Communist Professor Defends Stalin & Mao’s Legacy - Heated Debate
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1 hour and 30 minutes
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182.9395
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13
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Summary
Dr. Asatar Baer is an associate professor of economics at Riverside City College in Southern California and a self-identified communist. Dr. Baer frequently praises dictators like Stalin and Mao, and writes about meditation. He has practiced meditation since he was a small child and holds a PhD in economics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Transcript
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We're taught that Stalin is just an appalling monster.
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What's more important, living out my purpose and ambitions
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Should you not be allowed to live out your purpose?
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But should somebody starve so that you can do that?
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I would say capitalism kills 14 million people each and every year.
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I don't think that's how the world works. Do you?
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who's an associate professor of economics at Riverside City College.
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Dr. Baer frequently praises dictators like Stalin and Mao.
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has written over 150 blog posts about heart-centered spiritual development.
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He has practiced meditation since he was a small child,
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and he holds a PhD in economics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
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Doc, appreciate you for being a guest on Valuetainment.
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Moments after I post a very positive capitalistic tweet,
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I got to read it to everybody because this kind of lets the audience know,
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you know, how similar a belief system you and I have,
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and they're going to be able to enjoy it at the end of the day.
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So, your tweet that just came out, let me see this here.
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Speaking of debates, I'm being interviewed by Patrick B. David and a few.
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I like your spirit of competition, which is a capitalistic quality.
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If you don't mind, would you mind taking a moment and kind of sharing with the audience
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your background, upbringing, you know, schooling, how you came about your philosophy
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so the audience can get a better understanding of your background?
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My parents were very interested in meditation, philosophy, and became students of Sufism.
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So, it's sort of like Kabbalah for Judaism or maybe Gnosticism for Christianity.
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You know, most religions have a kind of esoteric side, right?
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So, and Sufism, you know, is often very deeply embedded in Islamic culture.
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But in the United States, it takes a very different kind of form.
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And the order that my family belongs to is a very universalist kind of branch associated
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with a fellow named Hazwan Anayat Khan who taught Sufism in the West.
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So, you know, I grew up in a very kind of alternative background, but it wasn't very political.
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You know, there are political hippies and non-political hippies, you know, and this is the non-political
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But I got into radical politics as a young person when I was a teenager.
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And it's at that point that I began to study Marxism, and I ended up studying that quite seriously.
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I studied it in college and graduate school with the noted Marxist economist Richard Wolff
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and his longtime collaborator Stephen Resnick, who has now passed away, sadly.
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And then I had the idea that I would really like to teach at a community college because,
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you know, I want to be able to speak to working class people.
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And, you know, it seemed like that was the best way to do it.
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Now, there's a lot of challenges that come along with that.
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But, and that's what I've done for about the last 20 years.
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I did take five years out of that and ran a non-profit.
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I currently, like you mentioned, teach at Riverside City College in Southern California.
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By the way, if you don't mind going back, you said in high school, you took interest in
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politics and you were always, you know, upbringing, you know, in what you guys were studying,
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I don't think there was a single kind of source.
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You know, I was in an exploration kind of mode.
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Definitely a book that interested me early on was by E.F. Schumacher.
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This is not a part of the Marxist or communist canon.
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This is written by a sort of mainstream or maybe kind of lefty economist.
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But I found it to be very kind of freeing in terms of its outlook.
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And that was one of the works that kind of set me on the path of discovery.
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I had a lot of dissatisfaction with a kind of mainstream economics, which seemed to me
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And that it didn't seem to connect with the kind of real problems that seemed to be happening all around us.
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And so I didn't understand, like, why was that the case?
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And but then when I would read other things, I was like, oh, OK, well, you hear they're talking about real stuff.
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Yeah. So that was sort of the beginning for me.
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So so if I'm doing the math right, 14 years old.
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Milton Friedman is probably all over the place.
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So is it fair to say, like, it was maybe Friedman is on Phil Donahue and they're debating Nader, Ralph Nader.
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And some of that stuff just didn't sit well with you.
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Would you say Friedman was one of the guys that you didn't agree with?
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Well, yeah, I mean, Friedman is somebody I studied later and somebody who certainly casts a long shadow in the field, in the culture as a whole.
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So definitely, you know, an important intellectual figure in terms of, you know, what we could call the rise of neoliberalism or the the neoclassical counterrevolution that occurs.
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Because, you know, what happens, of course, in the postwar era is that Keynesian economics becomes really the dominant form of economic theory.
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And its focus is how can the state manage and regulate capitalism to to the benefit of society?
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And Friedman and the Chicago school really systematically attacked Keynesian theory in favor of, you know, a stripped down kind of free market.
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And that's the that's the neoliberal kind of philosophy, right, that the state should have a very minimal role in the economy.
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And and they were, I think, broadly speaking, successful at, you know, kind of moving the pendulum back towards a much more free market or classical liberal or neoliberal kind of position.
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Got it. And by the way, just out of curiosity, if you and I were in 10th grade together, who were you in 10th grade?
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You know, I had in high school, I was sort of an introvert.
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I did some sports, but they were the sort of nerdy sports.
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You know, I I rode crew and I ran track and, you know, like the sports that nobody cares about.
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I didn't much like, you know, I like I was like athletics, but I didn't like the world of athletics all that much.
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It seemed like it was filled with bullies and douchebags.
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You know, I enjoy competition, but I don't enjoy the putting down of the week.
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You know, I think competition should bring out your best, not be about, you know, putting down somebody else.
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And and so it but I often saw that, you know, in the kind of world of sports.
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And I can see that turning some people off because there's the smack talk and the comparison.
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You know, sometimes maybe you can't compete with somebody else because they have certain abilities.
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Somebody else doesn't have certain features, certain things.
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OK, so I kind of have an idea who you were in high school.
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Coming out of high school, if you were to say like my hero, if I were to say coming out of high school would probably be, I don't know, an Arnold.
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I looked up certain people that were, you know, people I saw, maybe a military leader, somebody like that.
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Who was your hero coming out of high school, like in college?
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Well, probably be someone more like Gandhi, to be honest.
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You know, so, you know, I looked at Gandhi as a figure of national liberation for India, as someone who was very informed by, you know, spiritual experiences, spiritual views, but also took an interest in, you know, real politics and, you know, things like economic development.
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And so, you know, that certainly had a big impact on me as a young person.
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Have you, has there been an evolution to your heroes?
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Is it a, you know, I don't know, maybe a president?
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I don't think I relate as quite so much as I did as a young person to that concept of having a hero, you know?
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I think we are too individualistic about, you know, the role of individuals in terms of history.
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You know, Marxism is focused more on the collective mass of humanity, right?
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And the philosophy of dialectics of overdetermination is about, you know, how we kind of all matter, right?
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Not how, oh, it's just about one great man in history or whatever, you know?
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So, I mean, there's certainly lots of people that I look to and admire and say these are people who made great contributions.
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And let me just drop probably the most controversial one just right out of the gate, and that is Joseph Stalin.
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That's probably why I'm on the show, because I had some viral tweets back in the end of June where, you know, I celebrated the legacy of Stalin.
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And these really sort of took over and started trending on Twitter, and that got me a lot of attention, which has been interesting.
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I bet, you know, what's crazy is I have family members who admire Stalin.
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I mean, you got to realize, my mother's side, the majority of them are communists.
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Their Bible was Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto.
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They admired these men in many different reasons.
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So, imagine an imperialist marrying a communist.
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You know this thing's not going to work out, right?
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The second time they got remarried, I was born.
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So, I'm kind of glad they got divorced twice, not once, because if there's only one divorce, I don't exist.
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So, if you don't mind, I'm going to read the tweet.
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I'm going to read the tweet, and you can unpack it.
