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A
Welcome friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic dimensions of our lives and and those of our children. I'm your host, Richard Wolff. Before we begin today, I hope you all enjoyed the holiday season. Today's announcements will be brief and I want to start by once again thanking all of you who contributed generously to our end of the year fundraising effort. We came close to reaching our goal for the upcoming year, but we won't close the books until the 15th. So there's time to join us and support our work for the year ahead by going to www.democracyatwork.info donate. We're also proud to announce that today's show comes with a little bonus for those of you who signed up to our Patreon. Immediately following today's show, there will be an extended version of of the interview with our guest, Jared Yates Sexton. It'll be available on our Patreon page. The link is in the video description below, or you can go to patreon.com democracyatwork and join for a more in depth and exclusive discussion of today's topic. I won't repeat much about our book, Understanding the companion volume for this program, or the work of our volunteer Charlie Fabian, who takes your comments and suggestions. But I do want a moment to talk to you about fake videos. They are proliferating. You will see me in all kinds of strange environments with strange facial features and wobbling voice. The typical noise of fake videos. Be on the alert for them. They are increasing and we are doing everything to stop them and take them down, but there they are. Okay, let's jump right into today's program on Black Friday, that famous day back in November of last year. You know, that day between Thanksgiving and the weekend that follows is known for the shopping spree that Americans go on, or at least many of us do. But I want to talk about a Black Friday, and it's called that also in Germany. Black Friday on Germany, same date, involved a strike. The workers at Amazon in Germany, it's a big company there too, went on strike, thousands of them, in fact 3,000 of them, led by the German union Verdi, well known as the union for many German services workers. They struck nine different Amazon locations demanding a collective bargaining agreement which Amazon has resisted sitting down and bargaining over with them. And by the way, this is part of Amazon workers across Europe, in many countries, in fact, across all six continents around the world under the banner Make AmazonPay. And it's a rising up of workers that have reacted to the Unbearable conditions of working at Amazon to demand what workers have always decent lives, decent pay, decent working conditions. And as if that weren't enough, in the largest of the world's fast fashion producers, the Zara Corporation, located in Spain, there's also a movement now to mobilize and organize those workers in unions as well. Unionization is spreading all over the world. It's a reaction to the failure of the capitalist system globally to live up to the promises it has made, to the commitments it has entered into and then betrayed. And it is a movement that is affecting everybody sooner or later, in one place or another. And the sooner you get on board, the sooner it can help you in your situation as well. I want to turn next to a very closely related matter, one in which I am personally involved. As some of you know, I am a visiting professor from time to time at the New School University in New York City. And currently something is happening at the university that I'm involved in and that I know about. But it is coming to many other universities across the country. And so it's worth telling you about it so you are aware of it. Dramatic announcements were sent out by the administration at the New School University to faculty and students and staff alike. At first, the announcement, and there have been several of these, at first, the announcement that struck my attention was the sudden decision to Admit no new PhD students this coming year across all departments except psychology. When a university suddenly and abruptly cancels all of its graduate that's a master's program, PhD. But in this case particularly PhD that is never a good sign. That's a sign that the college or the university that is doing that is in trouble. But then more information came from the administration. Let me mention some of the big ones. Salaries are to be cut 5 to 15%. The employer is going to pause, notice the word, the verb pause, its contributions to the retirement funds for all the faculty, freezing employment for the coming year and possibly cutting courses and programs. All right now the handwriting is on the wall. This is a university announcing its own end. Oh, it isn't there quite yet. And a miracle might somehow, but there are few miracles and none of them are coming over the horizon. The New School University has had budget deficits for years. These decisions were made by the administrators, a tiny group of people at the top of the pyramid of American universities. The mass of employees were not consulted about this would have been in uproar about it would have insisted on exploring all of the ways to keep the enterprise of a university like this, which has been around for so many years to keep it going, to keep it alive, to keep it doing for young people what it has been. And by the way, the New School is unique because it really opened itself up to older people, too, and welcomed them into its programs. And I want to stress, nothing good is going to happen from this. Will the students run away and go to other universities? The answer is unquestionably yes. Who will want to go to a university that's doing this sort of thing? Who will want to be associated with something that they'll have to explain to any future employer? Oh, I went to such and such a university. It doesn't exist anymore, but once upon a time, it. It did. This does not enhance your employability. If you're a faculty member, as I am, you can be sure that those people, especially if they need it, are looking for another job and in a hurry. Is it a good time to be doing that? No. Why not? Because