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- [00:01]
A
Welcome, friends, to Economic Update Extra. This is where we continue interviews and major discussions from the regular Economic Update program to allow those of you in the Patreon community who support us, and for that we are grateful, who support us and therefore we want in turn to support you. And one way we can do that is to provide you with a bit more material than the regular audience has available to it. So we were discussing the elections and what they might or might not mean for the broader historical movement of capitalism today.
- [00:40]
B
So I want to pick up, David, by asking you whether you support, like, don't like the idea that a good part of the blame, if you like, for the right wing turn for Trumpism belongs on the Obama, Clinton, conventional, traditional, centrist Democrats, in a sense, did they prepare the way, even though they want to pretend that they didn't?
- [01:05]
C
Oh, they prepared the way. No question about it. And I think if you go back to the first Clinton administration that they came in promising universal health care and they gave us NAFTA and they gave us the reform of welfare as we.
- [01:20]
B
Know it and the end of punitive.
- [01:22]
C
Incarceration, the end of glass Steagall, look at everything in the Clinton administration and it had nothing in it. And I think it was very significant that when they passed NAFTA and they signed nafta, there was not a single representative of labor in the room. And I think that that is a sign of the transformation of the Democratic Party from something that rested upon union power and working class interests to becoming more and more sort of dependent upon its positionality in relationship to urban elites and managerial classes and progressive social positions as opposed to real progressive economic positions.
- [02:04]
B
In light of that, will they now be able to turn around and claim, in a sense the mantle of vote for us because we're better than Trump? In other words, leaving the American public choosing between one awful and another awful because no blame is attached to them, giving them the right to somehow say we are the proper alternative to Trump.
- [02:32]
C
I think that's what they will try to do. I mean, that's what the Pelosi wing of the Democratic Party and Schumer and so on will try to do. But I don't think that's going to work, frankly. I don't think why should people listen to them? Because when they had power, they didn't do anything. They did all these other negative things. And so, no, I think people are not going to buy it, which, you know, I mean, frankly, I don't want to have to go to election and say I want Trump versus You know, Democratic Party again, I don't want a Clinton Restoration. It's the last thing in the world I would want.
- [03:10]
B
Well, the irony is your earlier comments about England strike me as quite a difference. Then we have a dominant control of the Democratic Party here which looks to everyone like it's going to do exactly what it did before. I mean, the Republicans demonized Obama and hoped to gather everybody who could have a grievance, real or imagined, against Obama to vote for them. And they're now going to do to trump the reverse of the same game, therefore the same thing. Whereas it looks more like the Labour Party has the idea that they have to be more different, otherwise there is no reason for people to be excited about that.
- [03:52]
C
Well, but remember, in the Labour Party, the majority of the Labour Party doesn't like Corbyn. They still would prefer somebody else. Corbyn came out because the membership of the Labour Party suddenly was transformed by opening it up to anybody to come in. So you democratize the base and Corbyn came out of that democratization of the base. And it's taken a little while for Corbyn to be accepted by most of the party. And it's still the case that if you took a vot vote amongst the MPs in the Labour Party right now, they would vote against Corbyn. But the trouble is that Corbyn has, if you like, the mass membership is behind him. So I think that it was simply that that put Corbyn in this position. But I think it's something that really should be listened to that if you opened up the Democratic Party and got away from the big donors, and we started to see that a little bit in the and the race in Texas, if you get away from the big donors, you can actually start to create something that's much more democratic in the Democratic Party. But we'll see if that happens.
- [05:00]
B
And if the democratic power structure of Schumer and Pelosi, if they understand what you just said, then being against an opening up of the Democratic Party would become a priority for them, which perhaps they're all the stuff they've done to undermine Sanders, is that.
- [05:16]
C
Yes. No, I think that was very much at work. So it wasn't simply that the Clinton forces undermined Sanders. I think there was something deeper along these lines.
- [05:28]
B
Okay, tell me, what is the relevance of the age factor? Do you put stock in the notion that the younger generations, either because of the passing of the Cold War or of the anti communist demonization of decay, whatever the reasons are, is there how strong is the foundation for the notion that the generation coming up now will play a very different political role than the ones they are replacing?
- [06:01]
C
Well, I'm sure you must find this in teaching, as I do, that teaching Marx right now is a different world from teaching it in the 1990s. And I wouldn't say that people accept it or anything like that, but they're curious about it and they're open to it. So that if we had enough people like you and I and everybody out there teaching this stuff, I think people would kind of say, yeah, why not? So they're not hostile to it. People don't really understand anti communism anymore. They don't understand antisocialism anymore. So the younger generation, I think, think is open. I wouldn't say it's inherently left, but I think, as I think you probably find, like me, people are curious. They want to know. So if we can present the ideas right, then I think there's a real opening for us.
