0:07

Hi everybody and welcome to the

0:09

Anti-Chata, episode 200 and a lot.

0:14

It's me, Sean KB. I'm here with

0:16

AP Andy. What's up Andy? Let's

0:18

go Mets. Let's go

0:21

Mets. Just 173 grand slam in the

0:23

second inning. Exciting time

0:25

to be an Andy. And

0:27

me too. I hope the Mets win. I hope

0:30

there's going to be a Subway series. I would love to

0:32

see a Subway series. Last time we had that was the

0:34

year 2000. It was the dawn

0:36

of a new epoch, the dawn of

0:38

a new century, even a new

0:41

millennium if you will. And everything

0:43

was looking so bright. That's back when

0:45

we were against globalization. Now we yearn for

0:47

the return of the rules based international order.

0:51

The dialect will get more. On

0:53

that note, we are here with

0:55

a returning guest, a good, good

0:57

friend of the show doing some

0:59

remarkable work here to talk about

1:01

the follow up to his end

1:03

game article in the Brooklyn

1:06

rail. That is Jamie merchant. What's up

1:08

Jamie? What is up guys? Good to

1:10

be back. Good

1:12

to see you again. The follow up of course.

1:15

And I'm going to plug the living hell out of this

1:17

book is from reaction books,

1:19

part of the field notes series

1:21

with a edited by Paul

1:23

Matic. It's a complete book

1:25

version. It's an expansion upon the essay called

1:28

end game, economic nationalism

1:30

and global decline. Podcasters

1:33

privilege. Andy and I were both able to get

1:35

copies of this book. Love

1:37

the book. Let's talk

1:39

about the goddamn book. Anything

1:42

you want to say, maybe like what

1:44

inspired you to expand upon your essay,

1:46

which you were here, I think last

1:49

year to talk about what inspired you

1:51

to write an entire book length, treat

1:53

us about globalization, the new

1:55

economic nationalism, as Andy said, the

1:58

kind of head spinning. turn

2:01

from globalization to de-globalization? Yeah,

2:05

I mean, I feel like it's just been one of

2:07

the the biggest transformations

2:09

of our time, in our

2:11

lifetime, you know, that we've

2:14

lived through kind of our generation and those

2:16

around us. We

2:19

have lived through this great

2:21

transformation of not

2:24

just the global political economy but like

2:27

popular attitudes towards it and

2:29

this huge, you know, shift in

2:32

mass belief, collective belief from something like

2:35

globalization to now something like this new

2:37

common sense of, you know, aggressive

2:40

nationalism. So I kind

2:42

of, you know, I've been writing about that

2:44

stuff in Brooklyn Rail for a couple years

2:46

and around 2018 or 2019, Paul

2:50

Matic, the editor there, suggested that I try

2:53

to put a book together and

2:57

so I started and then, long

3:00

story short, the pandemic happened and

3:03

that kind of prompted me to go

3:05

deeper in this book into some of

3:07

the like theoretical questions than I had

3:09

actually originally planned. But

3:12

yeah, that's the quick story of

3:14

it. And the politically expand upon

3:16

the sort of political implications of

3:18

the original article, which I think

3:20

is really great too. As a

3:22

form of plug, once more I'd

3:24

say that I found this book

3:26

to be incredibly readable. So if

3:28

this is the first time people

3:30

are delving into global political economy,

3:32

shifts in the regime of accumulation,

3:34

understanding the connection between politics

3:37

and common sense and ideology on the

3:39

one hand and like the actual mechanisms

3:41

of the profit system on the other,

3:43

awesome stuff. But it's not a simplistic

3:45

book either. You have some really, really

3:48

good insights in this stuff that made

3:50

me say, wow. So you begin the

3:52

book, I think, very well with

3:55

an examination of conspiracism,

3:58

especially the far-right. rights

4:00

whole great replacement theory,

4:02

right? I

4:05

would ask you why this ideology is

4:07

important to rebut. I think that's pretty

4:09

obvious, but what social

4:11

function does this sort of

4:13

conspiracism play under capitalism right

4:15

now? And what is

4:17

like the great reset? What are these

4:20

people reacting to? What global trends,

4:22

what economic factors, what political factors

4:24

are causing this right-wing conspiracism to kind

4:26

of go nuts? Yeah.

4:30

So I mean, the great reset in particular

4:32

is this. It was actually

4:36

the theme of, I think, I

4:38

think it was a Davos meeting in 2020. So

4:43

the year of the plague year. And

4:47

so the Davos elite were

4:50

those powerful people, like economic

4:53

and political elites in the world

4:55

were talking about the

4:58

need for a great reset around basically

5:02

inclusive capitalism, you

5:04

know, what the this kind of buzzword that

5:06

they have been throwing around for the last

5:08

few years, essentially since 2016 and

5:12

Trump and the populist

5:14

backlash has really set in,

5:17

you know, the need to like renovate

5:19

capitalism, whatever, to make it

5:21

more equitable, to make it fairer. So

5:24

if you like read the fine details, you know,

5:26

or sort of read the details of the plan,

5:30

it's all this stuff about, you know,

5:32

closer partnerships between policymakers

5:34

and business, you

5:38

know, business leaders and innovators and

5:40

entrepreneurs and stuff like that. And

5:42

so it's like the

5:44

actual plan behind the great reset

5:47

was like, just basically

5:49

more of the same, like

5:51

more corporate domination of public

5:53

life, more complete corporate domination

5:55

of political life, and

5:58

businesses. usual really.

6:01

But with the added modification that they

6:03

are thinking, they're trying, you know, within

6:06

the very strained parameters of

6:08

like capitalist elite thought, they're trying to

6:10

figure out a way to address the

6:12

legitimation crisis that they're at. But that

6:14

the meme, you

6:18

know, of the great reset went viral. You

6:21

will own nothing and you will be happy,

6:23

right? From the

6:25

end. Yeah, and they'll take away all your they'll take

6:27

away all your burgers. And you're

6:29

only going to eat bugs. Right. Get

6:31

in the pod and like, get in

6:34

the pod. And it's, it's

6:37

going to be a bad time. It's

6:39

like the

6:42

major revolt against it that I first

6:44

registered came in the Netherlands with like

6:46

the, the farmers

6:48

protests against, I

6:50

guess, like what kind of fertilizer they could

6:52

use or something like that. Did that seem

6:54

did that strike you as like the first

6:57

big grassroots political movement? I think in your

6:59

book, you started with Brexit, and then the

7:01

Trump but yeah, the Netherlands is when I

7:03

first thought it was like a real thing

7:05

and not just an internet thing. Yeah,

7:09

well, yeah, it's definitely the movement

7:11

in the Netherlands. And then of

7:13

course, the Canadian truckers that same

7:15

year, right? Yeah, like

7:18

mobilized and it was this whole thing.

7:20

And but I don't know, I don't

7:22

call if the Canadian truck drivers were

7:25

specifically referencing the great reset. But

7:28

they're also, it was also fairly small, like they

7:30

kind of had an outsized influence because

7:32

they use their trucks to block a city, but it

7:34

was like only 5% of truckers that

7:36

were supportive of it, I guess. Right, right.

