Seeking Solidarity
Guest Steve Hall is a polymath who has published in the fields of criminology, sociology, anthropology, history, economic history, political theory and philosophy.
**Each episode of Macro N Cheese has an “Extras” section filled with information and links to resources related to topics touched on in the interview. Go to https://realprogressives.org/macro-n-cheese-podcast/ where you will also find a full transcript of the episode.
Steve Grumbine’s guest is Steve Hall, a Professor Emeritus of Criminology who has published in the fields of criminology, sociology, anthropology, history, economic history, political theory and philosophy.
The discussion covers a range of political and economic issues, including class consciousness and unity among the working class in the US and Europe. They discuss the historical fear and suspicion of the working class by the political and economic elites. They talk about the impact of identity politics and the need for unity among the working class. They also touch on the influence of neoliberalism and the weaponization of identity struggles.
They highlight the disconnect between what is presented in the news and the needs of the working class. They look at the concept of natural laws in economic models and how they often ignore the role of human decisions.
The conversation ends with a discussion on the limitations of the current political system and the need for agency and alternative avenues of power for the working class.
Steve Hall is a Professor Emeritus of Criminology. He worked at the Universities of Teesside, Northumbria and Durham. He is the author of Criminal Identities and Consumer Culture, and Theorizing Crime and Deviance, and co-author of numerous others.
@ProfHall1955 on Twitter
FULL TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Steven Grumbine: All right, folks. This is Steve with Macro N Cheese. My guest today is a new guest. I have not had this guest on here, which is nice. It's nice to break new ground. My guest today is Steve Hall, who is a professor emeritus of criminology. He worked at the Universities of Teesside, Northumbria, and Durham.
He is a polymath, get that, a polymath, who has published in the fields of criminology, sociology, anthropology, history, economic history, political theory, and philosophy. And for today's discussion, and this might be the most important part of it, class drives his understanding of the world. And for me, class is a part of the world that I'm trying desperately to incorporate as an American.
Americans didn't get to experience a lot of the changes that Europe got to experience. They didn't really understand class in the way that Europeans understand class. However, as we go forward, there can be nothing more important at this moment than class because we have no democracy in the US. We've talked about this with our other guest, Aaron Good.
We've talked about this with many of our guests. And as people become more open to recognizing the lack of democracy within the systems that we live in, we need to find common ground. And the common ground that we have is our class as workers, as the working class. And this has brought up a bunch of problems for me personally, because as a guy who started as a Republican, I was always a reductionist when it came to a lot of the oppressed people that I get to work hand in hand with these days as an activist.
And in witnessing the oppression and the ruthlessness of the ruling class on minorities within the United States and abroad, ranging from slavery on through to, gay rights. and even quite frankly, the drug war. I mean, this is class war but recognizing that not everyone experienced that class war the same has been very challenging because the neoliberal era has weaponized identity politics. It has cheapened many of these, real legitimate struggles. And as a result of the cheapening and the weaponization of those struggles and the outrageous huge backlash from what we would call cancel culture, even if some disagree that it exists, many do not disagree that exists.
In fact, many live their lives to end cancel culture. And so with these warring factions in play, how does one bring about unity in the working class to take on a capitalist class who has been ruthless and owns the levers of power in government and owns the powers of industry and literally fattens itself while the working class struggles.
So I brought on my guest Stephen Hall today to discuss this, because Steven has some unique ideas that maybe aren't in line with what I would say, and I want to try to better understand them. And I want to find where we have common ground, because ultimately, in order to bring unity to the working class, there's a lot of people that you probably don't agree with right now that are part of that working class.
And you could see it in spades with what's going on with Trump's America and the bourgeois kind of elite that support Biden and ignore the struggle there as well. So you've got two sides of a capitalist class in the United States that rule over us, making us believe they care about us by plucking our heartstrings with identity politics.
And the weaponization has really wrought havoc to the working class. So that is the subject of our discussion today. And with that, let me bring on my guest, Stephen Hall. Welcome to the show, sir.
[00:05:01] Steve Hall: Hi, and thanks for having me.
[00:05:03] Steven Grumbine: Absolutely. You heard my intro. What are your opening thoughts here? What do you think? Help set the stage, because obviously you're quite passionate about how identity politics has sidelined the left. You frequently,point Death of the Left, that's been recently published. I'm curious as to your thoughts as it pertains to, unifying the working class.
[00:05:30] Steve Hall: I think that class is a modern concept, isn't it? It's a fundamentally marxist concept. Which, by associating with marxism means most people in America will rule him out anyway.
But it is an ancient concept at the same time. You have Geoffrey de Ste. Croix's fantastic work about class struggle in ancient Greece. But the working class has always been regarded as the populace, and there's always been, from the economic elites and the political elites, an antipathy towards the populace as the mob. The working class, the great unwashed as we call in the UK, has always been an object of fear, and an object of suspicion amongst middle class and upper classes in Europe. Huge number ofworks in the 20th century, for instance, Le Bon, people like Elias Canetti talking about Crowds and Power being based on this terrible fear of the mob. And so working class in Europe has never really been allowed to approach the levers of power.
We've had an independent Labour Party in 1905, which formed the Labour Party you know, it amalgamated all sorts of other fringe parties, which is what we're trying to do now. We're trying to talk about left unity amongst the fringe parties that are being successful in Britain at the moment.
I suppose you heard of the Workers Party, George Galloway's success and is now an MP in parliament from what wasregarded as a fringe party by the British establishment. But the working class has never really been allowed anywhere near the levers of power. As soon as they've brought themselves together, coalesced into a political unity, a political force, an organization, the middle class have moved in. And we saw this with the Fabianism in the early 20th century.Middle class intellectuals, HG Wells and George Bernard Shaw, and I was trying to think of Sidney and Beatrice Webb were the main,organizers of the Fabian group to move in amongst the working class and educate them and cultivate them and move them in their direction. Because the middle class left has always had this fear of the mob, that the working class is somehow dangerous.
In your own country, you had William Jennings Bryan, I think is, to correct me if I'm wrong.The American Populist Party had a lot of very very useful policies, but again, the establishment was terrified. So they've always held the working class, the populace, as an object of fear to be kept away from the levers of power. But in Europe, I think we've had a little more success in creating working class organizations, the original Labour party, and certainly after the war, 1945 had a huge Labour landslide victory. Most of the members of parliament were members of the actual blue collar, what you call in America, you like to call the blue collar working class. And we made huge changes after 1945. Nationalization of major industries, later steel and rail in the fifties and sixties. As soon as the working class get near the levers of power, things change.
And the establishments, now, this is not just the right wing establishment, but the left wing establishment have always tried to keep the working class at arm's length, away from the levers of power, because their expectations are much higher. They want things to change, and they want tangible change. They don't want high ideals and visions about a beautiful world of the future.
They need things to change quickly. They need to pay their dental bills, that they need to be able to pay their mortgages, they need jobs, they need tangible changes and little triumphs. And if the establishment can prevent these things happening, then of course people will eventually lose faith with the left and move back over towards whatever group is controlling the right wing of politics at the moment. It'son the geopolitical front, it's neoconservatives and then the economic front, it's neoliberals, isn't it? And so they can disrupt the left constantly disrupted by becoming part of it and infiltrating it and turning it towards the center, neutralizing it, softening it, and making sure that it doesn't ask too much and doesn't have the ability to do too much.
[00:09:52] Steven Grumbine: Could you define the working class for me? Because I think that my understanding of it is if you work for a paycheck, you're working class.
[00:10:02] Steve Hall: Yeah, that's the economic concept. Certainly. If you're wage dependent, you're working class, you have shared interests. Problem is that those shared interests are only shared to a certain extent in a very broad, abstract sense, because, high paid cyber security technicians, for instance, in this country, on a 120 grand a year are very, very different to baristas on 15 grand a year, So there are huge wage differentials in what the Weberian sociologists call stratification, across class lines. So those stratifications tend to be quite divisive. So we're wage dependent, but we don't all get, we don't all get the same wages. So our interests diverge slightly.
Culturally, the working class is very very diverse. It's an amalgam of various cultures. In this country, we have regional cultures. We have Irish, Northern Irish, Southernn Irish cultures, Scottish, Welsh. We have Northern Midland cultures. But it's odd because I think the differences are exaggerated. Stand in a pub in the center of England.
Birmingham is in the center of England. I won't, imitate a Birmingham accent because you won't understand the word I'm saying if I do. But, Birmingham in the center of England, I'd stand in a pub and talk to people from various parts of the country. I worked in the steelworks in the 70s as an example, and because it was a fairly high wage job, you're patient and working people, you got people from all over the country.
It's surprising how well we got on. And minor cultural differences aren't really too important. There's a lot of rivalry and all, but it was quite friendly. We used to laugh and joke about it. Because we realised that our interests, our economic interests were shared. Keeping our wages high, making sure our jobs were secure, making sure our schools were educating our children, that we had a health service.
Of course, we had a nationalized health service in 1945. We still have, but it's under great pressure from people who wanted to underfund it, run it down in order to privatize it. But , our shared interests were fundamentally economic, but the cultural differences were exaggerated. So there's really still in this country, and you can tell me about America because I don't really know, but in this country there's a potential dangerous unity amongst the working class. Still there, still possible for those who are dependent on wages to recognize their shared interests and to vote accordingly for politicians who will organize the economy in their interests rather than the interests of global Financial capitalists, investors,the global asset managers who are controlling the world's economy and decide which regions rise and fall. And the under investment in this country since 1960, when the growth curve flattened, because we had a huge growth curve from 1945, almost despite the austerity, despite everyone being fed up in the 1950s with austerity, we were actually growing very rapidly. Our industries were growing.
Americans didn't like that, of course. Don't forget, Stephen, that the American right regards European countries as competitors, as dangerous competitors and regard Europe as a dangerous competitor, economically. They pretend to be friends to have a special relationship, whereas really it's America special and we have the relationship as we all know.
So our interests don't necessarily converge. But, the growth curve flattened in 1960, and the private investors started to systematically under invest in the UK. Tony Benn, the, great British Labour politician, tried to put that right in the 70s with the National Economic Board in 1975. And the Labour Party Manifesto in 1978, which promised to use North Sea oil revenue to refurbish and modernize British industry,
because they were fed up with the fact the Germans and French were moving ahead so quickly. oOur plant was antiquated. I worked in steelworks in 1975, diaphragm pump on the gas water recirculation plant, which had 1948 stamped on it, no investment in that steel since 1948.
[00:14:04] Steven Grumbine: Wow.
[00:14:05] Steve Hall: And, uh, we were under invested. but we've always had that potential. The potential to recognize those interests and to vote for politicians who will refurbish our industries, who will create jobs andsupport our interests. And of course the financiers are terrified of that because they want to be able to put their money where they want, economies with low wages, low material costs, low taxes.
And, they don't really care about, the Rust Belt in America, do they? They don't care about Flint, Michigan, and these places, these sort of derelict places that have been de industrialized. When yoUSee the pictures of the old Packard, factory and the Champion Spark Plug factory, where they were all once these hives of industry, whole communities, but they don't care about that.
They want to put their money where they want. And they're terrified that the working class might vote in the sort of politicians who will bring back Keynesian capital controls, use the power of the state's currency to invest in the economy, and start to become autonomous. They wanted make sure that the working class don't vote for those sort of politicians.
[00:15:11] Steven Grumbine: It's funny when you reference the US, we have a very different history, obviously, you know. We're, kind of a, colonial power. We have always been empire of sorts. The foundation of the colonization of America is a story of the Trail of Tears. It's literally a story of genocide.
As we experience this right now for the people of Gaza, The US as aEuroextension,is really quite frankly a colonial outpost and now turned empire. And I think the challenge is different here because there's a lot of homogeneityin each of the countries of Europe.
I mean, yes, there are immigrants. Yes, there are some differences. But the United States literally kidnapped blacks, Africans, and brought them here to build up the industry of this nation on the backs of slave labor. And after that ran its course, you had Reconstruction. And reconstruction period turned them into criminals no longer slaves.
And so they had vagrancy laws and all these other laws that were spent to keep them in jail or to keep them working basically for pennies on the dollar, they never received anything. So this country that I live in is filled with stories like that. And people often say, 'Oh, that was 100 or 200 years ago' I'm saying, 'No, you don't understand the Jim Crow laws and all the other things kept going going. So their struggle was far different than the average white factory plant workers struggle as a class member of the working class. And so in this country, when we try and talk about uniting the working class, we don't have the shared struggle, the shared history, the share. We have a divided history, history of oppressors and rulers, and that has shifted significantly now. the lack of acknowledgement of those grievances has created splinters all over the place. And I say splinters as if we were ever one piece of granite. But we are not, we never have been. I think yoUSaid it quite eloquently, actually, that the US is a melting pot that never melted. And, here we are.
[00:17:36] Steve Hall: Yes, I'm stealing that from Gore Vidal he said that quite some time ago. And he was right, Stephen, you have a much tougher job over there. I don't envy the job, because your divisions run so deep.
[00:17:48] Steven Grumbine: They do and they're exaggerated daily.
[00:17:51] Steve Hall: Absolutely. And your culture is so ultra competitive. Because this, this works on the level of competitive individualism as well as competitive ethnic groups. Because your hyper individualist culture is, and the world's never seen anything as individualistic as America.
[00:18:09] Steven Grumbine: it's awful.
[00:18:09] Steve Hall: Well,it gives you a lot of freedom. It gives you an awful lot of individual freedom, the American dream, of course,
[00:18:17] Steven Grumbine: a lot of one.
[00:18:18] Steve Hall: which is, you know, a little bit of a fake. I don't know if I've got time, but if I've got time, I'll you've heard the WC Fields story about the American dream, I suppose, where, tell you later if I have time, it's quite a funny story. That level of individualism has never been experienced in Europe.
In fact, a lot of people fled Europe because of their religious differences. They were Protestants. Now, Protestants relocated God from the heavens, from an external power, into the conscience of each individual. So Christian Protestant individualism was the founding culture of the United States of America.
And it is so hyper individualistic that really bringing anyone together in any way, shape or form, the racial oppression and racial hostility that still exists in the place is, I mean, you have such an incredibly difficult job. And also don't forget that your nation is founded on a hatred of the state and taxation.
[00:19:24] Steven Grumbine: Which is crazy, right? Ultimately, the more that you think about
what we're up against, cause the US's number one export aside from military weaponry is neoliberalism. We outsource everything to the world, basically preaching that individualistic mindset that every problem you have is your own fault.