- [06:53]
B
Yes.
- [06:53]
A
I would only add my own experience.
- [06:55]
B
Outside the university as well as inside. I do a good bit of traveling. I speak to a variety of groups. I'm amazed at the. Anti communism is barely visible. And even though I know in my audiences there are folks who are not happy, they are now doing what the leftists used to do. They look around the auditorium and they realize they are in the minority. And so they don't say much. They don't want to be the object of other people's imitation. So they're quiet. They're there, but they're quiet because the mood has shifted. The whole feeling in the auditorium is, this is interesting. Let's hear some more. You're right, they haven't been persuaded yet, but it's kind of early in the game, and it's. For us, it's a breath of fresh air to have the openness there. Just a chance to make the argument.
- [07:49]
C
Yeah, it's fantastic. I mean, I really enjoy going around, you know, you get a big audience and they really kind of sort of get excited and come and want to talk about it afterwards. But like I say it, they don't automatically agree.
- [08:00]
B
No, but it's a wonderful moment. I think, you know, having lived, you and I, a long time, that what creates our audience is the critic. What creates our audience is the system we're criticizing. Mr. Trump is my best organizer. The crash of 2008 opened the space for everything I do, including this program, that in a sense, we are not hooked in on a particular issue or a horrible struggle in Vietnam. Or some other country. No, it's right at home in the core of capitalism as a system that there is a disaffection and an alienation going on that opens the space for us.
- [08:46]
C
And it's not only that. I think that there's a possibility of other forms of struggle converging more around a kind of a socialist ethic. I see Black Lives Matter, for example, which is not hostile to, if you like, the politics of more socialist politics. The feminist movement, I think, is more open now. It sort of have it a little bit. During the neoliberal period. It saw an opening and sort of thought there were some possibilities. But I think when you put together some of these movements and kind of say collectively we have a bigger story, then you get some resonance on that too.
- [09:31]
A
I just saw this morning an announcement.
- [09:35]
B
Came across my computer from the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands. They have a new PhD program in the Unmaking of Capitalism. That's a title. And the program is to study how social movements in, I think, five selected European countries, how social movements trying to build a sustainable society are confronting the fact that they have to unmake capitalism to do it. I mean, the recognition in this one of the best universities in the Netherlands, very old, very well known, that they haven't found their way to developing a new PhD program in the UN. I found that sort of astonishing.
- [10:21]
C
Yeah. But on the other hand, taking back some of the basic necessities of life away from the market and into the public domain. I mean, I was clearing out my bookshelf the other day and I found a little pamphlet put out by the New York municipal association in 1972, and it said, housing in the public domain, the only solution. Okay. And I was thinking to myself, you know, it's a long time since then, but on the other hand, that is the kind of slogan we need now. Because, you know, we've got a homelessness problem, we've got an affordable housing kind of problem at the same time as we're building these kind of huge luxury apartments for the billionaires and all this kind of stuff, it's a massive misallocation of resources in relationship to public need. And if we kind of start to say, look, housing does not belong in the market, healthcare does not belong in the market, education does not belong in the market, these should all be taken back into to the public domain. Transportation should be taken back into the public domain. And this is what the Labour Party is beginning to advocate in Britain. And the bourgeois press kind of laughed and kind of said, oh, nobody's going to take that seriously. Here they go back to nationalization, stupid old lefties. And then it turns out that 60% of the population think, hey, this is a good idea. This really is a good idea. And I think that is the sort of thing that resonates with youth when you say to them, education should be in the public domain and there should be no indebtedness in publication. And if anybody calls that socialist, they can't say, well, in that case, I'm a socialist. So I think that's the kind of resonance. So it's not hard to think of an anti capitalist project.
- [12:11]
B
You know, I noticed too, it didn't get much attention, but in Baltimore, Maryland, there was a ballot issue earlier in November at the election and it was a proposal that the city of Baltimore forbid any form of privatization of the water system for that city. 75% of the people voted for it won 3 to 1, even though there were efforts to go the other way, probably supported by whoever wants to get the water system. But it was overwhelmingly affirmed by the people of Baltimore. This is sort of remarkable.
- [12:51]
C
Yeah, I bet you would find that nice and wide. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it would.
- [12:55]
B
David thank you very much for your.
- [12:58]
A
Insights and for all of you on the Patreon community. Once again, we are very proud. David Harvey has begun a podcasting program bimonthly. It was launched on the 15th of November, 2018. It's called David Harvey Anti Capitalist Chronicles. Check it out both on our websites and the usual places you can find it. And there will also be a Patreon program, likewise. David Harvey, Anti Capitalist Chronicles, thank you very much. Our appreciation as always to our Patreon community and I will speak with you again next week.