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Try This from The Washington Post wherever

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you listen. AI

1:04

specifically is a tool that is owned by

1:06

Google. It is owned by Facebook. In

1:09

other words, it is not fundamentally different from

1:11

a loom on which textiles

1:13

are made. The question of a workerless future

1:15

is interesting to talk about, but it is

1:18

very distinct from where we are right now.

1:20

I think it's important to say, I think

1:22

people don't grasp this. We have been working

1:24

in a period of de-automization. It

1:27

is the case that the factories are now

1:29

less automated than they were 30 years ago.

1:34

What could go right? I'm

1:37

Zachary Carabell, the founder of The

1:39

Progress Network, and I'm joined by

1:41

my co-host for this podcast, as

1:43

always, by Emma Varvalukas, the executive

1:45

director of The Progress Network. This

1:48

is our weekly podcast as we look

1:50

at ideas and issues in the world

1:52

today and try to take a somewhat

1:55

different tact from the noise of the

1:57

internet and the media. So

2:00

today we're going to take a more, I think,

2:02

abstract look at some of the

2:05

structural conditions of the world we live in. More

2:07

of an idea discussion, not an

2:09

action discussion. We have these conversations

2:11

because we believe ideas matter and

2:13

that the direct conversation about ideas

2:15

is important and needs to have

2:17

more space, even though those

2:20

ideas don't always and clearly lead to

2:22

action in the way that people sometimes

2:24

want. They often lead to more questions

2:26

than answers. And that

2:28

too, I think, is something we ought to

2:30

celebrate and not denigrate. Today we're

2:32

going to speak with Freddy DeBore. He

2:34

is a writer. He's written for a

2:36

magazine, his newspaper, his website, and currently

2:38

he's writing for himself on Substack. He

2:41

is the author of two books. The first is called

2:43

The Cult of Smart, and the second, which we're going

2:45

to talk to him about today, is

2:47

how elites hate the social justice movement.

2:50

But before we get there, we are

2:52

going to talk a bit about Marxism

2:54

because Freddy is actually a Marxist, as

2:56

he says, of an old school variety. Let's

2:59

do it. Freddy

3:07

DeBore, what a pleasure to have you with us today

3:09

for what could go right. I've been

3:11

perusing your Substack, which has gained a pretty

3:14

healthy following over the past couple of years now,

3:16

right? What inspired you to

3:18

dive into the Substack land? Poverty.

3:23

Yeah, I worked in

3:26

administration for a city university of New

3:28

York at Brooklyn College for four

3:30

years, and they let me go. I

3:32

was sort of burning the money for

3:35

my first books advance, and I didn't really have anything

3:37

else going on. So, Substack reached out to me and

3:39

asked me if I wanted to write for them, and

3:41

I couldn't think of a reason not to. Actually,

3:44

on this question, which is really neither

3:46

here nor there for a lot of the content of rewriting,

3:48

but I do think it's interesting as a relatively

3:52

new, maybe

3:54

it's the next chapter of blogging

3:56

and the next chapter of publishing, but the

3:58

whole Substack phenomenon of India. individuals being

4:00

able to own their own

4:03

slice of a platform. One

4:05

of the concerns early on is that if you just open

4:07

it up to, you give everybody shelf

4:09

space and it's up to them to find

4:12

people who listen, I think their

4:14

business model has certainly been challenged.

4:17

But have you found this to be a ... Has

4:19

it met the promise of a liberating

4:23

venue for the free flow of ideas? I

4:25

mean, it certainly liberated me from poverty. The

4:27

house that I'm recording this in was bought

4:29

with money that I made on the platform.

4:32

I don't care about platforms in any

4:34

other sense than what's currently useful to

4:36

me at the particular moment. I

4:39

started out blogging at Blogger in 2008

4:42

and I switched to WordPress in I

4:44

think 2012 and

4:46

then I didn't blog for three years.

4:49

And then Substack was the first

4:51

opportunity. Does it really have easily

4:53

integrated payments into the system? I

4:56

generally like the Substack people, although I

4:58

fight with them sometimes. I hate the

5:00

name Substack, but I also hate the

5:02

word blog and blogging in Blogger and

5:04

I have always tried to distance

5:06

myself from those things. And so when they said you

5:08

can have a newsletter instead of

5:11

a blog, that sounded attractive to me. Their

5:13

system just works and so I'm going to

5:15

write somewhere so I might as well do it here. When

5:18

I didn't blog, I just wrote into one

5:20

giant Word document for three years. You're

5:23

a writer in spirit. I feel like

5:25

it's kind of hard to find these days. As far as

5:28

political writers go, I don't know. I feel like you're a

5:30

rare breed where you're a writer in spirit and you're a

5:32

political writer. I don't know if I can name

5:34

anyone else who's really like that. I mean,

5:36

at present, now that I don't have a full-time job, I'm

5:39

typically writing somewhere on the order of 35,000 words a week.

5:42

Wow. Not all for publication to

5:44

be clear, but the various things. I'm

5:47

curious where you see yourself in

5:49

the political writing realm. There

5:51

seems to be an interesting tension between how

5:54

you explain yourself as the old-fashioned

5:56

Marxist versus how other people see

5:58

your politics. I

6:01

will often get associated with the dissident

6:03

left or with contrarianism. I just don't

6:05

see that as being true. I am

6:08

a Marxist and not a liberal or

6:10

a progressive or a Democrat. I've never

6:12

written anything that I didn't sincerely believe

6:14

to be true. I never write anything

6:16

simply for the purpose of contradicting what

6:18

other people say. Everything that I've ever

6:20

written politically is an expression of beliefs

6:23

that I think stem from leftist first

6:25

principles, in particular Marxist principles. The

6:27

reason a lot of people would not

6:29

categorize me on the left is because

6:31

of my relationship to politics relating to

6:33

race and gender and sexuality and disability,

6:36

etc. But

6:38

the OG critics

6:41

of identity politics were all leftists, like

6:44

Eric Hobsbawm, Richard Rorty, Todd Gitlin,

6:47

Adolf Reed, etc. I think

6:49

it was Hobsbawm who said, if there

6:51

is no identity, only identities, there is

6:53

no left. Because the fundamental political need

6:56

but also moral imperative of left politics

6:58

is precisely to transcend the boundaries of

7:01

race, class, etc. The

7:03

sort of weird place that we've gotten

7:05

to in modern liberal politics where the

7:07

way to address racism is by hyperfixating

7:10

on race and emphasizing racial difference,

7:12

I just think is a bizarre

7:14

mistake that was made and that

7:16

has been followed because of a

7:18

weird kind of past dependence and people's

7:20

fear of breaking with the ordinary.