Every success you've ever had is your own fault. Every, if you win, it's all you. If you lose, it's all you and shame on you. The Ayn Rand scourge is real. We literally live
in a libertarian hellscape.
[00:20:03] Steve Hall: This was all orchestrated though, Steven. This was all orchestrated. Don't give up on America. Don't forget that despite the huge racial differences that the divisions between black and white workers after the Civil War were orchestrated, they were prevented from living in the same parts of the towns and the villages that were springing up, as America were industrialized, deliberately segregated.
And after the First World War, right up until the New Deal, that separation, continued, and the hyper individualism continued. But during that very, very formative period of 1929 to 1933, the Americans just realized how bad neoclassical capitalism is, didn't they? More than anyone else. We've all seen the Grapes of Wrath, the wonderful Steinbeck novel. We've all read about The Dust Bowl, Depression. The Americans learned a hard lesson there. And that was a fundamental, watershed for change. In 1933, Roosevelt got in on a social democratic, I think we need to go further than social democracy because social democracy was too weak to um, prevent neoliberalism from usurping.
But it was the Americans who first voted in a social democrat. Wasn't it? And in 1937, it's a little known fact, I mean, I'm a sort of polymath really, but I ended up working in the criminology department. That's an easy question to answer, because a job came up, and I took it. So I ended up working in the criminology department and I became a criminologist over the years.
One of the things that I' d investigate were comparative homicide rates. The incredible thing between about mid 1935 and late 1937, which was Roosevelt's second term, wasn't it? And he really started to put his new deal policies into practice in a, in a big way. I mean, you even had state funded theatre companies, didn't you?
These wonderful people like Orson Welles, John Cassavetes, people like that. We had the, um, oh, God, you remind me. What was the work program called? The administration program. Oh, bloody hell. Yeah, The W, what's it? Sorry, I'm getting old, my brain.
[00:22:10] Steven Grumbine: WPA.
[00:22:11] Steve Hall: WPA. Yeah, this was all organized and worked very well.
And, it was getting America back to work. America, in 1933, the homicide rate was about 11 and a half per 100,000, that's very high. By the end of 1937 Roosevelt cut the American homicide rate in half. And that a very little known fact. And I wrote an article about that, a while ago. Social democracy, it's not democratic socialism, it's not ideal, it's not perfect, but it had a massive impact. And it worried the American ruling class more than communism. Because they knew communism wouldn't work. Gosplan, for instance, the central command economy. I mean, how can you possibly, find out and work out what everyone in little villages and towns across Russia want for their breakfast?
It was a stupid idea. They have tales of, people queuing outside of shops in Vladivostok are waiting for bacon and sausages and a lorry load of midtown boot polish would turn up, because a bureaucrat in the office of Moscow made a mistake. Now if it stuck with the new economic policy, the market, who knows what would have happened to the Soviet Union, a controlled market might well have worked.
But the social democratic policies were starting to work, and they were a road to what I, my ideal is a democratic socialism. And I've always been a democratic socialist, a benight in a sense. America adopted Keynesian, demand management policies and capital controls before anyone in Europe did. So don't give up on America, Steven. You were capable of doing it. In fact, you were the first to do it. And you had a huge success in the 1930s.
[00:23:56] Steven Grumbine: I think things have changed though in both technology, the surveillance state, the police state, the weapons ofwar and the propaganda machine thatmanufacturers consent has radically shifted.
You used to have one newspaper that everyone read back in the day. You know, you knew that there was a show at 5 PM that everybody sat in front of the radio or the television to listen to together, they heard the same things. Now we're overloaded with just data. It's not even information anymore. It's just data just thrown at us.
[00:24:32] Steve Hall: Yes. Data overload. Yes. This is the Jean Baudrillard's notion of the obscene ecstasy of communication, he calls it. Go on.
[00:24:40] Steven Grumbine: We've checked out, we've given up. I mean, a lot of people are so overwhelmed that they're like little potato bugs and every bit of information that contradicts what they think just bounces right off their little shell. And the unfortunate part of that is, and I think this is an important thing that we need to discuss is that, we have no understanding of class in the US. We have no understanding of uniting beyond Democrat or Republican. We don't have that kind of history in this country, unfortunately, to lean on. And even when you point to Keynes, Keynes did not see class the way that Marx saw class.
[00:25:24] Steve Hall: Oh, absolutely not.
[00:25:26] Steven Grumbine: and. The unfortunate fact is that when you look at class in America, which is, I believe the one way that we can fight back, most people to your point earlier would run for the Hills.
They would, they'd be like, Oh my God, class. Oh, they're talking about that red scare stuff. And then they break out all the CIA talking points about Stalin or whoever. And, immediately their eyes glaze over and they become rabid. And with social media, which has been the way we communicate so completely shut down with algorithms and shut down with little games that they play to keep us in our own little bubbles.
We never build the kind of consensus that we could have built.
I'm curious your thoughts, you frequently point to that book, The Death of the Left. Help me understand. I don't see that path forward. I want to see that path forward. I see it has to be based on class because we would never have the numbers we would need to be able to make a dent. But help me understand.
[00:26:33] Steve Hall: Well, nobody in the 1920s, a European sociologist called Werner Sombart visited America and wrote that America is the last place in the world that you're going to have class consciousness or an organized class resistance. It is so atomized. It is so hyper competitive individualist that there's no chance of that happening.
But after 1933, it did happen. So you can never write it off. Now, I'm not suggesting that you go through the misery of the 1929 to 1933 Dust Bowl again in order to wake yourselves up. that's not going to happen anyway, is it? With welfare and quantitative easing and, and all of these, fiscal, well, they're just palliatives, aren't they, they're not really policies.
They're just palliatives. They're um,ways of getting countries through, very brutal market corrections as the neoclassicals like to call it. So it may not happen to that extent, but there will be... Alain Badiou, the French philosopher, looks to what he calls the Event, capital E. Now, the Wall Street crash and the Dust Bowl was an Event, Steven. Capital E. But there are some other Events. Gaza is an Event. Let's not get into that huge controversy this little discussion. But Gaza is an Event. Events happen. Things happen that wake people up. And, hopefully, should we hope for an Event?
Well, I don't know. Perhaps we should fear an Event. Perhaps we should be rather circumspect about the possibility of an Event, because the Event might be horrific. Or it might simply be a wake up call. Was the great financial crash should have been an Event. But as yoUSaid, you know, this huge ideological machine, this sort of weird libertarian/neoliberal ideology machine that runs American culture went straight into action, telling people that austerity was necessary, that inflation is a big problem that we can't keep on, we can't spend any money. We can't create jobs and all the rest of it. So that ideology machine is still there, but the great financial crash was almost an Event. It was almost an Event. Are we due another one? Steve Keen, another heterodox economist, who I have a lot of time for outside of MMT.
I'm not an MMTer as such. I have a lot of respect for MMT. I think it's the first port of call for any one interested in heterodox economics because it's a pristine description of how the fiat money system, how the monetary plumbing, works in a fiat money. It's great. And it should be the first part of the call, but there are other heterodox economists with good ideas. And there might be another financial crash.
The whole thing could just come apart at any time, because of course, the way that neoliberal capitalism works it's a credit system. And you have to lend money, you know, it's the old Marxist notion, as soon as money stops circulating, it's dead, isn't it? it has, hasn't it?
They must invest, they must constantly invest, and if they can't invest, the whole thing crashes. They inflate assets like they did with housing. Throughout the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, inflating their assets to try and create a market, a durable market. But it didn't work. Then they set up the derivatives market with collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps, basically selling each of the debt and insurance policies on top of the debt in order to keep on, they've got to keep on lending money.
And receiving compound interest, because that's how the system works. And if they hit a block in that system, then an Event occurs. I think let's call the GFC in 2008, a "nearly Event." And there may be an Event, but they managed to QE, you know, helicoptered in a load of money.
QE is non inflationary of course, because it disappears into the bank's reserve accounts at the central bank. It's just basically to obviate a liquidity crisis. But what were looking at it's a possible Event. We don't know what's going to happen because this system of lending out money. I don't know if you've read Michael Hudson, another heterodox economist.
[00:30:44] Steven Grumbine: Oh, I've had him on here quite a few times, yes sir.
[00:30:47] Steve Hall: Yeah, he's a great economist and he really knows his stuff. And he knows that really this, that the problem is that the debt crisis, that the old world, he's written a lot about the jubilees and,the [inaudible], of course the way that debts were canceled property was returned in order to try to get, they get out of social hostilities and reboot economies.
The Rome, Greeks and the Romans were the first to cancel the debt, debt jubilees. But can we keep on creating what Steve Keen calls debt zombies? And if they're compound, they've explored everywhere now, haven't they, Steven? I mean, they've done China, they've done Indonesia, Mexico, lent their money out to low wage economies.
And now these economies are developing. They've created their own organization, the BRICS. They're starting to talk about their own possible reserve currency in the future. They're starting to trade in their own currencies. They're challenging American dollar Hegemony and they're starting to fight back.
So will the BRICS cause an Event? Will there be an Event? We don't know. So don't give up. Things will change and we have to have policies ready for the Event. If something does happen, we have to say, look, this is the second financial crisis. We're not going to get out of this.
We can't helicopter money our way out of this. We're going to have to change the nature of our economy. We're going to have to change the way our economy operates. And then we can start looking towards the heterodox economists who receive such a trashing, don't they, on social media by the libertarians and neoliberals.
You can tell how worried they are by the amount of invective and ad hominem they throw at heterodox economists. But that's just, that's a sign of fear.
[00:32:28] Steven Grumbine: Yet look at the documentary finding the money, and I don't know if you've had an opportunity to see it yet.
[00:32:35] Steve Hall: Not yet. No, no.
[00:32:36] Steven Grumbine: My chief complaint of the movie is that it doesn't have Bill Mitchell in it. That's my chief complaint. Okay.
[00:32:43] Steve Hall: Yes,
[00:32:44] Steven Grumbine: But beyond that though, the thing that I find fascinating is that we're exposing just how little the establishment economists, these neoclassical slash new Keynesian, type economists know about any of this stuff. They have no concept of money creation. They have no concept of how banks actually function. It's kind of like placing the emphasis of a pronunciation of a word on the wrong syllable, on the wrong consonant, on the wrong vowel, and, they don't get it, and it's funny, ha ha ha. But the problem here is this, what I see in that documentary, and what yoUSaid in particular, about these events and having policies ready. We've got policies all over the place. I mean, I know, I come from the MMT world as an activist.
I want to be clear that I don't want anybody to confuse anything I say as if I'm saying I'm more than an activist, right? I am an activist, but that said, when I see this stuff, it requires agency. Okay. Now you have a couple of choices. If you can vote for people that are like yourself with the same class interest and they have a real legitimate opportunity to run for office and have a real opportunity to make a difference.
That's a democracy, and that's something that can happen. But we do not have that in the United States. We have corporate law, corporate control, and we have cash as speech. And corporations use that to great effect. Lobbying is legalized bribery, and we have no means as a working class to fight back through the channels that the ruling class has given us to operate within.
So that means we have to operate either A, as fake placebo beings within this system that we have no agency in, or B operate outside of that system to create the kind of,
dual power counter revolutionary force, if you will, or revolutionary force. Let's
call it what it is. We are screwed if we don't do that. I mean, and so,
[00:34:55] Steve Hall: It's Dostoevsky. We're Notes from Underground. We're Notes from the Underground, but we have to keep our notebooks going. And we have to keep on thinking and we have to keep on Thinking about communicating. If there's one criticism I can throw at the heterodox economists, but , it's a criticism being thrown at all economics and economists, because economics, economics is difficult.
It requires technical knowledge. It 's like engineering, you, need to know how things work. And it's not easy to get across to people. When I start sometimes talk about, uh, you know, MMT or post keynesianism, Um, we still have pubs over here in England.
You'd be glad to know. I want to talk about them, their eyes start glazing over Steve, you know, and they think, Oh no, he's going to start talking about the currency issue and inflation and and things again. and now, you know, and I can tell that you know, they don't really want to talk about it.
So I said, I started talking about, the football, which is not called soccer, by the way, it's the football.
[00:35:58] Steven Grumbine: I Look,
I want to say something else too, that I think that is very, very important. I was on a
radio program, Sputnik Radio, interestingly enough
[00:36:15] Steve Hall: Yeah, I know of it
[00:36:17] Steven Grumbine: And I was talking to them, and I mentioned that one of the other things is, whenever we read the news, we read the news as if they're talking to us. That they're speaking to us as individuals. But when you read deeper and you dig deeper, you realize that they're talking to their class interests, they're not talking to the working class. When they say 'it's a great economy!' Think about this, the newspaper said, 'it's a great economy, and so in order to maintain this great economy, we've got to suppress wages because upward rise of wages is causing blah, blah, blah.' Well, who are you talking to? Who are you talking to? Is that to a worker? I don't think so, because if a worker heard that, they'd be like, 'well, you're goddamn right I want my wages to go up!'
[00:37:01] Steve Hall: Well certainly, and capitalists like Henry Ford would have agreed with them, didn't he? When he said famously, 'there's no point in paying these workers, wages too low to buy the cars they make.' And this was at the heart of Keynesian effective demand. Look, we know that rising wages and what they call, disparagingly, 'money printing,' which is actually accountants, but it's just simply crediting accounts on the positive side. There's nothing to do with printing anymore. They do print a little bit. So we know the price rises cause inflation. We know that, but of course they will deny that to the death, because they reckon that if you have price controls, you lower price, that will create shortages, it probably won't.
And what they do is, that they present economic models that have human decisions completely extracted from them, that they talk about natural laws. Now, any good economist, someone like- he is not particularly heterodox, but- Ha-Joon Chang, the Korean guy working at Cambridge at the moment, is a fantastic economist and knows how the systems work.
He would say that, 'look, you've got in every natural law proposed by an economic model, you've got to insert a human decision. And by constructing these economic models with these ludicrously complex equations, which most of which are complete nonsense, by the way, it's just utter rubbish. It's like your doctors calling everything by a Latin name so that you won't... multiple sclerosis, the disease that affects many muscles, you know what I mean? , Botanists do the same too, they're calling plants complicated names in order to deter people, to make it an exclusive profession.
And they extract... even the basic laws of supply and demand have human decisions in them, they don't have to rise. If you have a field full of 10 goats, I'm going to simplify things that economists will roll their eyes right now and then go, 'Oh God, listen to him.' No, but I'm going to oversimplify something ridiculous.
You have a field, if you have tiny land economy with a field of 10 goats in it, and the little tiny land government issues 10 groats, then one groat equals one goat. Now, what the neoliberals and the neoclassicals say is that if the tiny land government issues 20 groats, then you need two groats to buy a goat, therefore you've halved the value of your currency.