7:40

Yeah, it was I

7:42

mean, it definitely had grassroots like

7:44

buy in. You had

7:46

some of the some of the like, you know,

7:48

lump in MAGA

7:51

politicians talking about it in

7:54

Congress and whatnot. And

7:57

it's and of course, you know, figures like like

8:01

all the conservative, shock, shock, Alex Jones,

8:03

and all of that, we're all over

8:05

it. And so, yeah, and

8:09

so that's basically what the great

8:11

reset is. But it

8:13

shows you, it's that perfect inversion that really like,

8:15

it explains so much of the present. It's just

8:17

like, it's corporate domination

8:19

that is this like, massive

8:22

transnational structure, right? That determines our

8:24

lives and shapes it from a

8:26

very high level, like, you

8:28

know, these global institutions that, a

8:32

finance and business, you know, that influence

8:34

our daily lives on such a deep level.

8:38

But the way that those

8:40

structures are interpreted at the grassroots

8:42

level are so often through

8:45

these lenses of conspiracism, you know,

8:48

that reduce everything to this kind of like,

8:51

extreme sensationalized, like morality

8:54

play, basically. Right,

8:57

with like, when you go from the

8:59

great reset to the great replacement, which

9:02

ruling class members like Elon Musk

9:05

are apparently proponents of these days,

9:07

you of course add like a

9:09

racial component. And that racial component

9:12

also of course, becomes a national

9:14

component as, especially in

9:16

the United States, the sort of

9:18

normative civic nationalism is, in

9:21

the midst of all of this new economic nationalism

9:23

for both the right and the left, interpreted

9:26

by more and more members of

9:28

the far right and even the Republican

9:30

party as like a racial republic, you

9:32

know, having a racial component to it.

9:34

So those two things, I feel like

9:36

the great reset, conspiracism and the great

9:38

replacement conspiracism are connected. But I thought

9:40

that there was a good quote in

9:43

here in your book, and I'm gonna

9:45

quote your book a lot, because I

9:47

like it, it's on page 27. In

9:50

a society where the economy is

9:52

privately controlled, like ours, the neuroses

9:54

of its owners tend to spread

9:56

throughout society at large, via the

9:58

influence they have. exert over political

10:00

and media institutions. It's like when

10:02

the ruling class sneezes, we all

10:04

get a cold. The when

10:07

profit rate says we're going to talk

10:09

about a lot in this episode start

10:11

to go down and as competition more

10:13

and more becomes zero sum, the

10:16

ruling class gets a little wiggy trying to

10:18

figure out different ways to maintain

10:20

its rule. Obviously it's profits as well.

10:22

And that kind of filters down through

10:25

us and maybe took a little bit

10:27

of time from like 2008 through those

10:29

green shoots that Obama talked about into

10:31

like Trumpism 2015 2016 now.

10:35

But in a very real way you you

10:37

you're you're identifying this book like a conveyor

10:39

belt of like ideology between

10:41

the ruling class and dispersed through like

10:43

various middle class segments and even picking

10:45

up some members of the working class

10:47

in it. So talk a little bit

10:49

about that. What is the relationship between

10:51

these two? Yeah. Yeah.

10:56

I think in the context of that

10:59

passage that you cited, right, it's it's

11:01

in the chapter on kind of like

11:03

what was globalization and the back. You

11:07

know, we think back to like the you

11:10

know, the house young days of like the early 2000s, late

11:14

90s, like high globalization, high neoliberal

11:16

period was all about like efficiency.

11:18

And you got to be competitive and you got to

11:20

work harder and you got to you know, you got

11:22

to be the smartest, like

11:25

sort of self

11:27

motivated, you know, guy

11:30

on the block or whatever to get to get

11:32

ahead in life because that's the new that's the

11:34

new playing field, right? It's this new like this

11:36

brave new world of of globalized

11:39

competition where everybody has a shot at

11:41

it. And it's all about

11:43

your you know, it's all meritocratic, basically, it's

11:46

all it's all about how what you can

11:48

do to get ahead for

11:51

countries, for businesses, for individuals,

11:54

whatever. And, yeah.

11:56

And so when you look at

11:58

the actual like. economic data from

12:00

that period though, like the macroeconomic data,

12:02

the statistics, right? It's like the growth

12:04

rates, you know, as I talk about in the book,

12:07

like they're not all that great compared to

12:09

if you look if you compare them

12:11

to earlier periods that

12:13

came before and a

12:15

number of ways you can measure that. And

12:18

so what that

12:20

ultimately, I mean that that discourse

12:22

right of efficiency and competitiveness and

12:24

the need to and

12:27

the need to do whatever it takes to get

12:29

ahead, all that classic globalization talk, that

12:32

was part of the, you know, the

12:35

neuroties if you like of the the

12:37

capitalist elite, sort of like, you

12:39

know, enjoining the rest of us to work harder to

12:43

exploit ourselves more, to allow ourselves to be

12:45

exploited more, to produce

12:47

more surplus value for this system

12:49

that actually already

12:52

in the early 2000s was

12:54

not running as as potently as it had

12:56

before. And so and

13:00

so that's one example of it. I think

13:02

a more recent example that probably everybody is

13:04

familiar with is of course the new you

13:08

know, the bipartisan elite consensus

13:10

around the need to confront China,

13:12

of course, in this country. And

13:15

we don't have to necessarily dig right into

13:17

that at this moment and save it

13:19

for later if you like, but yeah, I

13:21

mean that to me is like a textbook

13:24

case of just top-down manufactured

13:27

consent in the interests

13:29

of the most

13:31

influential, powerful fractions of

13:33

the ruling class, of the capitalist

13:35

class, you know, who decided that

13:37

the time, the time

13:40

for cooperation with Chinese companies and the

13:42

government there was over and it's time

13:44

now for sort of renewed confrontation

13:47

in the interest of not freedom

13:49

and democracy and all this kind of

13:52

stuff, but just straight-up corporate profits. You

13:54

know, they started to lose out to

13:56

Chinese businesses and they

13:59

decided that it was time for do enlist the

14:01

long arm of the state in their favor. And

14:04

once that process, which took a

14:06

long time to settle in, then

14:10

you start to see the political

14:12

consensus form where more and

14:14

more politicians

14:16

begin to line up

14:19

behind this agenda because they're

14:21

corporate benefactors. It benefits them.

14:24

Therefore, it benefits their electoral prospects

14:27

because of this kind of pay to

14:29

play way that politics works in Washington, among

14:31

other things. It's

14:33

a fantastic way to deflect

14:36

blame from yourself, right?

14:38

Like all the failures of the

14:40

American state, all

14:42

of its embarrassing humiliations over

14:45

the last 10 years, especially the

14:47

pandemic, the response to the pandemic.

14:49

Oh, god, yeah. That

14:52

was the moment where I think the whole world was just

14:54

looking at this country and was like, dear

14:56

god, we can't look

14:58

at these people anymore as some

15:00

kind of paradigm of leadership. It

15:02

was somehow both authoritarian, but also

15:05

feckless at the same time. And

15:07

it was like there was disinformation

15:09

flying everywhere, but in such an

15:11

authoritative way that it was really

15:14

blindsided, all of us, I feel

15:16

like. And

15:19

you're right. That was a real moment of not

15:22

just social turmoil that we're still dealing

15:24

with the wreckage of. And as the

15:26

founding member of ILC Chicago, you know

15:29

what's happened to social life since the

15:31

pandemic. But just as you said, too,

15:33

just on an administrative level, what

15:36

a delegitimization of what the

15:39

efficient state is meant to do. Absolutely.