Mr. Trump has been cutting funding for colleges and universities left, right, and center, every way he can. And that means all universities and colleges are being squeezed. That's one of the reasons I'm talking to you about the New School, because it is on the edge of going over that edge, but others are getting closer and closer, and maybe the one you're going to, and maybe the one you're thinking of helping your child go to, etc. Etc. And this is not just about universities. A university is a commitment of a society to its own future. That's where you train people, educate people, make them more and more capable. Of what? Of contributing to their society with the extra understanding they have, the extra skills they acquire, the extra relationships they have that connect them to people with whom they can then work for many years afterwards and often do. This is a system that is dying. This is a country that is going through the loss of its empire and now the decline of its whole system. On Thursday, December 4, the government issued a security document. And in that security document, the United States government made plain what I'm telling you now, but in a different language. There they talked about not being the world's policeman anymore. Well, the United States has stopped being able to do that for some time now, however, has to be admitted. That's a sign, just like what's going on at the New School is a sign we're going to be hunkering down. Our president tell us, defending the Western Hemisphere, turning in on what is to become Fortress America. This is not a new idea, but it's now much more serious because it's now Driven not by a dream, a hope of the future, but by a turning in. Because you can't do what you said you were going to do a short 20 or 30 years ago, which was to be the world's policeman. This document, very famous document it will be, commits the United States to ending the war in Ukraine with or without the European allies. Indeed, it demotes Europe to the role of a provider of resources for the Americans to turn inward. Wow. You're asking the Europeans to fund the end of the United States alliance with the Europeans. That's asking them to fund their own decline. Are the Europeans declining? You bet. Do they need to control whatever investable funds they have to try to deal with their decline? Yeah, but what did they just do? They just agreed to buy American natural gas instead of the cheaper Russian option and to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the United States. How in the world are those leaders going to ever justify to the European people, the voters, what they have just done? No wonder they're angry. No wonder they're bitter in Europe. And you're going to hear more and more about it as they understand that the United States has basically abandoned the role it took on after World War II. The protector, the policeman of the world, the governor, the one who will make it work well for everybody. Uh, America first is a clever way to sell to the American people the decline that would otherwise have been admitted, could have been, hasn't been even in this document. There's an effort somehow to assert that the United States is still somehow in a position to shape world events. And the claim buried in this document is as excessive in its way as it was back at the end of 1945. That period of history is over. We have real competitors, as the document puts it, China, Russia and so on. That's not going to go away. That has been getting stronger, while the United States has not. That is the reality of the process that's underway, and we'll have much to say across this new year as it unfolds. Stay with me. We'll be right back with our guest, Jared Yates Sexton. Before we jump into the second half of today's show, I wanted to thank you for your very generous response to our fundraising efforts this year and in particular in the last couple of months. And in part responding to that, we are extending the availability of our limited edition, linen covered hardcover version of Understanding Capitalism, the book I wrote and that we have been making available now for quite a while. If you are interested, I will be signing copies of that hardcover, and they will be available to you as they have been over the last few weeks. Just simply send an email to us@infodemocracyatwork.info and put in the subject line limited edition. We will send you all the information you need to order and receive your copy signed copy of Understanding Capitalism in its hardback. And thank you again for your kind attention to the fundraising dimension of what we do. Welcome back, friends, to the second half of today's economic update. I'm very happy to bring to our microphones and our cameras Jared Yates Sexton. He is the author of the Midnight A History of Power, Paranoia, and the Coming Crisis. He serves as a political advisor for the Change campaign and is the author of the newsletter Dispatches from a Collapsing State. Given all that's happening around us, I couldn't think of a better person to come and talk to us about exactly the items listed in this set of titles. So let me start, Jared, by welcoming you and thanking you for your time.
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Thank you, Dr. Wolf. Always a pleasure.
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Okay, I want to jump right in, and I want to jump in with a very minimal story. My daughter is a counselor, a mental health counselor, has a private practice and deals with very many people's psychological issues. A few years ago, she came to me and said there was someone that she had encountered on the Internet that I absolutely had to start listening to, which I did, as I take most of her advice very seriously. And that was you, Jared. And I can see why my daughter, given her psychological interest, would also find your work particularly insightful, both for her work and as a guide to, to what's happening. So taking her idea and now your work, Americans increasingly feel lonely, fearful, worried about their lives, what's happening to them, the future. Do you agree with that sentiment? And how does your work respond to it?