But, the decision is that the goat herder doesn't have to charge two groats for the goat. It can leave them and then put the rest in their savings, or they build a school, hospital, or go on holiday with it. Even the basic law of supply and demand is not natural. These models simply give people guides to the action that everyone is expected to do.
They expect everyone to behave in the way that the model has allegedly analyzed. In fact, it's an instruction. It's an instruction to decision makers. That's, this is what you've got to do. If there's more money about, you've got to charge more.
[00:40:26] Steven Grumbine: That is so brilliant. What you just said, exactly right. I tell people, these are signals, market signals, 'hey, we're, spending money, we're printing money... okay, guys, that's the signal, let's raise prices, okay, now we're going to go ahead and raise interest rates.'
Because guess who wins? The rich. Guess who loses? The poor. Yes, Once again, we've got the interest income channel, flaming hot. People with money, making money hand over fist. The working class getting screwed more and more and more.
[00:40:59] Steve Hall: Absolutely, and let's, follow that. You're absolutely right, we end up being screwed. We end up with high mortgages of interest rates. They won't raise taxes, because we are a culture based on the hatred of taxes. We think tax is theft of our rewards, is stealing our rewards.
They're stealing our enjoyment. So there's this constant moral, this tale. But let's follow that, let's look at the goat herd again. So the goat herd wants to raise prices. It's not a natural law of supply and demand, it's just a decision. But who's behind the goat herd? Where did he get the money for the goats?
He got the money for the goats from the bank of Tiny Land, and the bank of Tiny Land has investments, savings and institutional funds from other lands in the same part of the world, that they're clamoring for returns. So the goat herd makes that decision, thinking that the shareholders and the asset managers, Larry Fink and all of his pals, want more returns.
So I've got to charge more. And he will think that the goat feed guy in the field who sells him the goat feed, he's going to charge more as well. So everyone assumes that they're going to act as the model allegedly analyzes, but is actually dictating. It's telling them how they should act. It's almost like a set of commandments for action, for the determined action, and give the action a moral jacket, saying this is a good thing to do.
You're being a good person and you're doing exactly what's expected, and therefore then they put a load of stupid equations in the rest of it, as if they're all Einstein 'E = MC squared.' It's all nonsense. And they tell you these equations will determine your action.
In fact, the action they've taught people to do, is what's determining the equations.
[00:42:48] Steven Grumbine: This reminds me... I'm sure you've seen the movie Star Wars, and the very first one, they're pulling up- I can't remember is it on Tatooine?- They're pulling up to the bar and the Empire is standing there, and Ben Kenobi is in the land speeder with Luke and he's like, "These are not the droids you're looking for."
"These are not the droids we're looking for." And it's like, this is exactly what's happened. I feel like the puppeteer. And, but think about what you just said, and what we're talking about. There are so many things that have been programmed into our psyche, that are at a deep level. A level so deep that I can sit there and tell yoUSomething, I can show yoUSomething, but until you have a change of heart, until you've had an event of your own, a personal event- 'have you received the Lord and savior as blah, blah, blah'. Until you've had your come to Jesus moment- where you agree to change or you agree to see things differently or whatever it is that snaps you out of the trance- you are going to continue to follow the playbook, because that's what you know. It's so deeply ingrained, that to do anything other than that seems ludicrous.
[00:44:05] Steve Hall: That's true. We're basically describing a large scale religious cult. That's what it is. There's no doubt about it. It's a belief system. And the belief system is very, very powerful. And it's scientized. It's given a load of equations to prove that this is the god's natural order in the world.
And it's also modern psychologists like Tony Damasio, who talk about the way the psyche and the body's neurology is structured and molecular constitution is structured, means that these beliefs really penetrate right down to our nervous system. And they penetrate right down to give messages to the molecular basis of our bodies. If you look at a very simple creature, it only has really two or three commands. It's either to stay where it is or move to somewhere where it can survive, or to stay where it is and improve that environment. Now, only the primates can improve their environment.
So, only primates have the three molecular commands. Other organisms have two molecular commands, to move or to stay. And the neurological level sends messages to the molecules, we stay or we move. So basically, what neoliberalism is telling the body at the molecular level is we stick with this, we stay with this.
This is the environment. This is how deep it has penetrated. Not just to our feelings and emotions, and our neurology, but to the body's molecular level, is penetrated. We must stay with this. You know, this is Adam Smith. This is the creation of wealth. This will make us wealthy. It'll make us free. It will be a judicious combination of freedom and prosperity. Will not get any better than this. It was Francis Fukuyama, one of your guys again Steven, I have to remind you. Francis Fukuyama. Yes, you're trouble, you people, I'm telling you, yes. Francis Fukuyama, who declared the end of history, as European philosophers have declared since then, we don't really believe it's the end of history, but we are forced to act as if we do. You don't have to believe this, but you have to act as if you do believe it.
[00:46:15] Steven Grumbine: Double plus good.
[00:46:17] Steve Hall: It's as good as it gets. That was a movie as well, wasn't it? As Good As It Gets. And we believe that, that communism was a disaster. The Soviet Union was a disaster because Gosplan was a disaster. They made huge strides, they were great at making big stuff, like bombs and space rockets and things like that, but they were terrible at getting boot polish and sausages to the right people at the right time. And you heard of Richard Nixon's kitchen campaign, didn't you?
[00:46:45] Steven Grumbine: Yeah, go ahead, tell the fans.
[00:46:48] Steve Hall: '59, Well Khrushchev [I mean, anyone who's been through Stalingrad deserves a bit of respect], Nikita Khrushchev was a Russian, and I think- I might be wrong, don't quote me on this- but I think he was amongst one of the first groups to arrive, putting the flag on the Reichstag. Remember that famous photo, you know, the end of World War II, but he certainly in battle of Stalingrad, and he was sitting there and he invited over an American ambassador, who was at the time- I think it was the late '50s- it was a certain person called Richard Nixon.
And so, Richard decided to take over his weapon, and Khrushchev heard about this and said, 'What is this secret weapon?' 'What's this secret weapon?' 'What's he bringing over?' 'I hope it's nothing dangerous.' He said, 'no, no, no, I'm just going to bring some consumer items.'
So he came over with the latest American kitchen units and they all invited the Russian housewives.
I'm sorry to be sexist, but that's what they were in those days. Housewives that had a strict gender division of labor and, you know, women were concerned with domestic labor. That's changed. Good thing. And they were all coming. Oh, look, look what I could do. This is fantastic.
You've got a double, they've got a quadruple hob burner. You've got a timer on your other. I've got a timer. I don't have to stand there with my watch. That doesn't work. Trying to work out the time for the. From a stroganoff, you know what I mean? And they were cooing over these wonderful consumer items.
and Khrushchev was just, um, really, am I allowed to say pissed off on this program? Yeah, he was, you know, we, I think you mightn't say pissed, but we say pissed off. I mean, it was really, And, he would said famously, we will bury you. Nixon, of course, reported back and, he said, this is a cold war. These are going to send nukes there. But what he meant was we'll out produce you.
[00:48:27] Steven Grumbine: Indeed.
[00:48:28] Steve Hall: We will build, we will make better kitchen units, we will put timers on our ovens, and we will do all this, and we will do it better. Unfortunately, Stephen, they didn't, they couldn't, because they didn't have market signals to work off. They had abandoned the new economic policy, which Lenin was keen to go, but of course Stalin wanted to centralize everything, have total control over everything, So they didn't have the ability to do that and consumer dissatisfaction more than anything else. I mean, they had exploding TV sets. Well, when they suddenly found out that people wanted stuff, they hastily set up a Bureau. Well, that's the Bureau and we'll setup a design Bureau and a production Bureau.
And so they started making, you know, and TVs became popular in the fifties. Yeah. Remember they all start to come out in the night. Well, no, sorry. I'm assuming there's you're an old geezer like me and probably not. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, no, no. You're still a handsome young man, but I'm a grizzled old geezer.
And I was, I remember my mother talking about when, you know, televisions, I think the first television came out the year I was born, 1955 the Russians heard about this and they hastily made these television sets, which were totally crap. And they started exploding in the room, you know, and the tubes were exploding because hadn't been made properly. Consumer dissatisfaction brought down the Soviet Union more than anything else. But the Americans are consumer fixated. I mean, they'll queue around the block for the latest iPhone.
Have you seen them? you know, this sort of stuff. they created the consumer subject. Thomas Frank's wonderful book on the Conquest of Cool. In 1961, they changed the whole advertising scenario. All the advertising messages were changed from family man to rugged Marlborough man, producing stuff for these sort of individuals, these cool individuals who were striding out in the sort of a Ayn Rand fashion, like John Galt and making themselves and the country wealthy.
So consumerism took off in America and consumerism is a drug, you know, almost religion.
[00:50:28] Steven Grumbine: It is.
[00:50:29] Steve Hall: It is. And this country, consumers have had a tougher time. We tended to love you because you'd helped us. well, you were late, of course but yeah, you got there eventually, you helped us during the war against Nazis and against the Axis powers. And after that, we sort of fell in love with you, started importing all your music and all your Levi jeans and all the rest of it. we became highly American influenced. Especially during the counterculture, which looked so sexy and edgy and all the rest. It wasn't, of course, it it was a substitute for politics. And we imported all this stuff, but we had, as you were saying at the beginning, we had firmer identities. We had much stronger traditional identities, uh, in work, in religion, in region, and in locale, in the community, you know, I would I would describe myself as a, as a steelworker from concert and a socialist.
That was my identity. Yeah. There wasn't, didn't need a load of consumer trappings to construct my identity. But those identities were missing in America. People didn't really relate too strongly. They related more to the ethnic groups, Italian American and Irish American, Jewish American, et cetera. And consumerism didn't really have too much to get rid of in order to start. So it's easier to sell consumer symbolism to Americans as symbols of their identity. And this is how they got us into consumerism. We became what we bought and what we displayed and what we wore and what sort of car we drove, you know, what we drove in. And this, this is why America became so consumer fixated because there wasn't that much to get rid of really. We had much stronger identities over here, but eventually consumerism triumphed. No, we don't, our regional identities are now much weaker than they once were, which is, I think it's a tragedy because we had such incredibly rich cultures, you know, I come from a place called Newcastle Upon Tyne, Tyneside, yeah? The home of Hank Marvin and Mark Knopfler and Sting and people like that. we had a tremendous musical heritage, but our folk tradition,we've written some of those beautiful folk songs you've ever heard, but we started to lose that. You start to lose that tradition because we were being, Atlanticized. American culture was taken over. You were much sexier, you know, what I used to say in the fifties, the problem with Americans is they're overpaid, they're over sexed, and they're over here. that was what, that sort of, jokey sort of way of putting it. You must understand how powerful your culture was, how attractive and sexy it was, Of course, West Germany, apart from the fact that you used West Germany as an investment shock absorber, if your investments weren't producing the returns anywhere else, they would certainly produce it in Germany and Japan because They almost had to reconstruct them from the ground up. and you started pumping money through the Marshall Aid Plan into West Germany. And you created a very sexy place, the West Germany. And the East Germans would be sort of peering over the Berlin Wall thinking 'Oh, I wish our life was a sexy and wealthy and interesting. I wish you had all those consumer goods and Mercedes Benz and BMWs and all the rest of it. American consumerism is immensely, powerful, both in America and outside.
How do you see consumerism impacting the working classes? Is that the identity based on what I can afford? I can afford to buy this nice new car. You can't. So I'm better than you.
Sure.
[00:53:56] Steven Grumbine: individual, I'm the winner. You're the loser. You're the zero sum thinking.
[00:54:00] Steve Hall: Absolutely. It creates competitive hierarchies within a working class culture.
[00:54:04] Steven Grumbine: And that is a divisive thing, obviously. let me take us into this last thing here, because, you. know, we've talked a lot about some good history and all, but what really brings me to today is, is that I look and I see heterodox economists whom I happen to have championed for 15, 10, 15 years, and a lot of what comes out sounds a little bourgeoisie kind of high brow, you know, polite society kind of things. And I'm just very anecdotally, I am sitting here with five teeththat desperately need a root canal, right? We don't have any dental care. And in fact, as I told you before We started this, I didn't sleep last night because of my teeth hurting so badly. So when I hear them talking about what a great economy it is and Biden sticking the landing and other things that I feel are quite offensive. Um, it doesn't measure up. It's kind of like I said, reading the paper and you see that they're clearly not talking to me.
The quote unquote voter, if you actually believe we're voting, which we aren't. But if you believe that we are. They're not talking to regular people. They're talking to investorclasses. They're talking to ownership classes. And if you look at regular Jane and Joe six pack, we're told to lump it, basically. We're told, Hey, you know, Biden's doing great. Don't forget, Trump, You know, he's So horrible and I'm not voting for Trump, but I'm not voting for either of them. I, you know, I don't see my class interests being represented by either person. And and I don't see the economist even talking about things from a working class perspective either.
I see them talking about it from a capitalist class kind of environment. What are your thoughts on the messaging? Because when I bring this stuff up, socialists don't want to hear anything about MMT. They don't want to hear this heterodox stuff. They're like, that is just more crapitalism. That's more nonsense. And it just, it falls on deaf ears. What are your thoughts?
[00:56:13] Steve Hall: Well, socialism, and communism in a much firmer way, socialism is about work in control of the means of production. It's as simple as that. And if workers have controlled the means of production, they can make sure the right stuff's produced and, that it's shared round equally, and, and people have a chance to participate and work in it. And if, uh, there's an overproduction of labor, that means you have a shorter working week. one of our great old union leaders, Arthur Scargill, I suppose you've heard of the miners strikes in 84, 85. He suggested that we go down to a four day and then a three day working week because machines are making our cars now.
And, and we were promised a life of luxury, weren't we? And, leisure in the 19th century. And we would the technology that's basically made everyone's life more stressful. The opposite is more people that, you know, can do more work. Each individual can do more work with the machine. So the means of production, it doesn't see an MMT heterodox post Keynesianism really having, because it's all demand driven.
Keynesianism was demand driven. Keynes didn't really care who was producing anything. Whether it was the British government taking over steel and, coal and energy and rail, or whether it was private, it was a demand driven and most heterodox economists are also driven by aggregate demand, notional demand and effective demand.
Effective demand being the most important that, you know, people have money in their pockets and they can, um, afford to buy stuff, but who's producing that stuff and who's making profits from it, who's controlling production, who's controlling the direction of the economy, seems to be, um, a little bit, on, the periphery of, uh, but I think there are exceptions such as Bill Mitchell, uh, for instance, the MMT, who I think is more socialist inclined.