7:23

For me, everything that I write

7:26

is a fairly conventional and fairly

7:28

orthodox expression of Marxist principles. So

7:31

let's delve into that a little more about what

7:33

does it mean to be a traditional Marxist.

7:36

I think of that in terms of seeing

7:39

history and culture

7:41

and society primarily through the lens

7:43

of class as the dominant principle.

7:45

You referenced Eric Hobsbawm before. When

7:47

you read his actual histories of

7:50

the 19th century and all of

7:53

it, it ends up just being very sober. I

7:56

won't say conventional history, but it's definitely

7:59

measured. Marxism has a ring

8:01

to it culturally of you're gonna be on

8:03

the barricades of the paris commune and not

8:05

in the delightful way of singing lemurs are

8:08

as opposed to a framework.

8:12

How we understand how history and society

8:14

evolves and no one could define what

8:16

an actual purely orthodox marxist is and

8:18

there are some with some fairly unorthodox

8:21

probably the biggest one was that most

8:23

people identify marxism now. The

8:25

notion of the inevitability of the

8:27

dictatorship of the proletariat does

8:29

not seem very confident to me

8:32

right now and certainly capitalism has

8:34

demonstrated an ability to fold

8:36

critiques into it and to prevent the

8:39

kind of rest that would make marxist

8:41

revolution possible. Look marxism is a

8:43

theory of history first it is

8:45

an attempt to create a science of history

8:47

that's no different from a science of biology

8:50

or physics. That sort

8:52

of science of history then

8:54

suggests an economic sort of

8:56

reading which was marxist particular

8:58

obsession the analysis

9:01

of capitalism and its internal contradictions and how

9:03

it work. I'm actually fascinated

9:05

by capitalism he was one of

9:07

the capital was great poets you

9:10

saw it as an incredible machine for producing

9:12

abundance which people tend to leave out because

9:14

i think of marxism is being a type

9:17

of marxism is in fact post capital is

9:19

not in the gap. Then

9:21

both of those things the history

9:23

and the economics imply political

9:25

project but the political project has

9:28

always been the most contested and

9:30

the least certain in part because

9:32

marks and angles deliberately under drew.

9:34

What the political future would look like and it's

9:36

important to say a lot of people don't realize

9:39

this. There

9:41

is no expression within first order

9:43

marxism of what a marxist society

9:45

would really look like we

9:47

get to the dictatorship the pro-territ which is this.

9:50

Transitory period in which ordinary people

9:52

become dictators they come in effect

9:54

people who run who run everything

9:57

but that gives away to a period.

10:00

in which that such organization is not necessary

10:02

and in that space, infinite freedom

10:04

sort of flows. The closest

10:06

that people have come to sort of a

10:09

consensus Marxist future is something

10:11

like semi-autonomous bands of

10:14

people have the right of exit and which

10:16

sort of governed under the principle of from

10:18

each according to his abilities to each according

10:20

to his need. But we don't

10:22

really know what the Marxist future looks like. The Marxist

10:24

can tell us and he told, he said specifically, well,

10:27

I'm not smart enough to know that. I

10:29

can't predict that for you. Marxist

10:31

economics is the notion that profit

10:34

is derived from the work of

10:36

labor and that labor then must

10:38

receive a smaller portion of that

10:40

profit than they have actually created.

10:43

Okay, so Marx is not the inventor of

10:45

the labor theory of value. Adam Smith was

10:47

a believer in the labor theory of value.

10:49

He's seen as the great free

10:52

market capitalist guy. Labor theory of

10:54

value just says that I

10:56

have a factory, right? The factory itself

10:58

costs X dollars. The raw

11:00

materials cost Y dollars. And then the

11:02

wages of the labor costs Z dollars.

11:05

And we add those things up. And

11:07

in order for profit to exist and for capitalism

11:09

to function, we have to sell that for more

11:12

than X plus Y plus Z dollars. Because

11:14

if you don't, your company's losing money

11:16

and I can't continue to function. Marx says,

11:18

well, how does that work? Capitalism

11:21

has to rely on some sort of

11:23

principle of equivalent exchange. If

11:26

I go to the marketplace and you're

11:28

charging something for an Apple, that

11:30

I see as completely inappropriate for the

11:32

actual value of that Apple. We'll never

11:34

have a transaction. Of course, there's always

11:36

a wiggle, prices change. But fundamentally at

11:38

every point of exchange, there has to

11:40

be some sort of agreed upon idea.

11:42

This thing is worth this amount of

11:44

money, right? And if you don't

11:46

ever get there, you walk and there's no transaction,

11:48

there's no growth, there's no capitalism. So how

11:51

can we have an equation in which we've

11:53

tallied up the cost of producing this good

11:55

and then sell that good for more than

11:57

it's worth? Where does that profit arise? from.

12:00

And the labor theory of values that

12:02

it comes from the workers that the

12:04

other parts of the equation are inert

12:06

and they can't possibly create anything. And

12:08

so labor is the creator of

12:11

value of profit. And

12:13

yet when we look at the capitalist system,

12:15

it's not workers who capture the majority of

12:17

the money, right? The people who capture the

12:19

majority of the money is

12:21

the ownership class, the rentiers,

12:24

right? The bourgeoisie, who owns

12:26

the factory and contributes only

12:28

in that way. They

12:30

capture a majority of the

12:32

profit while we know that that profit

12:34

was the product of the labor class

12:36

and that that is the root of

12:39

capitalism's both its moral degradation, but

12:41

also of its fundamental instability. And

12:43

core to this is the understanding

12:46

that if you want to be

12:48

the good business owner, give your

12:50

workers appropriate wages,

12:52

then that would be amount equal

12:54

to all of your profits and you

12:56

would therefore have no business. So it's

12:59

not like the owners of the business

13:01

can be appropriately redistributive

13:03

because they're good people, right?

