Transcripts For CSPAN3 American Socialism 20170706

Magazine discusses the left under president trump. Jacobin offers socialist perspectives for the future. Welcome to the center speaking series. My name is nico mele, director of the center, and our guest today is bhaskar sunkara, Founding Editor and publishing editor of jacobin magazine a left wing quarterly magazine based in new york, it describes itself leading voice of the american left, offering socialist perspective on politics, economics and culture. He is the editor of the abcs of socialism and coed for of the future we want radical ideas for the new century. You can also i encourage you to pick up and subscribe to jacobin. I came across jacojacobin be i was looking for new ideas, new ways of thinking about where the country is going. I think its kind of clear this is a moment of significant transition for our politics and our media and i was looking for fresh voices in that. And i just want to read to you, i printed out the headlines from the jacobin website today. Lipstick fascism, women of the alt right and the feminization of fascism, your bosss little secret, you have a right to know how much your coworkers are played, ignoring elite, how not to think about politics in the age of trump, work to death, the american pension crisis, capitalism versus privacy. A number of interesting and compelling arguments and ideas. Im looking forward to a vigorous discussion. Bhaskar, welcome to harvard. Thank you for having me. So i want to start and ask you for your diagnosis of the politics in this country right now. Wow, youre starting big. Yes. I was a little disappointed i got the invitation to harvard i was expecting oak and mahogany, this, you know, its all right but next time. Theres cubicles even. Im looking for the cigar afterwards. I think the present situation is this. You have a lot of people who are alienated and disgruntled with politics as usual, and were in danger of having the only antiestablishment voice be one coming from the populist right. The swaition igsituation is me depressing one. Trump doesnt have a huge mandate yet. He quind of squeaked by in the election. Im afraid if democrats continue on their current course he could develop one over time. It doesnt take much. It doesnt even take trump and the populist right convincing people they have a much better alternative. All it takes is a little bit of deficit financing and them being smart enough and paul ryan allowing a big infrastructure and jobs program and something to slightly ameliorate the feeling a lot of people are having. What gives me some hope is that B Bernie Sanders showed there is a potential for maoritarian Politics Around a democratic program, not 10, 20 years down the road but immediately. The kind of rhetoric of the Sanders Campaign basically saying you work hard. You sacrifice a lot. Youre trying to do right. And you deserve more, and not only that, but we know the people responsible for you not having enough, and its a millionaire and billionaire class. I think broadly thats the only fighting alternative to the rhetoric were having from the populist right. Were in this situation now what seems to be a pretty, you know, dire one, with the rise of the right, and this is with them having trump at the helm. Obviously trump has certain things to his credit, as aboppositional figure, embodies some of this at least in rhetoric antiestablishment pose. He feeds his base with red meat but also is pretty bungling and made a lot of crucial errors like around trumpcare and other things and the way in which some of his concrete proposals have been laid out. Imagine how dangerous the situation would be if the populist right had someone with more acumen and vision. Im afraid not just now but after we defeat trump, and i also thought he didnt have a chance in the 2016, so who am i to say but it seems like he can easily be defeated electorally in 2020, but what about trumpism . Could we be in a situation where u. S. Politics starts to resemble french politics where you have, you know, a populist right thats constant fixture in politics, pushing every measure and every idea to the right, and even if they cant win in the french case in the second round of the president ial election theyre still there as a major force. I really think the only alternative is, im not saying its socialism or bar barism, but better thanner sanders welfareism or capitalist trumpism. The pragmatism of the Democratic Center is just, you know, i think in extremely unpragmatic way just allowing this rightward drift in american politics. Talk a little bit about how you view the Democratic Party today . You mentioned Bernie Sanders, but you know, hes approaching 80, and in fact many of the leaders of the Democratic Party are approaching 80, if not older. Yes, i mean, i think the Democratic Party, and this is not the fault of this generation of democratic leaders. I think this is often framed in a way, fdr and lbj were of a certain character and disposition and Hillary Clinton is of another, in a personalized way which i dont think makes sense. I would say the Democratic Party has always been a party of capital, and i dont mean that pejoratively. Its always represented certain business interests within its tent. Big oil, we now associate with george w. Bush and the republicans, but in fact big oil was a major part, lots of historical reasons for this, the Democratic Coalition from the 1930s up until the 80s. If youre the party that represents popular labor interests and the interests of capital at the same time it means that when times are going well, and theres a boom, you could actually say that the pie is growing because of this businessled growth, and were going to make sure that some of the share of this growing pie is going to workers. Now when the pie is at best staying the same size or if anything is shrinking, the best of the Democratic Party can say from the 1970s onwards the same workers is that were going to give you more of the pie, more of this pie than the republicans could, and also to historically oppress and marginalize groups. Well make sure this pie is more equitably split up, so in other words they could promise social inclusion, but they now promise social inclusion without any of the economic kind of gains that went with it. Even up to the Great Society they could offer both. Could you obviously see the way in which not just white workers but whole segments of the population it feels like things have been going wrong for them. Now correlate the fact that the pie is growing and there has been social gains for oppressed groups together as being one is responsible for the other, and i think the approach of this populist left