like , yeah , it does . And like with china , with soviet union and so on , like , so this is not by any means exclusive to , uh , quote-unquote liberal democracies no , I fact , actually liberal democracies it seems to be .

Speaker 1 52:39

I think we're in a moment . You know if I was going to characterize the current moment . You know people talk about , you know populism or whatever , but what I think it really is is like a return to bonapartist politics , because certain other kinds , like they're running out of ability to really stabilize the system . I'm not saying that profit rates are going to decline in a way that like everything's going to fall apart , or we're new to feudalism or anything like that , but what I am saying is that like the kind of return to profitability you saw in the early neoliberal phase between 1979 and 1997 , that's not happening right now . Nothing seems to be able to do that , including and frankly including , china . You know like , you know like so . So we're in an interesting place , I think , as far as that goes .

Speaker 1 53:36

And one of the things I find interesting about the current moment is , uh is I think a lot of the framing of this geopolitically is basically pretending , even by marxLeninists , that anything anywhere in the world that looks a little bit like mid-20th century social policy is actually socialism . And I'm not here to debate whether or not members of the PRC sincerely think they're socialist . I am sure a majority of them do . Right , that's not my concern here . My concern is just to point out that the horizons have changed , and they've changed everywhere , not just in the United States or the West west , with the fall of the soviet union , you know , I mean one of the like . For example , um , this year , or at the very end of last year , excuse me , um , china actually adopted singapore's housing policy . Is singapore a socialist state ?

Speaker 2 54:40

if it is , you got a lot of explaining to me to do about what socialism has historically been yeah , that's kind of my issue with , uh , richard wolf too , because he is calling scandinavian countries socialist , isn't he ?

Speaker 1 54:52

and he's calling bernie sanders socialist too well , I mean , at least in the case of bernie sanders it's he's self-identified as socialist , but , like , like there , there was a tradition of critique both from Marxist-Leninist , trotskyist and anarchist about Bernie Sanders style productivism . Murray Bookchin's the most famous , and I read that essay on my show coming up but and that was actually very popular in the 80s and 90s and a certain milieu of the left . Now , admittedly , when I say it was very popular in a certain milieu of the left , that milieu was tiny . I mean , you're talking about distributions of a couple of thousand of these pamphlets and whatnot , but still , it's something to look at versus now . Um , it's something to look at versus now .

Speaker 1 55:49

And I do think it's interesting how much , even when you try to do the MMT argument and say , okay , well , we can make , we can promise that our social welfare net isn't based off of taxes , so it's not based off profitability , so you don't have to worry about it , we can just base it off of liquidity , um , and increasing the money supply strategically . Even if you believe that that's true and possible , the question is well , why do so many MMTers still have to make appeals to elites to try to get them on their side by saying , hey , we can do this social safety net without actually hurting you , without removing your power , basically , right . Why are they doing that ? Well , the thing is , they actually are being class collaborationists . They think that we have to have the working class on our side and that's sustainable , right ? And MMTers say that .

Speaker 1 56:55

So Rob Amari over from Compact Magazine says that , and most social democratic Marxists and even Marxist-Leninists say that now . So you have this anti-socialist thing , and it was considered anti-socialist because one of the keys of socialism is worker power , not worker dependency Right and welfarism does I mean . I know this is going to sound like a conservative argument , but welfarism does cut down on worker power . We're not providing for our own poor , we are letting someone else do it for us .

Speaker 2 57:26

Yeah , yeah , I agree , I agree with that , and I think that was the original concern of uh german socialists as well under bismarck , that you um are kind of uh delaying , kind of like the revolution , you know you know now , the counter argument to that that's a little bit more complicated um is that uh I mean , I am kind of torn about it as well , because on the one hand , I think the welfare state does help a lot of people , but on the other hand , let's not delude ourselves into thinking , okay , we're , this is socialism well , the , the other thing , and uh , this is something that you know .