13:05

It is a structural relation. The

13:07

problem is that his position within the

13:10

structure of capitalism is fundamentally exploitative. And

13:12

in fact, the rate at which

13:15

these businesses are capturing profit that they

13:17

did not make, but that rather

13:19

the worker class made is called the rate

13:21

of exploitation. This has some

13:24

consequences. And one of the big things is that an

13:26

MBA player who makes $20 million a year is a

13:28

worker. He

13:30

is not the bourgeoisie. He's the proletariat, a

13:32

guy who earns a wage for Google. So

13:35

let's say some project manager who's way up the top of the

13:37

totem pole and he makes $2.5 million a

13:39

year. In every way, his life

13:41

might appear to be totally different from somebody

13:43

who works at McDonald's, but fundamentally

13:45

they are producing value that they do not

13:47

capture. And so they are part of the

13:50

working class, working class in

13:52

proletariat versus bourgeoisie that is no relation

13:54

to the size of the income that

13:56

you're drawing. It's whether you are living

13:58

off of rent. meaning, are

14:01

you drawing a percentage of a given

14:03

transaction through the process of owning means

14:06

of operation, or are you being paid a

14:08

wage in exchange for your work, in which

14:10

case you must necessarily be paid a way

14:13

that's insufficient, right? So that's the moral sort

14:15

of critique of capitalism, and that is sort

14:17

of the structural critique of capitalism, that it

14:19

does not distribute earnings in a way that

14:22

is equitable to the amount of work or

14:24

the control of the value that's coming in.

14:27

Let me ask sort of the contemporary questions.

14:29

Marx and Engels are writing in the

14:31

midst of the first industrial revolution, so

14:34

they were aware of the fact that

14:36

machines, to some degree, could replace, although

14:38

at that point it was more augment

14:40

of human labor. But in a world

14:42

of AI and digitization and technology, can

14:44

you foresee a future, or even a

14:46

present for that matter, that is

14:49

extremely worker-light, somewhat

14:52

capital-heavy, although much less capital-intensive than

14:55

building a factory, but is

14:57

essentially capital-generating without workers? So it's

14:59

capitalism without labor. It's important to

15:01

say, I mean, look, AI

15:04

specifically is a tool that is owned

15:06

by Google, it is owned by Facebook,

15:08

right? In other words, it is not

15:10

fundamentally different from a loom

15:12

on which textiles are made, if it is

15:14

producing these sort of things. The

15:16

question of a workerless future is interesting to talk

15:18

about, but it is very distinct from where we

15:21

are right now. It's important to say, I think

15:23

people don't grasp this, we have

15:25

been working in a period of

15:27

de-automization of many parts of the

15:29

economy. In some automotive factories, for

15:31

example, it is the case that

15:34

the factories are now less automated

15:36

than they were 30 years ago.

15:38

There has been a rehiring relative

15:40

to automation. We tend

15:43

to think that automation is this linear process

15:45

where we're this automated now in the future

15:47

will be that automated, and automation only goes

15:49

up. In fact, there are all kinds

15:51

of facts that go into this. Part

15:53

Of the reason why automation flowed to the

15:55

degree that it did was that we discovered

15:58

that offshoring was cheaper than automating. The

16:00

word: You can exploit child labor in

16:02

China for cheaper than you could build

16:04

this The robots a more sort of

16:06

immediately salient question is like and. Right

16:09

Where? Am I isn't the place. Because

16:11

I am not as and

16:14

not a equity holder in

16:16

sub stack. I don't draw

16:18

a portion of their earnings as

16:20

a shareholder. I. Am not living

16:22

off of the rents of what has

16:24

been created some sort of an independent

16:26

contractor. I'm. Using the machinery

16:28

provided for me by substance. To.

16:31

Create value and they give me a portion

16:33

of their value that is insufficient relative to

16:35

the you. Not that I'm Korean, it's a

16:37

name's ten splits on one hundred percent, but

16:40

ragged Alderman. So. Those can questions

16:42

are interesting for fundamentally across the

16:44

economy writ large talk of ai

16:46

is or of assumptions about like

16:48

driverless cars. The last hundred years

16:50

has that actually have been of

16:53

a vastly more complicated story about

16:55

a week when you use automation

16:57

and when use who with human

16:59

workers. And it's been

17:01

revealed a very often accompanies decide that

17:04

it's in your final financial best interest

17:06

to hire people rather than to continue

17:08

to automate. in part because if you

17:10

automate to a certain extent you have

17:13

a growing pool of labor of people

17:15

who won a job that necessarily depresses

17:17

the wages that they expect until you

17:19

get to the point where they're cheaper

17:22

than the robots and. right? Is

17:24

like a sort of cyclical sort of

17:26

his relationship between those two things, which

17:29

is why for example, open a I

17:31

was always so it's jazzy be seen.

17:34

As incredible the I device was trained

17:36

by thousands of human users human of

17:38

poise of open a i as nigga

17:40

places like the Philippines where you can

17:42

pay very little in order to fix

17:44

all the problems and to look out

17:46

for things that would get them in

17:48

trouble at right? So even the examples

17:50

that we have of the most sort

17:52

of the intense automation that as As

17:55

you want to cause that's in these

17:57

large language models depends upon a pool

17:59

of cheaply. We'll.

18:04

Be right back after the break. History.

18:08

Doesn't repeat itself, but it off and

18:10

rhymes that. Maybe a Mark Twain cook

18:12

but assistance to today's when he originally

18:14

set at my History Can Beat Up

18:16

Your Politics is a podcast. The comparison

18:18

contrasts history to the current events of

18:20

today post cars and has recently done

18:23

deep dives on fascinating topics like the

18:25

fall of the Soviet Union with sets

18:27

the stage for today's geopolitics, the man

18:29

who was in prison and still won

18:31

a million votes for the presidency, and

18:33

the mystery behind George Washington's involvement or

18:35

less Arab and a bill of Rights.

18:37

My history can beat. Up your politics offer

18:39

see contacts the all these historic stories especially

18:41

those that you may think you know wealth

18:43

and is particularly adept every leading them to

18:45

current events said I'll miss out listen to

18:48

my history can beat up your Paul Sex

18:50

on. All platforms. The

18:52

government of Kenya pledged to and gender based

18:54

violence by Twenty Twenty Six. The. Ministry

18:56

of Health in Uganda is trying to

18:59

eradicate Yellow Fever. It's ambitious to make

19:01

these kinds of pledges, but it is

19:03

much harder to achieve his lofty goals.

