Transcripts For CSPAN2 Joshua Muravchik Heaven On Earth 20240713

Bush administration and later jared cohen set the precedent due to the deaths of their predecessors. Enjoy book tv now and over the weekend on cspan2. Starting out on book tv World Affairs Institute Distinguished fellow joshua project discusses the views of socialism. Thanks to jeff and charles for the hospitality. And as alluded to, this is quite an august group including im afraid a number of people who know as much about the subject asi do. Im going to do my best to leave plenty of time for giveandtake around thetable. The book, socialism is in the airright now. The book is first of all a history and im going to quickly set the history and then spend some minutes on whats happening today and then we will have a backandforth or around the table. So the term socialism was coined in the 1820s and 30s by the followers of a small group of thinkers, british and french who were not out to overthrow governments but had ideas of a Better Society of sharing and also had the quite good idea that the way to get there was to demonstrate the validity of their ideas. And they created, they, their followers created over a period through the mid 1800s some 40 to 50 of these experimental communities, mostly in the United States even though these visionaries were europeans. Why in the United States . It seems to be on land and because the social mores were much more fluid and in fact their ideas were taken tremendously seriously. Perhaps the most important was robert owen and he announced he was coming to the United States to create a community that would demonstrate the validity of his ideas and he was taken tremendouslyseriously. On his way, he commissioned an architect to produce a scale model of the ideal socialist community envisioned and it was put on display in the white house for several months in conjunction with his arrival and then a joint session of congress was convened to hear him present his ideas and not only did the congressman and senators sit to listen but also members of the Supreme Court and outgoing president munro, incoming president elect adams spent hours listening to this presentation and the Community Set up was called new harmony. It was in indiana and it almost instantly collapsed in disharmony. And what happened with, new harmony turned out to be exactly representative of the whole group of these experiments. Historians of communes say that their median lifespan was 2 years for they went away of new harmony. And it might have been in an alternative and Imaginary History that the whole idea of socialism would have ended right there. Been there, tried that, didnt work but then it was taken up and given a much more powerful life by this remarkable tagteam of political activists and philosophers of great power. Marx and engels and they pulled off what i think has to be one of the great intellectual cons of all time. They were well aware of the results of these experimental communes. Engels in england participated in the group and wrote about it. Went to their meetings. Marx and engels said that doesnt matter. All utopia and any attempt to create socialism by acts of human will are utopian and what is important is that ive discovered the laws of history scientific socialism and these laws prove that socialism is coming. The reason i call it a con is what is science . The heart of science is experimentation. On and their followers had this idea of a Better Society and they went and conducted experiments to demonstrate the validity which sadly was not demonstrated but in any event, they were real scientific socialist red marks and engels they experimentation is no good. Weve seen the future and they offered sheer prophecy but they did it in the name of science. The prophecy though was very compelling. People found it convincing all through the second half of the 19th century, socialist parties grew up mostly of marxists strike or at least heavily under the influence of marxism and became major forces in countries all over europe. But there was a problem. 50 years after the communist manifesto, marks and engels leading the intellectual disciples, the air, Edward Bernstein observed that the prophecy wasntcoming true. The core of the loss of history is that the workers were going to grow constantly more miserable until they would be compelled to create the revolution that would usher in the new age but there had been no revolution now 50 years later. There was no sign of revolution and bernstein said well, theres been no revolution because the prediction was wrong. The situation with the workers as itsgotten worse, its gotten better. Its steadily improved. He may have been better positioned to register that because unlike marx and engels and most other socialist leaders bernstein actually was aproletarian family. He was probably much more attuned to changes in their standard of living. So bernstein basically gave up on socialism or what he said exactly is the final goal of Socialism Means nothing to me that the Movement Means everything. What did he mean by that . Socialism had come to a kind of fork in the road. The prediction that the workers would make the revolution had not been confirmed and thus you could eitherstick with the workers or stick with the revolution but you couldnt have both. Bernstein said ill stick with the workers so movement is everything meant he would continue to work for legislation, for shorter hours, better pay, what have you but forget about this image of creating the new society. The opposite choice was made by lenin. Lenin was in siberia. He ranbernstein. He was free oriented lenin was always infuriated by something that wasnt his frame of mind that he was infuriated but he didnt disagree with the premise of bernstein. He said it through the workers art making the revolution, theyre not going to make the revolution but then nevermind workers, we must have the revolution and we will have someone make it in their name, a military organization. And he insisted that this would somehow still embody the workers but this is purely mystical but despite its illogic, it succeeded. It succeeded at least in taking power in russia at a time when russia was falling apart and lenin said power was lying in the street and i just picked it up but that changed everything because suddenly, despite the predictive failure of what the workers wanted to do, suddenly the marks engels prophecy