Speaker 1 58:10

I was talking crap about andrew crime and a little bit earlier , but this is something I agree with them on that . If you look historically in time periods of immiseration , there's a very small window of actual possible revolutionary activity . And and and actually , if you do the like the linen thing and and like I'm not a linenist , but I think in this sense he's right there are objective and subjective conditions , and one of the interesting things , just as a pattern to note , is that the objective conditions for worker power are higher in unions when workers can command more power against employers , and that actually is better . When the economy is take , took a downswing and coming up , uh , as opposed to when it's just declining , it seems like there's less and less for worker organs of power to actually base themselves off of , and so you kind of have to ask yourself um is , is it delaying the revolution or not , or is it just not relevant ? Like , is the revolution about some other thing ?

Speaker 1 59:34

um , yeah , I mean uh I don't know , I don't think you can answer this objectively . I just you can look at historical patterns , but like it's not , like we have an example of a successful revolution that we think would meet all of our criterion that we could talk about . I mean , you know I've talked to you about how I'm mildly defenseless on China because I think there are sincere socialist elements in the government . Do I think China's socialist ? Not really , but like you know , that's neither here nor there sincere socialist elements in the government ? Do I think china's socialist ? Not really , but like you know , that's neither here nor there .

Speaker 1 1:00:11

Um , but being minorly defenseless is different from saying it's a socialist program that we should like all celebrate , like in in kind of I'm like we're kind of watching to see what , what side of this uh um situation's gonna win , win , and just pretending that the side that you want has won because all of it calls itself socialist is very dangerous I think . But I also don't want to . Similarly , when you're talking about the welfare state , I also don't want to be anti-Chinese right now because it's objectively like , for example , if China pulls I was talking to John Bellamy Foster about this If China pulls off its ecological civilization transition as it moves into socialism . As it states . That would be a net good for the world . Like regardless , like even if I don't think it's a perfect socialist system . What do you do about that ? I don't have an easy answer . When people go , oh we should just oppose welfare reforms , I'm like I think we should kind of admit that some of them would be good . I would support the United States getting socialized medicine in a heartbeat .

Speaker 2 1:01:36

Yeah , and I mean mean this again ties into kind of like uh , I'm also critical of andrew clemens group because they are , on the one hand , critical of the welfare state , but they are supporting the democrats and they have this revolutionary orientation . But this is inconsistent with their kind of support for the Democrats and reformism , like endorsements of reformism , except they're not supporting Bernie Sanders .

Speaker 1 1:02:04

Right . They actively oppose people supporting Bernie Sanders in 2016 . That was the beginning of the fallout between mhi and douglas lane , um . They supported hillary clinton , um , and their logic for that was that if bernie tried to implement his policies , they would fail because they're kind of incoherent social welfarism and that would empower the right . But then I'm like but . But also I'm like , but I'm sorry . Hillary Clinton's endorsement of fallout policy has failed

Critiques of Vanguardism and Welfare State

Speaker 1 1:02:42

and also empowered the right . So , by that same logic , we should probably be at least starting to build an alternative way out , as opposed , as opposed to just like hoping it emerges spontaneously from the black community or whatever they seem to actually think yeah , and the other reason I think they know that is because raya danyaskaya believe in that like yeah , and then , like the other thing that I found kind of odd with the whole idea of the black masses acting as the vanguard is that they are critical of political determinism .

Speaker 2 1:03:13

But then isn't that a kind of political determinism ?

Speaker 1 1:03:16

yes , but it's when based off of a spontaneous revolution just doesn't happen right , and then even like , even like they're .

Speaker 2 1:03:26

They're kind of like expecting for there to be like a world revolution , like they're kind of like expecting for there to be like a world revolution , right , and that's kind of like the other weird aspect .

Speaker 1 1:03:34

Yeah , a world revolution simultaneously .

Speaker 2 1:03:38

Yeah , and I think this ties into kind of what you were saying about China , because I think with Marx he talks about modes of production . With Marx he talks about modes of production and you can have different types of modes of production within a single country Because , for example , with Britain you still have agriculture and you still have .