19:05

Are these leaders really delivering on his

19:07

promises for women and girls Turn into

19:09

a new season of the hidden economics

19:11

of remarkable women. Apart from foreign policy

19:14

as reporters across Africa, me courageous woman

19:16

holding leaders accountable in various sectors including

19:18

health care start ups and the government

19:20

listen to hidden economics of remarkable been

19:22

and wherever you that your podcasts. Fucking.

19:29

Back to that today. How.

19:31

Do you see the Marxist. Should. Expression

19:34

of principles as far as coalition

19:36

building goes good at sex Me

19:38

that. Theoretically. I I

19:40

understand that are you We're making sexually about

19:42

this on a difference between a worker at

19:44

Google who makes two million dollars and somebody

19:47

who is serving pancakes at Denny's Bite when

19:49

it comes down to like what those people

19:51

really hot and com and as people. and

19:54

their purchasing power how their lives are the

19:56

level of comfort all that and how he

19:58

builds coalition's to format a

20:00

political movement that has real-world impact.

20:04

It's important to say that that class

20:06

is described in first-generation Marxism, which is

20:08

the petty bourgeoisie, which is the bourgeoisie

20:10

or the ownership class who actually owns

20:12

the factory. The petty bourgeoisie

20:15

are sort of like the upper-middle

20:17

class. Own some stock, have some

20:19

rents, but they still derive a

20:21

majority of their income from somebody

20:23

else's wage, a wage of someone

20:25

else paying them. Crucially,

20:27

they have ownership mindset. They

20:29

are stuck in what

20:31

Marxists call false consciousness, where they believe

20:33

that their interests are associated with the

20:35

ownership class rather than with their own

20:38

class. Again, these are

20:40

amoral distinctions. A

20:43

member of the rentier class, of the

20:45

bourgeoisie and Marxism, is not a bad

20:47

guy. Good and bad is

20:50

irrelevant. It's the process itself that

20:52

doesn't make sense, is inherently unstable

20:54

in society. In the broader sense,

20:56

Marxism helps us to understand the

20:59

world. I would not go out

21:01

to a union hall

21:03

and try to get people to sign up

21:05

for my Marxist party right now. That's not

21:07

how I would approach it. Look, for a

21:10

really orthodox Marxist, and I still know people

21:12

like this because I grew up surrounded

21:15

by commies and has done my whole life like that. For

21:17

a really orthodox Marxist, there's

21:20

essentially nothing to do, because

21:23

the revolution emerges from internal contradictions.

21:25

One of the things Marxism predicts

21:27

is the tendency of the rate

21:29

of profit to fall, which is

21:31

that over time, as capitalism enters

21:33

into its most mature stage, rather

21:35

than getting more and more profitable,

21:37

companies find themselves in tighter and

21:39

tighter competition with each other. As

21:42

that happens, their profit levels

21:44

fall, which eventually leads

21:47

to certain inevitable social instability,

21:49

including the inability to pay

21:52

people more who expect to be

21:54

paid more. If you

21:56

just hold every computer

21:58

programmer in the country right

22:00

now. You get how much you make right now,

22:02

that's it for the rest of your career, that

22:05

would lead to social unrest, right? Nobody predicted the

22:07

2008 financial crisis

22:11

better than Robert Brenner, who more

22:13

than two years before it happened

22:15

in a book called Economics of

22:17

Global Turbulence, described exactly what was

22:19

going to happen using Marxist

22:21

economic principles and laying out the case

22:23

that this bubble is crashing, the plunging

22:25

of the world into a potential new

22:28

Great Depression, we're all inevitable consequences of

22:30

where we are. The basic argument is

22:32

always this. Number one, you

22:34

don't need the boss, the boss needs you, right?

22:37

Making people understand that they are the engine

22:39

that makes it all happen, right?

22:41

Making people understand that fundamentally, the power

22:43

is in the hands of the workers.

22:46

So look at the UPS

22:48

strike that was narrowly adverted.

22:51

They got extraordinary concessions from UPS.

22:53

Did they do that because UPS

22:55

leadership are such good guys? Did

22:58

they do it because UPS leadership was like, yeah, you

23:00

know, we probably could get a little away with paying

23:02

them less, but let's pay them more? No, of course

23:04

not, right? The UPS workers were

23:06

able to demonstrate to UPS, we will cost

23:08

you hundreds of millions of dollars a day

23:11

if you force us into a strike posture. And

23:14

it's real easy to steal the keys to

23:16

a UPS strike, right? They were able to

23:18

insert themselves into the sort of machinery of

23:21

UPS and say, we have the

23:23

ability to shut this whole operation down and we

23:25

will make it more expensive for you not

23:27

to pay us than it is to pay us. And that first

23:30

thing is just that like the centrality of

23:32

workers and the actual sort of worker

23:34

power that is embedded in all these

23:36

things is really core. But the other

23:39

thing is understanding that the appeal

23:41

of politics is not to like

23:43

people who are different from you,

23:45

right? The appeal of

23:47

politics is to pursue your own self

23:49

interest by working with people who are

23:52

also pursuing their self interest by recognizing

23:54

what you share. So the

23:56

UAW, United Auto Workers, they just

23:58

got 25% raises for

24:00

many of their workers at American factories

24:03

and plants. The

24:05

UAW has traditionally been a

24:07

very powerful union that has

24:09

also been driven with

24:11

ethnic conflict, racial conflict, different

24:14

sectors and sects within the

24:16

union, battle for leadership, battles

24:18

over the sort of left

24:20

unionism and the right unionism

24:22

that are both within it,

24:24

etc. It organizes

24:26

both this sort of blue collar,

24:28

socially conservative guys who work on

24:30

the factory line and also like

24:32

grad students at a ton of

24:35

universities who have wildly leftist politics.

24:37

Why does that work? Because when

24:39

the time comes to have this right, they have

24:41

this right and they all benefit. So again, like, looking

24:44

beyond the idea of, of course, I

24:46

want like racial harmony. But if you

24:48

can convince people, hey, black voters,

24:50

this is good for you. Hey, white voters,

24:52

this is good for you. Hispanic voters, Asian

24:54

voters, this is good for you. They don't

24:56

have to like each other. It

24:58

is a vision of left

25:00

politics and cooperative politics that

25:02

is independent of any fundamentally

25:06

moral consideration. A

25:08

strike is not a moral force. A strike is a

25:10

force to secure the best interest of people who want

25:12

stuff. But on this, these

25:14

are examples of capitalism

25:16

saving itself, as opposed

25:19

to the revolution drawing nearer.