Um, I hope, you know, if he's listening, he doesn't mind me describing him as such. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:57:54] Steven Grumbine: No, he said in my most recent podcast.. Absolutely.
[00:57:55] Steve Hall: I know. I know, Bill. I mean, I don't know. I did a little mini-tour with him in England a few years ago, when I was talking about the the, Rather. Oh, how can I put their methods of communication could be slightly improved to somewhat.
He would say that what's most important is that we take over the means of the production of money. And if we have the means of production of money we can, decide where investment goes. neoclassicals will respond straight away. If you do that, you need capital controls. And capital exchange controls. In other words, you can't let capital out of your country all the time. If you want to, invest it in your industry. And if you want to fend off the bond vigilantes and the forex vigilantes, you'll try and devalue currency and bid up your interest rates.
You need some way of defending yourself against them. And that means capital controls, central banks, buying of bonds, buying long instead of selling short and all the rest of it. We know. all of this. I'll go and go through the boring technical details because they bore me as well as everyone else, to be honest with you.
But, if we have control of the production of money and we have the control of investment, some MMT and heterodox don't like to make distinction between spending and investment, and they're right because it's all spending, isn't it really? But there's a tradition of distinguishing between spending and investment.
Spending seems to be profligate. It's what you, it's a loss, whereas investment is a gain. Uh, for the future investment You're creating something will be useful in the future. So there's a very, very important ontological and ethical distinction between the two that the economists, cause they're not very good philosophy and all the rest of they tend to, to miss all that, it's, it's important to make that distinction.
If we are controlling investment, we control money, control investment democratically through representative democracies, then we can start to rebuild economies in a fair way, in a way that creates jobs, in a way that has an union representation on jobs. And we in this country, believe it or not, are still talking about re nationalizing the railways. The Labour Party has given in because the fringe parties like the Workers Party, which I'm in by the way, I'm a member of the British Workers Party, um, that we have got a couple of candidates. We got George Galloway into, um,Parliament and they're worried that the fringe parties are getting more votes. the independent councillors are up, the Labour Party and Conservatives are toast. And that, let's just have a you know, let's rub our hands and enjoy that moment, the Conservatives toast. The Labour Party's doing okay, not as well as I thought, they'll probably get it to power.
But we have a chance of power broking, getting in a few Members of Parliament and having some say in the close decisions. So they're worried about that and there are some positive things happening, Steven, you know, we can keep on pushing.
I don't think simply educating people in economics on Twitter is necessarily the way to do it. I don't think we should stop doing that. I don't think we should stop doing that I think we should keep on doing it because some people are interested and if it sparks interest go off and read.. Randy Wray's books or Stephanie's books or whoever
and they do you learn majority they are too busy it is all a bit too difficult some of them failed their math at school and, you know, it's all a bit too tricky. It's like trying to teach people, um, what would be the equivalent? It's not as complex as astrophysics or quantum mechanics. Let's not, you know, let's not elevate it to that level, But it's at least as complex as, uh, as, as engineering, motor engineering, you know, so it's, it's fairly complicated.
It's, it's not something that's an easy sell. and I will say something quite controversial here. I don't think the job guarantee is an easy sell. I agree that you know, [Pavlina] Tchernova, uh, uh, Tcherneva, sorry, um, uh, very good book about it. It, it does all what says on the tin, it will automatically stabilize wages, stabilize prices and effective demand, and all the rest of it give people a job.
It will be sort of spatial Keynesianism in the sense that it can help to, um, to, to regenerate some of the theories made derelict by de-industrialization.De-industrialization was the crime of the 20th century, the real, the real crime century. It can do all that, but it's a very hard sell, especially in this country, because it seems like you're sort of it's calling people rejects who have been put on a government program, who can't get a proper job. English workers are very proud people. Very, very, proud. We have huge pride. We made the world's greatest ships with our inventions, we invented the steam engine for God's sake, you know.
We have huge pride in our engineering tradition in our work, and we don't want to be seen as sort of government workers in yellow jackets with, you know, with JG stamped on the back, you know, go around. Singing songs in old folks homes and serving soup in the streets, you know, that we want that people they want a proper job.
So my advice to MMT people is that's a good idea, but it's not a great sell. It's not going to attract people in. Promising proper jobs, industry jobs, public services, direct labor forces.
To doing that sort of thing where people can get proper jobs, proper wages, job security. That's the way forward. So our identities as workers are still there. We don't stand outside shipyards gates in crowds of 2000 anymore. You can find the working class in cafes restaurants and all sorts of little places.
It's all atomized. Britain is a service economy and America is quite happy to keep Britain as a service economy because that's one competitor out of the way.
[01:03:28] Steven Grumbine: Indeed, I want to break in on that momentarily before we close out. I just want to say this, you know, I think that one of the biggest mistakes that not just activists make, but people that are just kind of stumbling onto the job guarantee is they try and make it more than it is. Okay. And, you know, I hear some trying to sell it as a green jobs program and we'll have, you can have a green jobs program at more than a living wage at a professional wage at a gilded wage, whatever. But problem is they try to take what is considered to be the base, which is the job guarantee, which is the employer of last resort. We're talking about providing work as opposed to like, for example, in the US if you're released from prison, you're not going to find a job, but yeah, a condition of your release is to have a job. So we have recidivism where people end up back in jail because of this.
So in America, in the US I should say, we need something like this to prevent this nonstop revolving door in and out of the prison system based on really, really pathetic ideas. But the reason why it's there the way it is is because people are trying to sell it as career work and Warren Mosler, I don't agree with his political angles on some things, but from a perspective of economics, he's talking about the job guarantee as the transition job going from here to there.
[01:04:55] Steve Hall: Sure, sure. But if it's a transition, why sell it? Why put it at the foreground let's just, keep it in the background. What we should be doing is is trying to sell the ideas that we, as Bill Mitchell argues, if we take over the means of production of money and we can invest, we can create proper jobs before we need a job guarantee.
[01:05:12] Steven Grumbine: heck yes.
Agreed.
[01:05:14] Steve Hall: And that's what we should be leading with. I mean, we shouldn't be ditching the job guarantee, but to lead with it, if that is your jab in the ring, it's not a very good jab. It's not Larry Holmes jab, that one. I agree with you, we need to take the job guarantee down a peg or two and be a little bit quieter about it and talk about investment, talk about real jobs, talk about control, talk about onshoring of industry, you know, I don't want to do that too much upset China, of course, But we need progressive, high productivity. We need to move into the fourth industrial revolution, and a green transition.
We know it's going to happen. We know there are massive problems with lithium mining and the conditions that we know that, but that's, that's the same for everything. Same copper is the same. So we know we're moving it. We're moving ahead. We need to move America and Britain and Europe ahead. We need to help the developing world. We need good relationships with the BRICS economies, because the BRICS economies are going to become powerful whether we like it or not.
[01:06:09] Steven Grumbine: I am about cooperation, but I will just say from my vantage point, and this is, uh, kind of my final word before I ask you for your final word, you know, a lot of the policy space, it, it, it doesn't take into consideration that I can't just go to the voting booth and vote my way to what I want. And this is, I think it abrogates a lot of the responsibility of us to participate in and and rising up and saying, I won't take this anymore and we've become complacent. And when we don't get our way with that little sticker, we put on our forehead that said, I voted, we just go. Oh, well, and, and quite frankly, we have stopped doing the things, like we've stopped really organizing.
We've stopped coming together as a people and, and saying what we want, what we demand and making it so. And because of that lack of imagination and that lack of fortitude, all that stuff you had said about, we need these things. Well, we may need them, but we're at the mercy of the capitalist class based on the way the system works to, to agree with us.
They've got to do it or it doesn't happen because we don't have that. And we have to accept that in this class war, we have to actually be prepared to fight. And I don't see that fighting spirit. I see a weeping, uh, you know, a,knee bend to fake electoralism. and, and, you know, and basically just going along to get along.
Kind of like 1984 where it's just like, Oh, well, I don't want to rock the boat. So I'm just going to keep my head on and not commit a thought crime. I'm just going to keep walking forward. And I think we need to begin to think about having some thought crime, maybe, maybe think about breaking the mold, maybe, maybe doing something other than just going to the ballot box and thinking I'm going to change society by hitting this button.
[01:08:12] Steve Hall: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I totally agree with you. Um, um, the opposite of that, of course, is to grow from the grassroots. I have no faith in that either. I don't think there are any grassroots. I think we're living on scorched earth in terms of politics.
[01:08:26] Steven Grumbine: Amen.
[01:08:27] Steve Hall: You know, so let's forget all about that. What we do have Um, are some very pissed off people, uh, in Europe, don't forget they can be persuaded to go to the far right as well to put the, you know, the gilets jaunes, the Canadian truckers, uh, or this sort of demonized as, as, uh, examples of popular, uh, populist uprisings.
Let's stop demonizing people and calling them populists as a pejorative that term, and let's just think of them as working people. There are fringe parties We need unification of fringe parties. We need to be talking economics to the fringe parties, just persuading them that there are ways in which we can reboot our economies.
We need to be educating the fringe politicians. Got a lot of politicians don't really have time to become economically literate. We, we need to be, we need to be preparing policies when we need to be accumulating knowledge, collating it and putting it into, um, and let me say this, you know, into comprehensible books and pamphlets so that people can understand it. That's the main thing.
It just goes too highfalutin. And there's too much preachiness and lecturing going on about, you know, in the heterodox economics. We need to talk to people simply so that they understand what's happening. And be prepared for an event. Nobody can predict history. I think there are about a dozen economists who predicted the great financial crisis [GFC]. Nobody knows when the next one's going to come. Nobody predicted Putin's invasion. We can't predict history. Events will happen. Things will happen. We, we don't know what, but we have to be prepared with the right policies, with the right organized political parties.
This means as much unification as we can of, uh, you know, amongst the left,
you know, the old joke, you know, you don't know a leftist party until it's had its first split. We need to stop,
[01:10:24] Steven Grumbine: Ha, ha, ha.
[01:10:25] Steve Hall: you know, we, we need to stop bickering about cultural issues. And we need to try to get black people, Asian people, white people together to, to, to recognize their shared interests in the economy.
And we, can we combat competitive individualism right now? Can we persuade people to be socialist? Of course we can't. But an event will happen, or a series of events will happen, where people will say to themselves, This is dead. This has, this has now died. This has collapsed. And we must, this has happened in history.
Look at the collapse of the Bronze Age, 1100 BC.Don't get me talking about that because I'm writing a book about that at the moment. Don't get me, I'm just having at least another two programs worth out of me. And if you think economics is incomprehensible, wait, til you hear all this stuff. But it has happened periodically in history.
History changes, things just collapse. I mean, Michael Hudson's work on the collapse of [the ancient world] that, I don't know if you've had him on talking about that, but it'd be great to get him in to talk about the collapse of the ancient world, into debt crisis, and all the rest of it. He's written a book called The Collapse of Antiquity, which I've got a lot of time for.
So things will happen, Steve, and we have to be prepared. And we have to have as many people as we can prepared. We have to get them on side. I'm not sure talking about the economic models and job guarantees is the way to do that. We have to get them on side. We have to try and to promote as much understanding as we possibly can and get through the fringe, politicians, some fringe parties are starting to win elections in this country.
So people are realizing that the uniparty, as we call it over here, you know, you've called the Dems and Two cheeks of the same backside, as George Galloway calls them. Uh, the, the uniparty is, is, is, people are losing faith in it. Voting, the, voting in the council elections over here was about 29%.
People are fed up with it, and they're getting fed up with the austerity, the pressure, the traffic jams, everything. They're just getting, generally, more and more pissed off. And then an event comes, forces austerity on them, And, you know, then at that point, we have to be ready to get out on the streets and start persuading people that there's another way.
[01:12:36] Steven Grumbine: I love it. All right. Well, listen, Steve, it was very nice to have you on. Actually. It's been a long time. I, you know, we're obviously in the same circles. It's nice to finally get to talk to you. Tell folks where they can find more of your work.
[01:12:50] Steve Hall: I'm not working at the moment. I'm retired. Um, but, um, if you want to read some of this stuff and bore yourself to death, you know, buy one of our long, boring books. Um, The Death of the Left, I think, is the most recent where we outline all of this. And in the final chapter, um, chapter, I don't know how many chapters are in the flipping book, uh, chapter 10, we outline the economic way forward, uh, that we can present to people when the time comes. So, you know, please read The Death of the Left. Don't forget it's the death of the left. Long live the left. You know, the way we see in this country, the King is dead. Long live the King.
This old left is the, it's the new left. They are the new left of post structuralism and counterculture. It's all dead. It's finished. We have to start building the left again from the bottom, from people's basic social needs, and they need to be, they need to live in a society together. So read the book.
That's where you'll find, um, the thoughts of Chairman Steve in, um, in, in graphic detail. And, um, I hope you, I hope you get something from it, but let's not give up. Let's just keep going.
[01:13:57] Steven Grumbine: Amen. All right, folks. My name is Steve Grumbine. I am the host of Macro N Cheese with my guest, Steve Hall. We are out of here.
EPISODE EXTRAS
GUEST BIO
Steve Hall is a Professor Emeritus of Criminology. He worked at the Universities of Teesside, Northumbria and Durham. He is a polymath who has published in the fields of criminology, sociology, anthropology, history, economic history, political theory and philosophy. During his career he was described by public criminologist Professor David Wilson as the 'most important criminologist working in Britain today'. His book Criminal Identities and Consumer Culture (Willan 2008, with Simon Winlow and Craig Ancrum) has been described as ‘an important landmark in criminology’ and his book Theorizing Crime and Deviance (Sage 2012) has been lauded as ‘a remarkable intellectual achievement’ that ‘rocks the foundations of the discipline’.
He is also co-author of Violent Night (Berg 2006, with Simon Winlow), Rethinking Social Exclusion (Sage 2013, with Simon Winlow), Riots and Political Protest (Routledge 2015, with Simon Winlow, James Treadwell and Daniel Briggs), Revitalizing Criminological Theory (Routledge 2015, with Simon Winlow), The Rise of the Right (with Simon Winlow and James Treadwell) and The Death of the Left (with Simon Winlow). He is co-editor of New Directions in Criminological Theory (Routledge 2012, with Simon Winlow). He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the international Extreme Anthropology Research Network at the University of Vienna in 2017.