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You're not just going to read the initial one, right?
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It's a long one, so I'm going to go through the whole thing.
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The man was neither a savior nor saint, but he was at once a very successful revolutionary, a great contributor to Marxist theory, and said to be a great listener and collaborator during discussions.
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First, the foresight to fear a belligerent German fascism.
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Then, the tactical ability to successfully defeat the world's greatest invading army, combined with the strength to make tough decisions that have no easy answers.
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I simply think one should read everything the man wrote and then make up your own mind.
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I would certainly conclude that he is one of the great leaders of the 20th century, though.
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So, that's what you said, if you don't mind unpacking that.
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That is the one that caused Stalin to trend.
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I think Twitter felt that they had to explain this.
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And then, it said, Dr. Asatar Bayer of Riverside City College has defended Stalin, blah, blah, blah.
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Somebody from Twitter had to try to summarize the situation.
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Yeah, that tweet got something like 20 million impressions.
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And, you know, I wrote this knowing that this would probably be somewhat, let's say, triggering, right?
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You know, we are taught in the United States, because of anti-communist propaganda, you know,
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we're taught that Stalin is just an appalling monster.
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And there's not a single thing that he did that was good.
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You know, we look at the achievements of the Soviet Union.
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And what we find is that the Soviet Union improved the lives of ordinary people more rapidly than any state has ever done in history.
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So, we're talking about two things here, right?
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First, we're talking about a massive expansion in the size of the economy, right?
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And when I say that, I'm talking about conventional measurements.
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Now, there are some differences in terms of how GDP is reckoned in socialist countries and so forth.
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The fact is that socialism under Stalin massively grew the economy more than at any other point in Russian history, right?
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Now, the second thing, GDP doesn't mean that much, though, in terms of how the average person is doing, right?
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Because the size of the economy can grow and we have no idea, you know, where does that wealth go, right?
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Typically, I mean, Marx said, right, the history of hitherto existing society is a history of class struggle.
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That means a small group of people tends to take the lion's share of the wealth of an economy, you know, and this is going back thousands of years, right?
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The wealth went towards improving the average person's life and especially towards improving the lives of the very poorest.
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That is, in fact, at the time, there's no cases of it.
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So before we get into, you know, this debate is carried out about, oh, Stalin murdered this and that, right?
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Okay, look, before we even get into the details, you start with the big picture, you know?
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When you're approaching something from far away, right, you see certain, you know, there's the mountain, right?
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This is the mountain of Soviet socialism, right?
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It's a rapid economic development, A, and B, rapid improvement, very rapid, right?
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History's most rapid improvement in the lives of the ordinary person.
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And I think that is a stupendous accomplishment, you know?
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Now, again, I'm not a fan of the great man theory, right?
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So I'm not saying, oh, Stalin, oh, we worship Stalin, like this, right?
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That's not true for any leader of any modern country, right?
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I mean, you know, what leaders do is supported by millions of people, right?
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So, but we can say, right, Stalin is the leader and in a leadership role, right?
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And so, you know, he has certain responsibility, both positive and negative, right, for what happened under that, you know, 28-year period or so of his leadership.
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And I think it's a huge mistake to look at Soviet history and say, oh, that was an economic failure and, oh, people suffered and whatever.
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Well, look, you know, people suffer in every single society.
00:18:15.500
The fact is the economy grew massively under Stalin, right?
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The economy industrialized quicker than any society ever industrialized.
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And people's lives got a whole lot better, right?
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We can look at that in terms of, you know, the tools that social science has to measure that, right?
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How many babies are dying before age one, right?
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And especially when you're dealing with a relatively poor, mostly agrarian society, a society where 92% of the people work in agriculture, right?
00:19:02.800
I think it's a huge mistake and a huge distortion to allow the anti-communists, most of whom, by the way, are Nazis, to write this history.
00:19:16.300
You said most, you just made a lot of assumptions right there, some would say.
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And you said it in a confident way, which is pretty impressive.
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It's like going up to a girl at a bar and saying, listen, I'm going to be the greatest man you're ever going to take home.
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And she doesn't know until she takes you home.
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Let me go back and measure a few things that you said.
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You know, one, by the way, you know, I've had Richard Wolff on before and we had a great time together.
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It's a good conversation because I think the audience wins.
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So, you know, you said, you know, what it did to the economy, it improved the average person's life.
00:20:02.540
And, you know, yeah, let's not look at the amount of people that died.
00:20:07.460
It's, you know, you have to do what you have to do.
00:20:09.860
And then leadership, there's some negative, there's some positive.
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The part I agree with you, to me, a leader is somebody that gets people to do something they wouldn't do on their own.
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I think a criminal that says, hey, let's go rob the bank.
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If I end up going and robbing a bank with a criminal, that guy was a leader who led me to go rob the bank.
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Now, does that mean he's a good leader or a bad leader?
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I define him as a leader, but it depends what he's leading you to do.
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But to go back and say, you know, improving the average person's life.
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If you, any history book you read, it doesn't matter where you read it.
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Stalin and Lenin are not seen as, you know, heroes.
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Or Mao, the only places that you will read that's positive about them is typically their own country.
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Or somebody that's maybe favoring them that was from their lineage that, you know, says good things about them.
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But the biggest challenge with communism for me, and I want to kind of focus on this.
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And we can go any different angle you want to go.
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So, who is the government to determine what improving means to me?
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Maybe I want to build my life at a different scale.
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Communism's basic foundation is force, and I know what's good for you.
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Now, you're going to disagree with that, so I want to know where you're going to go with disagreeing that.
00:21:42.020
Because I don't think communism exists without a level of force.
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I would say, I would agree with everything that you said, but we have to change the term communism to capitalism.
00:21:54.200
It is capitalism, which gives us no choices, right?
00:22:01.860
You cannot have freedom if you have nothing, okay?
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So, now when I say the average person has nothing, what does that mean, right?
00:22:08.100
It means, how much liquid wealth does that person have, right?
00:22:12.240
Okay, so if we look at 90% of Americans, and, you know, richest country in the world, right?
00:22:28.560
Now, even if when we start approaching the top 10%, that answer does start to change, right?
00:22:33.560
So, the top 10% has wealth, but when we look at how much wealth they possess, almost all of it is illiquid, right?
00:22:40.940
So, almost all of the average person's wealth is in the form of their home, right?
00:22:51.700
But this is not wealth that you can use, right?
00:22:54.200
Because the most you can do with that wealth is you can borrow against it, right?
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So, if you try and use it, you have an immediate problem, which is, where do you live, you know?
00:23:07.340
Does the wealth that you have, even if you're at the 85th percentile or whatever, right?
00:23:12.880
Even if you're sort of near the top of the income distribution under capitalism, does it allow you to stop working and do whatever you want, right?
00:23:22.100
Imagine if you could do whatever you thought would make you the most happy and be of the greatest benefit to humanity, right?
00:23:37.020
And I can say this as a pretty privileged position, right?
00:23:39.900
I mean, like, you know, people can look up my income if they want.
00:23:42.960
You know, my critics do this sometimes on Twitter, you know?
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And they say, look at this communist who's all privileged and a high income and whatever, right?
00:23:49.740
Like one shouldn't or something as a PhD college professor, right?
00:23:54.980
You know, the point is, right, even if you're doing well on the income ladder, you probably have almost no wealth, right?
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And if you do have some, do you have enough that allows you to live off the proceeds and do whatever you want?
00:24:11.180
The answer is no, except unless you're in the top 1%, right?
00:24:21.040
I think freedom means you get to control your time.
00:24:26.820
I mean, that's the most precious resource that we have, right?
00:24:33.760
So you said everything you said I agree with, except I would replace communism with capitalism.