15:45

And so that was, and it was

15:47

around then, the anti-China discourse had, of

15:49

course, been percolating. And it was present

15:51

in public life until 2020, but

15:54

it really went into overdrive in 2020. The

15:59

China virus. like all that stuff. And

16:02

so, and ever since then,

16:04

it's just been this ratcheting, you know, this

16:06

program of ratcheting up military and economic tensions

16:08

with with that country. And so, yeah,

16:11

the neuroses of the ruling class, filter

16:13

down to the rest of society. And

16:15

now there's this lockstep media consensus, right?

16:17

No. Now, in addition to the political

16:19

consensus, that's just there's it's just airtight

16:22

on that issue, right? Anyway,

16:24

so that's a couple of examples of what I

16:27

mean by that. Yeah, you bring up Thomas

16:29

Friedman's argument that the world is flat,

16:31

right? That was what 2006, I think,

16:33

amazing time to

16:37

write a P on to globalization, right? As

16:40

it's about to reach its terminal crisis.

16:42

Perhaps the American Empire's terminal crisis too,

16:44

but that awaits to be seen. I

16:47

wonder how he feels right now, because the

16:50

the world isn't flat, but Gaza

16:52

is, you have what's

16:55

substituted for the legitimizing

16:58

sort of national project

17:02

or like defense project of the

17:04

global war on terror. At the

17:07

same time as like this

17:09

de-globalization really kicks into speed,

17:11

this new economic nationalism, all

17:14

of a sudden, as you point out in the book, too, it's

17:16

no longer international networks of

17:19

jihadist terrorists that we have to

17:21

worry about. But as revisionist states,

17:24

and of course, Russia being number one among

17:27

them after the war in 2022.

17:29

But of course, China now gets accused

17:31

after making hundreds of billions,

17:34

perhaps trillions of dollars for American

17:36

corporations, outsourcing much of

17:38

their production, lending them the

17:40

technology they need in order to make them

17:42

all have money. Now China

17:44

has suddenly become a revisionist state as

17:46

well. So this is like the shift

17:49

that we're looking at here is not

17:51

just an ideological one, it's like a

17:53

substantive one across all

17:55

facets of society. And like you said,

17:57

it's like for those of us born

18:00

and raised in like the

18:02

go-go 90s, for example, right? When

18:04

Thomas Friedman's views, when

18:06

the views of globalization

18:08

were basically like hegemonic,

18:11

we very seamlessly sort of transitioned

18:13

into a new series

18:16

of villains, but also

18:18

like a new series of policy, a

18:20

basket of policy proposals, which include all

18:22

sorts of things that would have been

18:24

anathema to these people 20 years ago.

18:28

And yet, except for your books

18:30

and broadly books on like the

18:32

Marxist left, it doesn't seem like

18:34

there's been much sort of self-analysis

18:36

here, right? Like I feel like

18:39

they need a good fucking psychiatrist

18:41

or something like that. Somebody needs

18:43

to sit these people down and

18:45

fucking tell Matti Glaceus like you've

18:47

lost the plot, man. Yeah,

18:52

the whole thing just runs on, it's

18:55

almost like it runs on Amnesia or something. The

18:59

condition, the job description is

19:02

like you have to have a severe

19:04

case of selective memory and

19:06

forgetting. And so

19:09

that you can't think any further than like five or six

19:11

years in the past. And

19:14

they just, yeah, for

19:16

the commentators and the

19:18

pundits and the politicians

19:20

and the elites as well, it's

19:22

just like there's no seemingly no

19:25

desire to

19:27

reflect on any of this stuff and look

19:29

back and think about, well, wait, why did

19:31

it go terribly wrong? The

19:35

consensus was that it was going to

19:37

be this thing. And then it really

19:39

turned out to be something totally different.

19:41

And everyone who was supposed to know

19:43

what the hell they were talking about, about

19:46

the benefits of globalization and trade liberalization

19:48

and the spread of human rights and

19:51

the appeal of liberal democracy and all of

19:53

that, it all turned out to be total

19:56

nonsense. And so there's

19:58

just, but again, because of. of

20:00

the, I would argue it's because of the

20:02

relentless pace of the, you know,

20:04

the capitalist crisis cycle that

20:06

they just, it keeps them, they, their, their

20:08

vision can only be like right in front

20:10

of their right in front of their nose

20:12

and they can't, they don't have time to

20:14

really look back and think about history that

20:16

much because it's just, you know,

20:18

it's just constantly putting out fires and

20:21

the need to, yeah, to guide this

20:23

extremely crisis-ridden social formation that is only

20:26

getting worse. Yeah.

20:29

I mean, it kind of reminds me

20:31

ideologically of the way you described later

20:33

on in the book, the, uh, the

20:36

way the federal reserve operates, how central

20:38

bank banks operate. You know, there's no

20:40

time for thinking. You just have to

20:42

do like throw whatever you can at

20:45

the wall, whatever policies necessary, go back

20:47

to Volcker, go back to fucking 1913

20:49

in order to try to figure out

20:51

some way just to keep price stability,

20:54

make sure that American

20:56

assets in the trillions like dollar

20:58

denominated assets retain

21:00

their value. Uh, and it's just sort

21:02

of putting out fires. More

21:05

recent example, merging with BlackRock. Yeah.

21:10

They're doing their bonds in form, right? Yeah.

21:14

What do you know about that? Yeah. They've been, I

21:18

mean the partnership with BlackRock goes back to,

21:22

I think as far back as 2008, um, they

21:25

were already working with BlackRock and to

21:27

structure the bailout then. But

21:30

2020 was when they, they worked, they

21:33

really worked very closely with BlackRock to,

21:35

you know, create the, like the

21:38

fed was working with BlackRock to create the,

21:40

like the investment vehicles and like the weird,

21:42

you know, financial instruments that like structured the

21:44

whole, uh, bailout of

21:46

the, of the banks and the corporate sector

21:49

more broadly. And you

21:51

know, I mean, yeah, the, the bankers or the

21:53

asset managers, whatever you want to call them, they

21:55

basically just tell the fed what to do. And

21:58

the fed is like, you know, all right. Because

22:01

again, the global economy is at the verge of

22:03

collapse. They

22:06

really don't know what they're doing at the end of the day. So

22:10

yeah, it's a really good

22:12

example of that close, that

22:15

really fusion of

22:18

economic and political power that

22:20

really defines the highest level of

22:24

the power structure, the political economy

22:26

and the capitalist order that we're

22:28

in. You

22:32

use an analogy to the

22:34

Kafka novel, The Castle, later

22:37

on in the book too, which is really powerful too.

22:39

It's like this sense of

22:41

alienated power that Kafka creates,

22:43

this sense in the book

22:46

that there's important people somewhere

22:48

administrating society, doing important tasks.

22:50

They're always shuffling paper around.