@ProfHall1955 on Twitter
From This Episode
(31:46 - 32:07)
“… So will the BRICS cause an event? Will there be an event? We don't know. So don't give up. Things will change and we have to have policies ready for the event. If things do, if something does happen, we have to say: Look, this is the second financial crisis. We're not going to get out of this. We can't helicopter the money our way out of this. We're going to have to change the nature of our economy.”
ORGANIZATIONS
Labour Party (1905) (6:46)
The Liberal government which took office as a minority administration in December 1905, before securing an overwhelming popular endorsement at the General Election of January 1906, remained in power until May 1915. It is justly regarded as one of the most distinguished governments of the twentieth century, its leading figures a collection of political luminaries which included David Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, Herbert Asquith and Edward Grey. It is often credited with laying the solid foundations of the Welfare State which were consolidated and developed by the Labour administration of 1945-51.
Liberal Governments of 1905-15 – Journal of Liberal History
Worker’s Party (6:59)
The Workers Party of Britain emerged out of the complete abandonment of the working class majority of Great Britain by Labour. Labour are Labour in name only. Labour do not represent the workers, they serve the elite, the class that does not work: the ruling class. But Labour likes to pretend it is on the side of the workers. It has stolen the name “Labour”. Labour is the wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Ten Point Programme (workerspartybritain.org)
The American Populist Party (7:53)
Formed in 1891-The Populists aspired to become a national party and hoped to attract support from labour and from reform groups generally. In practice, however, they continued through their brief career to be almost wholly a party of Western farmers. (Southern farmers, afraid of splitting the white vote and thereby allowing Blacks into power, largely remained loyal to the Democratic Party.) The Populists demanded an increase in the circulating currency, to be achieved by the unlimited coinage of silver, a graduated income tax, government ownership of the railroads, a tariff for revenue only, the direct election of U.S. senators, and other measures designed to strengthen political democracy and give the farmers economic parity with business and industry.
United States - Populism, Farmers, Reforms | Britannica
NHS (11:58)
On the 5th July 1948 an historic moment occurred in British history, a culmination of a bold and pioneering plan to make healthcare no longer exclusive to those who could afford it but to make it accessible to everyone. The NHS was born. The National Health Service, abbreviated to NHS, was launched by the then Minister of Health in Attlee’s post-war government, Aneurin Bevan, at the Park Hospital in Manchester.
The Birth of the NHS - Historic UK (historic-uk.com)
National Economics Board (13:39)
{National Enterprise Board} Government body set up by the Industry Act 1975 to implement Harold Wilson’s plans to increase public ownership of industry. Under Margaret Thatcher its powers were increasingly limited and it was combined to form the British Technology Group, which was privatised in 1991.
National Enterprise Board – UK Law (lawi.org.uk)
Packard Factory (14:45)
Detroit — The Packard Plant, one of Detroit's biggest symbols of blight, will be fully torn down by the end of the year and city officials hope to have a new automotive-related plant built on the site, Mayor Mike Duggan said during a Monday a press conference. The city on Monday afternoon celebrated the start of the third phase of demolition at the massive decayed plant that used to house a luxury automaker almost 70 years ago, touting "promises kept." The city owns 42 acres of the location after Peruvian developer Fernando Palazuelo failed to comply with a 2022 court order to demolish the deteriorating industrial site and missed other deadlines. {Article From Detroit News, March 4, 2024 by Sarah Rahal}
Champion Spark Plug Factory (14:50)
HELLERTOWN, Pa. - The former Champion spark plug factory just off Interstate 78 in Hellertown, a site once so polluted it fell under federal regulation, has been sold for $2.75 million. From 1930 to 1975, spark plugs were made at the site and waste including zinc plating materials, cleaners and oils were dumped in unlined lagoons, according to the U.S. Department of Environmental Protection. The land was deemed a Superfund site, a designation for polluted lands monitored by the EPA. In 2023, Lehigh Valley Hospital Network and Peron Development discussed plans for a "neighborhood hospital" at the property, which is a gateway to Hellertown. Peron Development said at that time that a small hospital would be suited for the site. Some of the land is covered by an asphalt cap that must remain in place. That section could be used for parking, Peron Development said in August. The EPA's remedies for the site included requiring "an impermeable cover over the former lagoon area and installation of a groundwater extraction and treatment system." Federal oversight of the area began in the 1980s and the EPA began designing its remedial system in 1992. Construction of the cover was completed in 1994, according to the EPA website. {Article from LeHigh Valley Regional News, March 5, 2024, by Jeff Ward}
Champion spark plug factory in Hellertown sold for $2.8M | Lehigh Valley Regional News | wfmz.com
“state funded theatre company” (21:57)
Congress created the Federal Theatre Project in 1935 to provide work for theater professionals during the Great Depression. The Project was funded under the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and directed on the national level by Vassar College drama professor Hallie Flanagan (1890-1969).
Federal Theatre Project - HistoryLink.org
WPA (22:17)
Work Progress Administration was a work program for the unemployed that was created in 1935, under U.S. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Although critics called the WPA an extension of the dole or a device for creating a huge patronage army loyal to the Democratic Party, the stated purpose of the program was to provide useful work for millions of victims of the Great Depression and thus to preserve their skills and self-respect. The economy would in turn be stimulated by the increased purchasing power of the newly employed, whose wages under the program ranged from $15 to $90 per month.
Works Progress Administration (WPA) | Definition & History | Britannica
BRICS (31:33)
An informal grouping of countries that has developed into an intergovernmental organization. The term originally denoted a collection of countries experiencing rapid economic growth that would, if growth were maintained at similar rates, emerge as the dominant economic players of the 21st century. The acronym has since been adopted as the name of a formal intergovernmental organization that aims to create greater economic and geopolitical integration and coordination among member states.
The BRICS organization is commonly understood as an attempt to form a geopolitical bloc capable of counterbalancing the influence of Western-dominated global institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.
BRICS | Members, History, Name Origin, & Proposed Currency | Britannica
”Finding the Money” (32:33)
A documentary released in May of 2024, described as: “An intrepid group of economists is on a mission to instigate a paradigm shift by flipping our understanding of the national debt — and the nature of money — upside down.”
Finding the Money – There's another side to the national debt. (findingmoneyfilm.com)
Sputnik Radio (36:17)
Sputnik is a modern news agency whose products include newsfeeds, websites, social networks, mobile apps, radio broadcasts and multimedia press centers. Sputnik HQ is located in Moscow. Regional offices are located in key regions and countries around the world, including the United States (Washington, DC), China (Beijing), Egypt (Cairo).
Sputnik News - World News, Breaking News & Top Stories (sputnikglobe.com)
Conservatives {UK} (1:00:19)
Conservative Party, officially National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations., British political party whose guiding principles include promotion of private property and enterprise, maintenance of a strong military and foreign policy, and preservation of traditional cultural values and institutions. It is the heir of the old Tory Party, whose members began forming “conservative associations” after electoral rights were extended to the middle class in 1832. The modern party (whose members are often known as Tories) is essentially a coalition of two groups, and must balance its traditionalist and communitarian wing against its libertarian and individualist wing.
Conservative Party summary | Britannica
CONCEPTS
Polymath (1:10)
: a person of encyclopedic learning
Polymath Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
”The Mob” (6:38)
Ochlocracy (from the Greek words ‘Ochlos’ and ‘Kratos’, power of the masses) is a degenerative form of democracy. As the famous ancient Greek historian Polybius wrote, whereas people in democracies are led by the most virtuous citizens, in ochlocracies the masses become prey and instruments of populist leaders and demagogues. In other words, ochlocracy or ‘mob rule’ is the rule of government by mob or a mass of people, or, the intimidation of legitimate authorities.
Ochlocracy - ECPS (populismstudies.org)
MP (7:13)
The UK public elects Members of Parliament (MPs) to represent their interests and concerns in the House of Commons. MPs consider and can propose new laws as well as raising issues that matter to you in the House. This includes asking government ministers questions about current issues including those which affect local constituents.
MPs split their time between working in Parliament itself, working in the constituency that elected them and working for their political party.
What do MPs do? - UK Parliament
Parliament (7:14)
The UK Parliament has two Houses that work on behalf of UK citizens to check and challenge the work of Government, make and shape effective laws, and debate/make decisions on the big issues of the day.
Fabianism (7:36)
Socialist movement and theory that emerged from the activities of the Fabian Society, which was founded in London in 1884. Fabianism became prominent in British socialist theory in the 1880s. The name Fabian derives from Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, the Roman general famous for his delaying tactics against Hannibal during the Second Punic War. The early Fabians rejected the revolutionary doctrines of Marxism, recommending instead a gradual transition to a socialist society.
Fabianism | British Socialism, Social Reform & Political Strategy (britannica.com)
Nationalization (UK-1945) (8:56)
… Nationalization of railroads and coal mines, which were in any case so run down that any government would have had to bring them under state control, and of the Bank of England began immediately. In addition, road transport, docks and harbours, and the production of electrical power were nationalized. There was little debate. The Conservatives could hardly argue that any of these industries, barring electric power, was flourishing or that they could have done much differently. More debate came over Labour’s social welfare legislation, which created the “welfare state.” Labour enacted a comprehensive program of national insurance, based upon the Beveridge Report (prepared by economist William Beveridge and advocating state action to control unemployment, along with the introduction of free health insurance and contributory social insurance) but differing from it in important ways. It regularized the de facto nationalization of public assistance, the old Poor Law, in the National Assistance Act of 1946, and in its most controversial move it established the gigantic framework of the National Health Service, which provided free comprehensive medical care for every citizen, rich or poor.
United Kingdom - Post-WWII, Brexit, Monarchy | Britannica
Stratification (11:10)
“... While each theoretical framework offers unique insights, they also have limitations and are subject to debate. By comparing these perspectives, we can deepen our understanding of social stratification.”
Consensus vs. Conflict: Functionalist theory tends to emphasize consensus and the shared values that bind society together, while Marxist theory focuses on conflict and the tensions between different social classes.
Stratification as Functional or Harmful: The functionalist view sees stratification as a positive mechanism that ensures the most capable individuals fulfill critical social roles, whereas Marxists see it as an exploitative system that benefits a few at the expense of the many.
Diversity of Influences: Weber’s multi-dimensional approach provides a more complex view of how different factors like class, status, and power interact to shape social hierarchies and individual experiences.
Major Theoretical Perspectives on Social Stratification - Sociology Institute
Labor Party Manifesto (1978) (14:28)
This chapter examines Labour Party manifestos between 1974 and 1983. Rather than being electoral documents, designed to win votes, in this period manifestos were part of a bitter internal struggle within the party. Both left-wingers and right-wingers made frequent reference to themselves as “custodians of the manifesto,” using such claims to legitimate their diverse political positions. Such disputes meant the contents of manifestos and the interpretations of them were important signals of the party’s character and of diverse views of socialism.
North Sea Oil Revenues (14:30)
North Sea exploration started following the Continental Shelf Act 1964. Gas was first discovered in 1965, with production starting the following year. However, it was not until 1970 that commercial oil was first found and not until 1975 that production began. Since 1975, there have been several dramatic swings in receipts from oil and gas …
The evolution of North Sea oil and gas receipts - Office for Budget Responsibility (obr.uk)
Rust Belt (15:21)
Geographic region of the United States that was long the country’s manufacturing, steelmaking, and coal-producing heartland but that underwent dramatic industrial decline that resulted in widespread unemployment, increased poverty, decay, and population loss. Because the Rust Belt is defined by similar economic experience rather than by natural borders, its boundaries are debated; however, it is generally viewed as encompassing a large part of the Midwest (Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, and Wisconsin) along with Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and portions of New York. Some schemes extend it east to include the former textile-manufacturing cities of Massachusetts, west to eastern Iowa, and south to the coalfields of Kentucky.
Rust Belt | Definition, Map, States, & Cities | Britannica
Flint, Michigan (15:23)
human-made public health crisis (April 2014–June 2016) involving the municipal water supply system of Flint, Michigan. Tens of thousands of Flint residents were exposed to dangerous levels of lead, and outbreaks of Legionnaire disease killed at least 12 people and sickened dozens more.
Flint water crisis | Summary, Facts, Governor, & Criminal Charges | Britannica
WATCH ‘Flint Fatigue’ Documentary -Flint, STILL A CRISIS 10 Years Later…
Flint Fatigue - Documentary Produced by Status Coup News
Deindustrialized (15:27)
: the reduction or destruction of a nation's or region's industrial capacity
Deindustrialization Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
Keynesian (15:45)
Keynesian economics is a macroeconomic theory of total spending in the economy and its effects on output, employment, and inflation. It was developed by British economist John Maynard Keynes during the 1930s in an attempt to deal with the effects of the Great Depression. The central belief of Keynesian economics is that government intervention can stabilize the economy. Keynes’ theory was the first to sharply separate the study of economic behavior and individual incentives from the study of broad aggregate variables and constructs.
Keynesian Economics: Theory and How It's Used (investopedia.com)
Trail of Tears (16:18)
The Trail of Tears is the name given to the forced migration of the Cherokee people from their ancestral lands in Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and North Carolina to new territories west of the Mississippi River. The journey, undertaken in the fall and winter of 1838–1839, was fatal for one-fourth of the Cherokee population.
The Indian Removal Act and the Trail of Tears (nationalgeographic.org)
Gaza (16:24)_
Gaza Strip, territory occupying 140 square miles (363 square km) along the Mediterranean Sea just northeast of the Sinai Peninsula. The Gaza Strip is unusual in being a densely settled area not recognized as a de jure part of any extant country. The first accurate census, conducted in September 1967, showed a population smaller than had previously been estimated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) or by Egypt, with nearly half of the people living in refugee camps. Pop. (2017) 1,899,291; (2023 est.) 2,226,544.
…
On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched a coordinated land, sea, and air assault that took Israel by surprise. At least 1,200 Israelis were killed in the attacks—the deadliest day for Israel since its independence—and about 240 were taken hostage. Israel’s response led to hundreds of deaths in the Gaza Strip on that same day. On the following day, Israel declared war for the first time since the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
Gaza Strip | Definition, History, Facts, & Map | Britannica
homogeneity (16:41)
: the quality or state of being of a similar kind or of having a uniform structure or composition throughout : the quality or state of being homogeneous
Homogeneity Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
Reconstruction (17:16)
In U.S. history, the period (1865–77) that followed the American Civil War and during which attempts were made to redress the inequities of slavery and its political, social, and economic legacy and to solve the problems arising from the readmission to the Union of the 11 states that had seceded at or before the outbreak of war.