Speaker 1 1:04:04

You still have semi-feudal landlordism , like in a real sense , not in a metaphorical sense .

Speaker 2 1:04:12

so yeah , yeah , so I think it's , it's , it's . The idea of there being like this simultaneous world revolution is a little bit idealistic yeah , I don't know how you achieve it simultaneously and spot and spontaneously .

Speaker 1 1:04:33

And I don't know why , like , like , they take the concept of the advanced , no , no , uh , the advanced section of the worker to mean like the most oppressed , but they also completely oppose immiseration theory , like . So I think there , you know , and I know there's probably not going to be an article about me and you're fucking with me , but I think there's like , at least seemingly , there's massively contradictions . And to make it , to make this broader , I don't think it's limited to MHI and Andrew Kleinman's group , I think it's throughout Marxist hyphen humanism , not like we're not talking about graham she here or any of the other kinds of marxist humanism , but like our ep thompson , but in the raya dunya sky , uh , um , tradition that this , these contradictions run throughout and they also run throughout the clr james tradition . So , like these traditions of like ex-trotskyists , they're kind of , they kind of all have like well , vanguardism is bad , except when it's spontaneous and it's within a group . I like , like um , and there is no white working class but there is a black working class , etc .

Speaker 2 1:05:46

Etc , etc , which is just like , kind of like and even like with the idea of there being like a . I mean , we have to like . This is a kind of an essentialist way of looking at it , because what do you mean by quote-unquote black are you talking about like west africans ? East africans are you talking about like descendants of slaves ? I mean , that is kind of a weird way of looking at it .

Speaker 1 1:06:14

It's weird because I think it reifies a certain moment in time coming out of the Civil Rights Movement and the discussions about ML groups in the 30s and 40s keeping their mouth shut about like segregationist policies . Uh , because of the popular front , I think that's really right , kind of what .

Speaker 1 1:06:40

What led to that and it's been reified and frozen um so the cp usa supported the democrats right yes , from from uh during the popular front period from the popular front period until literally about four years ago . So you know it's yeah and they're ambivalent about it . Now I can't really tell where they are now , like they're still not running their own candidates or anything so it's , it's uh , it's hard to say .

Speaker 1 1:07:13

I mean , and honestly , during the first bernie run there were both mhi articles against bernie and cpusa articles against bernie that could have said the same thing about like ultra leftist and empowering the right , blah , blah , blah . And to me , like , if you're calling bernie an ultra leftist , like leftism doesn't mean anything , like ultra leftism doesn't mean anything , it just means what's not in line with what your group says , which is also a problem I have with this accusations on like , uh , you know , in the dsa , because the dsa , you know , groups in the dSA are always calling other groups in the DSA ultra leftists all the time , and they're like MMT years calling other MMT years ultra leftists . And I'm , like you know , from my perspective , you guys are all from the right wing of socialism anyway . Like , yeah , it's just weird , and so I think we have to be skeptical of the welfare state . But I do think also I am with you I don't necessarily think what people now call accelerationism are maybe the hard form of impossibilism or whatever are maybe like the hard form of impossible , ism or whatever .

Speaker 1 1:08:29

You know , I am an impossible in the sense that I do think that socialism will not just organically emerge naturally from capitalism , like that's the , that's the minimum definition of impossible ism . There's also a definition that's like like nor fight trots uh . For those who don't know , they are like the world , the world socialist uh website , um and uh um , the scp , the Socialist Equity Party , um and um . And people like that who are always arguing that like no , we should , we should , we should basically uh either be totally neutral on things like unionism and try to encourage , uh , completely organic self-organization or , um , we should , like accelerationists say , actually encourage neoliberalism to make things worse so that it inspires a revolt . I think those are disastrous policies and I actually think Marx also historically opposed them . So yeah , yeah .

Speaker 1 1:09:42

I mean , if you actually look at what Marx politically advocated and you don't get that from Capital , you get it from the letters and some of the historical writings on France and stuff like that the way is actually very narrow . It's very , very specific .