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B
Well, thank you first of all, for that introduction. And I think what you've already drilled down into at this point is like one of the great misunderstood parts of what is happening in our politics and in our culture. And all of the signifiers are there. We have these polls and studies that show historic levels of depression, anxiety, loneliness, uncertainty about the future. And you don't even need those polls. The, the anecdotal material is there. We see it every single day. People are under incredible pressure. And that pressure, for whatever reason, and the reason is because people do not want to actually look at the way that this is playing into our politics and our cult. There is not that analysis that looks at the connecting of the dots between the types of pressure and Precarity, which we'll talk more about under the current capitalistic, neoliberal, capitalistic, exploitative, predatory system. And so those things find their expression in illogical actions, supporting candidates who don't actually help you, that aren't interested in actually doing anything for you, that aren't going to make your lives better or the lives of the people that you care about. People are having an extremely hard time now that we are at what is the decline of the American empire and at this advanced predatory stage of capitalism. And so, yes, I do believe it, and I look at the work that is. Is necessary to be done now as having to look at this thing that we all know deep, deep down, we all intuit, and we all have that feeling. We all have this experience of living under this increasingly precarious system, looking at this and starting to make different choices instead of continuing to go in this destructive, exploitative cycle that I think that we all understand is leading towards destruction.
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At this point, can you imagine, or is this the animating force in your life? Can you imagine a shift within the country that would take us out of or beyond what you've just described?
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I think it starts with awareness. You know, Dr. Wolfe, you and I have talked with some regularity, and I think that we have both said that we've noticed the conversations are changing things that in the past did not seem possible. Questioning of capitalism. It eventually reaches a point where the contradictions of capitalism become so large and so undeniable that to continue believing that this is the best of all systems, much less one that works at all, it takes such a large amount of energy and denial. And I think that people are starting to finally understand that, which for me, as someone who was raised in the 1980s and 1990s and got my education in the early part of the 21st century, having these conversations about how the system does not work, this is new. And the excitement that people have and the determination that they have to start hoping for something different. For the longest time, it was this feeling that we were trapped almost in a. In a cage that was being lowered into the water that we could never possibly escape. And it feels now as if even talking about this, even having these conversations and people seeking them out, it feels like the energy is there for something different. And I believe more and more every day that that energy is there.
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Well, you know, the skeptic might ask or say that there are two reactions to what you've just described. One is a kind of depressed resignation, you know, bad luck. I was born when I was, and here I am. And then the alternative, which is a rebellious, I don't have to stand for this. This does not have, you know, the opposite of whatever resignation is. How do you see the tension between those two playing out?
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Well, I mean, everything you're describing at this point and you know, when we're talking about this work and where we're going, we have to understand trauma responses. We have to understand that the examples you just gave are examples of activated states, fight, flight, fear, fawn and freeze, which is where we are at this point. So when you are in the middle of a fascistic crisis or you are in the middle of a self destructive cycle, you have a few choices. One is that you say something and you risk state violence, you risk being crushed, you wish becoming that fight response that we're talking about, the rebellion, the uprising, whatever we want to call it. And then you have a choice of being in denial about it, which we see so much with liberalism and so much within the Democratic Party and members of the corporate media. Then there's the other choice, which is put on the armband and become part of the fascistic project. And you can live in any of these, these states, but doing it in an unconscious way is how you end up at this point. You end up dissociating or depersonalizing your own experience of what's taking place. And so what I think that we need to do at this point is a reckoning with clarity, saying, you know, much like what it would be like in an abusive or dysfunctional household or in a workplace that doesn't work, being the person to say, you know what, this doesn't work and this is painful and it's hurting me and it's hurting others. And we at least need to have an actual logical, informed conversation about what's happening as opposed to continuing down this self destructive sort of fantasy, fairy tale life that thinking that everything is going to work out okay or that this system isn't collapsing in on itself.
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All right, how you do this, I mean, that's in a way, I know you're working on it. And that's what I want. Not only because I don't want to end on the note that you just did, because it's not enough. But I do want to help people make the further step. And so let me put it to you this way. How do you motivate people who are on the edge of making these decisions, who might go one way or the other, but who are getting the awareness you're talking about? How do you get them to take the step of resistance, the step of fighting back, the step of a different choice.