Reconstruction | Definition, Summary, Timeline & Facts | Britannica
Jim Crow Laws (17:39)
In U.S. history, any of the laws that enforced racial segregation in the South between the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and the beginning of the civil rights movement in the 1950s. Jim Crow was the name of a minstrel routine (actually Jump Jim Crow) performed beginning in 1828 by its author, Thomas Dartmouth (“Daddy”) Rice, and by many imitators, including actor Joseph Jefferson.
Jim Crow law | History, Facts, & Examples | Britannica
Melting Pot (18:30)
1a: a place where a variety of peoples, cultures, or individuals assimilate into a cohesive whole
b: the population of such a place
2 : a process of blending that often results in invigoration or novelty
Melting pot Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
WC Fields-American Dream (19:43)
… Souse is the typical family man in Fields -- henpecked by his wife and mother-in-law, mooched off by his children, and harassed by all sorts of outside forces, including snooping neighbors. Fields is particularly negative about the way women try to domesticate men, and Souse must fight a constant battle just to smoke and drink. From a historical perspective, Fields's comedies represent a male reaction against what today would be called female empowerment in the first quarter of this century. Like many of Fields's heroes, Souse is threatened with emasculation. Souse is haunted by the American Dream, the hope of striking it rich, of suddenly rising in the world, of becoming something other than the pathetic loser everyone thinks he is. For Fields, the get-rich-quick scheme is specifically a way for a man to reassert his authority in his family. The Fields hero has usually been emasculated because of economic irresponsibility. Unable to bring home the bacon, he no longer gets to sit at the head of the table…”
W.C. Fields — Paul A. Cantor (paulcantor.io)
Christian Protestant Individualism (20:14)
… In the United States, individualism became part of the core American ideology by the 19th century, incorporating the influences of New England Puritanism, Jeffersonianism, and the philosophy of natural rights. American individualism was universalist and idealist but acquired a harsher edge as it became infused with elements of social Darwinism (i.e., the survival of the fittest). “Rugged individualism”—extolled by Herbert Hoover during his presidential campaign in 1928—was associated with traditional American values such as personal freedom, capitalism, and limited government. As James Bryce, British ambassador to the United States (1907–13), wrote in The American Commonwealth (1888), “Individualism, the love of enterprise, and the pride in personal freedom have been deemed by Americans not only their choicest, but [their] peculiar and exclusive possession.”
Individualism | Definition, History, Philosophy, Examples, & Facts | Britannica
Dust Bowl Depression (20:58)
The Dust Bowl was the name given to the drought-stricken southern plains region of the United States, which suffered severe dust storms during a drought in the 1930s. As high winds and choking dust swept the region from Texas to Nebraska, people and livestock were killed and crops failed across the entire region. The Dust Bowl intensified the crushing economic impacts of the Great Depression and drove many farming families on a desperate migration in search of work and better living conditions.
Dust Bowl: Causes, Definition & Years | HISTORY
Neoliberalism (21:09)
Generally thought to label the philosophical view that a society’s political and economic institutions should be robustly liberal and capitalist, but supplemented by a constitutionally limited democracy and a modest welfare state.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/neoliberalism/
Social Democracy (22:52)
Political ideology that originally advocated a peaceful evolutionary transition of society from capitalism to socialism using established political processes.
Social democracy | Definition, Principles & History | Britannica
Central Command Economy (24:53)
Economic system in which the means of production are publicly owned and economic activity is controlled by a central authority that assigns quantitative production goals and allots raw materials to productive enterprises. In such a system, determining the proportion of total product used for investment rather than consumption becomes a centrally made political decision. After this decision has been made, the central planners work out the assortment of goods to be produced and the quotas for each enterprise. Consumers may influence the planners’ decisions indirectly if the planners take into consideration the surpluses and shortages that have developed in the market. The only direct choice made by consumers, however, is among the commodities already produced.
Command economy | Definition, Characteristics, Examples, & Facts (britannica.com)
Red Scare (27:57)
A period of public fear and anxiety over the supposed rise of communist or socialist ideologies in a noncommunist state. The term is generally used to describe two such periods in the United States. The first occurred from 1917 to 1920, amid an increase in organized labour movements, immigration, urbanization, and industrialization. The second period, also called McCarthyism after U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy, took place from roughly 1947 to 1954.
Red Scare | Definition, U.S. History, & Causes | Britannica
Quantitative Easing (29:37)
Quantitive easing is often implemented when interest rates hover near zero and economic growth is stalled. Central banks have limited tools, like interest rate reduction, to influence economic growth. Without the ability to lower rates further, central banks must strategically increase the supply of money. To execute quantitative easing, central banks buy government bonds and other securities, injecting bank reserves into the economy. Increasing the supply of money provides liquidity to the banking system and lowers interest rates further. This allows banks to lend with easier terms.
What Is Quantitative Easing (QE) and How Does It Work? (investopedia.com)
Capital ”E” event (30:03)
Idiom –relating to Conflict Theory; which operates on a broad base that includes all institutions. The focus is not only on the purely divisive aspects of conflict, because conflict, while inevitable, also brings about changes that promote social integration. Social change can evolve from a number of different sources, including contact with other societies (diffusion), changes in the ecosystem (which can cause the loss of natural resources or widespread disease), technological change (epitomized by the Industrial Revolution, which created a new social group, the urban proletariat), and population growth and other demographic variables. Social change is also spurred by ideological, economic, and political movements.
Social change | Definition, Types, Theories, Causes, & Examples | Britannica
Austerity (31:02)
a set of economic policies, usually consisting of tax increases, spending cuts, or a combination of the two, used by governments to reduce budget deficits.
Austerity | Economics, Government Spending & Social Policy (britannica.com)
Derivative Market (32:30)
Type of financial contract whose value is dependent on an underlying asset, group of assets, or benchmark. A derivative is set between two or more parties that can trade on an exchange or over-the-counter (OTC). These contracts can be used to trade any number of assets and carry their own risks. Prices for derivatives derive from fluctuations in the underlying asset. These financial securities are commonly used to access certain markets and may be traded to hedge against risk.
Derivatives: Types, Considerations, and Pros and Cons (investopedia.com)
Collateralized Debt Obligations (32:31)
(CDO) is a complex structured finance product that is backed by a pool of loans and other assets and sold to institutional investors. A CDO is a particular type of derivative because, as its name implies, its value is derived from another underlying asset. These assets become the collateral if the loan defaults.
Collateralized Debt Obligation (CDOs): What It Is, How It Works (investopedia.com)
Credit Default Swaps (32:33)
(CDS) is a financial derivative that allows an investor to swap or offset their credit risk with that of another investor. To swap the risk of default, the lender buys a CDS from another investor who agrees to reimburse them if the borrower defaults. Most CDS contracts are maintained via an ongoing premium payment similar to the regular premiums due on an insurance policy. A lender who is worried about a borrower defaulting on a loan often uses a CDS to offset or swap that risk.
What Is a Credit Default Swap and How Does It Work? (investopedia.com)
Compound Interest (32:43)
Compounding. It’s when the earnings from your investments—including dividends and price growth from stocks, or interest on bonds and CDs—get added to your investment pile. Then those earnings start building upon themselves.
Interest on your interest. Returns on your investment returns. No wonder compounding has been called the eighth wonder of the world.
Compound Interest, Explained | Britannica
2008 GFC (32:52)
{global} financial crisis of 2007–08, severe contraction of liquidity in global financial markets that originated in the United States as a result of the collapse of the U.S. housing market. It threatened to destroy the international financial system; caused the failure (or near-failure) of several major investment and commercial banks, mortgage lenders, insurance companies, and savings and loan associations; and precipitated the Great Recession (2007–09), the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression (1929–c. 1939).
Financial crisis of 2007–08 | Definition, Causes, Effects, & Facts (britannica.com)
Jubilees (33:35)
This column describes how the tendency towards increasing indebtedness in much earlier societies was held in check by debt-cancellation Jubilees, and discusses ways to deal with today’s debt overhang and accompanying wealth inequalities. The funding of a modern Jubilee could come mostly, perhaps entirely, from a land/or property tax. {Michael Hudson & Charles Goodhart / 11 Jun 2018}
Some ways to introduce a modern debt Jubilee | CEPR
“THE once-glowing core body of law within the Judeo-Christian Bible has become all but ignored - indeed, rejected - by the colder temper of our times. This core provided for periodic restoration of economic order by rituals of social renewal based on freedom from debt-servitude and from the loss of one's access to self-support on the land. So central to Israelite moral values was this tradition that it framed the composition of both the Old and New Testaments…”
"The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender (michael-hudson.com)
Reserve Currency (34:21)
A reserve currency is a large quantity of currency maintained by central banks and other major financial institutions to prepare for investments, transactions, and international debt obligations, or to influence their domestic exchange rate. A large percentage of commodities, such as gold and oil, are priced in the reserve currency, causing other countries to hold this currency to pay for these goods.
What Is a Reserve Currency? U.S. Dollar's Role and History (investopedia.com)
Heterodox Economists (35:13)
Heterodox economics is any economic thought or theory that contrasts with traditional or orthodox economic or neoclassical principles. While most economists accept mainstream economic theories, they tend to rely on neoclassical theories of market equilibriums and rationality. There is no single "heterodox economic theory"; there are many different "heterodox theories" in existence. What they all share, however, is a rejection of the neoclassical orthodoxy as representing the appropriate tool for understanding the workings of economic and social life .
MMT (35:32)
Heterodox macroeconomic supposition that asserts that monetarily sovereign countries (such as the U.S., U.K., Japan, and Canada) which spend, tax, and borrow in a fiat currency that they fully control, are not operationally constrained by revenues when it comes to federal government spending. Put simply, modern monetary theory decrees that such governments do not rely on taxes or borrowing for spending since they can issue as much money as they need and are the monopoly issuers of that currency. Since their budgets aren’t like a regular household’s, their policies should not be shaped by fears of a rising national debt, but rather by price inflation.
https://www.investopedia.com/modern-monetary-theory-mmt-4588060
https://gimms.org.uk/fact-sheets/macroeconomics/
post-Keynesianism (35:33)
(PKE) is a school of economic thought which builds upon John Maynard Keynes’s and Michal Kalecki’s argument that effective demand is the key determinant of economic performance. PKE rejects the methodological individualism that underlies much of mainstream economics. Instead, PKE argues that fundamental uncertainty and social conflict require an analysis of human behavior based on social conventions and heuristics embedded in specific institutional contexts.
https://www.postkeynesian.net/post-keynesian-economics/
Effective Demand (37:17)
The principle of effective demand, as developed by J. M. Keynes in the General Theory (1936) and M. Kalecki (1933); holds in the short, as well as in the long run. That is, that economic activity in a capitalist monetary economy is demand-driven and that there are no built-in mechanisms that guarantee full employment and full utilisation of capacities.
Post-Keynesian Economics | Exploring Economics (exploring-economics.org)
Natural Laws (38:20)
Self Interest, Competition, Supply & Demand Supply were Adam Smith’s 3 “Natural Laws”.
In the Marxian scheme the engine of evolution is ultimately the struggle between contending classes, whereas in Smith’s philosophical history, the primal moving agency is “human nature” driven by the desire for self-betterment and guided (or misguided) by the faculties of reason.
The Wealth of Nations | Summary, Themes, Significance, & Facts | Britannica
Interest Income (40:28)
MMT recognizes that a positive policy rate results in a payment of interest that can be understood as “basic income for those who already have money.” MMT recognizes that with government a net payer of interest, higher interest rates can impart an expansionary, inflationary (and regressive) bias through two types of channels -- interest income channels and forward pricing channels. This means that what’s called “Fed tightening” by increasing rates may increase total spending and foster price increases, contrary to the advertised intended effects of reducing demand and bringing down inflation. Likewise, lowering rates removes interest income from the economy which works to reduce demand and bring down inflation, again contrary to advertised intended effects.
Bond Economics: MMT Primer: Mosler's White Paper
Institutional Funds (41:20)
An institutional fund is a collective investment vehicle available only to large institutional investors. These funds build comprehensive portfolios for their clients, offer varying market objectives, and can invest for a variety of purposes, including educational endowments, nonprofit foundations, and retirement plans. The types of institutions that invest in institutional funds include companies, charities, and governments.
Institutional Fund: Meaning, Overview, Types (investopedia.com)
Star Wars/ Tatooine /droids (42:34)
{*For “these aren’t the droids you’re looking for…”, see gaslighting & telepathy/mind control.}
Weird Al Yankovic “Star Wars” synopsis:
"Weird Al" Yankovic - The Saga Begins (Official HD Video) (youtube.com)
Gosplan (46:07)
Central board that supervised various aspects of the planned economy of the Soviet Union by translating into specific national plans the general economic objectives outlined by the Communist Party and the government. Established in February 1921, Gosplan was originally an advisory council to the government, its functions limited to influencing the level and direction of state investments. It assumed a more comprehensive planning role in 1928, when the First Five-Year Plan, which called for rapid industrialization and a drastic reduction of the private sector of the economy, was adopted. Until the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Gosplan’s role changed frequently to suit a variety of economic reorganizations.
Economic planning | Definition, History, & Facts (britannica.com)
Reichstag (47:05)
Building in Berlin that is the meeting place of the Bundestag (“Federal Assembly”), the lower house of Germany’s national legislature.
Reichstag | History & Facts | Britannica
Battle of Stalingrad (47:10)
(July 17, 1942–February 2, 1943), successful Soviet defense of the city of Stalingrad (now Volgograd), Russia, U.S.S.R., during World War II. Russians consider it to be one of the greatest battles of their Great Patriotic War, and most historians consider it to be the greatest battle of the entire conflict. It stopped the German advance into the Soviet Union and marked the turning of the tide of war in favour of the Allies.
Battle of Stalingrad | History, Summary, Location, Deaths, & Facts | Britannica
”Exploding TV sets” (49:05)
“Sadly, Soviet TV sets were actually very dangerous as some were made with explosive elements. A tiny power surge could spark a fire at any moment.”
Why was it so dangerous to watch Soviet TV sets? - Russia Beyond (rbth.com)
Production Bureau (49:14)
OKB is a transliteration of the Russian initials of "опытно-конструкторское бюро" – opytno konstruktorskoye byuro, meaning 'experiment and design bureau'. During the Soviet era, OKBs were closed institutions working on design and prototyping of advanced technology, usually for military applications. The corresponding English language term for such a bureau's activity is "research and development".