that emerged around sanders, also represented by keith ellison, to some degree Elizabeth Warren to fight against the idea the house is full or the pie is going to. To strengthen in this direction. My view of the party because of the structural factors that emerged since the 1970s, there needs to be a strong affirmative program of redistribution, and alternative modeled growth. Theyve been unable to provide it. I think often on the left, we personalize this inability, but you know the fact is, unless you actually have the will and the capability to actually mobilize a different source of power than the Traditional Democratic base, and i dont mean people voting for the Democratic Party, i mean the business interest attached to it today. Lot of it is in the finance industry, Silicon Valley and whatnot, unless youre able to conceive of politics in a different more popular way i think were doomed to have the democrats continue along this path. In that framework, why did you start this magazine . I have lots of reasons why i could see. Two or three years or in this case five or six years after the fact come by with this narrative and vision. I started the magazine because i had some extra spare time, and it was between my sophomore and junior year as an undergrad, so i didnt have a lot of social obligations. The world wasnt asking much of me at the time. And i thought that i had developed a network on the socialist left, and i knew plenty of smart people, and i had a bit of business acumen, so i figured why not take these smart people and facilitate a project so were not just talking amongst ourselves. I think it was based on this idea that socialist ideas ive been a member of the democratic socialist of america for ten years, since i was like 17 years old, and for me, these ideas, the moral and ethical ideas at the core of the socialist project, the idea we should live in a World Without exploitation, without oppression, these are ideas that should have appeal beyond the 5,000 or 6,000 then in discussion with the ideas. So i think jacobin what set it apart from the rest of the socialist left, at a time of historic defeat, we were trying to kind of evangelicalize among this broader public, and try to win over people unpoliticized and liberals to this moral and ethical vision. Also, the one hand combine this earnest purpose with some degrees of humor and levity and whatnot, and i think thats where it started. It was an easy project at first. At first it was an online magazine. It was an utter failure. My first day we had 636 visitors on the site, and the reason why i went to print is i figured how many of them were your mother . Yes, my mother, my aunt, and they were probably refreshing throughout the day a little bit. So my thinking was, though, that i needed an actual revenue mechanism and a mechanism to make jacobin perceived as more serious and that meant going to print. I doubled down on something that was failing and it continued to fail for a while, and then it stopped failing but no one was really watching. Thats the thing, when youre doing a project in private, or in semiprivate, i mean 636 people is basically private, you have time to learn and develop and grow skills and whatnot, whereas right now i am far more conservative, hopefully not in my politics but the way i approach jacobin just because the failure would be even more humiliating in public. So what do you make of hillbillyology and strangers in their own land, this kind of narrative that we have to more deeply understand the trump voter and the Democratic Party . So i actually have only read about half of hillbillyology and it seemed to me from that half, thats basically more than most books i read, i do the grad student read, read the introduction, skim to the end, see if theres interesting footnotes and i say i read the book, but, you know, if youre an editor, all i need is general knowledge to get to two to three minutes of a conversation. This is going to be tough for me. This is a whole hour. But hillbillyology is almost like the cultural poverty arguments throughout the 80s and 90s that were obviously very racist and prop fwagated b the new republic, but poor white people and here is a potential native informant whoi thi i this in his community in the summer and whatnot, like now pushing this narrative of theres something wrong with the roots of the culture of these communities that reinforce poverty and all these other things. So i mean, sure, i think there should be a level of understanding the situation, the people live in, but if, the thing youre diagnosing people should be more flexible and able to adapt to the economy and willing to move to the cities and Everything Else i think thats a wrong conclusion. When i see poverty i see something very simple. People who need money, and i see people who need goods and services and when i think of the state, i think of the state as the only vehicle large enough to efficiently deliver these goods and services. If we have an epidemic of heroin addiction in huge parts of the country, i see people in need of High Quality Services to get over these addictions, counseling, medical services and whatnot. I also see people who probably need jobs, i think as a last resort the state should be a provider of those jobs and whatnot. I see the problems i think more simply than a lot of people. What im even proposing isnt a leap into the unknown. What im proposing in the short term is nothing more than a scandinavian welfare state, which in a country as wealthy as the u. S. Should be common sense. And i think thats part of our immediate project and part of the project that Bernie Sanders contributed so much to, to try to get people to expect more of the state. Were not asking for the state to alleviate heartbreak and suffering and angst or whatever. Even communism wouldnt do that, right . Certain things are parts of the human condition. But we are asking for the states to provide a basic level of Human Dignity to allow people to reach their potential and so on, and i think often theres this kind of voyeuristic view of poverty. Whether in the Africanamerican Community or among poor whites would people make it seem like these are impossible to decipher solutions. I see 60,000 Homeless People in new york and i think hey, maybe we should build more high quality Public Housing instead of letting the Public Housing that we have deteriorate. I see poor people i think we should build homes. Obviously at the level of policy, this becomes more complicated and nuanced, but at the level of politics, i think its common sense what direction our policies should be driven and thats in a lot of ways is immoral and unethical vision. What role do you see technology