22:52

And eventually the question arises, are

22:54

these people actually doing anything? Is

22:56

this just a self-perpetuating bureaucracy for

22:59

the sake of bureaucracy? That's

23:01

not what the government does. Talk

23:04

a little bit, but it is how

23:07

it appears sometimes. Talk a little bit

23:09

about the capitalist state. That

23:11

is a big question through history. I

23:14

want to get into your critiques of the

23:16

works of Michael Hudson, because I think they're

23:18

really important, and also

23:21

of the Keynesians and MMT, which

23:23

has disappeared much to Varnes happiness

23:25

I think. But

23:27

first, let's get down to

23:30

maybe some rudimentary shit. The

23:34

capitalist nation state is counterposed

23:36

often to the self-ordering functions

23:39

of the free market. And

23:42

the contradictions between these two

23:44

things have bedeviled theorists

23:47

of capital, whether of

23:49

the right or left since the very

23:51

beginning, because they seem to be working

23:53

across purposes. But you have a more

23:55

rich dialectical view of this. In

23:58

this new rising realm of... economic

24:00

nationalism. What is the state doing?

24:03

Specifically the American state, but the

24:05

state in general? I

24:09

mean, yeah, the states

24:11

are doing a lot of different things

24:13

right now to try to like

24:17

make their way through this period

24:21

of fundamental uncertainty and instability

24:23

that increasingly

24:25

is defined by it

24:29

is a very dangerous vacuum,

24:31

I think, in

24:34

global power and leadership as

24:39

the US continues to sort of

24:41

de-legitimate itself now through this reckless

24:44

genocidal war that it's expanding across the

24:47

Middle East through

24:49

its client state and through its brazen willingness

24:55

to weaponize its financial system

24:57

against its geopolitical enemies and

25:00

the monetary payment system against

25:02

its enemies. There's

25:06

just a lot of doubt with state

25:08

actors around the world about how

25:12

are things going to shape up? Who should

25:14

you ally with? Who should you stay away from? Who's

25:17

going to come out on top of all this as

25:19

the US is raging

25:22

against the dying of the light, but it's

25:25

pretty clear what direction things are going in. I

25:31

try to resist just

25:34

staying in the state, the

25:36

capitalist state in

25:39

a kind of general sense, but

25:42

it's safe to, but it's rather than, like

25:44

sometimes I prefer to look at specific cases

25:46

as much as I can, right? But

25:52

the general function of the capitalist state, one

25:57

conventional definition, is to to

26:01

mind the needs of capitalist

26:04

accumulation and at

26:07

the same time to preserve

26:09

its image of

26:13

popular legitimacy in the eyes of its own

26:15

population. And

26:18

there are many different kind of takes and

26:20

theoretical directions of that

26:22

central kind of thesis, but

26:25

that's what the capitalist state has to

26:27

do. The problem is that there's almost

26:30

always, but there is built in a

26:32

tension, a conflict between these two objectives,

26:36

because of course the capitalist state is

26:38

a class formation. All

26:41

states in the modern capitalist

26:43

world are class states, which

26:46

means they reproduce themselves by

26:48

extracting surplus value

26:50

from one class and enriching

26:52

the other class with it the owners,

26:55

and that is how the economies

26:57

grow and reproduce themselves. And

26:59

so at this

27:02

point, so many things can go

27:04

wrong. I mean, if the

27:07

rate of labor productivity, for instance, starts to

27:09

go down, then that means

27:12

that labor costs begin to

27:14

eat other things being equal

27:16

into corporate profits, but

27:20

for whatever reason, labor is more

27:22

expensive than it used to be. And

27:25

that then creates large problems of growth

27:27

and profit growth, which means that like

27:29

the overall economic pie, right, is not

27:31

as big, it can't

27:33

be distributed. There's not as much value

27:36

or wealth to distribute to

27:39

the rest of society. And

27:42

the more that these macroeconomic

27:44

crises afflict the capitalist

27:47

economy like that, of

27:49

course, the more that the legitimacy problem comes

27:52

into play and the more difficult it is

27:55

for the elite

27:58

class to run the... the country to

28:00

run the government credibly. And

28:03

so that's kind

28:05

of the general outline of it. In

28:09

the US case,

28:13

the inequality, the really

28:16

savage inequality between

28:18

the wealth and asset-owning

28:20

class and the

28:23

rest of the working class had

28:26

gotten so extremely bad by

28:28

the after 2008 and the

28:33

kind of aftermath of the great financial, sort of the

28:35

great global crash of 2008 and the recovery

28:38

from it, right? The

28:41

very techniques that the state uses

28:44

in its attempt to recover from

28:46

capitalist crisis exacerbates the same problem,

28:48

right? So inequality just got even

28:51

worse following the great crash of 2008

28:55

after they, from the bailout and from

28:57

the austerity and from all of the

28:59

sort of gimmicks that they try to

29:01

throw at the problem to fix it. And

29:03

of course, that leads to the huge political

29:07

problem, right? The rise of

29:09

the right-wing populist challenge to

29:11

the very legitimacy of

29:15

the state, right? Like think back to Trump

29:17

in 2016. He's really kind of lost his

29:19

edge these days. But

29:22

when he was running in 2016, it

29:24

was all about, he talked a little

29:26

bit about trade, but it was mostly

29:28

just about making fun of the other

29:30

people in the election. That was great

29:33

fun. I wasn't a Trump

29:35

fan, but it was great fun to watch him

29:37

dispatch them one by one, just

29:39

with like cutting remarks and biting

29:41

satire. Yeah, yeah, same. I mean, like none of

29:43

us are Trump fans, right? But it's like, you

29:46

have to be able to laugh at this shit

29:48

at the end of the day. Otherwise

29:50

you'd cry. Yeah.

29:53

And so, but that's, he was, he was

29:55

just the living embodiment of the de-legitimation of

29:58

the American, the American, the American, the American,

30:00

the American, the American. state. You know, like

30:02

he was just up there like flinging insults

30:04

left and right and people loved it. He

30:07

was breaking that taboo, right? And

30:09

the reason he was able to do that is because the

30:13

conditions in American society had gotten

30:15

have gotten so bad that people

30:18

are so angry and and

30:20

just furious at the failures of the

30:22

political system that all you have to

30:24

do is just make these other make

30:26

the politicians, you know, look like the

30:29

sort of the penal, uh, freedoms

30:31

that they are and people eat it

30:33

up. Oh yeah. Big time.