seemed to be confirmed in the most dramatic way. Socialism was now in power in a big important country. Russia at that point was Something Like six or seven percent of the population of the world and the sense that history, of the teleology, that history had a direction it was moving from the old system of capitalism to this new shiny future seemed to be confirmed and the result was that socialism was really put on the map of the world politically like it hadnt been to that moment. For one thing there were communist parties and that grew up virtually in every corner of the world trying to emulate lenin. Mostly they came from split from existing socialist parties socialist parties even though they lost some members to the communists were themselves energized and invigorated by the conviction that this, that they were the future or as they often put it, the future is going to be socialism, now you have a choice. You could pick the bad part socialism of lenin or the benignsocialism that we have to offer but you dont have any other choice. And then there was even fascism which was an offshoot of socialism in both its italian andgerman varieties. And but fascism quickly brought about the Second World War and essentially spelled the end of fascism but in the aftermath of the Second World War, the other forms of socialism were, grew even more socialism spread around the world. First of all, communism thanks to the red army was imposed in Eastern Europe and north korea. But there were also some indigenous communist movements that took power in yugoslavia, albania a few years later, most importantly china. Much of indochina, and so its ultimately about a third of the human race was living under or just under a third under communist regimes but also the democratic socialists were achieved success after, in the decades after world war ii but they never achieved before. They were able to form governments on their own with no Coalition Partners or minor Coalition Partners and attempt to pursue their path to socialism and then there was a whole new branch of the socialist tree that grew up in the aftermath of world war ii and was in the new nations that were born through decolonization so there was african socialism, arab socialism, broadly put under the rubric of third world socialism and in fact almost all of these new nations race some kind of socialism. It tended to be a melange of social democracy, communism, fascism, sometimes just strongmen wanting power and this was the way to go or the way to describe themselves so by the time we get to the mid70s, we find a situation in which the teleology of marx and engels seems right. Upwards of 60 percent of the population of the world was living under governments of one kind or another calling themselves socialists. But then the pendulum began to swing back for reasons i can think of some that were important but its not very clear why. But through the70s , we had first of all the change in portugal which i think was a significant moment. Even though the communists were affairs brett from taking power they were defeated. The forces that defeated them were led by the socialist party of portugal so it wasnt exactly a defeat for socialism but it was kind of a trigger to the third wave of democratization which in itself greatly weakened the force of communism around the world. And then in 78 we had a third plenum of the communistparty of china. With the rise of Deng Xiaoping and his second revolution which although the communist party clung to power as it stilldoes to this day , a shift in the economics of china from a socialist to a free market economics. And then a year later elected in england with a platform that she was out to kill socialism as he put it and then in the 80s gorbachev and the end of the soviet union and then also in the 80s really taking on board of the lessons of the four tigers or for dragons of east asia that were flourishing while all the rest of third world had stagnated for about 20 years under state led planning for Economic Growth and so there was a turn also in the third world away from socialism. So at that point i wrote the First Edition of this book and it was kind of an appetite. The story was over. Socialism had been tried everywhere in every conceivable way and had either failed or some of the social democrats in europe wouldnt say failed but they pulled back fromsocialism and contented themselves with creating awelfare state. That was a rat. And then this thing somehow phoenix like has risen from the grave before our eyes. My first thought as i wrote this was of marx comments on napoleon that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce and but venezuela where this Rising Phoenix first appeared, with the election of chavez in 1998 turned out to be both a tragedy and a farce. And the country has been destroyed by this Chavez Maduro regime. It was at first chavez was revolutionary antiamerican, didnt declare himself a socialist but my 05 he said we in cuba are pursuing the same revolution and in 06 he coined the slogan socialism or death which turned out not to be an either or. And we see now the results of that but even this tragic farcical repeat of so much of the history of communism and third world socialism, we see eyes in britain and america gazing upon this in rapture. It reminds me of that scene in midsummer nights dream where the enchanted person looks upon the bottom with the head of an. [bleep] andsays its beautiful. And so we see both the rise of warren and of sanders to let me spend a few words on each of them. Its funny that some of the many at this moment of the apologists for the new socialism say dont harness us with venezuela, were not talking about venezuela or at least set aside sanders for a moment, corbin wax eloquent about the great contributions of chavez and at least for a time he was in bed with maduro to on this Television Show and in venezuela as a guest. And maduro and also aoc and her colleagues in that wing of the house have been very resistant even now to criticizing maduro although theyre not and or sing him. They changed the conversation to what trump is doing or shouldnt do and cant bring themselves to give a clear condemnation of maduro area corbin has been, has gotten heat mostly for his antisemitism. All the viewers know who Bernie Sanders is, many will know who corbin is but some may not read would you say who corbin is . Jeremy corbin is now the