playing in that and kind of the direction of our economy . So on technology, this is one place where i cant really even feign through two or three minutes. I think like a lot of people im convinced by the last thing i read. Something will say like Driverless Cars and mass automation of existing jobs is coming in like ten years, another article says 20 years and i just agree with the last thing i read generally. I would say that if you think about places in which, like why does in europe why are they more capital intensive and why are they slightly on the more innovative edge than American Companies and factories . The answer is simple. Like they have more wage pressure. So when i look at the low wage workforce in the u. S. , i kind of think why would capital even want to automate some of these jobs, being paid almost nothing and theres risk in introducing new technologies and so on. So to some degree im a skeptic about how fast some of these automation will be pushed through. I also think that generally youre a skeptic because you think theres the potential that automation will increase pressure on the no im skeptic just because i think as far as these things are going to be introduced but as far as the pace of introduction, if we had even a social democracy in the u. S. I think wed have a quicker pace of job displacement through automation because thered be more wage pressure and more incentive for companies to invest in capital, this capital intensive technology. As it is, i think its more important than ever to actually develop a mode of politics that foregrounds the interests of workers. That doesnt necessarily mean this society will be less on the cutting edge of technology or whatnot. It might again create wage pressures that will increase the pace of technological innovation, but then at the same time be able to protect these workers through active labor market policies and jobs retraining and welfare state in case theyre displaced and put them in a different sector of the economy and whatnot. I think we have to start from the premise the most important thing isnt the bottom line. The most important thing is social welfare, so when we think for example about 1970s sweden, i hate to point to it. Its not my model, the just Society Falls short of it but the closest weve gotten in the human endiscover. This is a society that had free trade, right . This is a society that had lots of firm failure and things like that. So i think in other words whats key is that we develop the politics that foreground working class interests, then from there we could, you know, see technology is a thing that helps rather than hurt. Certain jobs should, in fact, be automated, right . The people in those sectors might want to do something else, but if its on the present course, or the working class has less and less power, but also theyre more and more at the whims of globalization, and technological change i think thats dangerous. The best way ive heard this described was by a british member of parliament, the labor party, John Trickett and he was trying to explain why in his district, almost 90 plus of the population voted leave. He said that youre on a runaway train and you dont know what direction the train is going, and its going faster and faster. So he said people in his district did what was pretty logical, especially if they didnt know there was a conductor or not. They looked around, the people in their car, and they decided to link hands with the people in their car. Obviously theres a different alternative, right . Theres a socialist vision of maybe trying to communicate with people in other cars and joining together and trying to take control of the train, but in the present environment, i think for a lot of people theyre not against technology for the sake of being against technology. Theyre against, you know, a train that they dont know where the direction is and they dont know what their fate will be in the future, but to contrast discussion bringing politics into this sphere of technology, i think we could have both. We could have technological advance. We could embrace actually the positive aspect of automation, so im 27 years old. I am not planning to have kid any time soon. I would hope the Driverless Cars i wouldnt have the worries my parents had when i was 17 and 18 and trying to learn how to drive and so on, of you know, maybe in fact it will be nice living in a society where human beings arent in the control of vehicles. Maybe there will be certain social goods we could think about it. But i am more apt to envision that future once were at that stage than i am now, when i know how many truckers and cab drivers and whoever else will be displaced and just go from being precariously employed in the working class to being just poor. So thats kind of my stance on technology. I want a foreground in politics without being antitechnology. Theres this kind of media narrative about the young people in america being very far left, and arguably the farthest left generation the countrys ever seen, you know, kind of a new generation of socialists, and how do you is that narrative true . Is there a generational kind of shift happening . Play that out for us. I think its true in this instance, in the United States today, but its often ascribed to like youth or these other cultural transhistorical cultural factors. If you look at france for example, not to turn back to france, but the national front, le pen might win a polarity of young people, millenials, right . These are people exposed to similar mass culture that american young people are exposed to and whatnot. Theres all sorts of reasons for this but the point being that yes, young people are moving to the left, but a lot of that has to do with politics, right . It has to do with the success of organizers. It has to do, yes, with a certain degree of cultural traits that makes america better than certain european countries, right . Its hard to build a xenophobic ethnonationalism in a state that can see itself at least as a nation of immigrants. I think Steve Bannons project building a social majority, is in fact harder than if not my project which is pretty damned hard than Bernie Sanders building a majoritarian democratic kind of consensus. I think could you find it just in the fact that a lot of these people are welleducated. Theyre the sons and daughters of the professional middle class. Theyre finding out that the promises told to them, that if they work hard and put their head down, theyll be able to get a stable job and be able to at least maintain their Living Standards is a lie, and i think thats leading people to look for solutions, and if youre young, you might like actually find a