00:24:42.460
The average person, you know, wealth is measured based on liquid savings, not based on the income
00:24:51.920
Do you think it's the choice of the individual on how they spend their money?
00:24:56.560
And do you think there are people that are better with their money than versus those who
00:25:01.280
are not good with their money on how they spend their money?
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Like when you say, I'm a PhD and you're making good income, you earned the right to do that.
00:25:12.920
I think you, whatever you're making, whether it's 120, 150, 200, I haven't looked up your
00:25:18.080
If you have the discipline to go, I haven't looked up your income, but if you have the
00:25:22.500
But if you have the discipline to go get a PhD and you were a thought leader professor,
00:25:26.800
if the market pays you good money, more power to you.
00:25:29.340
But I think that that's more based on the choice of the individual on how they spend
00:25:34.100
I got guys in my, in sales that make a half a million dollars a year and they're killing
00:25:40.660
They got a hundred thousand dollars in savings because they had four Lambos for what?
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Then I got guys that make $78,000 a year and I got $2 million in savings.
00:25:51.440
So that argument gets stopped based on the habit of the individual on what they do with
00:25:56.860
No, not at all, because, you know, in order to, in order to have the ability to save at
00:26:02.160
that level, you have to have income at that level, you know, like let's not act like the
00:26:06.960
average person makes 78K or 200K or 500K, right?
00:26:11.080
That's not, those are not average incomes, right?
00:26:14.220
So, you know, the, the, if we want to talk about who is average, we need to talk about median
00:26:21.320
So the median household income in the United States, right?
00:26:26.760
So that includes every member of the household, right?
00:26:29.600
So there's about a little over two members of the household on average, right?
00:26:33.300
In the United States, 160 or so million households.
00:26:37.100
So the average is about, you know, about 60K, right?
00:26:39.540
So that means half make below that and half above that, right?
00:26:44.200
Now, income is not the whole story though, right?
00:26:47.520
Now, well, I should just say, just to finish that point, right?
00:26:50.620
We are dealing with masses of people who don't really have the option to save because their,
00:26:57.360
their cost of living is so high relative to their, to their income, right?
00:27:03.000
And because rents have been rising much faster than incomes have, right?
00:27:09.300
I mean, these are the, the constant problems of capitalism.
00:27:13.580
Capitalism has such an emphasis on employment, but does it guarantee everyone a job?
00:27:21.440
Even under good times, you have millions of people who are looking for work and can't
00:27:25.900
Do you, how much of it do you think is on the individual to increase their market value?
00:27:30.920
Well, individuals can certainly do that, right?
00:27:33.540
You can, I mean, I, I'm sort of in the business of encouraging people to do that, right?
00:27:46.720
I mean, I think it's, it's sort of cruel to tell everyone, uh, Hey, listen, we've got
00:27:59.700
Maybe you could say, look, you kind of eat a little too much and you put on too much weight.
00:28:04.820
Maybe discipline yourself a little bit so you can have stamina a little bit more.
00:28:07.800
You can say, you know, what's wrong with us saying, look, instead of watching Netflix
00:28:12.680
all day and playing video games, maybe spend that same amount of time learning a new skill
00:28:25.380
Because we need to look at the fact it's like, it's like musical chairs, right?
00:28:29.340
Musical chairs, the whole point of the game is there's not enough chairs, right?
00:28:32.980
It wouldn't be much of a game if when the music stopped, everybody had a place to sit down.
00:28:40.200
But our economy is not that different from musical chairs, right?
00:28:43.520
I mean, like, there's always going to be millions of people unemployed.
00:28:47.040
I mean, we can look at the lowest unemployment figures in the series, right?
00:28:53.120
It translates into several million people unemployed.
00:28:57.060
Every 1% of unemployment is 1.6 million people or thereabouts, right?
00:29:01.780
So you always have millions of people unemployed, even in the richest capitalist nations.
00:29:09.780
You just hope that you hustle hard enough and it's not you.
00:29:16.620
Because we are saying, look, somebody always has to suffer, right?
00:29:29.520
Do you feel they have to contribute to society and where they're living today?
00:29:47.140
I think when you say that, you mean in a formal employment capacity.
00:29:54.220
For example, the part I agree with is when somebody's coming up, like, listen, you got
00:29:59.600
to kind of give me an opportunity to kind of build myself up.
00:30:02.680
And then like, you know, the culture of Middle Eastern culture, you know, sometimes in America,
00:30:07.100
it's like, you turn 18, go figure it out on your own versus, hey, listen, let me give
00:30:11.540
you a little bit of a head start and then go and do your thing, you know?
00:30:14.880
But some may go out and be independent at 18 and never come back, but some may go at 28,
00:30:24.220
But to think that an individual doesn't have to contribute to society, isn't that a miserable
00:30:32.540
life to not have any way to contribute positively to the world?
00:30:41.420
I think there's a lot of dignity and nobility in labor, right?
00:30:47.100
And we have been given a wrong picture of labor by capitalism, in fact, right?
00:30:52.820
We think of labor as work, as toil, as trouble.
00:30:57.320
I mean, it's, this is all through the economics literature, by the way, right?
00:31:08.360
So, you know, these are ideas about labor that says labor is intrinsically unpleasant,
00:31:21.320
I think there's two different versions of that, okay?
00:31:25.280
There's one version of that, which is a kind of capitalist version that says, yeah, look,
00:31:30.160
work doesn't have to be shitty, but it will be if it's low wage.
0.80
00:31:33.960
So don't be stuck in a low wage, shitty kind of job, right?
0.87
00:31:39.920
The Marxist version says no work is shitty, right?
00:31:43.300
What makes work crappy is the exploitation, the alienation, the low wages, the precarity,
00:31:52.860
Is your wage actually going to even keep up with the cost of living, right?
00:32:00.940
People say, well, who's going to pick up the garbage?
00:32:03.240
This is a funny one to me because people that pick up the garbage, this tends to be a pretty
00:32:09.160
Like, you know, sanitation workers have good unions.
00:32:16.800
Lots of people would be very happy to have a good job as a sanitation worker, right?
00:32:22.660
So, you know, people always say this to me under socialism, right?
00:32:30.420
People want to be of service to society as long as they are getting their needs met, right?
00:32:36.620
There are no unpleasant kinds of jobs, but there are ways of structuring them that make
00:32:42.200
them crappier or make them better, depending on how their structure is.
0.95
00:32:45.980
So then what you're saying is, what you're saying is, there are some shitty capitalists,
0.98
00:32:57.220
All they care about is themselves, and they don't treat their employees right.
00:33:01.140
Who do you think of when you think of a capitalist like that?
00:33:08.100
You're going to bring up probably, I don't know, who are you going to say?
00:33:15.160
I mean, those guys definitely get a lot of friends.
00:33:16.880
I have to tell you, because the way I see it is in the following way.
00:33:25.700
I got a lot of friends that we have political differences.
00:33:28.220
I mean, we have a podcast with a guy we don't see either on politics.
00:33:55.220
We're probably going to have a long-term relationship together, friendship together,
00:33:59.840
We don't have to agree on everything, but we're going to.
00:34:01.720
But if I treat you shitty, if I betray you, if I disrespect your kids or your family, we're
00:34:09.160
probably not going to be friends for too long because you're not going to put up with it.
00:34:13.440
And I don't think 99.9% of people will put up with it.
00:34:20.940
The market who is filled with people who make their money and they become arrogant and mistreat
00:34:26.960
people, they're the ones that make others who take care of their employees well, their clients
00:34:35.060
So you almost need a little bit of that to get somebody to say, you know what?
00:34:38.780
I got to tell you, I used to work at John's place, man.
0.99
00:34:45.500
Every time I've done well, she's given me a raise.