leader of the British Labour party and with the conservative party essentially in disarray over brexit, its entirely possible the labour party will win an election and then he would become Prime Minister. Hes taken a lot of heat for his antisemitism which is all to the good but its really only part and its all to the good not bnsf is about the but its really only part of the story and on the antisemitism, there was a time when it was possible for a fairminded observer to say well, hes just very passionately antiisrael, antizionist but hes not really antijews but now we had one thing and then another and now a third that make that an untenable explanation. The one thing was his endorsement of the mural showing jewish bankers playing monopoly on the backs of enslaved dark skinned whatever, workers, slaves and then we had the clip of his saying although they live among us for a long time they dont get british irony. And of course his camp said he was referring to zionists but who have lived among us for a long time left mark linguistically, it doesnt work. He wastalking about jews. And then just now it was just recently someone found that he had written an extremely laudatory blurb to gloss the reissue of hoskins imperialism which treats imperialism as a jewish conspiracy led by the house of rothschild so its just, its too many instances to just say well, hes against zionism but theres Something Else here is he is, he is immersed in a world of stalinism. Theres, when i use that term i dont mean he was a member of the communist party but he was a columnist for the communist Party Newspaper or the daily worker of england changing its name to the morningstar back in the 60s and 70s but continued to be funded from moscow at that time. Thats his newspaper and he surrounded himself with shamus milner and Andrew Murray and others who not only come from the communist world but actually the communists were divided in britain between the communist party of britain and the communist party of great britain. These were two rival factions read the point being that one faction was eventually probe gorbachev and before that pro euro communist and the other faction were hardliners who really most presented chris jobs disavowal of stalin. This was called the straight left room and corbins circle of advisers comes from this hardline calmness group. Father communists called them thetaxis. Attendees meeting that they supported the soviet invasion of hungary in 56 and prodding 68 and supported the tax going in. Thats corbins million so the prospect of corbin, never mind whether he will create socialism but if he becomes Prime Minister of england, its certainly going to be something very painful for jews but also its impossible to see for me how the us British Security cooperation can continue if he were to become the Prime Minister of england and then we have Bernie Sanders who is not the same thing as corbin, who calls himself a democratic socialist which is what i and others around the table used to call ourselves but is he . You can see on Youtube Sanders in the 1980s really waxing eloquent at length about the wonders of the sandinista regime in nicaragua and just regurgitating sandinista propaganda claim for claim, line for line with great assertiveness and indignation at anyone who would disagree and then doing much the same for the claims accomplishments of castro in cuba and even going to honeymoon in the soviet union and coming back and getting a press conference in which he didnt wax as eloquent as he did about nicaragua but in which the thrust of what he had to say was a great things he had seen in the soviet union in terms of public transport and especially in terms of their cultural programs that they made available to the people at a very low price. He would hasten to say and yet you may have seen that in the New York Times yesterday a reporter was asking him about this and said is there anything you said about the soviet union or latin america back in the 1980s that you think differently about today andhe said no. So what kind of socialism he actually believes in seems to me is way up in the air. Lastpoint , sometimes he says well, its scandinavia. More often its apologists for sanders. I noticed their calling oped columns in recent weeks. Not only in the United States, some dont reallyneed. These people sanders and cortez are so inarticulate they cant explain themselves but let me help, they dont really mean socialism at all, they mean social democracy like in scandinavia. But aside from the fact that these people are so inarticulate but whats wrong with that line of argument is that there is a scandinavian model and it involves a much bigger Public Sector than we have in the us but that Public Sector rests on a thriving capitalist engines of growth and wealth. If you look at the world bank , World Bank Without each year and ease of doing business index, breaks all the countries inthe world. Denmark is almost at the top, its either in third or fourth place read some sweeping is 12 in this years index and that is they make a congenial atmosphere for capitalists to do their thing but then they have high tax rates and a very rich set of social welfare benefits. But the process of everything really that sanders and aoc and others have to say is fiercely angrily anticapitalists area aoc says capitalism is irredeemable and sanders, his whole stick is that the billionaire class constitutes an oligarchy that has taken over our country and our eliminating democracy and on and on. Journalists who covered him way back in burlington said thats the same speech he used two gift when he was running for mayor of burlington except word for word except he substituted the wordbillionaire for millionaire. No doubt since he became amillionaire himself. But my essential point is that what these people, that the idea is that they are harboring is sometimes more and sometimes less open about our in a completely different spirit scandinavian social democracy. Sorry for banging on so long, ill stopthere. Thank you, that was a terrific some of the new edition of the book let me restate it for cspan if i may. Were meeting in washington dc at the office of the American Interest, my name is jeff gedmin and im coasting with charles davidson, elder and publisher. The book is called heaven on earth by joshua maruvchik, the rise fall and aftermath of the socialist idea or socialism in the title. In it was First