coherent world view. Agree with it or disagree with it, in a place like jacobin or other places on the socialist left than you would in the venues of the center, that actually dont have anything else to offer, but i dont want to just lay back and assume that demographics are going to take care of everything. I think thats part of the problem that got us in this mess to begin with, trumps election. I have one more question and then ill open it up to the audience, so please, get your questions ready. But, so i didnt want to ask you about you know, race and class in america, and to what extent i mean both race and class were seems like very high relief in this last election, and how you, how do you understand that in america right now . Well, yeah, it seems to me that if you look at actually this situation in america, you have first of all this question is often broadly the pocs versus white and this very kind of broad kind of language, but i think in particular in the United States, we have to grapple with the hyperexploitation of black workers and the fact that in particular, black workers have been always locked at the bottom of the u. S. Labor market, and theyre locked at the bottom of the labor market thats also very hard to move out of. Even for white workers its very hard. We have very little social mobility in this country and theyre on the worst end of it. But then i think almost comes a broader discussion about diversity and representation, and thats been the dominant rhetoric of the Democratic Party, this rhetoric of social inclusion. Its not that im against these things. I just think it only goes to the surface level. If you really want to talk about the conditions of minorities in this country, you have to deal with the question of redistribution, and if youre dealing with a question of redistribution, you have to deal with the question of class, and we have to acknowledge that the number one, number two, number three concerns of the white workers, latino workers and black workers is probably exactly the same. Its probably jobs, security, all these other issues, and often again, this is kind of made to be this like complex difficult thing, like can this politician, can Bernie Sanders get in the head of black workers and what theyre thinking . Can he relate to these experiences or whatnot . Maybe . Maybe not at a cultural level but the kind of program that he pushed for, medicare for all, massive jobs program, free higher education, these are things that would disproportionately help black workers, and i think its an argument that he could win in the black community and other communities through organizing. So often these things are seen as divergent. I think they go hand in hand, but to me, there can be no antiracism with teeth unless youre dealing with a question of redistribution, and if were dealing with a question of redistribution, dealing with a question of class. If youre dealing with a class of taking something from someone and giving to other people. Youre not talking about taking something from a diminishing share of returns going to white workers and go i have been it to other people. Youre talking about really taking on interests, and i think thats what the rhetoric that people are uncomfortable with. Theyre fine with diversity f diversity just means representation. Theyre not fine with diverse fit it means provides goods and services to communities who dont have it now. Not because theyre ideologically opposed to it, not because the ruling class is ideolocally racist. Its because its a cost theyre not willing to bear for anyone, be they white, black or latino workers. Do we have some questions from the audience . Anybody, question . We got a question right here, and then over here. Hi, Shorenstein Center fellow. Im wondering how you you have a very robust circulation, and a great magazine, but so many people are completely shut off from most political discourse, even within their ideological silos. They just maybe get a little surface information, dont want to hear more because they feel completely disempowered and dont want to know anything more. How can we break through the disengagement around politics, economics, and just this feeling that i mean i spent years as a field reporter and so many people just unplug from these debates because they feel they have nothing to gain and will only be angry. Yes, i mean i think a lot of this stems from the fact people dont have a lot of time and dont feel like politics is working for them. Its like the same discussion often happens with like voter participation. Its often framed in apolitical terms, just apathy, people dont care, as opposed to people weighing different needs that they have, and a limited amount of time and deciding not to vote because politicians havent been serving them. I think a publication like jacobin is fundamentally always going to be somewhat niche. I think were more meant as a spark to start something broader that could actually be like i appeal to reason. We had a socialist publication a little bit over 100 years ago that was number three or number four in circulation in the entire country and adjustment for population bigger than Time Magazine or the economist today. That was appeal to reason. They had a life in working class communities, it had a base. Jacobin obviously has more of a base than your average socialist journal, but you know, we just like the left as a whole, at the moment isnt deeply rooted in this working class community. So its like a silo. Theres the socialist left, social movements, and the working class broadly conceived, right . Whereas when the socialist movement was always at its strongest you would have the Workers Movement, out of this Workers Movement would arise socialist leaders and obviously that would have kind of a life of its own, this interaction, and out of the struggles of the working class would arise the things we are broadly considering the, you know, like social movements, right . And the fact that we kind of conceive of these things as separate things, i think is just a reflection of where were at politically, but i think thats the goal. The goal is to obviously reach and connection with people, not just people reading and receiving information but actively participating in political processes that are generating these ideas to begin with. Jacobin is more of an effort from kind of afar to try to spark this kind of thing, but thats something im very wary of, the fact that left and the media generally is in almost like a subculture. Its either like the New York Times circulation is spiking but i bet if you did a demographic profile of the New York Times Subscriber Base youd still find it disto portionately higher