00:34:49.900
She's given me plenty of when I had my two kids, I had my leave time.
00:34:56.800
But I think the bad makes the look, makes the good a win.
00:35:00.680
Because, you know, like a lot of times on the socialist side or the communist side,
00:35:06.560
And like Sanders will go after him or AOC will go after him.
00:35:10.320
He doesn't take care of his people and he treats them like shit and all this other stuff.
1.00
00:35:28.220
In capitalism, if you work for a shitty boss or a shitty company, you can leave them to
0.98
00:35:40.080
Let's say you don't have the money to leave a job, you know?
00:35:42.340
Let's say you don't have any savings because you're a low-wage worker, right?
00:35:48.720
Well, because you come from a poor family, you know?
00:35:57.840
Now, you could say, okay, hustle harder, you guys.
00:36:02.120
You know, hustling harder is going to work for a few people.
00:36:09.060
It is better than the brutal system of feudalism.
00:36:12.960
It's better than the brutal system of slavery that preceded it.
00:36:17.280
And Marxists are, you know, very willing to admit that.
00:36:21.900
Like, are we trying to return to the corrupt monarchies of the past?
00:36:31.560
It's a great thing that humanity has abolished slavery.
00:36:38.880
But are we going to celebrate a system of exploitation that requires, that needs, and
00:36:45.000
that will always create a low-wage group which is on the edge of subsistence and cannot develop
00:36:55.500
Because how can one, right, when almost every waking moment goes to enriching somebody else,
00:37:04.960
I mean, you know, you could celebrate for me the relatively small number of forward-thinking,
00:37:17.240
There are, you know, you know who gets a lot of press is this guy, Dan Price.
00:37:27.360
They'll pay the workers well and they'll do well.
00:37:30.220
And yeah, you know, this is, this is an enlightened capitalism, right?
00:37:40.300
They make life better than it would be otherwise, but it's still a brutal system.
00:37:44.140
You know, like when I say capitalism doesn't guarantee you a job, that's true.
00:37:52.380
So this is why we have over half a million homeless people in the United States.
00:38:00.940
It generates poverty because it concentrates wealth in a few hands.
00:38:06.460
I mean, are there times where societies decide to go against that for whatever reason?
00:38:12.080
But they are at constant risk of getting undone.
00:38:16.300
The places that have nationalized health care, let's take Britain, for example,
00:38:20.740
their health care system is quite beleaguered, right?
00:38:25.520
Because capitalists don't want to pay for it, right?
00:38:27.460
Because it benefits everyone rather than benefiting a select few.
00:38:31.480
Capitalism is all about generating mechanisms that redistribute wealth toward the rich.
00:38:37.520
And then lying to us and telling us that's for the average person.
00:38:44.580
So, by the way, Dan Price, do you agree with his philosophy or no?
00:38:50.120
Well, he's trying to be a good capitalist employer.
00:38:53.280
I think it's better to be a good capitalist employer than to be a bad capitalist employer,
00:38:58.040
Yeah, I mean, the part when I asked him, I said, so at the company, he pays everybody
00:39:03.240
I think he had some issues with his brother, lawsuit, family.
00:39:12.400
I said, that means you own a $100 million company.
00:39:18.320
His people are working for him, but he owns all the equity.
00:39:21.000
So it's not like he's given the shares of the company.
00:39:23.260
So if your position, I applaud you for sticking to your position of where you are.
00:39:28.280
So the question, what's more important, living out my purpose and ambitions or living a safe
00:39:43.600
I don't know what you can say to that to an individual, right?
00:39:47.660
Like, you know, should you not be allowed to live out your purpose?
00:39:53.320
But should somebody starve so that you can do that, right?
00:40:01.280
We need a system that truly frees people to uncover themselves and achieve, right?
00:40:09.140
To be who they can be, to develop their potential, right?
00:40:13.240
Think of the millions of people who are systematically denied that opportunity, right?
00:40:23.180
At any given moment, okay, there are 850 million hungry people in the world right now, right?
00:40:31.360
And 9 million of them will ultimately starve, right?
00:40:40.580
There's another 3.5 million people that die from lack of access to clean water.
00:40:44.520
So are you going to tell me that you can achieve your potential in life when you don't even
00:40:51.880
I mean, what happens when a person doesn't have clean water?
00:40:57.740
I mean, they're much more likely, not everyone, right?
00:41:02.360
There's a lot of ways you can die from drinking dirty water, right?
00:41:05.840
Another million and a half people die just because they don't get
00:41:12.940
So I would say capitalism kills 14 million people each and every year.
00:41:27.440
Let me make the connection for you if you're interested.
00:41:32.860
So what capitalism does, again, concentrates resources in a few hands, okay?
00:41:43.360
This is when capitalism conquered the world, okay?
00:41:48.060
Now, some of it had already been conquered at this point, right?
00:41:52.120
China, you know, is subjugated, never fully colonized.
00:41:59.000
This is a period of time where a lot of the world's land changes hands, okay?
00:42:05.660
It goes from indigenous control to European control, control under a few hands.
00:42:11.880
You end up with African countries in which 80% of the land is owned by the colonizers,
00:42:18.920
Now people want to tell me that has nothing to do with starvation today.
00:42:27.760
Well, it was caused by the competition among the capitalist powers for resources, for markets
00:42:35.020
to get access to those commodities and keep out their competition, right?
00:42:40.960
It emerges inexorably from the logic of capitalism.
00:42:45.040
The world that has been created, the world that we see today, is the product of that, right?
00:42:50.300
So that structural cruelty is inseparable from the system and will never be undone by capitalism,
00:42:58.280
By the way, you know, that part, the only way that kind of cruelty is possible is with
00:43:10.200
So for me, if that did happen, I guarantee you the government was involved.
00:43:16.720
You cannot create a monopoly without the help of a government.
00:43:20.320
It's mathematically impossible to have a monopoly without the help of a government, to have
00:43:24.340
some lobbyists come behind closed doors and help you out.
00:43:27.000
But I'm going to go a different direction with you on this.
00:43:30.040
So I asked the question at the beginning, what's more important, pursuing my purpose, ambition,
00:43:36.820
Just a guaranteed safe life to make sure everybody else is happy.
00:43:39.480
And everybody else living a safe life becomes more important than my own desires that I have.
00:43:45.900
Let's just say right now, we got a 22-year-old kid that's watching this conversation.
00:43:58.440
And he's sitting there saying, okay, doctor's got a degree.
00:44:07.720
He doesn't have an eight-year, not an MBA, not a PhD, not a four-year, not an associate.
00:44:11.840
He just went in the military, came out, went into a business, and he's done well for himself
00:44:17.000
This kid that's watching this has the choice and the capacity to go be the next Bezos and
00:44:28.180
And he's in there where he has that kind of drive and intellect to be able to pull it
00:44:35.740
If he goes and does this, in the next 20 years, Doc, he's going to create 1.3 million jobs,
00:44:48.600
That means they created the market 1.3 million jobs.
00:44:51.000
Or he can choose to go out there and become a major loyalist to Marxist and communistic
00:44:59.860
philosophies, go into school, become a professor, and educate people on why capitalism is cruel
00:45:12.460
The guy that gives 20 years to build an incredible company that creates 1.3 million jobs?
00:45:16.100
Or the guy that goes out there and says, capitalism sucks and communism is the way to go?
00:45:25.660
I think if we're dreaming, I would like to see the Marxist figure be more of a revolutionary,
00:45:39.760
Do you think the world's a better place if this kid chooses to become the next Karl Marx
00:45:45.320
Well, we have to distinguish between these figures, these historical figures, right?
00:45:50.660
If we say, what are the results that Marx generated for people's lives?
00:45:57.620
Marx was never in a position to do any policy, right?