Speaker 2 1:09:56

Well , didn't the Soviet Union kind of normalize relations with the fascists during the Populist Republic period and look at how well that turned out , and then with the fascists during the popular front period and look at how well that ?

Speaker 1 1:10:10

turned out , yeah , and then the Soviet Union reversed the third period , not the popular front , the third period , where they're like you don't , but even in the popular front period they weren't siding with the social democratic parties and trying to heal that , they were siding with liberal parties , like . So you know , the exception was only in the Spanish Civil War and you know , depending on who , you believe that led to an internal Civil War within the Civil War . So , like which ? I think honestly , honestly , if I'm completely honest , uh and this is a little bit beyond the scope of the welfare discussion , but I think that's the result of popular frontism in all cases , that you , if you form a popular front , then the contradictions of that popular front .

Speaker 1 1:11:06

Once you get rid of the usually occupying power they've not been very good at getting rid of actually standing powers , except in World War II you immediately go into a civil war . That was true in China , that was true in Tucson . I mean , if you really want to look at what was going on in the Spanish Civil War , there seemed to be an internal civil war amongst the Republicans . That's implied by the Popular Front period , because in some ways you can't just get along at the end of that , yeah , I mean , you have different values , right .

Speaker 1 1:11:44

And different wants . And there's a power struggle too right and you know the way , to me , the way around that power struggle is empowering um workers themselves to some degree , but nobody really seems to like that or believe in that anymore .

Speaker 2 1:12:03

So like and then I guess the question becomes with the welfare state . Does the welfare state empower workers ? And I don't know that it does .

Speaker 1 1:12:25

I don't know that it does . I don't know that it always say I tend to oppose UBI and support like socialized medicine .

Speaker 2 1:12:36

Well with UBI . I think you have libertarians in favor of UBI , but the way that they're advocating is that they want to get rid of Social Security and replace it it with the ubi . It is not on top of the social security right and and then .

Speaker 1 1:12:54

That doesn't like a ubi , that's not like pegged to inflation or something would be a disaster like yeah , yeah , um , I think , uh , what's his name ?

Speaker 2 1:13:03

charles murray's in favor of ubi yeah , I mean there's a lot .

Speaker 1 1:13:06

There's a lot of right-wingers who are in favor of uvi and there's a lot of people I know , like in the military , who kind of advocate it for social stability reasons , right , and I'm just saying like , uh , the military is not the most reactionary institution in american life , that's the police , but um , um , but I do sort of think if the military is really really pro something , maybe you should think about it like just a little bit , like what its implications actually are .

Speaker 2 1:13:34

So I mean anytime like policies align with the right wing , you should yeah it should at least give you pause .

Speaker 1 1:13:44

I'm not saying like , for example , yes , sometimes anti-war policy will rhyme with that , with the right wing , and like that shouldn't cause us to be I mean , at the very least you should ask why they're aligned .

Speaker 1 1:13:56

Exactly Like what's what ? What is going on ? Why are ? Why are our seeming enemies and us on the same side of something ? Should always be a question Like what are they going to get out of it ? And also , are they going to get out of it and and also are they going to get us once we succeed ? If we succeed , like , do they immediately have the upper hand turning us and or not , like that's always a question , right , yeah , um , and you know what ? I would say that I think so the democrats in america ?

Speaker 1 1:14:24

what do you mean ? I think people should start thinking about the democrats in america the same way they are to the right of socialists . So they should be treated like we treat right wingers with extreme skepticism and always the question what are they getting from ?

Speaker 2 1:14:40

our relationship . The Democrats are objectively like a right wing political organization agreed and they have been historically . In fact , in the 19th century they were more react , they were more right-wing than the republicans and I was gonna say , like , with the , the fact that you have like libertarians supporting a welfare state , maybe I should tell you like , okay , well , because you know , maybe you like , if you advocate welfareism from a socialist standpoint , it's easier to co-opt that from a right-wing framework . You know what I mean . I don't know if that makes sense .