income and whatnot, which is completely opposed to the way you would imagine mass circulation newspapers used to be or could be when they had strength and relevance. I think its a problem that you cant solve by media alone. You have to solve it by political organizing, and theres a limited amount we could do. I think the best we could do is make sure that someone could pick up on article, read an article without any prerequisite knowledge be able to get something from it, the way that i could pick up an issue of the economist and read an article and not have to ever read adam smith to understand it, right . But the idea that i think especially on the socialist left we expect people to be just jumping in at the very tail end of a conversation, instead of just even assuming that people share our ethical and moral values, like you know, im opposed like i said, a socialist opposed to hierarchy and exploitation, but what is exploitation and what is hierarchy and why is it bad . These are normative arguments. One could disagree or one could actually say im opposed to extreme versions of exploitation like slavery or indenture but i think capital exploitation is justified so lets have that discussion. I think every venue is assuming a lot of Common Ground that actually needs to be forged. And so in terms of your energy and the energy of the magazine, are you putting that into the Democratic Party, or how do you think of if you have a magazine of ideas, and of kind of socialist argument, where does that transition into politics and power for you . I think a lot of that will be up to organizers and people taking these ideas. I would say that in general, this new socialist left thats emerging has an uneasy relationship with the Democratic Party, similar to the relationship lets say libertarian current state in the 60s and 70s to the Republican Party, and obviously they in their project eventually more or less fused with National Review type conservatives and develop a current within the Republican Party, i think for the sake of our project, socialist politics will only be developed in a party rooted eventually in the working class, rooted with different prerogatives and interests in the Democratic Party, but its easy to say that. Its hard to say how we get from here to there. There so theres a lot of different arguments. An interesting one by Seth Ackerman in a previous issue of jacobin that basically argued what constitutes independent Political Action . Socialists keep talking about it. If you have your own base of funding, you have your own ideology, if youre connected with your own organizations that discipline electoral efforts and eventually candidates when theyre elected, if youre running on the democratic primaries and open socialists with all the prerequisites, isnt that Political Action . If i decided to run against needle lowey and decided to do so with my politics with a base of support and funding independent as a republican in my home district in new york, would that constitute me trying to be a republican and transforming the Republican Party . Would that constitute independent Political Action . So i think theres a way that to understand the particularities and the conditions of the u. S. Electoral system, without going the old Michael Harrington route, which actually made a lot of sense at the time in the 60s and 70s, are trying to transform and realign the Democratic Party. If it didnt work then with all the fissures in the Democratic Party and with all the mobilized social forces, i cant see it working now but at the same time i know that the last successful third party effort, now he, eventually got us donald trump. So but in fact, you know, im open to different ideas. In other words, i think in the short term its very hard for me to say socialists should be spending our time trying to get status access when we could have easier access to primaries, but again it depends on the location. We shouldnt forget that almost 70 i believe of elections in the u. S. Local elections including almost everything west of the mississippi is nonpartisan, are nonpartisan races, so this shouldnt be a crippling or paralyzing debate. I think we can immediately run candidates kind of skirting the question in these nonpartisan rac races. Over here. Hi, ian samuel, lecturer at harvard law school, and magazine. As we get ready to possibly have the confirmation of a new Supreme Court justice, im curious on your thoughts of the role of the courts and judges and legal strategy on the left. Its obviously the case that over the back half of the 20th century, the court played an Important Role in a lot of victories on the left. Its also true that over the broad sweep of American History, courts have often been an incredibly reactionary force and they still often are. So i guess im curious if you think that the courts have a big role to play in leftist political strategy. Is it just something we need to give up on and hope theyre not too much of a drag on the effort, is there some third thing there, what are your thoughts on that . Yes, im a rob hunter has written a lot for jacobin on this particular idea, the role of the court system and whatnot. I would say overall i find i think the courts play a role dampening our ability to reshape america in a more democratic direction. Obviously i think theres a role for a court system, but i would just conceive of this role being, you know, as small as possible, protecting certain freedoms and rights and so on, but fundamentally, our task and the way i can see the vote on the left is to extend freedom. We are going to extend freedom by intruding on the freedom of some, in certain ways. It wont be their freedom to organize or speak or whatnot, but it will be their freedom to a dogmatic to put it, freedom to exploit but put it a different way. If youre running a corporation, you obviously are under a lot of pressure. Youre under pressure to maintain profitability and whatnot. So you might want your workers in a down month to work an extra two hours, and of course youre paying them for these two hours. Now, if the government says, no, in fact, you cant work workers over 40 hours a week, if you need extra help you have to hire for people or whatnot, were obviously intruding on the scope of the freedom of private property or whatnot, but we think this freedom obviously extends more freedom for more people. They have extra spare time, they can spend time with their family, they could pursue hobbies, they could, you know, watch tv, whatever else. So i think in other words libke the court system in the u. S. Will dampen these things. More interesting question is what would jurisprudence look like in a socialist society, because