00:46:00.140
So now Stalin, that's a different story, right?
00:46:02.660
Stalin is actually the leader of the Soviet Union, right?
00:46:05.060
So, and he is in a position to have an impact on ordinary people's lives.
00:46:08.560
And he did have an impact on ordinary people's lives, right?
00:46:11.180
So these are very different figures historically, right?
00:46:14.340
We have to distinguish between a theoretician, right?
00:46:20.260
The theory affects our understanding of the world, right?
00:46:39.580
Now, look, generating 1.3 million jobs is not the unambiguous good that you're making
00:46:45.880
The question is, what's the nature of those jobs, right?
00:46:51.320
I could create 1 million internships for you right now.
00:47:06.040
They're just paid at a starvation level of wages, right?
00:47:14.200
Well, that's not what the Amazon workers say, is it?
00:47:18.500
Listen, the part that you're right is when the complaints come about breaks, and other
00:47:26.960
But if we have to choose between the two, you're saying, without a debate, Stalin would be better
0.97
00:47:37.460
And the historical record is very, very clear on that, right?
00:47:41.260
Now, look, how long were people living in the Soviet Union under the czar, right?
00:47:46.160
The life expectancy in the Soviet Union was about 40 years, right?
00:47:54.540
So what it means is, let's take everybody who died, okay?
00:48:12.020
And that shows you that this is a pretty brutal society, okay?
00:48:15.660
So Stalin improved that by about 30 years, right?
00:48:20.260
This is almost a doubling in life expectancy, and it's occurred in a very short period of
00:48:33.180
What happened was massive investment in healthcare, right?
00:48:37.100
We're talking about training thousands and thousands of doctors, building hospitals where
00:48:49.700
Well, let's get to the cost in a moment, right?
00:48:51.620
We're just on the positive side of the ledger right now, right?
00:48:56.640
And the answer is, there is no question that that saved lives.
00:49:01.140
And we're talking about lives on a grand scale, okay?
00:49:04.580
So this is a nation of about 160 million people, okay?
00:49:08.860
So when we say that life expectancy on average increased by about three decades, how many years
00:49:25.940
Now, people say, oh, maybe the czar could have done that.
00:49:32.020
There is, in fact, no capitalist nation that has seen that kind of increase in that span
00:49:43.960
Now, if we want to get into, okay, Stalin killed millions, that's a detailed argument.
00:49:52.380
Let's get into it, because now we're on the negative side, right?
00:50:05.800
The biggest charge against Stalin is that Stalin intentionally caused a famine in the Ukraine
00:50:18.040
And, you know, this has been propagated, you know, since about the 1930s, so since about
00:50:25.540
the time that it happened, not shortly after, right?
00:50:29.660
And it was, the story was originally created by Hearst, right?
00:50:35.820
Hearst sent this guy named Thomas Walker, okay, to the Soviet Union to go and observe,
00:50:47.400
Because we know we have his train tickets and stuff, right?
00:50:50.060
He never went to the Ukraine, came back and told a story which Hearst was very willing
00:50:57.920
And then they used pictures that were from the Volga famine.
00:51:04.220
And I mean, you know, they, they, so they used a bunch of misleading pictures, right?
00:51:08.700
And tried to cook up this narrative that said the Soviets intentionally starved Ukraine.
00:51:17.580
What the Soviets wanted to do was to rapidly industrialize and they knew they had to increase
00:51:23.660
There is no logical basis for any Soviet official anywhere ever wanting to damage agricultural
00:51:33.320
Their entire, their entire focus was increasing it, right?
00:51:52.960
When the famine began, the Soviets shipped them grain.
00:52:01.880
Oh, we happen to be exporting grain so that we can get foreign exchange to industrialize
00:52:08.900
There's never been any kind of good argument that said the Soviets intentionally, or let alone
00:52:19.700
The Soviets ended the problem with famine, which had a long history in Russia.
00:52:32.620
I haven't been able to travel the world because of...
00:52:42.580
Oh, I didn't realize that they distributed airline tickets on the basis of your appearance.
00:52:48.840
You think I'm good looking enough to be able to go to Russia?
00:52:56.520
You know how it is when you have a family and you have kids and you have a house and
00:53:00.720
If I love the country as much as you love Russia, shit, I'd go live there.
1.00
00:53:09.740
Russia is not currently a socialist country, though.
00:53:13.580
Would you rather live in a capitalistic country or a communistic country?
00:53:21.400
You know, I don't like this question because I feel like it presupposes that the world works
00:53:28.340
You just move wherever in the world makes you the most happy.
00:53:38.300
No, no, for those who want freedom and they want to avoid force.
1.00
00:53:41.500
Shit, I didn't come to America to be rich.
1.00
00:53:46.260
We lived in Germany at a refugee camp for two years.
00:53:53.340
After Jimmy Carter pushed out the Shah, saying the fact that Khomeini was going to give everybody
0.99
00:53:58.160
free housing, free food, free rice, free phones, free TV.
00:54:01.300
He came and he killed half a million people's lives.
00:54:05.760
I mean, it was a treacherous type of an environment.
00:54:08.260
My mother's family escaped Armenia and Russia and Baku to come to Iran because of what Lenin,
0.97
00:54:19.360
Like, so for you to say people come only for money.
00:54:22.440
No, man, we came here because I can tell somebody, my mom, I was an atheist for 25 years.
00:54:27.720
I don't believe in God for 25 years because the stuff I saw, it's very hard to believe
00:54:31.440
If a God really exists, why the hell would he make this kind of stuff happen?
00:54:35.020
But we couldn't tell people we were Christians.
00:54:40.460
You know, my mother couldn't go out there and have the kind of career that men have here.
1.00
00:54:45.800
Women were forced to be able to marry a man that's 40 years their age at eight years old,
0.99
00:54:53.160
So when you say why people leave, it's just for money.
00:54:56.160
No, people go to places because that country's values and principles match theirs.
00:55:01.640
I didn't come to America because I wanted handouts.
00:55:07.500
We came here because I just wanted to be able to say, hey, doc, what?
00:55:27.180
And nor am I saying that you guys left because of money or whatever.
00:55:32.280
I said that the rich have the option to go wherever in the world they'd like to go.
00:55:41.700
And no doubt you guys suffered in the way that refugees suffered.
1.00
00:55:50.320
Unless you're very rich, in which case it's easy.
00:55:57.400
I lived in a two-bedroom apartment complex with my mom and dad and my dad left at 5 a.m.,
00:56:05.980
I don't like that kind of stuff because I don't want you to feel bad for me.
00:56:11.400
All I'm saying to you is none of your values and principles that you admire are any of those
00:56:20.120
How could you live in a country that doesn't match any of your values and principles?
00:56:27.860
If I go, I could talk in front of a giant stadium full of Republicans.
00:56:40.500
I'd say, how many of you are proud of the work that you do, right?
00:56:46.180
How many of you do you think everybody should have a job?
00:56:50.200
Everybody who wants to work should have a job.
0.57
00:56:53.260
Is there anything more American than working hard and being proud of what you do, right?
00:57:02.200
Well, those are the values of the United States.
00:57:07.640
I mean, and yet we have this dream in the United States that if we get rich enough and if we succeed, then we can do what?
00:57:16.660
I mean, when you win the lottery, oh, look, now I'm going to kick back and go in a hammock and do nothing, right?
00:57:30.500
It was perhaps the most difficult thing that I did in my young life.
00:57:34.780
You know what happens when I see a guy that got a PhD?
00:57:43.240
I see somebody with a PhD and I say, this guy must have freaking put a shitload of hours into reading and studying and improving.
00:57:50.440
Probably had to say no to a lot of parties.