25:21

So the ability for

25:24

whether it's under threat

25:26

to meet demands

25:28

that workers can accept keeps

25:31

the system stable and fluid, just like

25:34

if you're Marx and Engels in 1850s, 60s,

25:36

70s, anticipating the growth

25:38

of a very robust social safety

25:41

net, predominantly Western Europe,

25:43

but the United States has its own inept

25:45

version of it, was a very,

25:47

I think, conscious way of, frankly,

25:49

capitalist elites and, you know, when

25:52

there was a perception of a threat from

25:54

the Soviet Union of saying, what do we

25:56

have to do to satisfy worker

25:58

needs and demands sufficiently? to

26:01

maintain a system of capitalism and prevent

26:04

a communist revolution. It was

26:06

not a beneficent move

26:09

of like we think this is right or

26:11

not. It was a much more, I think,

26:13

calculated as long as

26:15

people have enough of what they think is

26:17

essential, they are not likely to

26:19

engage in a lot rebellion and try

26:21

to overthrow the political system. And the

26:24

examples you gave of UPS

26:26

is an example of functioning

26:29

capitalism, where the allocation of

26:32

rewards is continually up

26:34

for contest and debate. I mean

26:37

Marxism is correctly identified as a

26:39

revolutionary politics, but at the front

26:41

of it, it's all reformism. The

26:44

idea is that labor militancy that

26:46

fundamentally acts eventually as a form

26:49

of reformism within capitalism eventually creates

26:51

the kind of labor discipline where

26:54

if the sort of collapse of capitalism

26:56

happens as is predicted by the idea

26:58

of the fundamental contradictions of capitalism, that

27:01

happens. And we've been working

27:03

for many years to build labor

27:06

militancy and to make people understand

27:08

what they are capable of, right?

27:10

When they band together under labor

27:12

organizing principles, that then becomes the

27:14

vanguard which begins with the revolution.

27:17

Do you know where the word

27:19

sabotage comes from? So French women

27:21

workers would drop their shoes into

27:23

the machinery and their shoes were

27:25

called sabo, right? Sabotage, right? The

27:27

plan here is to make people

27:30

understand that if you control the

27:32

machinery, if you control the apparatus,

27:35

then you have a remarkable ability to

27:37

force things out of capital. At the

27:39

individual strike level, sure it's reformist in

27:41

the sense that you're just getting more

27:43

within capitalism. But It trains people

27:45

to understand that when the moment comes, they

27:47

have the ability to use these tools to

27:50

force amazing concessions from people. The People who

27:52

run these companies don't think that it's capitalism

27:54

saving itself. There's plenty of people in leadership

27:56

in the UAW who say these contracts are

27:58

not sustainable, we can't do it. Do

28:00

it anymore. The company's gonna go down

28:02

in flames. Bubble of of lot of

28:04

say for any contract negotiation, but they

28:07

signed the contract anyway. Because. They

28:09

were forced to because the workers had the

28:11

power started. Now I think a com and

28:13

critique is that it's a lot easier to

28:16

do that when you work in an actual

28:18

factory. If your workplace is a laptop, labor

28:20

militancy is a lot harder. That.

28:22

Being said, there are labor unions

28:24

in places that has one hundred

28:26

percent or of digital production elected

28:28

by the like digital media to

28:31

have an able to wind important

28:33

in real concessions from. Your

28:35

boss's there's a strike. I think it's St.

28:37

Louis, the city that has like that. the

28:39

major first thoroughfares like one really big i

28:41

weigh like a four lane on both sides

28:43

bridge to sort of goes into the city.

28:46

The teamsters word a dispute with the city

28:48

so they took a tractor trailers and stop

28:50

them on the bridge and through the keys

28:52

into the river. If you are willing to

28:54

be militant, there's always sort of ways to

28:57

move things forward. Will.

29:02

Be like. There's.

29:06

A big difference between talking and reporting,

29:08

especially right now with a fire hose

29:10

worth of news coming your way. You

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now and help close the gap. Welcome

30:09

back to What Could Go Right? Freddie,

30:11

I want to ask you about your book

30:13

that came out last year, How the Elites

30:16

Ate the Social Justice Movement. You know, it

30:18

tells the story of what happened after the

30:20

murder of George Floyd during the BLM protests

30:22

and at the time there was sort of this shining moment

30:25

like something's gonna happen. There's a

30:27

lot of momentum for reform and change

30:29

but then I think

30:32

nothing really happened. So that's my

30:34

question really. Did anything actually come

30:36

out of all of that unrest?

30:39

I mean it's like you know I this is the pushback

30:42

I get a lot. It's I'll say well

30:44

this city did this this this you know

30:46

this town did this whatever. There have been

30:48

some worthwhile criminal

30:51

justice reform efforts in

30:54

individual states and cities in the United

30:56

States and I don't dismiss them. However,

31:00

that was not the demand in June of

31:02

2020. The demand was not let's

31:05

have some small bore local municipal

31:07

and state-level criminal justice reform efforts.

31:09

The demand was we're gonna turn

31:11

the whole system upside down. The

31:13

demand was defund the police. The demand was

31:16

tear down the prisons and none of that

31:18

happened certainly. Nothing happened that

31:20

matched the fervor and the

31:22

demands and to agree that

31:25

which things that happened they're

31:27

sort of durable is in

31:29

elite liberal coded organizations and

31:31

employers and academic institutions there's

31:33

been the creation of a new

31:35

layer of jobs that are specifically

31:38

devoted in some way to diversity

31:40

which has functioned as a hiring

31:42

program for talented young black and

31:44

brown workers. I don't have any

31:46

problem with that but like as

31:48

a affirmative action program it's kind

31:50

of backwards because those people

31:53

are all among the most upwardly

31:55

mobile members of black

31:57

America anyway. Like the people who are

31:59

getting hired by the

32:01

Ford Foundation for some new seat

32:04

where you do vague policy work

32:06

in the realm of anti-racism, the

32:08

kind of black person who gets hired into that job

32:11

already has a college degree and is already like in

32:13

the top 10% like most sort

32:15

of upwardly mobile black Americans anyway. So that was

32:17

kind of a bust as far as I'm

32:19

concerned. So no, there hasn't been a lot of real change at

32:21

all. I do want to

32:24

ask as we enter this political year, I'm

32:26

sure you'll have a lot to say about it, which

32:30

I suppose circles back to the Marxism

32:32

discussion, but it does raise this question

32:34

of increasingly around the world, it seems

32:36

like people are channeling their discontent into

32:39

want to be

32:41

authoritarians or actual authoritarians to

32:44

say what people want to hear without

32:47

creating any real structural equity rather

32:50

than in genuine sort of

32:52

social reform and progressive or Marxist directions.