30:37

And the more high-minded message of Bernie

30:39

Sanders that we might have like a

30:42

political revolution that you could create

30:44

like a top-down sort of like progressive

30:47

return to welfare-ist policies is of

30:49

course, as we know now, certainly

30:51

in retrospect, but people like us

30:54

called it at the time was

30:56

sort of the mirror image of

30:58

Trumpism. Not that, uh, that he

31:00

was odious like Trump was, but

31:02

it was very much a backwards

31:05

looking, uh, and very much kind

31:07

of like an ersatz, um, populist

31:09

movement on both sides, uh,

31:11

that attempted to kind of break through

31:14

the log jam of, um, of

31:16

capitalist politics in the United States in a moment

31:18

when they weren't working, uh, which

31:20

I think is a good moment

31:23

to bring up the sort of,

31:25

uh, bipartisan basis of economic nationalism,

31:28

right? Because industrial policy is back

31:30

on the menu. The

31:32

trade war that Trump fitfully

31:36

imposed upon China, um,

31:39

and our own steel producers, as it turned

31:41

out too, uh, became

31:43

bipartisan under, uh, Biden,

31:45

uh, certainly his, uh,

31:47

inflation reduction act, which

31:49

was like a massive, uh,

31:52

subsidy program giveaway to capital in order to

31:54

kind of spur investment in a, in a,

31:56

in a brute, in a brute sort of

31:59

way. And like an old, like 20th century

32:01

industrial policy sort of way, led,

32:03

I would say a

32:05

lot of the people who now recognize him

32:07

rightly as a genocide heir or

32:10

at least a supporter and a

32:12

helper of genocide in Gaza

32:15

to call him the most left-wing president,

32:18

you know, in American history. So

32:20

there's a way in which large segments of

32:22

the left, the social democratic left, the

32:25

Keynesian left, indeed

32:27

maybe even the Michael Hudson left, whatever

32:30

that left is, the American Communist Party

32:32

left, recognize that the

32:35

state has in their mind

32:37

an important role to play and that national

32:40

competition is the game of the

32:42

hour. So talk a little bit

32:44

about the left in economic nationalism,

32:46

how the left has gotten there,

32:49

broadly the left, like everywhere from like

32:51

center-left Democrats all the way to like,

32:54

you know, supposed communists and how it

32:56

mirrors or how it differs maybe from

32:58

the right. Yeah,

33:01

I mean, we

33:05

can take Michael Hudson, I guess, right?

33:07

Yeah, let's do it. He's popular these

33:09

days. Let's take him down a couple

33:12

of pegs. Yeah, just as a point

33:14

of departure, like,

33:17

so I haven't read much of his over the

33:19

last couple years, like, since I finished

33:21

the book, you know, so I don't know if his positions

33:23

have changed. I suspect they haven't. But

33:26

he wrote

33:29

this book called Super Imperialism, right, which

33:31

is like this

33:33

descriptive take on

33:36

the way that US

33:39

imperial power has evolved through

33:41

its financial system, of course,

33:44

and particularly how after

33:48

the the divestment

33:50

from the gold standard and the,

33:54

I mean, I think that both even he

33:56

wrote it even before, I think that the separation of

33:59

the dollar from from gold

34:01

but then he sort of supplemented it

34:03

later looking back afterward expand

34:07

the argument sort of but he

34:10

his argument essentially is that right

34:13

like because the the role

34:15

of US debt is so essential

34:19

and the US dollar is so

34:21

essential in global money markets and

34:23

financial markets as a as a

34:25

form of investment the

34:28

US had the ability to of course you

34:30

know fund its insane

34:34

and reckless global empire endlessly

34:37

because it can always rely

34:39

on this global demand for

34:41

its for its state

34:43

debt and for and for dollar

34:46

assets for investment flowing into the country because

34:49

you know its currency is the most

34:52

it's the most valuable currency in the world is

34:54

the this most high demand is the most used

34:57

and it's just seen globally as

34:59

like the safest the world's global

35:01

reserve asset right like the safest

35:03

asset you can have dollar assets

35:07

and so because of

35:09

the unique status the exorbitant

35:11

privilege right use that phrase

35:13

of the of

35:15

the dollar the the US

35:17

can can fund its its

35:21

maniacal global military part essentially and

35:23

its input and it's and its

35:26

global system of state

35:28

coercion and

35:30

exploitation of other states and

35:33

so that you

35:35

know that that's pretty true right like there's

35:37

not much to disagree with there but

35:40

you said that in the very

35:42

beginning that his analysis was descriptive

35:45

which for people who don't know

35:47

Marxist jargon much that's like

35:49

derogatory parentheses derogatory yeah

35:54

yeah yeah that's true and that's how I

35:56

meant it actually you know good I was

35:58

hoping so yeah I thought I could picked

36:00

up on that. Yeah. So

36:05

the problem is that he

36:07

takes that description and

36:10

just draws the conclusion that like

36:13

the traditional capitalist, the

36:16

motor, right, of capitalist

36:19

economy and the exploitation

36:21

of labor and the extraction of surplus value

36:25

doesn't apply anymore. And

36:27

the whole global economy is

36:29

just this sort of static,

36:32

monolithic, like US

36:34

financial and political order imposed on

36:36

the rest of the world. Just

36:39

basically one country exploiting

36:41

the rest of the world and

36:44

that the, so the

36:46

problem is purely just US imperialism.

36:52

There's no other real imperial actors in

36:54

the world, inter-imperial competitions, not

36:56

so much a thing. It's just basically

36:58

the US exploiting the rest of the

37:00

world. And

37:02

so, you know, again, it's

37:04

fine, but it then leads

37:07

him in his more recent stuff

37:09

to valorize in this kind of

37:11

like, I'll use the word

37:13

productive as a right. It's like very

37:15

often in the sort of left anti-finance

37:18

crown, right,

37:21

you see this counter position or

37:23

this opposition between bad finance on

37:26

one side and capitalist

37:28

production good on the other side.

37:31

And that's why Hudson and others

37:34

valorize China always, right? There's some

37:36

kind of like model for 21st

37:38

century socialism. They

37:41

see that country as providing, as like

37:43

kind of the antithesis of

37:46

US super-inperialism. You know, it's like

37:48

forging the path into socialism for

37:52

the 21st century or whatever, but

37:56

it just erases, you know, the

37:58

sphere of production as a site.

38:00

of exploitation and

38:02

value extraction. And struggle. Of

38:05

course class struggle, yeah exactly.

38:07

Class conflict, you know. This

38:10

is the, and that's the result of

38:13

thinking that it's all sort

38:15

of finance and politics driven,

38:17

you know, and that like

38:20

the categories of class

38:23

and value, surplus value production no

38:25

longer apply. You make

38:27

those kinds of basic analytical errors. And

38:30

so, you know, so he's just a

38:32

good, he's a particularly clear example of that. It

38:36

reminds me in Capital Volume Three,

38:38

Marx has this point

38:40

about how the productive capitalist feels

38:43

like the worker and he

38:45

sees the financial capitalist as the

38:47

capitalist. And I mean,

38:50

so you, like you point out, you see this in

38:53

both left and right critiques of

38:55

finance capital. I wonder if

38:57

what they're getting wrong is, I think

38:59

you've mentioned this in the book, so

39:01

tell me if I'm reading you right,

39:04

is that there's this perception that the

39:06

finance capitalists have too much political power

39:08

and they're imposing their own political preferences

39:10

and wills either as schemers or as

39:12

just, you know, rich people

39:15

with their own ideology onto the rest of

39:17

the world at the

39:19

expense of like- Triple parentheses, elites,

39:21

globalists, yeah. Or, you know, the

39:23

99% slogan of Occupy Wall Street

39:26

has kind of this implication to,

39:29

yeah, what do you think that gets wrong? Yeah, I mean,

39:31

I think it's,

39:35

for one thing, that is kind

39:37

of where it begins to overlap

39:39

a little bit with the sort

39:42

of the great reset narratives that we

39:44

were talking about earlier in the sense

39:46

that you're locating the sorts of the

39:48

social evil, right? Like

39:50

the source of social

39:52

problems and the ill's political

39:55

dysfunction and all of that, just in a

39:57

particular group of people.