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At the risk of simplifying it too much, organizing political resistance or for political change is about intimacy. It's about being able to talk to another person, to talk about your own experience. You know, when you're organizing labor unions, one of the first things that we tell people is talk about the conditions in the workplace, talk about what you're being paid, share information with one another in a vulnerable way. And we live in a society with neoliberalism that is inherently sociopathic. We're supposed to hurt one another. We're supposed to climb over top of one another. We're supposed to stab each other in the back. Meanwhile, what is the experience of the people like us or the people listening and watching? We're told constantly, oh, you're overreacting. Things will be fine. You're being. You're wishing for a utopia in which things could possibly be better. It's about people standing with one another and having a conversation, saying, I see this clearly, I know what this is, and we deserve better. There's a problem with capitalism in that it makes us feel like there's something wrong with us, that there's something that's missing that can only be replaced by buying things, by getting promotions, by making more money, by sacrificing ourselves and the things we love and just making our lives smaller and smaller. There's not something wrong with us. It's always been psychological and emotional manipulation. We deserve better than this, this absolutely fraudulent, abusive, exploitative system that we have had and we can have better once we begin to not just talk to one another, but begin to struggle for something better because we deserve better. This doesn't work. It is offensive. These are crumbs. And only by working through this together are we going to find something different.
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You know, it's interesting that you would say that. Some years ago, when I was in Europe for a meeting of some sort, I came across a group of leftist radicals, and they had emblazed, this was in Germany, they had emblazoned on their banner the German equivalent of the following, we can do better than capitalism. That was the slogan they wanted to utilize. So it's sort of interesting that they might have come to a conclusion rather similar to that. Are there phenomena, are there things happening here in the United States that you know of or that you're involved in that are developing that motivation that are actually getting it going, this motivation to do something rather than to be resigned or to join the oppressor.
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Well, what I have noticed in my own organizing with the Change campaign and with certain groups that brought me in is that people are desperate for these conversations. It very much was for a long time, keeping our heads down, because that's what precarity breeds, right? You don't want to make waves, you don't want to get fired, you don't want to get laid off. You don't want to risk the boss being mad at you. And now the big boss is president or, you know, state power, which is the way that it happens. And it has become intolerable. That's the difference at this point, is that you're able to work through this stuff with cognitive dissonance, to tell yourself, like, it's not as bad as I think it is, if I can just make it through this week, if I can just get to Friday, if I can just get to Saturday, if I can just get to the end of the year. There's a grinding pain at this point. And when I talk to groups and we have these discussions, people say, I can't keep doing this. And that sort of desperation, it leads you to take chances, to give up the familiar hell for the unfamiliar future, which is what we have to do at this point. And then, Dr. Wolff, one last thing is that I have seen a change in terms of how we approach this. When the SNAP benefits were put in danger, of course, because of the government shift shutdown, people have responded. The conversations about poverty, precarity, those things have changed from moral and ethical judgments to an understanding that this system doesn't work and something has to change. The energy is there, the want is there. It is not represented by either of the political parties, but there is a desire and there is a groundswell that could make a difference.
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You know, I've noticed it also, I'd like your opinion. I'm struck that the government's effort to persecute, and I use the word choice to persecute immigrants in a way I don't think we've ever seen in this country before. We've had hostility to immigrants for sure, but creating a special police force to hound them down and abusively treat them. And I notice a lot of action among people who are not themselves immigrants or who are immigrants, but have all the requisite papers so they're documented of support for the, you know, hiding them, protecting them, running interference with ice. It's a remarkable. I don't know if anyone has tabulated it, but that is a remarkable decision by people who are not themselves the target to do something about a system they find intolerable.
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What you're talking about is a burgeoning sense of interconnectedness that has been missing for so long. I mean, people have been getting roughed up by the police for decades now, centuries now. And people have been, you know, we're talking lately about what happened with these fishing boats and these war crimes that were committed. People are starting to look at that, or what has happened in Gaza or what's happening out on the streets and they look and they see themselves. And that sense is what has to drive all of this. And it's been missing for so long. But I think the abject cruelty of this, the obvious immorality, the self serving nature, the exploitative nature, I think it's coming to the forefront and I think people are starting to not just desire something different, but needing something different. And I think that that interconnectedness is what's going to power this through.
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Well, I want to inform you and our audience we're about to try a, a new experiment and we're going to keep you here. I've told you about this, so you know, it's coming for a segment we call One Last Point and I want to let everyone know we're going to continue this conversation. I'm going to ask Jared particularly about the issue of trauma, but we're going to put that on our Patreon operation so that if you want to hear it or want to watch it, please go there. And that's how you'll be able to do that for everyone else. Thank you for your attention. I hope what we've discussed here stimulates your thinking and your action. And as always, I look forward to speaking with you again next week.