0.79
00:57:53.600
He probably partied a little bit, but I think he had to say no to a lot of them.
00:57:59.520
He probably had a lot of Friday nights and Saturdays and Sundays while everybody else was going kicking back.
00:58:18.960
No, dude, I'm going to study for this test that's coming up.
00:58:34.280
I think I'm a historically good wingman, but I think you would also be a good wingman.
00:58:39.180
The point I'm trying to make to you is you busted your ass to get your PhD.
1.00
00:58:43.920
How about the guy that partied instead of wanting to bust his ass?
1.00
00:58:54.780
Everyone should have a decent life just by, but just by virtue of being alive and being
00:59:01.240
That means everyone should have food, clothing, shelter.
00:59:08.100
What if I, some people are, unfortunately, right?
00:59:17.760
Just like we have a very broadly shared understanding right now.
00:59:23.920
You know, I mean, ask a thousand people, you get a thousand people who will agree with
00:59:37.640
Communists know that communism is pure slavery.
00:59:41.600
Well, now we're, now we're just mixing up terms.
00:59:46.680
You better ask a thousand workers under capitalism.
00:59:56.900
I think you're going to get pretty strong agreement on that.
01:00:03.980
If David right now comes and tells me, screw you, Patrick, you're the worst boss ever.
1.00
01:00:14.440
What I'm trying to tell you is what can I honestly do to David?
01:00:22.020
If in a communistic regime, he comes and puts his finger at the boss and says, screw you.
0.99
01:00:41.420
Let's just not, you know, it's, it's just, it's just.
01:00:51.560
You know what I appreciate about you is the following.
01:00:54.480
Here's what I appreciate about you is you have your own thoughts on believing the data that
01:01:05.820
a Stalin's regime would give you to say, that's the data on how things got better.
01:01:11.640
For somebody that is an intellect like you, who's read way more books than I have and knows history,
01:01:22.860
And I have you on to get your perspective on it.
01:01:26.460
Does not every government have similar motivations to lie about the numbers?
01:01:30.780
I mean, doesn't the United States have similar motivations to make itself look good by lying
01:01:35.360
The only difference we have here, here's the only difference.
01:01:40.220
When Trump was running and he made a lot of hay out of this, he said, the official unemployment
01:01:50.600
You just validated my point I was about to make to you.
01:01:59.040
They say, yeah, COVID came and it left and we're freaking partying our asses up.
01:02:11.700
But I tell you, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, you're not welcome into China.
01:02:15.780
And if somebody posts a video on any of those platforms, let me tell you, we're coming
01:02:20.100
Jack Knoll gets up there and gives a speech, an anti-government speech by this much.
01:02:26.320
How the hell does a guy worth $60 billion that created a bunch of jobs disappear?
01:02:32.640
Their Bezos disappeared just because they made a comment against the government.
01:02:39.020
You can get up today and talk shit about Biden.
0.99
01:02:43.740
You can get up there and talk shit about Trump.
0.99
01:02:48.140
Try getting up there and talk shit about Xi Jinping in China.
0.99
01:02:50.700
You have a job at the cemetery and it's six feet under.
1.00
01:02:53.960
You cannot talk shit over there or in Russia.
0.99
01:02:59.720
So why don't they believe in freedom of speech?
01:03:02.820
Why don't we have Facebook, YouTube, Twitter over there?
01:03:06.400
Why don't they go Facebook Live so we can see what's going on in China?
01:03:08.920
Well, you have to understand the history of China, right?
01:03:12.880
China is a long-established civilization that was very severely humiliated and basically
01:03:26.880
It did not deign to conquer the entire territory, but it shaved off the part that it wanted, right?
01:03:34.620
And it got the policies that it wanted that came out of the opium wars.
01:03:42.220
So, and, you know, this caused, I mean, you know, this is part of a whole string of different
01:03:46.940
defeats and humiliations in the early 20th century, right?
01:03:50.240
That led to, you know, the downfall of the Qing dynasty and the warlord period and Chinese
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01:03:58.760
This is China just saying to the capitalist powers of the world, just saying, no, right?
01:04:19.800
They say, we are going to bring you the fuck down by any means necessary.
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We're going to bring you down through infiltration.
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01:04:27.120
We will bring you down through planting people inside your government.
01:04:32.780
We will create an entire organization called Radio Free Asia, right?
01:04:36.680
Just designed to spread lies and propaganda, right?
01:04:39.800
So does China ban a few, as many of these things as they can?
01:04:51.120
If there was a massive, hugely funded Chinese effort to spread propaganda in the United States,
01:05:09.540
Do you think that, I don't know how familiar you are with Radio Free Asia.
01:05:12.940
Radio Free Asia is a completely propaganda outfit.
01:05:18.280
Do you think that TikTok is equivalent to Radio Free Asia as a propaganda mechanism, or
01:05:24.520
do you not know enough about these things to say, or do you have a sense?
01:05:28.960
I have a sense of the fact that in China, you don't have freedom of speech like we got
01:05:33.880
In America, if you disagree with Trump, you can go out there and talk about it.
01:05:40.780
You cannot do that in the USSR that you love.
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There's plenty of criticism of the Communist Party.
01:05:52.200
You think during a Stalin era, I can say things about Stalin and get away with it?
01:06:04.400
What if I just start to, behind closed doors campaign, and I say, hey, I want to run as
01:06:08.860
an opposition against you, and I want to run as a Democrat.
01:06:15.480
You can run against anybody as long as it's in the Communist Party, right?
01:06:20.900
Well, because there's a long history of capitalist powers funding oppositional candidates, right?
01:06:27.280
Trying to bring down the system, again, through a million different means.
01:06:34.640
intervention, you will find an unbelievably long list of dirty tricks, right?
01:06:39.940
These dirty tricks have been used everywhere to bring down governments that are democratically
01:06:44.640
I'm never going to defend a, you know, like the Taliban against the Afghanistan war.
01:06:53.260
Listen, if you go out there and get involved in everyone's business, and then you all of
01:06:58.100
a sudden want to step away, I'm sorry, America, but you're going to create a lot of enemies.
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War involvement in a lot of different business.
01:07:04.320
You and I are probably going to agree on that part because some of this stuff, when I was
01:07:07.860
in Iran and they hated U.S. and they would scream Matic battle on recall, like death upon
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But what I'm saying to you is all of those tactics, fair.
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But dude, in America, you and I can get up and talk.
01:07:23.280
In America, you can be a professor at Riverside, you know, City College, and you're a full-on
01:07:35.520
Yeah, but do you know how many people are surprised by that?
01:07:38.020
I mean, take a guess at how many have called for my job publicly out of those Stalin remarks,
01:07:45.260
You know, like how powerful a person do you think it would take to get me fired?
01:07:57.020
You know, in fact, I'm staking my livelihood on that.
01:08:02.160
Do you think a congressperson could get me fired?
01:08:09.500
You know, I used to work at a different university, the University of Southern Maine, and their
01:08:13.400
president fired 100 out of 400 tenured faculty members, some of them right near retirement.
01:08:21.800
I mean, listen, if the president of the United States is silenced by Twitter, you could get
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So, you know, if the president could get fired, you can definitely get fired.
01:08:29.720
But, you know, the left has a monopoly in education.
01:08:33.460
You know, 13 for one, professors lean to the left and to the right.
01:08:39.940
All I'm saying from my end is, think about it this way.
01:08:43.920
This is a pro-entrepreneurship, pro-capitalism YouTube channel.
01:08:51.700
Do you know these are my favorite conversations?
01:08:54.340
I think you like good conversations with people who are going to push back a little bit
01:08:58.520
because that's what creates fire in terms of the discourse, right?
01:09:06.780
No, for me, you know who wins in this conversation?