Published in 2002. We have a new addition in 2019 and i want to ask first question which is why did you read the book . As i said recently, the book was a kind of epitaph for a story that i thought was over but it was also, it seems to me a tremendous important story that i would argue that socialism was the idea that shapes the political history of the20th century. But also it was an idea that i was entirely immersed in. I grew up in a home where socialism was outside the family the most important thing in my parents lives and it remained that way until their deaths. And i myself came in viewed with this and dispense years of my life from the time i was 15 to 30 as a devoted and active socialist. In fact i joined the young people socialist lee the same year that berniesanders did. I was in high school in new york, he was in college in chicago i didnt know him. Let me open it up and just one second but thank you for explaining a little bit more about your background and your relationship with the subject and do you recall, i dont recall the year what you wrote an essay for crisis magazine titled why a marxist goes in frozen the towel you remember the article and hear remember what led you to throw in the towel . I didnt write the title of the article. But i think way back in the 80s there was something called the Second Thought movements and it was meetings of some young radicals of the 60s who had rethought their views of the world and i think a lot of the other people involved were much more radical than i had been but i certainly thought of myself as a radical in my socialist days. And what led me to change was really something thathappened gradually. The first thing was initially i was always anticommunist but initially i had a view that there were two bad alternatives in the world. There was a capitalist west anticommunist east and i could imagine Something Better than either one. But with some reading and thinking i came to realize that it was a mistake to equate these two. Communism was infinitely more horrible than whatever was wrong with democratic capitalism. And so i started to find that a lot of my energies were devoted to fighting against the threat of communism which was quite real and substantial back then and i was decreasingly interested in fighting against capitalism. That also opened me to thinking further about economics then i did observe some of the social democracies and i noticed whether its scandinavia, i also had a chance to observe israel where the labour party was or socialist party was had always been in power. And i noticed that none of them ever created socialism in that imaginary ideal of a new human brotherhood. And so i realized it then became a matter ofwhether you want this law or that law. Government spending, how much taxation and these became very practical or prosaic issues rather than the millenarian ideas that i had had this society could be replaced by something infinitely better. What id like to do is i wantto open it up , i want to try taking two or three at a time. The floor is open to everybody is going to look at the side of the room because we have to for younger colleagues, two of whom come from the United States. Just curious how you come to the subject matter and argument. You dont how all have to speak, avery, your hand is a first read tell us you are and we will take two or three in each round, avery, your first. ,avery james, i am a senior and will be starting an internship at the Cancer Center shortly. Are you sitting next to your right. Youve got to advertise for cspan, come on man area. As i was saying, im very curious to discuss you discussed marx and engels and their approaches to industrial capitalism. And this final point becomes so clear, that this is inevitable, its not really good but socialism and communism for society is inevitable and as we saw you mentioned any type one third of the human population was under communism but at the same time those revolutions occurin different conditions. China and russia were agrarian societies, they were not industrial societies. But to get to my question, one task today so many young socialists point to these important goods like housing and healthcare and ac increasing inequality, thats whats causing socialism to rebound. The right explanation or you do you think theres Something Else writing . Lets collect a couple more, net. Causing you are. Im rossdale, and a lawyer and historian. And occasional contributor to the American Interest. Rereus online, etc. I have an observation, its very important for the discussion. Lenin did not see power lying on the street. He was sent back by the German Government to moscow with nine tons of gold. And you can buy a lot of revolutions with that and you can look it up in richard prices history of the russian revolution. We can take two more this round and then we will continuewith frank and veronica. [inaudible] my question is you mentioned many names but you didnt mention trotsky which i dont care about chalky but he has a lot of operation which i dont know, but. [inaudible] they go into different leftist parties and then they go to this power. Is there analog with aoc and other candidates in congress and people around canada and using those properties, i dont know, their philosophies trotsky or something surely are red flags beforeyou that you follow. Lets take one more in this round and thats you carl and we will come back to veronica and others. Im Carl Gershwin from the National Endowment for democracy and my question follows averys question about why the rebound and i think his use of the term inequality was the first time the word quality got mentioned in this discussion area and you know im thinking that tocqueville used to write that over the last 700, 800 years democracy has been advancing and it was almost inevitable and confidential because and human by democracy equality. In his great concern was how do you protect liberty if democracy is advancing in that way . Just last week i saw a piece by henry olson of ethics and Public Policy center was talking about how to make America Great again and he was saying conservatives have to address the issue of the quality because thats what is feeding a lot of this and just as you dont want to give the issue of nationalism to populists and there is kind of a patriotism and pacific nationalism that people should feel comfortable with and its not anticommunist more pro whowe