Speaker 1 1:15:28

Yeah , no , it totally makes sense and I think it's something to to really consider when , as we move forward , like when people you know there's you and I talk about this because on one hand , there's a certain group of leftists who just think talking about red , brown stuff is always like liberal propaganda , and there's another group of leftists who kind of admit that it is a problem , and there's a third group of leftists who are like conspiratorially paranoia obsessed with it and anything you , anytime you say , anything that could be construed , it's kind of a little bit nice to russia or whatever people accuse you of being um , yeah , like a surrogate for russian surrogate for russian government .

Speaker 1 1:16:11

Like it's just , um , just , even even though you , like in my case , uh , you know , oppose the invasion of ukraine the entire time , because I thought it was , if nothing else , just stupid , even if they won , that it was kind of gonna lead to , um , like , just from a geopolitical standpoint , that it was going to lead to things that would empower the , uh , the west , even though I did not think that the west thought that they could , like actually have ukraine win the war . Uh , I'm not sure . There are days that go back and forth on that . You know , we've talked about that too . This has been a talking point of my show for a while , uh , and I have pointed out that , like nobody has called everything in this war , like everybody's been wrong on parts of it , um , so , uh , but , but people on the left were saying russia isn't gonna invade , right , for a long time .

Speaker 1 1:17:02

Right , they invaded and they actually weirdly were , were in agreement with the paleo conservative right on that . So , or , like me , I thought they would kind of invade , but it would be like Georgia and it would be just like , hey , leave , uh , don't ask him to cost alone , and and we're going to pull back , and also you're not getting Crimea back , fuck off . Like that's what I thought was going to happen , but I was wrong , like I , I made the wrong call too . So um , uh , you know uh , so I don't know what to say about that . Um , but it's just something uh , people should admit . Yeah , I think you know this is a broad topic , um , and obviously I'm going to have you come back about it , but I do think you

Anarchism, Marxism, and Global Politics

Speaker 1 1:17:48

know .

Speaker 1 1:17:49

A lot of people ask me all the time why I'm so interested in anarchist , a Marxist dialogue , and I'll just state plainly I think anarchists tend to accept liberal modalities for moral reasons , whether they realize it or not . Like , for example , there's a whole lot of anarchists that just accept , like , outright agitprop from the Ukraine russia war , like um but um . But I don't think that's inherent to anarchism , I think it's a trend . That's like in the west , specifically because people are reacting to other , frankly , left-wing subcultures that they see as suspect um yeah , I think with marxist , this it's , it's .

Speaker 1 1:18:33

I think it's certainly true for your shakmanite trotskyists , absolutely yeah well , and I think we also agree that certain kinds of marciite and anti-revisionist mls are too soft on on russia , china and like iran well they .

Speaker 2 1:18:50

They don't have a problem with the invasion right yeah , I mean . So it's just for me , it's kind of they're glorifying kind of your hezbollah houthis types as heroes , you know , like anti-imperialist heroes .

Speaker 1 1:19:03

Excuse me right which they might be , incidentally but the reasons for that are not , like some , like principled socialist Right . Somebody told me , though , since I like favor de-escalation and the Civil War and Yemen and I favor it because I've seen the results of it that I'm like objectively pro , pro Hootie , and I'm like , oh you know what , if that's true , ok , but it doesn't mean I like them , like I'm not . I don't really love , like Zaydi Shia , tribal politics , just because it happens to align with my geopolitical aims at a given moment , um , but but it also means , you know , I also don't want it to get bombed to shit . So what are you gonna do ?

Speaker 1 1:19:56

like yeah , um , so it , I think I .

Speaker 1 1:20:01

I think for the reason why I wanted to have this conversation for you is it opens up a lot of hard questions for the left and right now , given that I think we see , weirdly , that the cultural like , cultural left-wingism , you know , a kind of libertarian social attitude and a distrust of libertarian market economics , is dominant in the US , canada , europe , but that in other ways we're very much not in a left-wing moment , and people conflating those two leads people to misanalyze the situation , and I think to get out of that we're going to have to ask them very hard questions about what we mean by left wing like and what we think this stuff is for , like , like we should all oppose .