40:00

that is really at the end of

40:02

the day, just one fraction of this

40:04

is much, they're very powerful fraction, but

40:06

they're just one fraction of this, of

40:08

this much bigger capitalist class, right, that

40:10

like spans the world and is divided

40:12

into different jurisdictions and national territories and

40:15

allegiances and all of that, and

40:19

whose nation states are constantly

40:22

struggling to like, you

40:24

know, organize these organize them into a

40:26

class, right, to make them like a

40:29

cochlear and actor, it's like, you

40:31

know, the like capitalists, we

40:33

do refer to the capitalist class because that's

40:35

what they are, but they all are constantly

40:39

undercutting each other and antagonizing each

40:41

other and acting in their own self interest.

40:44

They form alliances and, you know, obviously trusts

40:46

and stuff like that. But

40:49

there is an incredibly anarchic and chaotic

40:51

for a class situation there and like

40:53

the role of the capitalist government is

40:56

to the government capitalist states is to

40:59

try to organize all that chaos right

41:01

into a coherent class. That's one of

41:03

the other tasks of the capitalist state.

41:07

And so, and so

41:09

I, yeah, so I think that this idea that

41:11

it's just like this, this one, like, you

41:14

know, privileged, we group of people

41:17

imposing its will on

41:21

not just not just people,

41:24

but like, you know, the entire rest

41:26

of the capitalist or the

41:29

productive capitalist, the transport capitalist, like,

41:31

you know, merchant capital, all

41:33

of that. Even

41:36

though all these things are kind of financially

41:38

intertwined and states

41:40

as well, like, yeah, I think that's too

41:42

reductive. A

41:45

point of view, but not

41:48

to say that it's politically not useful,

41:50

right, which is why I think, you

41:52

know, for all the faults, you

41:55

know, the 99% versus the 1% for its moment, you know, it

41:57

just, you know, it's just like, you

41:59

know, did, it did some work, right? It

42:01

did some ideological work. It helps to like

42:04

focus the, the

42:06

energy and the anger of large

42:08

numbers of people against, you know,

42:10

a true enemy, which is like

42:12

the bankers, the banker class, who

42:14

was getting bailed out. Yeah. It

42:16

was a very specific and concrete

42:18

political question at that time, right?

42:20

There was still talk of attempting

42:22

to claw back the bonuses of

42:24

those bankers. There was still some

42:26

talk about, um, bailing

42:28

out homeowners who were increasingly at

42:30

that point, uh, being foreclosed upon

42:33

and bankrupted. I think that,

42:35

I mean, the most

42:37

plausible, it's not the Hudson view.

42:39

It's actually quite far

42:41

from the Hudson view. The most plausible

42:44

sort of analysis and one that you share in

42:47

this book is, is like, is

42:49

you, you have to raise the question, like, why,

42:52

why financialization? Why all of a

42:54

sudden, what, it was it just

42:56

like a power move,

42:58

a political move by like globalists

43:00

and like powerful financiers to craft

43:03

the American state into

43:05

a financial aid, a realization machine,

43:07

um, you know, and

43:10

some nefarious way to like de-industrialize America

43:12

or whatever. And therefore is it just

43:14

a political choice we make to euthanize

43:17

the rent financiers once again as dung

43:19

did or no. Yeah. Or

43:21

I guess as Ma, I dunno, it

43:23

mixing it up with China, right? But

43:25

like the point is, is that analysis

43:27

I feel like leads to bad politics.

43:29

The real important question is like, why,

43:31

what is it about capitalism that this

43:33

massive shift occurred? And you point out,

43:35

I think rightfully, and, and I, we

43:37

should all agree with this, that this

43:40

giant surplus of financialized assets

43:42

and, and instruments flying around

43:45

is a reflection of the

43:47

tangential secular decline of

43:49

the rate of profit. And the

43:51

financial system being the way that

43:54

that surplus is, is basically distributed

43:56

within the capitalist class amongst its

43:58

actors across space. across time within

44:01

sectors and without sectors, right, means

44:03

that all that financial shift sloshing

44:05

around points to a dysfunction in

44:08

the productive profit system

44:10

itself. These two things, there's our

44:12

two moments, you know, in the

44:14

cycle of commodity production, money

44:17

and commodities in a very abstract

44:19

way. And so I feel like

44:21

any communist who takes their politics

44:23

from like the Michael

44:25

Hudson view of things automatically is on

44:28

the back foot because they think it

44:30

was a political decision to get us

44:32

into this mass of globalization.

44:35

And as though it's like just takes

44:37

a purposive political movement to get you

44:39

out of this mess, as though we

44:41

could simply return to the mass worker

44:44

of the 1950s in the United States

44:46

as though it's possible to go backwards

44:48

in time off my soapbox now. But

44:51

that's what pisses me off about like

44:53

this ML, like, you know, get rid

44:55

of finance, bring back productive jobs, American

44:58

communist party shit. Beyond being like vulgarized,

45:00

I also find the politics of it

45:02

to be very unappealing.

45:07

As someone that works in industry, even I

45:09

find it unappealing. Right

45:11

on. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, I

45:14

mean, we should be thinking about how to make, you

45:16

know, all kinds of all forms of work less

45:18

shitty. You know, it's not about

45:21

like returning to an earlier

45:23

shitty form of labor, right?

45:25

Labor regime. Yeah. Yeah. Totally.

45:29

And and they, and of course,

45:32

thinking strategically about, you know, workplaces

45:34

as sites of class conflict and

45:36

strategy, right? Not just sort

45:38

of writing them off and assuming that we

45:41

can socialize investment at the top, right? As the

45:44

Keynesians want. And, you know, we're just going to

45:46

have we're just going to get some really smart

45:48

elites who somehow can overcome the opposition

45:51

of the entire capitalist class

45:54

to take control of the financial

45:56

system and like redirect and reinvest

45:58

all of that money into. to

46:01

unprofitable, socially useful sources, right?

46:04

It's like, okay, you

46:06

can believe in that and you can think that that's like,

46:09

it's useful to come up with, I

46:12

still think it's valuable for people to come up with ideas

46:15

for what this could look like and what

46:17

like new

46:19

forms of socialized investment could look like if

46:21

and when we're ever in a position to

46:23

be able to do that kind of project.

46:26

Like we just, there's no

46:28

class power or social power in

46:31

view right now that could possibly kind of

46:33

force that agenda into political

46:36

action. So, and

46:38

so yeah, I think that it

46:41

misses a much more a prior question

46:43

of social and

46:45

political organization that needs to be addressed.

46:48

Yeah, which maybe our ILC

46:51

might be some small part of

46:54

bringing the sort of politics necessary

46:57

to do that out to the fore because

47:00

the idea that in

47:02

our particular like constellation

47:04

of state forces that

47:06

exist right now, our constitutional order, our

47:09

federal order, that one could

47:11

be elected into a position where

47:15

like dungism could be applied to the United

47:17

States seems kind of wild,

47:20

right? I feel like in order to

47:22

have a sort of, even a social

47:24

revolution of that character, an economic revolution

47:26

of that character, you would need millions,

47:28

tens of millions of workers activated

47:31

to do things besides pulling the lever

47:33

on a voting booth every two, four,

47:35

six years. Yeah,

47:40

yeah, absolutely. That's

47:42

the word right now is I see it. Indeed.