are , the issue of equality is the same way. You dont want to give the issue of youve got to address these problems otherwise the people who dont share your values are going to take advantage of it and how doyou do that in the current context . Josh. I think id rather address the round of questions. Why the rebirth, the answer is i dont know why. I do think that weve been through this stretch of time of increasing disparity in incomes and increasing inequality, you see various figures gone from some comparison, gone 30 to 1 to 300 to 1 depending on what youre comparing but theres no question that this is a trend of the last 40 years or Something Like that and its not a good friend. It was excuse me, especially was worrisome i thought until just a couple years ago when not only was there this disparity but when wages were stagnating or even coming in lower than they had decades before so it wasnt just inequality but the people at the lower rungs were moving downward. Certainly not in any sense moving upward. According to the official data, thats begun to turn around in the last couple of years. People at the bottom are not rising as fast as the people at the top but still they are rising which would make, which i think may take some of the edge off this. Is that the reason for the rebirth of interest . In socialism . That, its certainly intuitively plausible but it doesnt make it true and i just dont know. One thing that has to bring us up a little short in terms of following that hypothesis is that the people who i think were probably hurting most from this long period of wage stagnation seem to be mostly from voters. There not bernie, aoc supporters and certainly it seems that the core support for these neosocialists comes as for radicalism, when you and i were youngcarl , younger or affluent people so it is a question and i agree with you that needs to be addressed but im just not sure of the causality. As for erins question about entry isnt, thats a pretty esoteric term. And entry is him is if i can repeat you explained it is the idea that was around among communist groups of rather than going forth politically in their own name they should join larger, more moderate socialist parties where they could somehow leverage more impact. I have very little doubt in my mind that corbin is an entry. That is he believed in some more radical things but decided his best path forward was to join the labor party. But the americans socialists of this moment, i cant figure out i dont know aoc that sanders has a really odd history because he was as i said he joined young people socialists the same year i did which was a Democratic Socialist Group but before that, according to his biographer he was first attracted to bolshevism and he also participated. He worked for a communist dominated labor union and he went to israel on activities that was affiliated with not official communists but prostalin and prosoviet so he had at least a dalliance with a communist world and then he was in the democratic socialist world. According to his biographer in roma or month he was an amateur and even sought Vice President ial nomination of the socialist workers party. Which is a trotskyist party. Now, im sure people were not immersed in a world of socialism or marxism will find this quite obscure but between the socialist, communist and trotskys , each one needed other two. Ive never heard before someone who involved themselves in all three so what to make of his ideological trajectory is beyond me. Thank you josh, lets go to the next round and let me call on veronica and patrick and then others to get in but veronica, you first. [inaudible]. [inaudible] my question is what is the attribution of technology . Thank you, over to you. This is going to put forward a bunch as to reasons for not only a huge appeal of socialism to a payday but also its resilience again to a socialist idea is more than a blueprint for a radical alternative social system, its a rebate aspiration just generally for a kind of gentler fair world. So lots of people along the way through the 20th century didnt really, really seized by the blueprint for the aspiration. And one thing that threw them there wasnt just this was a lovely aspiration but also opponents to socialism routinely would damn anything that wasnt part of the radical blueprints or that was any kind of move for the gentler failure or world so in the United States we have the Civil Rights Movement condemned as socialistic and theres things now just like florida and water and polio vaccines condemned as socialism and medicare condemned as realism. Just recently we had obamas Affordable Care act which was by the fiercely antisocialist Areas Foundation and end as socialism. So just to put forward that, to what extent does the looseness of socialisms opponents and condemning everything socialism set up this socialist renaissance . Forgive me. Im brent lindsay, iwas in the skandia center patrick , were you on deck to seek or make a comment or question. Thank you, im Patrick Alexander so so far joshua has talked about socialism in 2 countries that dont have a very strong socialist tradition,especially in the us. So and so my question is do you think that instead of growing that kind of socialism and other european countries, its actually weakening and thats why they have other groups which are either radical islam or multicultural movements and so i was wondering what you think. Why you think that socialists whether socialist or communist have those alliances with groups that are foreign to their positions. [inaudible] lets take one more. Erin and then bob, ill come to you next. Andrew, i think stand up and i think the camera might be able to capture you for cspan. Tell us who you are and make your comment or ask your question. Im erin, editor of the American Interest. My question comment is you mention at one point that fascism was an offshoot of socialism. And id like you to elaborate on that because it seems to me that theres an obvious extent that thats true that they opened up some state planning of the economy but another sense in which its not obviously true is that socialism springs forth from in many ways individualistic assumptions of sort of modern liberalism. Its goal at the end of the day to emancipate everyone is the marx quote, is romanticized and what have you. Whereas fascism as i understand it to be more humanitarian ideology that projects a whole