Speaker 1 1:20:57

You know Goshen's being wiped out , I think , absolutely . To me , that's not a question that has much to do with socialism . That's just like a basic human fucking decency question . Um , uh , people might say , oh well , we can build socialism off of it because national liberation , and I'm like , can you , though ? I mean like , let's be real here . Um , palestine is tiny , even if you got all of it like , you're gonna base a world revolution off of that like as your starting point ?

Speaker 2 1:21:37

I just don't see how that works and I mean a lot of people in the broader palestinian solidarity movement aren't even socialists , right , you have like a significant amount of islamists , um , you know lots of just normal , normal , I think , a lot of normal arab liberals , because like it's uncomfortable , right , like yeah , like I mean in a way .

Speaker 1 1:21:59

In a way I even think that's good . We just need to understand what it is like .

Speaker 2 1:22:05

A lot of this boils down to how you frame the issue .

Speaker 1 1:22:09

Right , and I think that's I mean . And to bring it back to the social welfare stuff , like like yeah , we should not want American . I will say this American the American healthcare system isn't also a real laissez-faire system at all . It's like . It's like the worst of all worlds from an economic perspective yeah , I mean it's the .

Speaker 2 1:22:32

Yeah , I mean , uh , there is a uh like social security , uh it's . You get health care if you reach a certain age , so it's not universal . But you do have public healthcare , but it's just not universal .

Speaker 1 1:22:57

Yeah .

Speaker 2 1:22:58

Yeah , but it's a total gift to the healthcare corporations because they just jack up the prices and charge you .

Speaker 1 1:23:08

Yeah , that's exactly what they do , because they just jack up the prices and charge you . That's exactly what they do , because they know you need it .

Speaker 2 1:23:14

They know you need healthcare services .

Speaker 1 1:23:17

Right , they jack up the prices because they know they're not going to get it , so they can write it off as a tax right , then sell the debt to someone else , but you're still in tow for that debt because it's not dischargeable , even under the otherwise fairly liberal bankruptcy system of the united states . You will notice that the , that the , you know , biden and the republicans , and uh and the aughts were very clear to make sure that the most important , least more , I mean just just accepting a liberal moral hazard framework , education and health care being the things you can't declare bankruptcy on it's fucked up Like those are the things that you have the least control over . Are you're doing because ? Because you are trying to guess what the economic needs of the future will be and be educated accordingly on your own dime , which actually also causes corporations to be free writers , but no one seems to question that either .

Speaker 1 1:24:12

Um , and that's just from a , that's not me wearing my marxist hat , that's me putting on classical , like classical neoclassical economics , just yeah , flat on my head . It's pretty clear . And so when you look at it from that system like like the U ? S is kind of the worst of all worlds , like objectively and and so , yes , we should want that to end Well . I've actually lived in a country I've lived in two countries with socialized medicine . One had bad , one had excellent , and and then one country where there wasn't even an insurance system . And what was funny about that is , both in the country with excellent socialized medicine and in the country with no insurance system whatsoever , health care was affordable like just because there's a central negotiator right , the social negotiator in the in the universal medicine one and then in the in the market one .

Speaker 2 1:25:14

They have to state prices and so there's actual competition yeah , yeah , in canada we have a central negotiator and a single pair system which reduces prices , and then , I think , in Germany , I think you have market competition . I'm not sure .

Speaker 1 1:25:32

Right , you have a central negotiator , but I think that the poison pill in Canada is that they fund it at the provincial level , which is yeah , yeah , you know , which is which is why Canada , canada's healthcare funding , doesn't really keep up with its needs .

Speaker 2 1:25:52

Yeah , and again with the healthcare spending . You have to adjust these things by inflation , because just because the prices are going up doesn't mean the quantity of services that you're receiving is going up .