i think there is a need for it, and if the examples of the 20th century is, you know, is to be remembered, i think that we should think about the way in which socialist societies will need an independent judiciary that will play some role defending freedoms and preventing certain tyrannies, but im sure if we have this Current System i would love to have more left wingers appointed to the Supreme Court and some of the people were getting appointed, but we shouldnt think of our model of politics through that. If we cant imagine a robust court system ushering in certain things i think this will often be gains from above that are then less sustainable than gains from below. Jane, back here. Hi, im jane mansford, i teach at the kennedy school. Couple of times youve mentioned the word redistribution. Leaving aside the fact that marx thought that was a bourgeoisie approach to the problem, its not a very popular concept in the United States either, and when i think of Bernie Sanders, i think of him supporting work, and workers, and what do you think about redistribution . Im for redistribution of power and im for Building Social goods, and in the process of building the money necessary to get the social goods, were going to have to redistribute wealth. Debris the redistribution of wealth is a byproduct of the policies i want. Its not necessarily the main goal, and the project of building up the power of workers is workers will be able to press demands, which will redistribute welt wealth. I think of it as the secondary effect, not the main effect. So i would agree with marx as far as the concept. I would also say this is the reason why i think the idea of a federal jobs guarantee is a much more powerful and dangerous idea, and also more politically palatable than ideas that are now envogue of a universal base income. My ideal is a federal jobs guarantee plus a basic income for those engaging in care work or other work or other work traditionally not valued by society, or unable to work but fundamentally i think that were concerned about power. Thats why if more people are employed, labor markets are tighter and workers have more power at the point of production, and thats when 20, 30 people can make decisions that will impact thousands of people and thats the reason why socialists always talk about workers and the working class. It isnt a moral category. Its not say these people are more holy or more deserving than others. Its just saying this is still the most powerful agent in society. If you win over a majority of the working class, this is a force that can lift up all others, poor and oppressed people. How do you think about the decline of unions in the United States . I am of two minds. When im at my most optimistic i say the Labor Movement has some sort of objective basis. Its rooted in conditions that arent going to go away. It will always kind of rebuild itself, right . So as long as theres capitalism in these prevailing conditions, worker also realize they need to collectively bargain in order to push back against their bosses. They cant do it as individuals, and some Labor Movement will always arise from the ashes. When i think more critically, i think capital is always at its strongest when they can divide workers into as small a unit as upon. Even having Union Density at around 10 , whatever, is quite an accomplishment, and it took years and years and decades of struggle, and the idea that now the soon to come rulings against, you know, Public Sector unionism and whatnot, that this strength that we have in the Public Sector, one of the last bastians of the Labor Movement further eroded, it scares me and it makes me think that its, you know, the project of creating social democracy is only going to be that much more distant in the u. S. And obviously the project of creating a kind of socialism after capitalism that i want is even further and further away. I would say some of this is selfinflicted. Unions have not done a good enough job engaging their membership, and convincing people that theres actually a reason to be a part of a union, and its been very a transact n transactional thing, people doing the calculation in their head getting x, y, z benefits, im paying this much in dues, i have no connection to decisionmaking process in my union and i think thats very worrying and i think to some degree this is almost deserved, some of the downfall of american unions, so to my hope is through these rank and file struggles to democratize unions will in fact convince people they have something to gain, they have a vested interest in defending unions. Even Something Like the fact that you might be a member of a union today, because of a vote that happened three or four decades ago. There is some truth in right wing arguments about unionization says that he fundamentally undemocratic having once and something undemocratic as a condition of your employment having to be a union member than having to have your dues deducted every month without you having any say in the matter and so on. In europe, unions dont have to rely on those mechanisms. So i think fundamentally we need a more democratic Labor Movement. For now this Labor Movement we have, and its still the most organized and consistently progressive force in american politics. So i cant just put on a very ideological hat and say let it burn, well rebuild it, because i dont think we will be able to. At least in the next generation or two. So i want to follow uhm on the previous question about work versus goods and handouts, whatever. The trump in the stump speech he gave in those rust belt states that gave him the election, part of his stump speech was actually to say, we need to rebuild the means of making a living. He actually used the phrase means of making a living which is of course a means of production. Folks might not believe this but if you going tell and go watch the speech its amazing. The elites dismantled our means of making a living and im going to rebuild it. Of course hes not, hes handing everything over to Goldman Sachs again, but where is i was kind of expecting that that would trigger a some socialist voices to pick up on how that kind of worked for him, and because that actually is, you know, a more socialist idea than jobs guarantee, you know, rebuilding the means of production, and if as a socialist, if youre willing to work with corporations, which it sounds like you are, youre not saying lets smash the corporations, youre willing to do some tactical negotiations here over the coming decades, and so if you are, then why wouldnt you and other socialists that youre working with raise that same message and say hey, lets get together and rebuild our economy, rebuild our