language of individual application and in certain ways its a conscious revolt against but my question is what you think of that hypothesis and then secondly you think thats part of the reason that we are seeing aresurgence in socialism is precisely that. Socialism is in certain ways less inherently inimical to live with at least as anthropology then fascism in certain forms of rights. Thats a lot to chew on, pick a spot. I work back from aarons question. Yes, you certainly can see the enlightenment in socialist ideas in a way you cannot all in fastest ideas but the enlightenment was thrown out the window by letting you once you got a as he said military style of Party Professional revolutionaries and a system based ondictatorship and mass murder , you couldnt see the roots of the enlightenment, at least not very clearly anymore and i was also not talking so structurally but historically, fascism grew out ofsocialism. Mussolini was one of the first red diaper babies. His biographer, his father read dos topic out to the family at thedinner table. I could see reading it to my children trying to put them to sleepbut not at the dinner table. And he was one of the top leaders of the socialist party of italy at the point that he became prowar. And at this point, he had a great insight. The insight as he set up a time was socialism will have to take account of nations as well as class. And this was as he says, a heresy to marxism. Marx said the workingman has no country. Class is the allimportant variable. He blew that to smithereens even though a lot of socialists refused to acknowledge it but the jews saw it clearly were letting and even more so was lenny so what he did was to try to create a new socialism that substituted nation for class and in many ways he and hitler both modeled themselves on lenin. Or when he took over, they made mayday a National Holiday and not the party membersaddress each other as comrade. They put the economy on a planned basis, a 4 year plan as opposed to the fiveyear plans and of course hitler invented the volkswagen, the peoplescar. So there were all these reminders of the socialist roots in both of these. It should define them by their nationality. And the good nations of the one blessed by history against the retrograde ones and i think we see that here and identity politics and in the european context in which you were describing of the socialist parties that have lost the support but are trying somehow to merge themselves with identity movements. In europe is the popularity of socialism spoke by all the readiness of conservatives or anti socialists to dam the socialists or whatever projects come along . May be. Maybe we could do a Public Opinion survey here but i have not seen month so i dont know for it i also, this technology to get back to your question, does technology have something to do with the rebirth and of course, i had no idea but it would suggest one way in which it seems to be and maybe it is which is it seems to me today people read tweets and not books and that there is, i wonder, i have not seen the surveys on the sever but i wonder if less knowledge of history than there was at one moment before we got everything in tweets and blogs and small digestible chunks. Thank you, we will take another round and may be too. Bob, i thank you are rating and john and then you are first. Georgetown university. Because the u. S. Has a separation of powers its very different from or difficult to foresee a profound break with mainstream policies and changes can happen but not a profound [inaudible] however, britain does not have that so i guess my question is what is the risk if the labour Party Wins Big in the next election, not just the Coalition Government but enough to win a majority that they could actually proceed to undertake profound changes which would far represent major distractions to the First Political system . Thank you. Don, your next. [inaudible] one columnist for the daily beast. It seems to me that weve seen the success of socialism and we have the new populism and now its in italy and hungary and poland and the difference between all of them is anti russian and the hungarians are so russian but there is this attempt to get together that steve bannon is working so hard to achieve with the new populace nationalist but on the other hand you have to the success of the socialists one in spade are now back in power and as far as the socialist in this country and i have been meeting and i cant pronounce his name correctly but [inaudible] the writer whose new book the socialist manifesto is out and he is the editor and founder of jacobin magazine and the book is somewhat nutty but contrary to what josh said the guy hasnt read everything. Hes read history and nature socialist theories and the new ones and the old ones and goes through the whole history of socialism and all these trotskys and my kid again and all the stuff and he still comes around to the idea that nothing will work except real socialism and when he presents in the book how it will work his ideas are offthewall but he condemns in the book Bernie Sanders as a sellout and says he is a democrat but not a socialist. [inaudible] so these people consider themselves to the left of Bernie Sanders and they are for real socialism and coming up i was reading todays post in the metro and there is a bit big article about the spd and berlin in germany whose [inaudible] says we need real socialism that socialist democracy and the party has failed us and we need to move away from social democracy moved to socialism and goes on and on and is not an extreme list like is on antisemites but in terms of the solution its real socialism which is coming back to and they know the bolshevik revolution failed and they know the cuban revolution failed but they calm down and say we will structure it in this way and unlike those failures hours will work. We cant discard it because they just did it badly. Thats essentially what it amounts to. Thank you, lets take steve please. Steve lagerfeld, public privacy at the Woodrow Wilson center and editor of [inaudible] for many years. To me at the spectacle to see what goes on in the american left in the socalled socialist expressing their solidarity in various ways with maduro and chavez and its repeating an old mistake and the attraction to the policy for historic authoritarian regimes and certainly its a mistake that [inaudible] and there are