01:09:15.960
The audience is going to go walk away and say, listen, I agree with what he said in
01:09:20.800
this side, and I agree with you, Pat, what you said on the following side.
01:09:26.900
I can go a couple of different things here, but I'll give you any final positions you want
01:09:33.580
I mean, one of the things I wouldn't mind reading, because we haven't yet, we can wrap
01:09:38.260
We got 14 more minutes and then we'll wrap up, is Mao.
01:09:46.600
So you said you tweeted support for Chinese dictator Mao, describing him as one of the
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You call him the greatest revolutionary leaders of all time.
01:10:06.620
Well, yeah, Mao is an incredibly important figure, you know, in terms of China, but also
01:10:11.580
in terms of the history of Marxism and communism.
01:10:15.600
You know, I mean, we what we have here, if we look at the long historical frame, right,
01:10:21.640
OK, so since, you know, the development of kind of modern Marxism, the Communist Manifesto,
01:10:33.380
Now, at the time, there's no socialist countries at all.
01:10:40.020
Europe is emerging out of feudalism and it's making a kind of the final transition away
01:10:46.320
from the feudal aristocracy and toward, you know, liberal bourgeois kind of democracies
01:10:54.120
So socialism at the time is highly theoretical, you know.
01:10:59.300
And, you know, that's why you have this relatively long document, right, the Communist
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And it has to say, like, here's what we mean by it, because the term is being used by lots
01:11:12.680
But when we get to by the time we get to like 1949, the time of the Chinese Revolution, we're
01:11:21.080
Right now, we've we've had successful socialist revolutions.
01:11:27.220
That the Chinese Communist Party can study this and say, what did we think has worked and
01:11:35.680
Now, they are a little bit off the map in terms of, you know, Marx had predicted that the contradictions
01:11:43.360
of capitalism would cause workers to get together and say, hey, we have some similar interests
01:11:49.860
I mean, we're all working for a wage and our employers would like to pay us less.
01:11:57.120
They'd like to work longer so that they can have more profits.
01:12:03.760
Our interest is, look, the wealth that we produce should go to us.
01:12:10.180
And so Marxist thought that the revolution would occur in the most developed capitalist
01:12:15.380
Now, what a surprise it was to find that wasn't true.
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They occurred in the least developed, like the the least.
01:12:22.360
I mean, Russia is the least developed capitalist country, capitalist slash feudal country in
01:12:33.060
It has a little bit in the cities, but is, again, mostly an agrarian country.
01:12:39.180
Mao works with the peasantry, lives with the peasants for 20 years.
01:12:51.240
To see a leader that emerges from constant contact with the poorest people in the society.
01:12:59.260
Now, these are people who are exhausted by warfare.
01:13:04.320
You know, they had internal fighting for decades and decades and decades.
01:13:08.580
And so their peasants are familiar at the time with what do armies do when they come
01:13:20.500
I mean, like, do they make your lives better in any way?
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You know, the only thing that you can say that they do positively is they're fighting
01:13:30.160
against another power that's trying to take you over.
01:13:35.400
So and this is the time when when Mao and the communists really start to become popular.
01:13:41.580
They're fighting this war against this, you know, the Kuomintang.
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That the differences between these two different armies.
01:13:54.600
So we have the we have the KMT and we have the Red Army.
01:13:58.600
But Mao is insists on a different kind of conduct for his soldiers.
01:14:06.720
So we have to treat people much differently than any army has ever treated people, because
01:14:17.240
And, you know, like we have to be different than that.
01:14:24.960
The Red Army goes from having something like 40,000 troops to having a four million.
01:14:33.940
Because so not only does he treat people ethically.
01:14:38.780
I mean, even if you have if you have 40,000, an army of 40,000, that's small relative to
01:14:43.120
the KMT, but that's still a lot more power than any peasant has.
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So you can do whatever the fuck you want in that situation.
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Mao treated people very, very fairly because he saw it as like these are the people that
01:15:03.520
Most most guerrilla fighters are incredibly unethical.
01:15:07.360
You know, like they mostly do whatever the hell they want.
01:15:10.120
Now, then we could say, what did Mao do when he was in power?
01:15:13.420
What Mao did when he was in power is a very similar to Stalin.
01:15:17.260
He said, we need to get the entire country organized.
01:15:22.640
But we're going to do something that's never been done in China, which is we're going to
01:15:36.920
That never, ever existed any time in Chinese history.
01:15:40.740
So the very and, you know, this is among the first things that are done.
01:15:46.300
Even while the economy is still emerging from the wreckage of, you know, tens of millions
01:15:52.620
of people died in the fighting, in the invasion of the Japanese and so on.
01:15:58.260
Mao immediately turns toward improving the lives of the very poorest.
01:16:02.840
These are things that I certainly admire and I think anybody should admire.
01:16:07.600
I mean, like if you care about the fate of the poor, the fate of those who are the least
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Well, this is a leader who put their needs very much, you know, near the top.
01:16:23.500
Because every leader has the same challenge, which is how do you keep power in a world of
01:16:39.580
You know, the United States supported the KMT for decades after they fled to Taiwan.
01:16:45.080
They said, well, that's the legitimate government of China.
01:16:47.400
So, you know, we're not dealing with an equal kind of playing field here where the capitalist
01:16:53.400
powers say, oh, yes, well, whoever ends up running the country is fine.
01:17:00.720
That war is the working class versus the bourgeoisie.
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I'm sitting here thinking, I'm like, this guy has never written a book.
01:17:10.240
One, you should write a book because communists would love to.
01:17:23.600
When I spoke to Slavoj Zizek, he had some doubts.
01:17:26.080
And he was questioning certain areas of communism that maybe didn't produce the results that
01:17:38.540
He's a little bit different than you, although some similarities.
01:17:42.820
You know, I just pulled up something right now.
01:17:48.220
OK, number one is Mao, 49 to 78 million deaths.
01:18:02.720
Well, Hitler is a fascist monster, you know, somebody who committed genocide, somebody who
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Hitler did not focus his imperialism on Africa as the other capitalist powers did in the late
01:18:21.560
I mean, the drive was to go east to give the German people living room, Lebensraum, right?
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Now, they did that under the understanding that the Slavs and the Russian people were subhuman,
01:18:36.740
Now, they had a little bit of a problem ideologically because, you know, they had a white supremacist
01:18:41.420
And they did recognize that the Slavs and the Russians were, or at least some of them
01:18:48.100
But they used this very old kind of mythological idea that said that the Slavs had black bones.
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01:18:54.380
And I mean, it was just utter bullshit, right?
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01:18:56.380
So, what you have here is you have fascist nationalism, which seeks to conquer territory
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01:19:05.880
Now, I think that that's pretty well established by history, right?
01:19:09.700
The result of that is that tens of millions of people died, okay?
01:19:16.080
Now, people like to draw equivalencies, anti-communists do, between Hitler and Stalin.
01:19:25.660
None of the things that I mentioned apply in the slightest to the Soviet Union, to any
01:19:35.460
Saying Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, and then saying something after that just advertises your ignorance,
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There is no point in saying anything further at this point.
01:19:52.360
Now, in terms of Zizek, doubt makes a good philosopher, and Zizek's a great philosopher.
01:20:06.400
We have some maybe differences of opinion, but I think we just have a different style is
01:20:11.560
I think the differences of opinion are minor, actually.
01:20:14.960
But we have different areas of emphasis, let's say.
01:20:17.580
You know, I have a style that's a lot more unequivocal, right?
01:20:23.100
Because I'm acting as more of a kind of ideological warrior, you know, than I am as a kind of academic
01:20:34.240
But, you know, I'm here as a popular figure, not as a scholar.
01:20:37.400
For what it's worth, for what it's worth, I thought you were going to be a lot more antagonistic than you were.