32:55

I think it's important to sort of

32:57

locate all this in history. The millennium

32:59

turns, we've had the stability of the

33:01

Clinton years from my perspective,

33:04

for many people's perspective, Bill Clinton was a

33:06

sort of Republican and all but name. In

33:08

1996, Bob Dole

33:11

complained openly and bitterly that

33:13

Clinton had stolen his agenda. That's how far

33:15

to the right Clinton had moved. Of

33:17

course, compared to the contemporary Republican Party,

33:19

they're both like left-wing Democrats. I

33:21

think that's important. George

33:24

W. Bush gets elected under extremely contested

33:27

circumstances, 9-11 happens. As

33:29

someone who was just turning 20 when that happened,

33:31

it was real grim if you had sort of

33:33

a left-wing bent. The country

33:36

explodes into nationalist paranoia and there's

33:38

a ton of militarism, there's a

33:40

ton of Islamophobia. The president's press

33:42

secretary, when asked about protests of

33:44

the president said, you need to watch what you think

33:47

and watch what you say, which is

33:49

like, you know, very frightening and

33:51

sort of basic democratic principles. And

33:53

then the financial crisis happens, et

33:55

cetera, et cetera. Barack

33:57

Obama sort of gets elected and he comes in. With

34:00

the rhetoric of sort of Hopi and Changi and

34:02

I'm going to come in and I'm going to

34:04

sort of fix the country and liberals felt emboldened

34:06

again. There's been a lot of

34:09

debate since then about to what degree Obama

34:11

actually ran as a lefty. I

34:14

would argue that his rhetoric was deliberately drawn

34:16

to suggest that he was going

34:18

to be a fairly

34:20

radical president, but we can disagree about that.

34:22

What nobody disagrees about is that he gets into office

34:25

and reigns as a moderate. I mean, Obama

34:27

has described himself as fundamentally a centrist

34:29

guy who wanted to make some incrementalist

34:31

sort of changes. And I think one

34:34

of the sort of for me,

34:36

my generation, I'm an elder millennial,

34:38

was the Obama administration was a

34:42

endless reestablishment of the notion that this

34:44

does not work. That technocratic

34:46

liberalism of the Obama variety. We're

34:48

going to have a bunch of

34:50

academics who solve the problems and

34:52

we're going to reach across the

34:55

aisle and we're going to solve

34:57

problems with pragmatic American can do

34:59

optimism. That just fundamentally failed to

35:01

solve any of these deep social

35:03

problems that we have, conspicuously racism.

35:06

Obama was the first black president. I think a lot

35:08

of people got their hopes up

35:10

that American racial inequality was going to

35:12

start to really decline. And it

35:14

did not pretty much any metric. And

35:17

so that led to a lot of disillusionment,

35:20

but also many people would argue

35:22

that it led directly to the

35:25

conditions that allowed Donald Trump to win

35:27

an electoral college victory. And

35:29

so you're just sort of looking around at

35:31

just sort of the carnage of what

35:34

we were sold by the Democratic Party

35:36

apparatus as the means through which positive

35:38

change happens. And you just have a

35:40

generation like me who goes through the

35:42

horrors of the Bush administration, comes

35:45

into an Obama administration that brings quote

35:47

unquote normalcy. But unfortunately, normalcy also includes

35:49

the fact that the black white wealth

35:51

gap didn't go down, the black white

35:53

income gap didn't go down, the black

35:55

white life expectancy gaps didn't go down,

35:57

etc. From

36:00

gets his office. We

36:02

have Trump as president. Everything seems really

36:04

fucked up in weird and in Georgia

36:07

gets can read in so you had

36:09

a perfect moment. For people

36:11

who had come to reject.

36:14

The. Increments was

36:16

democratic approach. Having lived

36:18

through an extremist republican

36:21

administration followed by a

36:23

moderate democratic administration followed

36:25

by an extremist republican

36:27

administration. And they

36:29

sell fear justifiably the we need

36:31

to be extremists in in turn.

36:34

The. Problem was that only their rhetoric

36:36

was extreme because over the price for

36:38

a prior decade you had to take

36:40

over of less sort of rhetoric and

36:42

ideas. the sort of heart of were

36:45

sort of less ideas were coming from,

36:47

sort of had migrated fully to elite

36:49

university departments and humanities departments et al.

36:52

Universities. And come up with

36:54

this really abstract vocabulary that was hard for

36:56

it ordinary people to understand. Spreads hamlets to

36:58

tumbler and into Twitter. There were so many

37:00

people who I'd known who had been working

37:02

in journalism in media for a long time,

37:05

and they were one way. And.

37:07

Then suddenly they were very different way. And.

37:09

Every word out of their mouth

37:11

was fastest Masculinity or White Supremacy

37:13

or you know, like I can

37:15

remember the specific day that Media

37:17

Twitter discovered the term ballpark and

37:19

then they were all using. This.

37:22

This stage was set for. A

37:24

racial reckoning when we did not

37:27

have any single like an actual.

37:29

Grass. Roots the Anti Racist movement

37:31

and were that organizing committee where

37:34

people who were over educated lived

37:36

in elite spaces and didn't know

37:38

how to talk normal people. Now.

37:41

I would agree with her anecdotally the people I know

37:43

for instance, who are. Obama Translate Butters Their main

37:45

gripe with the Democrats at this point as they're

37:48

annoying and patronizing and they don't do what they

37:50

say. they're going stale. Joe Biden into

37:52

Best President mls them. By the way, Sherwood

37:54

knives them. Have guessed by. and

37:56

it hurts to say that thirsk for me to

37:58

give credit to any democrat or any president. But

38:01

he's been the best president of my lifetime. Why do

38:03

you say that? He has been really unexpectedly

38:06

aggressive in a redistributive

38:09

regulatory, pro government

38:11

domestic policy. Being

38:14

willing to bend to the federal government to

38:17

accomplish important social tasks and to spend

38:19

money to do it and to raise

38:21

taxes if we can. My context

38:24

is Ronald Reagan, George

38:26

H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, who

38:28

said the error of big government is

38:31

over, Bill Clinton, who signed the bill

38:33

that made getting gay married to federal

38:35

crime, Bill Clinton, the guy who gutted

38:37

the social welfare state and increased black

38:40

extreme poverty by three times, Bill Clinton,

38:42

the guy who moved in a right

38:44

wing direction, then George W. Bush, Horro,

38:46

Barack Obama, sort of consistently disappointing technocrat

38:49

who, for whatever reason, was addicted to

38:51

the idea that he could work with

38:53

Republicans. Meanwhile, the Republicans were like burning

38:55

him in effigy right in the village

38:58

square and then Donald Trump.