Speaker 1 1:26:06

Right , absolutely , absolutely . You're receiving is going up , right , absolutely , um . And there's also other . Even in health care there's kinds of inflation you don't see . So there's substitutions of of uh kind . There's reduction of of minutes for the same for the same price . There's all kinds of stuff you can do .

Speaker 1 1:26:28

This one of the things when I was talking to someone about inflation , why it's so hard to for the same price . There's all kinds of stuff you can do . This is one of the things when I was talking to someone about inflation , why it's so hard to figure out . Inflation from now to the 70s is like , for example and part of this is planned obsolescence but in the 70s , if you bought something in the 70s , most of those things still work because they're made of actually very good quality components . Today , the same thing can be bought at a at a cheaper price , but it's made out of shit and will last five years . So like that's uh , that's something to think about . Like .

Speaker 1 1:27:06

And so when you're comparing inflation that doesn't show up in , like government inflation numbers just can't um , shrinkflation , uh , ingredient substitution , skimflation , those things don't show up , um , so it's just one of these things where , like , uh to tie it back to our discussion about the falling where it's a profit . It's why it's hard to figure it out , because you have to actually know the value of all the components over time and then like , figure out those component values and then figure out the cost and the cost reduction in forms of constant capital and inputs and then do all that . No one's going to do that . In an economic asset like that's a lot of different inputs to adjust for over time it's a lot of work , yeah yeah , it's a ton of work and I mean like , look , I , uh , I'm with you .

Speaker 1 1:27:52

I read paketti's book and I thought it was kind of a mess , but I was like actually impressed that they did a thousand pages of fucking historical statistics like yeah , no , this is not like .

Speaker 2 1:28:01

My paper is not to discourage people from reading paketti . They should read paketti , but they should also read their critics as well .

Speaker 1 1:28:11

Yeah , I agree , and I actually would tell people read Marxist critics of Piketty . But also sometimes I do hate it that when people read right-wingers they only read the stupid ones . Are they talking about Ben Shapriolo ? Are like , are they're reading smart ? I mean , I'm even guilty of this because you know , everyone wanted me to do that on my , on my right-wing reading series and I was , and I said sure , because I think it tells us a lot about the left actually more than the right .

Speaker 1 1:28:43

But like uh , yeah I'm like , but that's not really what affects most of us political thought . Like . Like right-wing policymakers aren't populist definitionally , because they don't think their average constituent can understand the situation . They actually believe in natural hierarchy and so they don't think they're going to tell everyone the truth .

Speaker 2 1:29:03

So like yeah , yeah I mean a lot of the people that I'm looking at in my research . They do have kind of like this libertarian bent to it , but objectively they're correct . Their analysis is correct . So when it's correct , you have to like deal with it . I mean , you can't just ignore it and go back to doing your biased estimates Like you have to acknowledge what your critics are saying , which , by the way , piketty , saez and Zuckman , they did do . And then in 2018 , they released a new methodology , and this new methodology I look at as well . This one constructs estimates of trends on the basis of national income , national accounts data , how much people are receiving in transfers and all that from a distributional standpoint , which is going to change the game as far as how we discuss inequality , because now you're going to have official government statistics stating look , this is how much , percentage-wise , the top quintile or whatever grew richer Kind of like inflation data .

Speaker 1 1:30:39

Absolutely All right . Well , I think , Red , I'm going to let you go , but you will , of course , be back on the show when we have something else to talk about .

Finding Work on ResearchGate and Academia

Speaker 1 1:30:49

And where can people find ?

Speaker 2 1:30:51

your work . I'm going to let you go , but you will , of course , be back on the show when we have something else to talk about . And where can people find your work On ResearchGate and Academia ? And this paper will be coming out , it's been accepted and it's going to be published soon in Capital and Class .

Speaker 1 1:31:02

Awesome , awesome , all right .

Speaker 2 1:31:04

Thanks for having me on .

Speaker 1 1:31:05

Thanks for coming on and , like I said , you'll be a regular . Have a great day .