explanations, you might offer, certainly there are slogans, no enemies to the left, but i wonder what weather you see this fatal attraction being inbred and whether the explanation is. Would you take those for now . Sure. [laughter] yes, repeating an old mistake i find this disheartening grade i would like to see the young people come up with new ideas and make their own mistakes. Why do they have to repeat mine and my parents and my grandparents and that is really just my point that this thing has been tried before and its been tried over roughly six generations in a couple of centuries and its been tried in every corner of the world and been tried in every different way that people could imagine and it has never worked. It is often created catastrophe in taking countless lives. At its best, it became a vehicle for modest reforms or large reforms of capitalist economy but that is why i guess id rather believe that these people arent reading history, rather than then they are reading it and saying what the hell, maybe we can play russian roulette and get healthy lucky. And that is what [inaudible] here and there of the Younger Generation saying they want real socialism. They say they dont mean communism. They dont mean to do what they did in venezuela but actually real socialism was tried by the non totalitarian socialists, social democratic parties of western europe and i see patrick shaking his head because one of the classic examples was [inaudible] in france who came in with a big majority and the platform was called. [speaking in native tongue] the rupture, a clean break with capitalism and he began to and this is in the early 80s and they began to implement this and the economy started coughing and sputtering so badly that within a year they announced the complete aboutface and Austerity Program and joseph who was then the chairman of the socialist party said, we are bringing about a reconciliation between the left and the economy so. [laughter] whichever form so i honor the democratic socialists of europe and i dont put them in the same basket with the communist killers and they did do some things that made kinder, gentler societies but they did that by acknowledging that what they could not do was socialism. What they could do was welfare and so that brings me back to bobs question. What if the labour Party Wins Big and we have Prime Minister corbin and will they really an act radical changes in British Society and my guess is they will try but this too, we have seen, before a much finer individual then corbin tried this in the late 40s and they built up the British Welfare state but the attempt to socialize the economy by nationalizing industry did it but it did not have the results they expected the industry and those industries were struggling more after being nationalized. Would they do harm to British Society . No doubt they would and that brings back the other point i alluded to that corbin gets elected it wasnt mainstream antisemitism in a way that would be tremendously painful to me but i worry more about what it will do to the structure of that has kept the world peace and what we have in good reason worried about what trump is doing with his dismiss dismissive attitude towards nato in America First and the seeming indifference to the structure that the United States built that of cap the world of peace since world war ii. It is worth recalling that in the most important of those structures, in my mind, not the United Nations but what was nato which has been the main bulwark of the piece, especially during the cold war but has found a role for itself postcold war and people dont know or forget that nato actually was an idea that spring from the British Labour party and the person who came up with this idea was ernest [inaudible] right after the war and it is hard for me to see how nato could endure a corbin presidency. Corbin has a long record because nato, a frankenstein monster regards nato as the main threat to world peace and of course, in this moment and no doubt, Going Forward i dont necessarily mean that or think that anymore or whatever but but that is what he needs and things and i think that certainly it would be madness for the United States to maintain intelligence cooperation with a British Government headed by corbin or military planning. And so these structures have already been weakened thanks to the u. S. Side but they might be fatally weakened if corbin becomes Prime Minister. Final thoughts, finalround. My name is [inaudible] and im a professor of the university of warsaw and im on leave and currently serving as ambassador of poland to the United States. I was not planning to say anything today but read your book and then listen to the discussion but when you mentioned morningstar. When i was a teenager in high school in poland the only british newspaper we had was the morningstar so the more radical polish [inaudible] so when you mention corbin and i hope he will not be able to deduce and leaving socialistic leadership and its not the system but it was this paradox when i was learning english from these forces presenting conservative British Society and textbooks smuggled from the west and at the same time reading morningstar and im just thinking [inaudible] who lived in the system because until i was 27 i lived under socialism or socialist democracy so it was officially called socialist democracy. So, the only thing i wanted to say that when i lived in this country in the 90s when i was teaching at a few universities and i saw so many students of mine fascinated by marxist theories and all these theories i just wanted to say that i cannot understand it. After living through the system i cannot dash i know its my fault that im onesided and im prejudiced but i cannot feel any sympathy to anyone who likes socialism or introduces socialism and thanks socialism may change capitalism for the better. Im not radical. Im not any kind of radical but living through all of this im just so skeptical about any kind of pro socialist thinking and im not any kind of radical conservative you know, proponents but im just so that is i just did not want to give any statements. I didnt i just wanted to explain why because when you went through this and its not this most radical form of stalinism because i was born in 1962 so it was already not fascist in our system but you know, that is something i just wanted to say that for me it is still very difficult