39:00

But yeah, I mean, he has

39:02

been a real pleasant surprise in

39:04

terms of his domestic policy and its

39:06

aggressiveness. Yeah, I mean, again, I would, I

39:09

would argue that things like

39:11

antitrust legislation applied

39:14

much more rearranges deck

39:16

chairs than it does much

39:19

in the way of structural reform. I've written about

39:21

this over the years, I frequently get attacked for

39:23

being kind of anti regulatory. I'm definitely not a big

39:25

fan of certain aspects of the administrative

39:27

state. I mean, for instance, one reason to be

39:29

concerned about a Donald Trump presidency is that we've

39:32

made the administrative state very powerful. So you

39:34

want to be careful about who you give the

39:36

keys to that particular car. Meaning

39:38

that's an argument for not having such a powerful status.

39:41

democracies are fickle. And if you elect someone

39:43

who's willing to abuse those tools, those tools

39:45

can be used for good and for ill.

39:48

Things like antitrust, one of the challenges there is

39:50

like, if you broke Google and Amazon up tomorrow

39:53

into 15 companies,

39:55

right, I'm just like picking a number of

39:57

Facebook into another five or six, you'd

39:59

simply 25

40:02

megabillion dollar companies. It's not clear that would

40:04

do anything for any of the issues that

40:06

you're passionate about. I mean, if anything, it

40:08

would have the unintended consequence of seeming to

40:11

have done something while simultaneously have structurally done

40:13

nothing. I'm actually much more negative

40:15

about it for those reasons, that it is a

40:17

fix that is not a fix to a problem

40:19

that is much different than it's being construed as.

40:21

It's not corporate size. And I'm sure you're aware

40:24

of Jaron Lanier's work many

40:26

years ago of what would it look like

40:29

to have people license their

40:31

individual data, given that data

40:33

is the raw material for Facebook and

40:35

all ads and all of it. None

40:38

of our data would be worth that much, but

40:40

even the very act of that transaction would

40:43

establish a precedent of it is worth something. It

40:45

is not free. It is something

40:47

we license for free and we get stuff in return. I'm

40:50

just saying I think that there's all

40:52

I respect. I'm just pushing back on

40:54

what you're saying. Like I respect the perspective. Even

40:58

though many people respond to some

41:00

of these conversations as too theoretical and

41:02

too abstract, there isn't the kind of

41:04

heated debates over class and Marxism that

41:06

there were throughout the 20th

41:08

century, many of which were con

41:10

and not pro, but it was much more of

41:12

an animated time. The

41:14

essential questions of like what's the allocation

41:17

of gains between capital and labor, between

41:19

individuals and corporations, between the very wealthy

41:21

and the less so, remain

41:23

essentially at the core of everybody's

41:25

social and political life. What

41:28

I mean by social life in terms of where do

41:30

you live and how do you live and how do you allocate

41:32

your time between whatever we call work,

41:35

play, or family and relationships. All these

41:37

things are kind of at the heart of

41:39

what human beings, eight billion souls

41:42

on the planet, are

41:44

grappling with. And I

41:47

don't think we talk about it enough. Whether

41:49

or not I agree with your framework, we need

41:52

to talk about these issues in a more direct

41:54

way than we do so. And

41:56

there's a dearth of it in writing,

41:58

there's a dearth of it in how we all

42:00

communicated with each other and so everybody ends up sort

42:02

of like talking around it or talking elliptically or talking

42:04

about it in code. And I've

42:07

really appreciated the conversation. Again, you know,

42:09

as you know, I may not agree with all

42:12

you're saying, but I absolutely

42:14

welcome the dialogue. And

42:16

everyone should check out Freddy's Subsac.

42:18

It's a distinctive name. You won't confuse him for

42:21

everyone else. It's just Freddy DeBore. You can sign up.

42:23

Thank you for joining us today. Thanks for having

42:25

me. At

42:32

the risk of this being a backhanded compliment, I

42:34

enjoyed that conversation more than I thought I would.

42:37

Maybe because I thought it was going to be more

42:39

contentious or maybe because I thought it

42:42

was going to be abstract in a less

42:44

interesting way. I'll leave it to people listening

42:46

whether or not they found the abstraction interesting.

42:48

I just thought these are the kinds of

42:50

things that I wish we would

42:52

talk about more. And

42:54

maybe that's the academic

42:57

egghead part of my persona

42:59

that enjoys the Desiderata

43:01

of who are

43:04

we and what does it mean to be a capitalist and

43:06

what does it mean to be a worker and how is

43:08

society actually structured? Because look, most of us spend most of

43:10

our time living in the world as it is and not

43:12

living in the world as it might be. But

43:15

again, I feel like there were other points

43:17

in time where these issues were a

43:19

little more on

43:21

the cultural surface. Maybe when

43:23

unions were more powerful and there was an

43:25

actual argument going on in the

43:28

public sphere between labor and capital

43:30

in a really self-conscious way contesting

43:32

how the rewards were

43:34

going to be divided. Maybe when

43:36

all the social safety net

43:39

systems, whether it's the National Health Service in

43:41

Britain or Social Security in

43:43

the United States or the Great Society programs,

43:45

there was a more active debate about how

43:48

are the rewards of a wealthy society being

43:50

distributed more fairly and there was actual

43:53

nitty-gritty conversations about it which

43:57

questions of like the budget deficit

43:59

and interest rates. don't even begin to

44:01

get to it the same philosophical way. So count

44:03

me as somebody who wishes we would have some

44:05

more of these conversations. I know they can spin

44:08

off into pedantic abstractions, but I'd

44:10

rather take some of those risks. Yeah,

44:13

I mean, I think that there's this big

44:15

gap in modern day journalism, maybe it's not

44:17

even the role of water danger, but I

44:19

do feel like the basic

44:21

principles underlying, let's say, classic liberalism

44:24

or Marxism or conservatism, they're

44:26

not well understood or talked about by

44:28

people. And I think it's because it

44:30

can get easily pedantic and abstract, but

44:33

you do have people like Freddie that

44:35

are able to explain things well outside

44:37

the confines of a university education on

44:40

the internet, on sub-sac, on

44:42

a podcast. I do think it matters because

44:45

I'm a really big believer that no idea

44:47

is too complicated for anybody to understand, it

44:49

just needs to be explained well. The

44:51

whole endeavor here is that ideas matter greatly.