Marlboro Man (50:12)
Figure that was used in tobacco advertising campaigns for Marlboro cigarettes. In the United States, where the campaign originated, it was used from 1954 to 1999. The Marlboro Man was first conceived by Leo Burnett in 1954. The images initially featured rugged men portrayed in a variety of roles, but later primarily featured a rugged cowboy or cowboys in picturesque wild terrain. The ads were originally conceived as a way to popularize filtered cigarettes, which at the time were considered feminine.
Noun (Pejorative): A person, typically a man, who performs hypermasculine traits, mannerisms, or actions with the intent of impressing or intimidating, but are instead perceived as arrogant or an attempt at hiding an insecurity.
Urban Dictionary: Marlboro Man
John Galt (50:21)
Galt is the hero and main character of Atlas Shrugged, because his principles drive the action and the conflict of the story. The book explores what occurs when the thinkers go on strike. Galt conceives of the strike, initiates it, sustains it, and carries it to a successful resolution. Part of the fascination of Atlas Shrugged is that its dominant character works behind the scenes, his existence unknown to the reader, for the first two-thirds of the novel.
Consumerism (50:24)
: the theory that an increasing consumption of goods is economically desirable, also : a preoccupation with and an inclination toward the buying of consumer goods
Consumerism Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
Tyneside (52:36)
Tyneside Map - Area - England, United Kingdom (mapcarta.com)
Marshall 8 Plan (53:24)
{Also known as the European Recovery Program}(April 1948–December 1951)
U.S.-sponsored program designed to rehabilitate the economies of 17 western and southern European countries in order to create stable conditions in which democratic institutions could survive. The United States feared that the poverty, unemployment, and dislocation of the post-World War II period were reinforcing the appeal of communist parties to voters in western Europe.
Marshall Plan | Summary & Significance | Britannica
Effective Demand (57:27)
Post-Keynsian economics- (effective demand is the key determinant in economies) The principle of effective demand posits that economic activity is driven primarily by expenditure decisions. In particular, investment is held to be a key determinant of demand, output and employment. In contrast to the neoclassical (mainstream) approach, investment is not constrained by the availability of saving, but may be constrained by the availability of credit.
Post-Keynesian Economics | PKES (postkeynesian.net)
Capital Controls/Capital Exchange Controls (58:32)
Capital control represents any measure taken by a government, central bank, or other regulatory body to limit the flow of foreign capital in and out of the domestic economy. These controls include taxes, tariffs, legislation, volume restrictions, and market-based forces. Capital controls can affect many asset classes such as equities, bonds, and foreign exchange trades.
What Are Capital Controls? Definition and What They Include (investopedia.com)
Forex (58:41)
(FX) refers to the global electronic marketplace for trading international currencies and currency derivatives. It has no central physical location, yet the forex market is the largest, most liquid market in the world by trading volume, with trillions of dollars changing hands every day. Most of the trading is done through banks, brokers, and financial institutions.
Forex (FX): Definition, How to Trade Currencies, and Examples (investopedia.com)
Berlin Wall (54:32)
Barrier that surrounded West Berlin and prevented access to it from East Berlin and adjacent areas of East Germany during the period from 1961 to 1989. In the years between 1949 and 1961, about 2.5 million East Germans had fled from East to West Germany, including steadily rising numbers of skilled workers, professionals, and intellectuals. Their loss threatened to destroy the economic viability of the East German state. In response, East Germany built a barrier to close off East Germans’ access to West Berlin and hence West Germany. That barrier, the Berlin Wall, was first erected on the night of August 12–13, 1961, as the result of a decree passed on August 12 by the East German Volkskammer (“Peoples’ Chamber”). The original wall, built of barbed wire and cinder blocks, was subsequently replaced by a series of concrete walls (up to 15 feet [5 metres] high) that were topped with barbed wire and guarded with watchtowers, gun emplacements, and mines. By the 1980s that system of walls, electrified fences, and fortifications extended 28 miles (45 km) through Berlin, dividing the two parts of the city, and extended a further 75 miles (120 km) around West Berlin, separating it from the rest of East Germany.
Berlin Wall | Definition, Length, & Facts | Britannica
Zero Sum (54:00)
from the idea that if you add up the winners’ gains and the losers’ losses, they cancel each other out, so the sum is zero.
Zero-Sum Game: Explanation and Examples (philosophyterms.com)
Bourgeoisie (54:30)
a class or group of people with social behavior and political views held to be influenced by private-property interest : a social order dominated by capitalists or bourgeois
Bourgeoisie Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
Agregate Demand (57:24)
Aggregate demand is the amount of total spending on domestic goods and services in an economy.
Aggregate demand and aggregate supply curves (article) | Khan Academy
Central Banks (58:50)
An institution, such as the Bank of England, the U.S. Federal Reserve System, or the Bank of Japan, that is charged with regulating the size of a nation’s money supply, the availability and cost of credit, and the foreign-exchange value of its currency.
Central bank | Definition, History, & Facts (britannica.com)
Ontological (59:29)
: relating to or based upon being or existence
Ontological Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
Job Guarantee (1:01:40)
The job guarantee is a federal government program to provide a good job to every person who wants one. The government becoming, in effect, the Employer of Last Resort. The job guarantee is a long-pursued goal of the American progressive tradition. In the 1940s, labor unions in the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) demanded a job guarantee and Franklin D. Roosevelt supported the right to a job in his never realized “Second Bill of Rights”. Later, the 1963 March on Washington demanded a jobs guarantee alongside civil rights, understanding that economic justice was a core component of the fight for racial justice.
https://jobguarantee.org
https://www.sunrisemovement.org/theory-of-change/what-is-a-federal-jobs-guarantee/
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/05/pavlina-tcherneva-on-mmt-and-the-jobs-guarantee
Federal Job Guarantee Frequently Asked Questions with Pavlina Tcherneva
https://pavlina-tcherneva.net/job-guarantee-faq/
Recidivism (1:04:26)
: a tendency to relapse into a previous condition or mode of behavior
especially : relapse into criminal behavior
Recidivism Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
Onshoring Industry (1:06:00)
Reshoring is the process of returning the production and manufacturing of goods back to the company's original country. Reshoring is also known as onshoring, inshoring, or backshoring. It is the opposite of offshoring, which is the process of manufacturing goods overseas to try to reduce the cost of labor and manufacturing.
Reshoring: What it is, How it Works, Examples (investopedia.com)
Fourth Industrial Revolution / Green Transition (1:06:14)
A.I. hype could signal the start of the ‘fourth industrial revolution’—or it could be investor FOMO’ warping the market with trillions at stake.
A.I.: A ‘fourth industrial revolution’ or risky ‘FOMO’? | Fortune
Our results indicate that the main burden of the green transition lies on capital formation, accumulation, and transfers facilitated by full R&D investment in the green sector’s productivity.
Lithium Mining (1:06:18)
Today, there are two main ways to pull lithium from the ground. Until recently, most lithium mining occurred in Chile, where lithium is extracted from brines: salty liquid found at the Earth’s surface or underground. To extract lithium, that liquid is pumped from the earth and then placed in pools where the water can evaporate, leaving behind lithium and other elements. Elsewhere, lithium mining looks more traditional. In 2017, Australia overtook Chile as the dominant lithium producer. Companies there blast a lithium-rich mineral called spodumene out of open pits. Today, Australia produces roughly half of the globe’s supplies. More than 80 percent of that rock then travels to China, where it’s further processed to yield lithium.
How is lithium mined? | MIT Climate Portal
Critical minerals, essential for a range of clean energy technologies, have risen up the policy and business agenda in recent years. Rapid growth in demand is providing new opportunities for the industry, but a combination of volatile price movements, supply chain bottlenecks and geopolitical concerns has created a potent mix of risks for secure and rapid energy transitions. This has triggered an array of new policy actions in different jurisdictions to enhance the diversity and reliability of critical mineral supplies.
Introduction – Critical Minerals Market Review 2023 – Analysis - IEA
Gillete Jaunes (1:09:08)
Nicknamed for the safety vests worn by protesters, known as gilets jaunes, the yellow vest movement has sparked a political crisis for the French government.
Who Are France's Yellow Vest Protesters, And What Do They Want? : NPR
Canadian Truckers (1:09:09)
The movement was sparked by a vaccine mandate for truckers crossing the US-Canada border, implemented by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberal government earlier this month.
Freedom Convoy: Why Canadian truckers are protesting in Ottawa (bbc.com)
Putin’s Invasion (1:10:28)
From the outset, Russia’s decision to invade was hard to understand; it seemed at odds with what most experts saw as Russia’s strategic interests. As the war has progressed, the widely predicted Russian victory has failed to emerge as Ukrainian fighters have repeatedly fended off attacks from a vastly superior force. Around the world, from Washington to Berlin to Beijing, global powers have reacted in striking and even historically unprecedented fashion.
9 big questions about Russia’s war in Ukraine, answered - Vox
Bronze Age Collapse (1:10:30)
Modern-day term referring to the decline and fall of major Mediterranean civilizations during the 13th-12th centuries BCE. The precise cause of the Bronze Age Collapse has been debated by scholars for over a century as well as the date it probably began and when it ended but no consensus has been reached.
Bronze Age Collapse - World History Encyclopedia
Uniparty (1:12:26)
From Ralph Nader to Steve Bannon, self-styled populists and outsiders have disparaged Washington’s “uniparty.” When this critique turns to foreign policy, the uniparty is accused of groupthink and militarism—dragging the U.S. into unnecessary and endless wars while neglecting the concerns of regular Americans.
The ‘Uniparty’ Is Real—but It Isn’t What You Think - WSJ
Council Elections (1:12:40)
Local elections in the UK include Council Seats
Local elections 2024 results in maps and charts (bbc.com)
*Post-Structuralism /Counterculture (1:14:00)
Post Structuralism holds that language is not a transparent medium that connects one directly with a “truth” or “reality” outside it but rather a structure or code, whose parts derive their meaning from their contrast with one another and not from any connection with an outside world.
Poststructuralism | Definition, Features, Writers, & Facts | Britannica
Counterculture: a culture with values and mores that run counter to those of established society
Counterculture Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
PEOPLE MENTIONED
Geoffrey (G.E.M.) de Ste. Croix (5:49)
(8 February 1910 – 5 February 2000), known informally as “Croicks”
British historian who specialised in examining Ancient Greece from a Marxist perspective. He was Fellow and Tutor in Ancient History at New College, Oxford, from 1953 to 1977.
G. E. M. de Ste. Croix - Wikipedia
Elias Canetti (6:33)
(25 July 1905 – 14 August 1994) German-language writer, born in Ruse, Bulgaria to a Sephardic Jewish family… He reflected the experiences of Nazi Germany and political chaos in his works, especially exploring mob action and group thinking in the novel Die Blendung and in the non-fiction Crowds and Power (1960).
George Galloway (6:55)
(born 16 August 1954) British politician, broadcaster, and writer who has served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Rochdale since the 2024 by-election. He has been the leader of the Workers Party of Britain since he founded it in 2019. From 1987 to 2010, and from 2012 to 2015, Galloway served as MP for four constituencies, first for the Labour Party and then from 2005 for the Respect Party, which he led from 2013 until its dissolution in 2016.
HG Wells (7:42)
(21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946) English writer. Prolific in many genres, he wrote more than fifty novels and dozens of short stories. His non-fiction output included works of social commentary, politics, history, popular science, satire, biography, and autobiography. Wells' science fiction novels are so well regarded that he has been called the "father of science fiction".
George Bernard Shaw (7:45)
(26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950) Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from the 1880s to his death and beyond.
George Bernard Shaw - Wikipedia
Sydney {& Beatrice} Webb (7:50)
(13 July 1859 – 13 October 1947) British socialist, economist and reformer, who co-founded the London School of Economics. He was an early member of the Fabian Society in 1884, joining, like George Bernard Shaw, three months after its inception. Along with his wife Beatrice Webb and with Annie Besant, Graham Wallas, Edward R. Pease, Hubert Bland and Sydney Olivier, Shaw and Webb turned the Fabian Society into the pre-eminent politico-intellectual society in Edwardian England.
Sidney Webb, 1st Baron Passfield - Wikipedia
Martha Beatrice Webb, Baroness Passfield, FBA (née Potter; 22 January 1858 – 30 April 1943) was an English sociologist, economist, feminist and social reformer…
William Jennings Bryan (8:12)
(March 19, 1860 – July 26, 1925) American lawyer, orator, and politician. Beginning in 1896, he emerged as a dominant force in the Democratic Party, running three times as the party's nominee for President of the United States in the 1896, 1900, and 1908 elections. He served in the House of Representatives from 1891 to 1895 and as the Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson from 1913 to 1915. Because of his faith in the wisdom of the common people, Bryan was often called "the Great Commoner"
William Jennings Bryan - Wikipedia
Tony Benn (13:33)
(3 April 1925 – 14 March 2014) British Labour Party politician and political activist who served as a Cabinet minister in the 1960s and 1970s. He was the Member of Parliament for Bristol South East and Chesterfield for 47 of the 51 years between 1950 and 2001. He later served as President of the Stop the War Coalition from 2001 to 2014.
LeBon (13:45)
Charles-Marie Gustave Le Bon (7 May 1841 – 13 December 1931) was a leading French polymath, whose areas of interest included anthropology, psychology, sociology, medicine, invention, and physics. He is best known for his 1895 work The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, which is considered one of the seminal works of crowd psychology.
Gore Vidal (18:38)
(October 3, 1925 – July 31, 2012) American writer and public intellectual known for his epigrammatic wit. His novels and essays interrogated the social and sexual norms he perceived as driving American life. Vidal was heavily involved in politics, and unsuccessfully sought office twice as a Democratic Party candidate, first in 1960 to the U.S. House of Representatives (for New York), and later in 1982 to the U.S. Senate (for California).
WC Fields (19:43)
William Claude Dukenfield (January 29, 1880 – December 25, 1946) American actor, comedian, juggler, and writer.
Ayn Rand (21:30)
Alice O'Connor (born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum; February 2 [O.S. January 20], 1905 – March 6, 1982), better known by her pen name Ayn Rand (/aɪn/ EYEN)
Russian-born American author and philosopher. She is known for her fiction and for developing a philosophical system she named Objectivism. She moved to the United States in 1926. After two early novels that were initially unsuccessful and two Broadway plays, Rand achieved fame with her 1943 novel The Fountainhead. In 1957, she published her best-selling work, the novel Atlas Shrugged.
Roosevelt (22:45)
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882 – April 12, 1945), commonly known by his initials FDR
American statesman and politician who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. He was a member of the Democratic Party and is the only U.S. president to have served more than two terms.
Franklin D. Roosevelt - Wikipedia
Orson Welles (23:46)
American director, actor, writer, producer, and magician who is remembered for his innovative work in film, radio, and theatre. He is considered to be among the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time.