to understand how you may be even interested in introducing any kind of socialism and i think that scandinavian model is something really different. The scandinavian model is a unique and [inaudible] capitalist system with a very welldeveloped [inaudible]. Im sorry i dont have questio questions. The comment was helpful and clear. [laughter] thank you. My goal and then john. Michael, go ahead. Michael from the American Council of trustees and alumni and this is a very quick footnote on historical in asia. Every year we do a survey of the core curriculum requirements of over 1100 colleges and universities and less than 3 require their undergraduates to take any basic course in economics and less than 18 require even basic course on history of the United States. I think the connection of ignorance and bad policy. My name is john limburg and i used to be the general counsel and i do consulting and now but just a brief comment and my comment is picking up on some of the things sense or said today. I sense that people are much clearer about what they dont like and less clear about how to solve the problem. For example, many years ago i was an Exchange Student in venezuela in 1966, excuse me, 1967. I took spanish courses at the local university in caracas and i could see a great deal of poverty in venezuela and there was a great disparity between the rich and the poor and i thought this is a ticking time bomb. I took her course, sociology course, and there was a selfproclaimed marxist in the course but he did not have a clue as to what marxism stood for but he cannot define it. All he knew was it was in his line an alternative to what he saw in venezuela at the time written now, to define my question. Thank you for your presentation and i look forward to reading your book. My sense is that if you were to ask people the average american what is socialism or who is a socialist you would get a wide range of answers and some would say its the same as the communist and they dont really have a clear understanding of what is meant by socialism. You said that you called yourself a democratic socialist at one time but you no longer are. So my question is, what is a democratic socialist and why have you no longer consider yourself to be a democratic socialist . Now we are back to the beginning. That is the way life works. Josh, go ahead. Well, when i and some were a couple of the other people who were here called ourselves democratic socialists appoint was to emphasize the contrast to communists and that is, we completely aboard communist dictatorships but we shared in this idea that you could have a different kind of economy without private property really where everything was owned communally or shared in some sense but all to be achieved by democratic stages, by passing laws in convincing people that this would be a good thing to do. [inaudible] [inaudible question] basically, yes. That is why i find what sanders says today is reaffirming his praise for castro when Something Different than the democratic socialism movement. We were very farreaching in terms of our imagining of a different economy but we were also very strict in insisting that everything had to be done democratically and in that also means that we exit created those regimes around the world that call themselves socialists but were dictatorships. We had no sympathy for any of them, unlike sanders and i gradually got a different kind of understanding of economics so it seemed to me even though im proud that we were always democrats and never deviated from that but i think my ideas about economics were kind of imaginary about the economy how it might work without private property and without the incentives that go with it. Last thought to the ambassador. I think maybe the difference in the newspapers you read was because the people who were writing those polish newspapers really did not believe in the system whereas people writing morningstar really did believe in it. [laughter] last thing, may i think jeff, charles, very much valued you hosting me here. This was a very august group. Im honored and flattered that all of you are here. It is a fabulous group. I think all of you. [inaudible] cspan, thank you very much. This is the book, heaven on earth. On behalf of the American Interests here is the American Interest and this is the American Interest please read us and visit us. Good luck with intellectual combat. You have your hands full and its good you are what you are doing great thank you very much. Thanks to all. [applause] [inaudible conversations] you are watching a special edition of book tv airing during the week all members of congress are in their districts due to the coronavirus pandemic. Tonight the presidency. First u. S. News and World Reports Kenneth Walsh looks at different president s have handled crisis. Former sec. Lady lynn cheney and former president ial adviser karl rove reflect on the george w. Bush administration. Later jerrod looks at the age Vice President who became president due to the deaths of their predecessors. Enjoy book tv, now and over the weekend on cspan2. This weekend on book tv, saturday at 6 00 p. M. Eastern. Former director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It is about consumers and the problems they face in about Consumer Finance and how it has changed and about the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the role and importance of the work that engages to protect people across america. Sunday at 12 30 p. M. Eastern h. R. Mcmaster, former Top Administration National Security advisor. The United States and other free and open societies ought to every thing we can to protect ourselves against the efforts of the Chinese Communist party that are freemarket economic systems and our democratic form of government. At 6 20 p. M. Ruth gilmore, author and University Professor on mass incarceration in the u. S. The fact that most people leave prison do a little bit of analysis to see that we could be closing prisons already and jails already if we just cut by two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, much less years the kinds of sentences people are serving. Watch booktv this weekend on cspan2. Good morning. [cheering and applause] i am the librarian of congress and i hope you all have been enjoying yourselves this morning. Now, we have a rather large crowd this morning for this particular session and that is why im thrilled to introduce