47:46

So Andy, you had a question about

47:49

the George Floyd stuff towards the end,

47:51

right? Yeah, I thought it was really

47:53

interesting that you included pretty nice

47:55

depiction of what the George Floyd

47:57

uprising looked like in Chicago. to

54:00

some extent. It

54:03

has been really hard to keep interested

54:05

as Harris just drifts farther and farther

54:07

right, just like ran

54:09

herself as a Republican. And

54:11

yeah, I think you put it well when you're

54:13

talking about the sort

54:16

of neoliberalism of the Democratic Party leading to

54:18

the George Floyd uprising in some way, because,

54:21

you know, the as much as people say

54:23

that the Democratic Party just harnessed the George

54:26

Floyd uprising to elect Biden, I

54:28

had the uprising itself was completely disinterested

54:30

in the election like the election kind

54:33

of just stopped. Nobody cared

54:35

about it. And

54:38

yeah, that was maybe one of the openings there

54:40

that we could have just maybe

54:42

if if the that political moment had lasted

54:44

longer, whether in a riot or some other

54:46

form, we could just the

54:49

rejection would just the election itself would be

54:51

delegitimized and and maybe a new kind of

54:53

politics would come out of it. But I

54:55

just thought it was such an interesting thing

54:57

to to cap the book with because it's

55:00

you know, it's it's hard now to you know, I

55:02

was in a book I was in the group that

55:05

was trying to understand the George Floyd

55:07

uprising and it was very hard to

55:09

square the intensity of that moment with

55:12

like the the gap of struggle

55:14

that came after. Yeah,

55:18

yeah, I still think that's a that's a riddle that

55:20

we haven't really braced yet.

55:23

Well, we what? Like

55:25

a lot of people, I think

55:27

for good reasons, tie like the

55:29

rise of the Bernie Sanders candidacy

55:31

to the kind of after effects

55:33

of Occupy Wall Street. And so

55:35

the thing about history is like a lot of

55:37

people are done with the history of the George

55:39

Floyd uprising, but might not be done with them,

55:41

might not be done with us yet. You know,

55:43

like I see to like

55:46

abstract away a little bit from that

55:48

moment, we're talking about 2020. We're

55:53

talking about like an

55:55

explosion of social activity,

55:57

sometimes violent, certainly angry

55:59

and revolting. at this

56:01

delegitimized order. Well,

56:03

there's been a lot of those recently, right?

56:06

This is, it's like, it's

56:08

part of like these various different

56:11

peroxisms of like a world system,

56:14

not just in decay, but in the process

56:16

of attempting to become something else. And

56:19

I always wondered as I got into

56:21

the topic of like, regimes

56:23

of accumulation, if you want to call

56:26

them, or like periods of capitalist development

56:28

from like laissez-faire to the progressive period,

56:30

to the roaring twenties, to the new

56:32

deal, to Fordism, blah, blah, blah, like,

56:34

oh, what would it have been like

56:36

to live through that in the 1970s?

56:39

Well, this is what it's like to live through

56:42

it. I wonder if all of us like can

56:44

even maybe think about

56:47

whether, and this

56:49

is a dark idea, but like

56:52

in the seventies with the transition,

56:54

seventies and eighties with the transition

56:56

from one regime of accumulation to

56:58

neoliberalism. There are all

57:00

sorts of incumbent actors out there, and I'm

57:03

specifically thinking of like environmental

57:05

groups like NYPURG, or especially

57:08

trade unions in the United

57:10

States, these incumbent like civil

57:13

social institutions that fought

57:15

tooth and nail against the sort

57:17

of transition towards globalization, if you want

57:19

to call it that. It doesn't feel

57:21

like, and maybe this is part of

57:23

why it feels like no debate has

57:26

been had within the ruling class or

57:28

within the pundentry or the media or

57:30

the citizenry, because it doesn't feel like

57:32

there are great incumbents right now who

57:34

are attempting to stop this, like

57:37

the shift away from globalization. Is

57:39

that something that's different from like

57:41

say the 1970s, certainly the 1930s,

57:43

you know, was

57:46

a time of great social contestation, like how do

57:48

we look at this transition period and how long

57:51

is it going to go on for? I don't

57:53

know. Yeah,

57:56

I mean, that's a really good question. to

1:02:01

basically allowing Israel the idea to

1:02:04

pursue whatever objectives it wants in

1:02:06

that region, in

1:02:08

the pursuit of an

1:02:11

attempt to kind of renovate, shake up the

1:02:13

entire regional order in

1:02:16

a way that would have seemed

1:02:18

quite unimaginable, maybe like 10 or

1:02:20

15 years ago, you know, just totally taking the

1:02:23

leash off and being like, The

1:02:25

last 20 weeks. Yeah.

1:02:27

I was going to say the last

1:02:30

year in Gaza, the West

1:02:32

Bank and Lebanon and

1:02:34

the last three years in

1:02:37

Eastern Europe have been a series of

1:02:39

like, I can't believe that

1:02:41

we're seeing this happen over and over

1:02:43

again, more and more red lines being

1:02:45

crossed. You know,

1:02:47

the what's happening in the Middle East right

1:02:49

now is like a self demolition of the

1:02:52

rules based international order, like an auto coup

1:02:55

against the order that

1:02:57

in a broad sense, the American

1:02:59

ruling class and up the architecture,

1:03:01

right? Of, um, of

1:03:03

sovereign nation states, of, uh, borders

1:03:06

of, uh, you know, the, the

1:03:08

United States, this is

1:03:10

where, again, I depart from the Hudson thing and

1:03:12

where, and this, I think dovetails with what, with

1:03:14

the questions that you're asking, which I think are

1:03:16

the really important ones. Like, like

1:03:19

Joe Biden said in the 1970s

1:03:21

about Israel, if Israel didn't exist,

1:03:23

we'd be forced to create it,

1:03:25

right? If the United States empire,

1:03:28

if the architecture of empire that

1:03:30

Michael Hudson describes, uh, since

1:03:33

the 1930s and forties, right? Let's

1:03:35

say, and has prevailed for almost

1:03:37

a hundred years since then, if

1:03:39

it didn't exist, something like that

1:03:41

would have to exist, right? We

1:03:43

know this because there are cycles,

1:03:45

imperial cycles, uh, reserve currency cycles,

1:03:48

uh, capitalist architecture cycles that go up

1:03:50

and down and span, um, through the

1:03:52

history of capitalism over hundreds and hundreds

1:03:55

of years. And there's always been that

1:03:57

sort of linchpin for accumulation. that

1:04:01

one sovereign body that

1:04:03

leads to the architecture of exploitation

1:04:05

and oppression and domination and violence,

1:04:08

but also of some sort of

1:04:10

relative stability for a generation or

1:04:12

two. In the United States'