means of making a living . Introduce yourself, please. Zach ecksley, shorenstein fellow. In regard to corporations willing to let them exist. This is not something you will or not will. Obviously i advocate for a visual of socialism say after capitalism. In the power to consens consensus ill settle for doses of socialism within capitalism but in a broader Political Movement that has the end goal of eroding the power of capitalists, capitalism and transforming capitalism, because fundamentally, i dont think social democracy is sustainable, because capitalists if they have the power investment, solely in their hands, they could always when times get rough, their profitability is challenged erode the gains we have, so the marxist tradition has often been kind of the comparison often to cisifists, rolling the ball up the hill only to see it fall down, and i would say that. In the meantime, so i was working with corporations, they exist in society and if youre building a Workers Movement youre making demands on them. If that counts with working with them then maybe. Like a hostage crisis is like youre working with the people you have a gun pointed to. Now as far as this broader question of work and rhetoric, i think it is telling that bannon used the rhetoric of the american i think this is more bannon than whatever trumps thinking at this moment. Ive reared art of the deal. It was not talking much about the American Worker then. But the republicans are trying to be in a kind of identiarian way, a worker class, resurrecting this policy that are nakedly opposed to the interests of the American Worker. Worker, theyre not even trying to dupe people. If you look at trump care and the other proposals, this is just like attacks on the very people who voted for trump, with no particular reason to go about it this way. Now as far as the rhetoric, i actually think theres lots of ways of the american standards. It did rely somewhat on a makers and takers discount, trump did ta sanders said the taker was broadly the millionaires and billionaires and this class antagonism is actually firmly rooted in the socialist tradition. Who are trumps takers . It was felons, it was undeserving illegals, it was all these other things that i dont like this comparison, i dont like the fascist comparis comparison, but we invented the march, the right has always appropriateds appropriated aesthetics and language from the left. As far as why the Democratic Party isnt concerned with the rhetoric, theyre concerned with maintaining the governing party. Its often been put that the Democratic Party is a party of american capital, therefore for electoral reasons has to pretend that its not. Thats a difficult balance and i think it constrainins the rhetoc of the democrats. I think for the foreseeable future, business will boom and markets will be there. Thank you so much for being here and organizing this. Im Christine Jacobson and i work in the library now, and we now subscribe. I was wondering if you could respond to a criticism that is historically made of the socialist party in america and that in fact, the quotes made of Bernie Sanders a few weeks ago when he was here, and that is that the socialist party doesnt offer anything special to the black worker. And it seemed in your articulation of what the socialist party is offering the black worker kind of stops that, expanded medicaid and addressing pover poverty. That was sort of Bernie Sanders policy. And it stops short of reparations. If you could make talk a little bit about that. The socialist party unfortunately split into three in the early 1970s, im the vice chairman of the democratic socialists of america, so were up to about 20,000 members, so its one of the biggest things. Often this particular language, this nothing special language is often misquoted or a misrepresentation of something said by eugene debbs. And this is sort of a branch, more so democratic right wing of the party based in the upper midwest normally. But thats kind of theres an article about that and i want to rehash that. Now on the question on reparations, to me its an argument that exists purely in the political imaginary. So how would this look in practice . What kind of proof would we be asking for, would it apply to people who were, lets say, second or third or fourth immigrants from jamaica, right . And obviously, like, southward in slavery and the effects of slavery, but connected to the british empire. Its all these sorts of questions that makes a purely rhetorical device. So what do we want Something Like reparationists to do, we want reparations to uplift an historic disproportion. A full Employment Program actually has Something Special to offer to the black community that it doesnt have to offer to white workers who have higher levels of employment. So it does have Something Special to offer, but a lot of it is rooted in these kind of class demands. Now thats not to say that there shouldnt be particular organization done by black workers, not to say that black workers shouldnt at moments or times organize their own battle. Often when they do, they do so among the percentage of demand is largely economic in formation. If you look at the party of black nationalism that moved to the left, they all embrace socialist ideas. To them this wasnt a concern, to them their enemies were capitalists and a political elite in the United States and broader systems of imperialism and oppression connected to capitalism. So for them they dont have any of these concerns. So i dont actually think its kind as long standing of a comparison. So the idea that socialism doesnt have anything particular to offer or special to offer to oppressed people would be a total surprise to the legacy of like even third world post colonial movements and all of the organizing of the socialist banner. At any point from the 20th century and onward, theres been more black and brown socialists than there have been white socialists in europe. I find that argument not very compelling. I do think there is a variety of antiracism that is leveled purely at the symbolic and representational atmosphere and doesnt go deeper into issues of class. Now if youre asking me, should the elite in the United States be changed in that its 50 women and at least 10 black and so on. M actually yes, im not against those struggles. I dont think they go deep enough to actually fundamentally change things. Im going to just ask you a couple of closing questions. What are you most worried about right now . Well, im most worried, i think the democrats initially drew some lessons, it seems, from the election. And you can see this, like Chuck Schumer is a good bell weather, i think we had a socialist revolution, Chuck