44:54

They are the building blocks for a lot

44:56

of the laws and

44:58

institutions, social mores and all

45:01

the things that structure our society

45:03

these days more than

45:06

they're built on brute force when

45:08

they're built on just hierarchies of

45:10

control. That doesn't mean that ideas cannot

45:12

be their own form of a hierarchy

45:14

of control that can be, but we

45:16

live in idea-based worlds now, insofar

45:18

as someone first had to conceive of

45:20

a world and a reality and then

45:22

we construct society in a

45:24

way that is profound. It's as

45:28

if we're all in a machine that

45:30

we've forgotten the handbook for. Yes, people

45:32

talk about political reform and they talk

45:35

about how things need to change, but

45:38

more cohesive discussion of what are we trying to

45:40

do here? How are we structuring the societies that

45:42

we're living in? What's the goal? What's the point?

45:44

What's the outcome? What's the history of

45:46

it been? What have we learned or not learned from

45:48

it? Those conversations are absolutely

45:51

essential because they are the raw

45:53

material that we will all use

45:55

to build the next stage

45:57

of our collective existence.

46:01

So shall we turn to some less

46:04

portentous, maybe quirkier news?

46:07

I'm looking at 11, the sobriety

46:10

of the conversation with things

46:12

going on in the world that most of us hadn't noticed.

46:21

I have a good one for us today. Okay,

46:24

something very pedestrian in that it's

46:27

going to affect people's lives

46:29

immediately before I get to the quirky one because

46:31

I forgot that I had this in the lineup. Google

46:34

Chrome is killing cookies and

46:36

I'm so excited about it. So

46:39

everyone should have this by the end of the year.

46:41

Apparently already 1% of users are experiencing

46:43

this cookie-free world already. So that's the way I

46:45

would love to hear about it. Google

46:48

disabling cookies for 30 million users of its

46:50

web browser Chrome today. The first step in

46:52

its plan to stop all use of the

46:54

website tracking technology by the end of the

46:56

year. So it's going to be

46:58

rolled out slowly over the year, but for

47:01

the digital ad landscape at large, this is

47:03

ultimately another monumental change. And it comes just

47:05

a few years after Apple did something similar.

47:07

Now Google is getting rid of cookies will

47:10

make it harder for third parties to track

47:12

users across the internet. Here's what I mean

47:14

by that. You might have Googled pajamas to

47:16

gift over the holidays and search for a

47:19

specific brand. Cookies are

47:21

the technology that knows, remembers and

47:23

tracks that search and then follows

47:25

you all around the web continually

47:27

serving you ads for those pajamas, maybe slippers

47:29

and robes months after the holidays, even if

47:31

you already bought that item that you need

47:34

it. Obviously, this is

47:36

not the kind of cookies that help you remember your

47:38

password. So we're not going to have to reenter

47:40

our passwords every time we go onto the site. That

47:42

is wild. How are people going to

47:44

track? Apparently, the advertisers are like kind

47:47

of clueless about how to respond to this and how

47:49

much that's going to affect business and all

47:52

of the run on effects of that are very

47:54

unknown at the moment. All right. Well,

47:56

I'll look forward to that and not also avoid all that kind of

47:58

annoying when you go to Europe. constantly clicking

48:00

on accept cookies, 70%

48:19

of all the energy used there comes

48:22

from geothermal sources. And now they have

48:24

this really fun, hopefully one

48:26

day made into a movie plan that

48:29

by 2026 they're going to tap

48:31

into a volcano, specifically

48:33

the magma that's inside a volcano,

48:36

and get geothermal energy from there. So

48:39

it's a plan, it's not happening right

48:41

now. They have to figure out some

48:43

important details, for example, how

48:45

their machines are not going to get

48:47

melted by the volcano. Active

48:51

volcanoes are proving to be a hot

48:54

commodity in the global race to transform

48:56

to renewable energy as regions all over

48:58

the world that reside near these natural

49:00

wonders work to harness their heat. Geothermal

49:03

energy, the process of using the heat from

49:05

the inner cores of the earth to create

49:07

power, is one of the most sustainable

49:10

forms of energy, experts told

49:12

ABC News. The technology

49:14

works by pushing hot water from the

49:16

reservoirs of volcanoes and geysers toward the

49:18

surface, which then turns to steam due

49:20

to the reduced pressure. There

49:23

are virtually no carbon emissions from this

49:25

process once the infrastructure is in place,

49:28

other than the diesel-powered pump required to bring

49:30

the water and steam to the surface. Pete

49:33

Stelling, a retired geology professor

49:35

formerly at Western Washington University,

49:37

told ABC News. That's

49:40

very sci-fi, especially, I mean all these volcanoes keep exploding, there

49:42

was the recent one in Iceland which had the, you

49:45

know, that dramatic seas of lava going down.

49:48

But yeah, I mean, I think Iceland's

49:50

already a leader in geothermal as a production

49:52

of energy, so it's a natural next step

49:54

for them to try to

49:56

tap the volcanoes. The

49:58

article where I read... Twitter

50:00

Vietnam Science. The article

50:02

took pains to quote a. Vulcanologists,

50:07

They took great pains to say that's not

50:09

going to lead to an eruption as okay

50:11

now, which is a pretty. Understandable

50:13

concern if you think about tapping into that

50:15

thing like are. We. Gonna call of

50:17

as an issue here, Fairly not

50:19

and we are capable of doing

50:22

some fantastic scientific think. I owe

50:24

a volcano power. Here we come fingers

50:26

crossed or thank you for joining us

50:28

again this week. Will be back next

50:30

week with yet another for stimulating conversation

50:32

like you and of them. Please send

50:34

in comments as always son of from

50:36

a newsletter with no right. Or

50:39

and let us know you

50:41

think. What

50:51

Did the Right is produced by and receive

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