1:04:14

case, like four or five generations, I guess, at

1:04:16

this point. But it's

1:04:19

not clear to me for the exact same

1:04:22

reasons that it's not clear to you what

1:04:24

replaces this

1:04:27

particular regime of accumulation. The only things that

1:04:29

I can come up with are, as you

1:04:31

said, increasing,

1:04:33

as we're seeing already,

1:04:36

inter-imperialist rivalry, the formation

1:04:38

of quasi-mercantilist

1:04:41

blocs. Of

1:04:43

course, the BRICS on the one hand in the United

1:04:45

States, that might be overblown, but it is

1:04:47

a thing, and it's something to look at in

1:04:50

a more substantive sort of like,

1:04:53

what would the material substratum, what would

1:04:56

the politics, what would the policy look

1:04:58

like in a place like the United

1:05:00

States? It's a dark one. It's like

1:05:03

AI, massive investments in AI,

1:05:05

like sucking entire country's worth

1:05:08

of energy to answer stupid

1:05:10

questions so that you can

1:05:12

automate away every paralegal, every

1:05:15

secretary, like half

1:05:17

the white collar jobs that exist. Robotics,

1:05:19

as Elon Musk is trying to do, they're

1:05:22

not there yet, replacing a

1:05:24

lot of the service work, automated

1:05:26

cars and trucks, replacing a lot

1:05:28

of the driving jobs and logistics

1:05:30

jobs. And then you'd, of

1:05:32

course, to have legitimacy, the ruling class would

1:05:34

be forced to have, and it would look

1:05:36

like a leftist thing, something like a UBI,

1:05:39

like a guaranteed income thing. And

1:05:41

we'd all be not in like 1984, but

1:05:43

some sort of brave new world thing. And

1:05:46

already you're seeing now, and this is part of

1:05:48

what the ILC is attempting to try and fight,

1:05:51

this real evacuation of the political sphere,

1:05:53

but also the social sphere too. Like

1:05:55

the last time the United States, last

1:05:58

time NATO. tried to

1:06:01

put nuclear tipped internet intermediate

1:06:04

nuclear weapons in

1:06:06

Germany. It was the

1:06:08

1980s and millions upon millions

1:06:10

of Germans came out against

1:06:12

NATO and American imperialism and

1:06:14

militarism out of the self

1:06:16

interested idea that they don't want to be

1:06:18

the first ones blown up in a global

1:06:20

thermonuclear war. Well, now these same things are

1:06:23

happening without a fucking peep and

1:06:25

it's got to scare the shit out of you,

1:06:27

right? Like it feels like the

1:06:29

end game of of the

1:06:31

last 50 years has been the

1:06:34

absolute liquidation and evacuation of not

1:06:36

just politics, but like social life,

1:06:38

like the ability to think politically

1:06:40

about the future except in some

1:06:42

sort of conspiracist way or some

1:06:44

sort of like center left, like,

1:06:46

well, everything has to get better,

1:06:48

right? Sort of way and

1:06:51

without an alternative to that, I

1:06:53

don't see how World

1:06:56

War three doesn't happen or I don't

1:06:58

see how we're all not just like

1:07:00

instead of the rent years being euthanized.

1:07:02

We're all sort of euthanized into some

1:07:04

grim like brave new world type future.

1:07:06

Sorry to be pessimistic, but that's what

1:07:08

it feels like at this point. Yeah,

1:07:12

no, it's fine. I share many of those

1:07:14

same anxieties. I

1:07:16

mean, yeah, I

1:07:19

always try to check myself and think like, okay,

1:07:22

so yeah, again, like back in the 70s

1:07:24

or something, right? Or, you know, another crucial

1:07:26

moment, like the 30s, you know,

1:07:28

were like, people had

1:07:30

the subjective sense that they were

1:07:33

living, they had to like

1:07:35

think and believe they were living through these

1:07:37

crazy unprecedented events, right? Like, like, where red

1:07:39

lines are being crossed and like, you

1:07:41

know, like

1:07:43

alarming events were happening

1:07:46

at an increasingly accelerating

1:07:48

rate. But it's

1:07:50

like, I don't know something about the

1:07:52

present. Like, yeah, I always come back

1:07:54

and be like, something feels different now.

1:07:56

It's like, there's just generally society is

1:07:58

more subdued. people

1:08:01

feel like they're out of

1:08:03

options or they think the, you know,

1:08:05

the political system has nothing for them

1:08:07

and it's entirely useless. And

1:08:09

there's just like, yeah, like you

1:08:12

said, so many of these

1:08:14

red flags are happening without, you know, without a

1:08:16

peep. And yeah, we, I mean, some, we gotta

1:08:18

do something about it or try to release. Well,

1:08:23

that seems like a dour place to end

1:08:25

it, except that a couple of weeks ago

1:08:27

you guys, you guys had your first meeting

1:08:29

in Chicago. How'd it go? Yeah,

1:08:32

we did. It looked great. Yeah.

1:08:34

We had more people turn out

1:08:36

than I expected, uh, considering

1:08:38

how we didn't really advertise

1:08:40

much at all for it. But,

1:08:43

um, but yeah, you can call it out on

1:08:45

the show and we had a, you

1:08:48

know, a couple of social media posts up for it.

1:08:51

And so we had like 14 people show

1:08:53

up, I think. And you know,

1:08:55

we have others who are interested and we're getting

1:08:57

in touch with and following up with, but,

1:09:01

um, we're also discovering other some

1:09:03

other organizations in Chicago that are

1:09:05

doing kind of similar ish work.

1:09:08

And so we're, we're meeting up, you know,

1:09:10

we're connecting with them and, uh,

1:09:13

we're going to be learning from them and sort of

1:09:15

vice versa. And, uh,

1:09:18

I think, I don't know, like I said, I

1:09:20

do think there's a, there's

1:09:22

a hunger for some

1:09:24

kind of, uh, what, some kind of

1:09:26

way forward, you know, to put it that way, at

1:09:29

least a vision that people can sign onto and, um,

1:09:34

and throw, you know, throw themselves in

1:09:36

with. And so that's, that

1:09:39

seems to be, it seems like we have a constituency

1:09:41

for that, you know, in Chicago.

1:09:43

Yeah. So I'm happy about it. Yeah.

1:09:46

We had a similar experience in New York at about

1:09:48

like 15, maybe 20 people at

1:09:50

the first meeting, and then pretty quickly

1:09:52

formed like a really solid core of

1:09:54

like a, a dozen

1:09:56

or two people who consistently show up,

1:09:59

uh, Adding

1:12:00

to that is Jamie will

1:12:02

be at Woodbine on November

1:12:04

23rd. That's a Saturday

1:12:06

night. So you can buy

1:12:09

the book there and hear him

1:12:11

talk and ask him questions. And

1:12:14

yeah, I'll plug that again before then,

1:12:16

but that's November 23rd at Woodbine. And

1:12:19

also the title of the book is

1:12:21

chess reference end game. And I'll try

1:12:23

to add a somewhat optimistic note on

1:12:25

top of that, which is that a

1:12:28

saying in chess is no one's

1:12:30

ever won by resigning. There

1:12:32

you go. So even if

1:12:35

you're a down material, you got to play out

1:12:37

the clock. That's right. That's

1:12:39

what we're doing. The enemy sometimes makes

1:12:41

a big blunder. Well,

1:12:44

thanks again, Jamie. This has been great. And we'll

1:12:46

see you in New York. We'll do like a

1:12:48

meetup with ILC people. It'll be really, really fun.

1:12:51

So until then, so long. Thanks

1:12:54

again, guys. Coming

1:12:57

back around again. This

1:13:00

is all the people of the sun. Coming

1:13:02

back around again. Coming

1:13:09

back around again. This

1:13:11

is all the people of the sun. Coming

1:13:13

back around. All

1:13:16

right, let's go.