Schumer would join us, because he just wants the cameras and if we have the cameras pointed at us, hell join. Now everybodys talking about backtracking, the cia, the last bastion of defensive democracy, indisputable of course. Im worried that theyre drifting away from this initial idea that democrats would appeal to workers. I think the segment of the liberal left that does think this, perhaps even too narrowly working class is a youve youvism for black workers. Its not just a kwul churl thing, its not just like we werent out there like joe biden, Walking Around with our sleeves rolled up or whatever. It isnt just optics or messaging, its actually your policies. Actually to show people that you want something different, you want something that will help their lives and theyre willing to take political costs in order to do it. And this is something that the democrats, main stream democrats i dont think will be able to do, i think a lot of the democratic base, though, wants it and i think there are politicians and segments of the party that want this Bernie Sanders agenda. So ill just wrap up and say whos the most popular politician in the United States . Bernie sanders. If you look at the response his speeches around the country get, and his town halls get, you can see it. The republicans know it. Everybody in American Society seems to know it except for the Democratic Party. Their quotes recently by leading democrats saying theyre concerned that the economic populism of Bernie Sanders will hurt them in more conservative swing states that they adopted. Have they actually been paying attention to the rhetoric thats been succeeding in these states . Its not just Bernie Sanders has won over liberals, no, Bernie Sanders pulling very well among moderates and other people. There are people fed up with politics, like in europe, social democracy, with this old decrep decrepit they speak at the very group, the gut of someones, you know, political beliefs and more unethical sense of being. So i am worried about a Democratic Party that doesnt embrace this and im worried about even if, lets say we have a Cory Bookertrump matchup in 2020, that even if trump loses, which i hope he would in that matchup, that trumpism would be alive and well and would be in fact the only antiestablishment oppositional force. And were running out of time because were very heavily de n dependent on better than any Bernie Sanders, who is getting older and might not be able to keep up with the pace. If that worries you, what givings you hope . What gives me hope is the fact that i think that we have a majority or a potential majority for at least a shortterm that socialists have. It gives me hope that socialism now economists, at least in peoples minds, that it isnt just a dirty word connected to the crimes of stalinism and its my hope that we can get an Oppositional Party in the long run. I think we can win in the long run, but we have climate change, there are also some things that demand shortterm policies, solutions, before things even get on a worse course. Even though i think were now becoming better position to influence politics in the course of 20, 30, 40 years, were very far away from building the kind of majorities we need as a party. Mr. Carson, thank you very much. And we hope to see you next week, sarah lewis, talking about art, image, politics and race. Today, at 7 00 p. M. Eastern, join American History tv for a live tour of the museum of the American Revolution in philadelphia. The museums president and ceo Michael Quinn and collections and exhibitions Vice President Scott Stevenson will introduce artifacts and exhibits throughout the museum, including George Washingtons war tent and a piece of the old bridge from the battle of concord, hear stories from the American Revolution, and you can participate in the live program with your phone calls and tweets. Watch American History tv, live from the museum of the American Revolution, today starting at 7 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan 3. This weekend on American History tv on cspan 3, saturday, lectures in history, university of washington professor compares the 1950s beats and beatniks to the hippyings of the 1960s. The beats were disparring veterans of the great aggression and the holocaust and the the rising aflew wednesday of the post war consumer boom. 30 years ago, oliver north appeared before the house and Senate Committees investigating the iran contra affair. We did not intend to deceive the american people, or had that intent to begin with. The effort to conduct these covert operations was done in such a way that our adversaries would not have knowledge of them. And that is not wrong. And sunday at noon, historians authors and former congressmen and president ial candidate ron paul explore the consequences of what they call americas post world war ii authoritarian state. They know its illegal for an individual to go into your house and take what they want. Fortunately that moral standard still exists, you cant personally take from people and hurt people, it happens, and most people recognize you cant do it. But its not illegal for the government to do it. For our complete American History tv schedule, go to cspan. Org. Now, live to a discussion about Terrorism Financing and efforts to disrupt or prevent those Funding Network operations. A former cia deputy director, and a former Deputy National security advisor to president bush will participate in the forum. Its being hosted today by the Arab Gulf States Institute and should be Getting Started in just a few moments, our live coverage here on cspan 3. Again, were waiting for a Terrorism Financing discussion to get started. Its hosted today by the Arab Gulf States Institute. The event should get started in just a few moments. While we wait, some information on our programming tonight on cspan 3 this evening, its American History tv, well be life from the new museum of the American Revolution in philadelphia, which opened back in april, from 7 00 to 9 00 p. M. Eastern tonight well be joined by top museum staff to learn about their artifacts and exhibits and also to answer viewer questions about the American Revolution. Again, thats tonight, American History tv live from the new museum of the American Revolution here in philadelphia here on cspan 3. Also on our companion network on cspan tonight, Hillary Clinton talks about women and diplomacy and international relations. On cspan 2 this evening, its book tv in prime time, getting under way at 8 00 p. M. Eastern time. Experts talking about technology and the internet. Again live here on cspan 3, an event hosted by the Arab Gulf States Institution about financing of terrorism