John Cassavetes (23:47)
(December 9, 1929 – February 3, 1989) was a Greek-American filmmaker and actor. He began as an actor in film and television before helping to pioneer modern American independent cinema as a writer and director, often producing and distributing his films with his own money.[2]He received nominations for three Academy Awards, two BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, and an Emmy Award.
Jean Baudrillard (26:41)
(27 July 1929 – 6 March 2007) French sociologist, philosopher and poet, with interest in cultural studies. He is best known for his analyses of media, contemporary culture, and technological communication, as well as his formulation of concepts such as hyperreality. Baudrillard wrote about diverse subjects, including consumerism, critique of economy, social history, aesthetics, Western foreign policy, and popular culture. Among his most well-known works are Seduction (1978), Simulacra and Simulation (1981), America (1986), and The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (1991).
Keynes (27:29)
John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes, CB, FBA (5 June 1883 – 21 April 1946) English economist and philosopher whose ideas fundamentally changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments. Originally trained in mathematics, he built on and greatly refined earlier work on the causes of business cycles. One of the most influential economists of the 20th century, he produced writings that are the basis for the school of thought known as Keynesian economics, and its various offshoots.
John Maynard Keynes - Wikipedia
Marx (27:34)
Karl Marx (5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) German-born philosopher, political theorist, economist, historian, sociologist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His best-known works are the 1848 pamphlet The Communist Manifesto (with Friedrich Engels) and his three-volume Das Kapital (1867–1894); the latter employs his critical approach of historical materialism in an analysis of capitalism, in the culmination of his intellectual endeavours.
Stalin (27:59)
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin[f] (born Dzhugashvili;[g] 18 December [O.S. 6 December] 1878 – 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who was the longest-serving leader of the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953.
Werner Sombart (28:57)
(19 January 1863 – 18 May 1941) German economist, historian and sociologist. Head of the "Youngest Historical School," he was one of the leading Continental European social scientists during the first quarter of the 20th century. The term late capitalism is accredited to him. The concept of creative destruction associated with capitalism is also of his coinage. His magnum opus was Der moderne Kapitalismus. It was published in 3 volumes from 1902 through 1927. In Kapitalismus he described four stages in the development of capitalism from its earliest iteration as it evolved out of feudalism, which he called proto-capitalism to early, high and, finally, late capitalism —Spätkapitalismus— in the post World War I period.
Steve Keen (31:22)
(born 28 March 1953) Australian economist and author. He considers himself a post-Keynesian, criticising neoclassical economics as inconsistent, unscientific, and empirically unsupported.
Michael Hudson (33:20)
(born March 14, 1939) American economist, Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri–Kansas City and a researcher at the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College, former Wall Street analyst, political consultant, commentator and journalist. He is a contributor to The Hudson Report, a weekly economic and financial news podcast produced by Left Out.
Michael Hudson (economist) - Wikipedia
Bill Mitchell (32:43)
(born 7 March 1952) is a professor of economics at the University of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia and Docent Professor of Global Political Economy at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He is also a guest professor at Kyoto University, Japan since 2022. He is one of the founding developers of Modern Monetary Theory.
Bill Mitchell (economist) - Wikipedia
Dostoevsky (35:00)
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, romanized: Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevskiy, ( 11 November 1821 – 9 February 1881), sometimes transliterated as Dostoyevsky
Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and journalist. Numerous literary critics regard him as one of the greatest novelists in all of world literature, as many of his works are considered highly influential masterpieces.
Henry Ford (37:37)
(July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American industrialist and business magnate. As the founder of the Ford Motor Company he is credited as a pioneer in making automobiles affordable for middle-class Americans through the system that came to be known as Fordism. In 1911 he was awarded a patent for the transmission mechanism that would be used in the Model T and other automobiles.
Chang (38:08)
Ha-Joon Chang (born 7 October 1963) is a South Korean economist and academic. Chang specialises in institutional economics and development, and lectured in economics at the University of Cambridge from 1990–2021 before becoming professor of economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in 2022.
Larry Fink (41:34)
(born November 2, 1952) is an American billionaire businessman. He is a co-founder, chairman and CEO of BlackRock, an American multinational investment management corporation.
Tony Damasio (44:07)
Portuguese neuroscientist. He is currently the David Dornsife Chair in Neuroscience, as well as Professor of Psychology, Philosophy, and Neurology, at the University of Southern California, and, additionally, an adjunct professor at the Salk Institute.[1]He was previously the chair of neurology at the University of Iowa for 20 years. Damasio heads the Brain and Creativity Institute, and has authored several books: his work, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain (2010), explores the relationship between the brain and consciousness. Damasio's research in neuroscience has shown that emotions play a central role in social cognition and decision-making.
Adam Smith (45:14)
(baptised 16 June [O.S. 5 June] 1723 – 17 July 1790) Scottish economist and philosopher who was a pioneer in the thinking of political economy and key figure during the Scottish Enlightenment. Seen by some as "The Father of Economics" or "The Father of Capitalism", he wrote two classic works, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). The latter, often abbreviated as The Wealth of Nations, is considered his magnum opus and the first modern work that treats economics as a comprehensive system and as an academic discipline.
Francis Fukuyama (45:46)
(born October 27, 1952) American political scientist, political economist, international relations scholar, and writer. Fukuyama is best known for his book The End of History and the Last Man (1992), which argues that the worldwide spread of liberal democracies and free-market capitalism of the West and its lifestyle may signal the end point of humanity's sociocultural evolution and political struggle and become the final form of human government, an assessment met with numerous and substantial criticisms.
Richard Nixon (46:20)
(January 9, 1913 – April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and as the 36th vice president from 1953 to 1961 under President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
The Kitchen Debate – transcript:
Kruschev (46:25)
Nikita Kruschev (15 April [O.S. 3 April] 1894 – 11 September 1971) was First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and Chairman of the Council of Ministers (premier) from 1958 to 1964.
Lenin (48:50)
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (22 April [O.S. 10 April] 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician, and political theorist who was the founder and first leader of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic from 1917 until his death in 1924, and of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death. He was the founder and leader of the Bolsheviks, which led the October Revolution that established the world's first socialist state.
Thomas Frank (50:02)
(born March 21, 1965) is an American political analyst, historian, and journalist. He co-founded and edited The Baffler magazine. Frank is the author of the books What's the Matter with Kansas? (2004) and Listen, Liberal (2016), among others. From 2008 to 2010 he wrote "The Tilting Yard", a column in The Wall Street Journal.
Hank Marvin (52:38)
(born Brian Robson Rankin, 28 October 1941) English multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, and songwriter. He is known as the lead guitarist for the Shadows.
Mark Knopfler (52:39)
(born 12 August 1949) is a British guitarist, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He was the lead guitarist, singer and songwriter of the rock band Dire Straits from 1977 to 1988, and from 1990 to 1995.
Sting (52:40)
Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner CBE (born 2 October 1951), known as Sting, is an English musician, activist and actor. He was the frontman, principal songwriter and bassist for new wave band the Police from 1977 until their breakup in 1986. He launched a solo career in 1985 and has included elements of rock, jazz, reggae, classical, new-age, and worldbeat in his music.
Arthur Scargill (56:40)
(born 11 January 1938)[1] is a British trade unionist who was President of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) from 1982 to 2002. He is best known for leading the 1984–1985 UK miners' strike, a major event in the history of the British labour movement.
Randy Wray (1:01:01)
Larry Randall Wray (born June 19, 1953) is a professor of Economics at Bard College and Senior Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute.[2] Previously, he was a professor at the University of Missouri–Kansas City in Kansas City, Missouri, USA, whose faculty he joined in August 1999, and a professor at the University of Denver, where he served from 1987 to 1999.
Stephanie {Kelton} (1:01:03)
(née Bell; born October 10, 1969) is an American heterodox economist and academic, and a leading proponent of Modern Monetary Theory. She served as an advisor to Bernie Sanders's 2016 presidential campaign and worked for the Senate Budget Committee under his chairmanship.
Tcherneva (1:01:44)
Pavlina R. Tcherneva is an American economist of Bulgarian descent, working as associate professor of economics at Bard College. She is also a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute and expert at the Institute for New Economic Thinking. Tcherneva's work is on macroeconomics issues, where she is conducting research in the field of fiscal policy, with a focus on full employment. She is a notable proponent of modern monetary theory and the notion of a job guarantee.
Pavlina R. Tcherneva - Wikipedia
Warren Mosler (1:04:54)
(born September 18, 1949) is an American hedge fund manager and entrepreneur. He is a co-founder of the Center for Full Employment And Price Stability at University of Missouri-Kansas City[1] and the founder of Mosler Automotive. Mosler is a proponent and research financier of post-Keynesian Modern Monetary Theory.
Larry Holmes (1:05:39)
(born November 3, 1949) is an American former professional boxer who competed from 1973 to 2002 and was world heavyweight champion from 1978 until 1985. He is often considered to be one of the greatest heavyweight boxers of all time.
More From This Episode
“…Don't forget that despite the huge racial differences- that the divisions between black and white workers after the Civil War, were orchestrated. They were prevented from living in the same parts of the towns and the villages that were springing up as America was industrialized, deliberately segregated.
And after the First World War, right up until the New Deal, that separation continued, and the hyper individualism continued; but during that very, very formative period of 1929 to 1933, the Americans just realized how bad neoclassical capitalism is. Didn't they? …”
PUBLICATIONS
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Criminal Identities and Consumer Culture by Steve Hall
Theorizing Crime and Deviance: A New Perspective by Steve Hall
The British Journal of Criminology, Vol. 53, No. 2 (March 2013), pp. 344-346 (3 pages) Published By: Oxford University Press
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23640018
Violent Night by Steve Hall and Simon Winlow
Rethinking Social Exclusion by Simon Winlow & Steve Hall
Riots and Political Protest bySimon Winlow, Steve Hall, Daniel Briggs, James Treadwell
Edition1st Edition/First Published2015/ eBook Published1 July 2015/ Pub. Location London/ Imprint Routledge
DOI:https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315849478 Pages230/eBook ISBN9781315849478
Riots and Political Protest | Simon Winlow, Steve Hall, Daniel Briggs, (taylorfrancis.com)
Revitalizing Criminological Theory by Steve Hall and Simon Winlow
ISBN 9780415744362 166 Pages 1 B/W Illustrations Published May 27, 2015 by Routledge
Revitalizing Criminological Theory:: Towards a new Ultra-Realism - 1st (routledge.com)
The Rise of the Right by James Treadwell, Simon Winlow & Steve Hall
The Death of the Left by Simon Winlow and Steve Hall
Crowds and Power by Elias Canetti and Carol Stewart
Crowds and Power a book by Elias Canetti and Carol Stewart (bookshop.org)
The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World by GEM de Ste. Croix
Browning, Robert. Review of The Class Struggle in Ancient Greece, by G. E. M. de Ste. Croix. Past & Present, no. 100 (1983): 147–56
. http://www.jstor.org/stable/650624The Class Struggle in Ancient Greece on JSTOR
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath: 75th Anniversary Edition a book by John Steinbeck (bookshop.org)
The Conquest of Cool by Thomas Frank
The Case for a Job Guarantee by Pavlina R. Tcherneva
The Case for a Job Guarantee a book by Pavlina R. Tcherneva (bookshop.org)
1984 by George Orwell
The Collapse of Antiquity by Michael Hudson
The Collapse of Antiquity a book by Michael Hudson (bookshop.org)
Let me begin by saying that I don’t agree with Steve Hall’s position on the job guarantee. I think Steven Grumbine did well to try to frame the JG in a more accurate way as an employer of last resort program and not the cornerstone of a jobs program. As Grumbine said, Mosler’s politics might be a bit more right-wing than some of the other MMTers, but I think his framing of the JG is about as good as I’ve heard from a prominent MMTer. The public sector will be fully provisioned through regular employment and through increased spending. Since the public sector is fully provisioned, the JG serves to help get people (re-)employed in the private sector.
Where I do have some sympathy with Hall’s position is that I think the framing of the JG is still raw and I think those of us on the MMT side need to work on how we sell the JG. Hey, we all love Bilbo (well, maybe the Europeans and British don’t like him, he’s quite rough on them, lol), but as Mosler points out, the notion of the JG serving to help teach children how to play guitar at the beach, or whatever Bilbo likes to say, really isn’t a convincing message with the general public. Notions of the JG proving WPA-like ‘shovel jobs’ aren’t convincing either and some of the notions about the JG being the backbone of the ‘Green New Deal’ are way off.
Mosler says his current idea of the JG is to have JGers work at existing non-profits. Even that is a bit of a hard sell in my mind. The JG probably, I’m thinking, could be some combination of job seekers working in the community, but then also being paid to engage in training, occupational counseling, and job shadowing...something that will help job seekers network and find private sector employment. I think this might sell better with the public and perhaps it’ll be more convincing to Steve Hall. Maybe even the name ‘job guarantee’ needs work. I think we need to be open-minded about that.
That said, full employment and the use of an employed buffer stock are vitally important and Bilbo is spot-on with that messaging.
Hopefully this rant will be deemed acceptable around here, but I hope Steve Hall doesn’t take Michael Hudson too seriously because I sure don’t. I do like Hudson’s messaging about neoliberalism shifting the debt burden from government (where it isn’t a burden at all) to the public (where it is a burden). It is a catchy and accurate description. Ok, but Hudson was on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour a couple of years ago and someone in the comments, probably a MMTer, rightly corrected Hudson on inaccuracies in the way Hudson described QE. Hudson then came back on a later Ralph Nader Radio Hour episode and said that commenter needed to be banned and accused the commenter of being a troll. What utter nonsense, Hudson seems to be a hot-head who pushes conspiracy theories rather than promoting empirical theory even if he might throw a little praise here and there towards like likes of Randy Wray. Maybe this gets him a lot of attention on podcasts and such, but I don’t have a use for that London. We won’t even get into the inane economic positions pushed by Hudson’s co-host on the podcast Hudson is on regularly.
To put things in a way that perhaps only Steve Hall might understand given where he's from in North East England, Michael Hudson is a lot like eating a parmo in Middlesbrough. It might look appealing at first glance, but it is ultimately lacking in substance.
There's so much to take away from this discussion! The story of the Goat-herder in Tinyland needs to be repeated. His critcism of economic models struck a chord with me. That need to obfuscate by orthodox economics is what attracts me to the empirical descriptions of MMT. The subtlety of British humor might be an aquired taste for some, but I understood and appreciated it.