01:20:44.140
I thought you were going to be a lot more coming from a place of this thing was going to get zero to piss stuff.
01:20:58.520
If you're not, if you want to entertain yourself, he is a great, great, great, great grandson of Thomas Jefferson
01:21:06.400
If you want to be entertained, just watch the first minute.
01:21:13.060
Tell me one word that comes to mind, and then we'll wrap it up.
01:21:21.080
What's the word that comes to mind with Churchill?
01:21:29.280
I mean, you know, I think of Churchill with the Bengal famine, really, you know.
01:21:35.780
And if you want to look at a leader who intentionally starved people, I think that's who we're looking for.
01:21:50.460
You know, he seems like a figure of integrity, although I think he's burning a lot of clout right now because, you know, embracing the Biden administration and going towards incrementalism, you know, started off saying Medicare for all and now is saying lower the eligibility age.
01:22:13.160
You know, this is the kind of thing where what I had always said about Bernie is Bernie is the furthest right that I'm willing to go.
01:22:19.960
You know, you know, I consider him to be a right wing leftist because he's not saying, oh, you know, let's expropriate the rich.
01:22:33.780
He's saying, oh, we can tinker with it and make it work better.
01:22:36.580
Would you say the furthest right wing or the furthest socialist?
01:22:46.940
He's somebody who favors a reformed capitalism that has higher wages and more benefits or whatever.
01:22:53.720
That, you know, I consider that to be a good result.
01:22:57.340
But I think the only way you're going to get to that is through socialism, basically.
01:23:01.480
You know, like I and that's what we've seen historically as well.
01:23:07.660
AOC, I think, you know, it's a figure that a lot of us had high hopes for.
01:23:12.980
And, you know, it's exciting and whatever to see a socialist.
01:23:15.740
But this is somebody who is, first of all, became way more famous than their power, you know, sort of merited, right?
01:23:26.640
Like AOC as a freshman congressperson, basically no power, you know.
01:23:31.380
Your power as a congressperson depends on what coalitions can you build, what committees are you on and so forth, right?
01:23:37.080
And AOC had basically none of that, but she became, it was just catapulted to fame because she's young and, oh, a socialist and whatever, you know, Fox News really made her famous.
01:23:48.020
And then becomes, oh, this is the lion of the left.
01:23:51.940
But, you know, leftists look at her and be like, what has she actually done, you know?
01:23:56.240
What policies has she done that actually improve people's lives?
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01:24:01.060
So, you know, I like AOC, you know, she seems like a good person, whatever.
01:24:05.560
But, you know, it's like you throw a handful of sand at an oncoming tidal wave.
01:24:11.440
You're not really going to change the result there, you know?
01:24:15.760
Well, Elizabeth Warren, I put in a very different position.
01:24:18.160
Elizabeth Warren is a very opportunistic politician, in my view.
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01:24:22.460
Somebody who, you know, Bernie's out there campaigning in 2016, talking about Medicare for all, talking about the $15 minimum wage, talking about everyone should have a job.
01:24:38.180
Then comes and adopts that program without a word.
01:24:41.400
Like, what the hell is that in the 2020 campaign?
01:24:44.480
I mean, and the entire Democratic field adopts all of Bernie's proposals.
01:24:50.060
Why don't, if you guys support the proposals, then you should be supporting Bernie, right?
01:24:56.460
And, you know, it's a lot of my colleagues in academia, you know, love Elizabeth Warren.
01:25:03.340
And so maybe I will end some friendships by speaking to Miller.
01:25:07.220
But at this point, I think probably nobody cares.
01:25:11.120
You know, I just think it's, it tells you whether you really support a program, though.
01:25:16.120
You know, like, do you support it rain or shine?
01:25:21.620
I think, like you said, she's an opportunistic.
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01:25:27.140
Well, Fidel Castro is an interesting one because Fidel Castro started off as a revolutionary,
01:25:31.260
as a nationalist revolutionary, not as a socialist, interestingly enough, right?
01:25:39.800
It's just sort of, it's on the fence for a little while, right?
01:25:42.800
It's kind of the U.S.'s response that pushes Fidel to socialism.
01:25:47.580
But once he does that, he very much embraces it, right?
01:25:50.540
So, you know, one of the first things that they did, I just wrote about this for a new
01:25:59.060
I wrote about the economic achievements of Cuba.
01:26:02.540
One of the first things that they do, they expropriate the land, right?
01:26:06.900
So like I mentioned, in Cuba, similar to lots of places in Africa and so forth, you had
01:26:12.300
most of the land being owned by a very small landowning class.
01:26:17.320
And, you know, the Castro and the revolution, they said, look, we're not going to do that
01:26:23.560
We're going to turn the land over to the peasants.
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01:26:28.480
The state section went to about 80% of the land.
01:26:33.560
And they also had individual peasants also owning their land individually.
01:26:41.140
But, you know, in general, I think I am very favorably inclined towards Castro and the revolution
01:26:54.800
Yeah, a big figure on the left, not someone I've ever really been a fan of, just because
01:27:00.840
I don't see him as having a very good answer to like the question of what should be done.
01:27:06.840
You know, Noam Chomsky is somebody who has good critiques, you know, like he critiques
01:27:11.260
that his critiques of the media are very solid, right?
01:27:22.260
But does he have a very good vision of what should be done?
01:27:26.020
You know, you said, hey, Noam Chomsky, you can write your ticket.
01:27:34.040
As a critic, you need to have a positive vision of your own.
01:27:38.560
And last but not least, our current president, your president, my president, Joe Biden.
01:27:44.340
Well, Joe Biden is just the next iteration of Reagan.
01:27:50.360
You know, I mean, like we've we've had a Reagan government since Reagan.
01:27:55.860
You know, Clinton, the masterpiece of Clinton is that he rebranded the Democrats.
01:28:01.120
You know, he said, we're Eisenhower Republicans now.
01:28:05.860
So, you know, Clinton and the Democrats since Clinton have been very much in that vein.
01:28:11.880
I mean, the Republicans have gone in a very different direction.
01:28:15.800
The Republicans have gone toward a kind of, you know, nationalist and fascist kind of
01:28:23.160
The Democrats are the ones now saying we are the technocrats and we are the ones that will,
01:28:28.140
you know, tinker with the capitalism and make it work better and whatever.
01:28:34.200
I think that's the that's the kind of Keynesian vision again.
01:28:38.560
But they also do this with a very aggressive militarism.
01:28:41.580
You know, the the U.S. military machine costs about one point two five trillion dollars
01:28:48.280
That's a stunning amount of wealth to spend on killing people.
01:28:54.660
Appreciate you for answering questions and working and going back and forth.
01:28:59.700
Like I said earlier, I enjoy doing these things.
01:29:02.620
We're going to put the link to both your YouTube channel.
01:29:07.420
I think there's 10 criticism you give of capitalism.
01:29:14.660
We're going to put the link to your Twitter as well below.
01:29:17.080
If anybody wants to go send a tweet at him and I, I would love to hear what you took
01:29:27.960
So if you want to have me back on the show, let's have dinner sometime.
01:29:42.480
So when's the last time you saw a communist and a capitalist sit down together, have a
01:29:46.520
One of them says, hey, I'd love to take you out to dinner, especially the communists.
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01:29:53.060
Curious what you took away about what he had to say.
01:29:58.200
Again, if you're watching this, Doc, a lot of strange comments were made.
01:30:05.920
If you haven't subscribed to the channel, please do.
01:30:11.440
If you've never watched it, he's a number one socialist professor in America, according
01:30:17.620
And the other one is an interview I told, you know, a satire about is Lucian Truscott.
01:30:25.460
If you haven't seen this one, you want to be entertained.