A little bit of a different take on it i noticed there had been a flurry of books on socialism. Thats no surprise because socialism has come into the american mainstream for the first time in the country theyve collapsed at the end of the 20th century suddenly they tried to take stock of its other unifying theme by and large is the idea that socialism has never worked certainly not for the lack of being tried was tried in the majority of the world. The largest countries in the world, russia, china, india so the issue is that socialism didnt work before and its not going to work now. The verdict of history kind of argument. But the problem is that a lot of young people dont know that history is a house and really ds them. The second part is we are trying a new form of socialism. Its not authoritarian socialism, its democratic socialism. It is scandinavia. Its right there you can see it and we have three types of socialism. Its not just about the racial grievances and gender grievances and transgender grievances. Getting straight what it is we are talking about when you write a book about socialism in what is it that they were talking about in the classic sense of the most early socialist and early concept it was a form of collective ownership in the of e means of production abolishing private property. That form of socialism isnt very common today at least in largescale so what is it that you mean when you say socialism and this conflict . It is not classic socialism. Its sort of evolved over the last century and a half they came along and proposed the socialism that essentially was the revolt of the working class and overthrow the capitalist class and take over the means of production and the whole community into the stay or anywhere in the world there had never been that kind. Way to socialism and nationalization. The government over the banks and airlines and controlled the farming industry so it meant state ownership in the major and critical industries. Now the left isnt interested in any of this per se. There had been an economic component in all of these ideas you can see that these are not embraced by the party that this is important as a cultural component. I write somewhere in the book it isnt a union guy demanding the high wages it is to the black lives matter and peaceful rallies and cement blocks at her political opponent. That isnt a character that they could have foreseen and it reflects the fact we are dealing with an interesting hybrid of cultural and economic issues. A lot today care more about abortion than the minimum wage. They care more about the her bathroom then the universal basic income. The cultural component. Host at one point you talk about hardcore socialist fossae socialists and socialist light. What did you mean by these three term hopefuls into those categories . Guest Bernie Sanders is an explosive socialist who found a comic element. Now this is a bit too much i dont believe you can get sold in the United States. So they opted for socialism. Biden for example opposed free college but now hes for it because the pool in the Democratic Party is towards the left and a good way to think about socialism now isnt so much of a defined thing but which democrat is pulling in tha freemarket directiothefreemarh democrat is pulling the socialist direction and the answer is its just a matter of whether they are pulling hard or softly so i think the democrats decided lets go with more marketable than bernice socialism so thats why they picked joe biden over bernie. Host i think that you are right to talk about this as being a spectrum. With the means of production there are various degrees of the socialism present. The complete nationalization and then theres still overwhelming those like us that may be running in the opposite direction. One of them is singlepayer healthcare that fits into the traditional definition of socialism a little bit better. Guest yes, it does and of course there are welfare states in europe that have National Control of health care. You cant debate these things without being honest and knowing what you are talking about so when i listen to people like Elizabeth Warren talk about medicare for all our singlepayer healthcare they begin by using a rhetoric that is to be unpacked. They say things like we want to take Health Care Away from the companies and turn it over to the people. We want peopl the people to be n control of their health care and the way their health care is administered so then i asked the obvious question what role will the people have in any of this. Lets look at other government institutions, the post office. What control do you or i have been running the post office . None. What control do we have been running the dmv, none. What control does the ordinary british guy have over the National Health service, none. So the people are not going to be actually running anything. Elizabeth warren is. Right away we realize it offered something to the socialist class that is proposing it. Its not just the pharmaceutical politicians who themselves have a great deal of power to gain and cover that is convertible into money. That is a very important component. If people are able to parlay their positions ultimately into vast amounts of cash, it happens with the biden, clinton, al gore. How do people go from zero to 100 billion on the government salary, alternately by cashing in on their public position. So that is the first point i want to make is that the people are not in charge in fact. The question is who is going to run healthcare, the industry including the Insurance Industry or the Political Class and that makes it a little bit more of the actual choice. Host this is true of socialist revolution is everywhere done in the name of the people that the index benefiting or some more equal to others. One thing as a part of this Economic Policy you say is treating everybody more equally but the universal basic income we will guarantee income to all americans as a part of this sori can be the impression of one. How do you respond to the different models of baath guest this is where we have seen the preview where weve had a form of universal basic income. They almost want to say to the American People youve been sitting on your couch for months. How would you like to keep on doing it. Why would you want to put on an outfit and shave and go to work a bunch of times and listen to your employer raise and rant. What if we give you a thousand or 2,000 among them essentially make you a permanent slug. I have to admit there is a little bit in human nature that says that sounds fantastic because who wants to get off the couch. Thats how it feels to all of us and ultimately i think it points to the type of socialism by the way the democrats are selling. Marx would have been disgusted by this. He admired the worker who was sweating and putting in the long day. The point that you are putting so much of the load on the sky and some point his back is going to break and he will have enough so they unite as freeloaders of the world. Democrats today prefer we dont work. They made a video where they said we are not going back to work. Dont keep telling us to go back to work we are going to try to make this a temporary condition permanent. Another way to put it is the same shortages and limits on purchases and things im familiar with so we have a temporary case of what it would feel like and we shouldnt also forget the attack on civil liberties. That is the key part is not just economic its also no religious liberties, no freedom of assembly, no freedom of speech. Host its funny paying people not to work you dont get production and weve seen some of that in these recent months. Another one to bring up an just doesnt fit with the traditional marxist view would free college, i dont see that as the oppressed class but free college for everybody or forgiveness of student debt as a part of the package. Guest i was watching 60 minutes and so this fellow studying to be a doctor and says i would be such a better doctor if i didnt have to worry about paying for medical school. It would be so great is his education was free i could put all of my attention and being outstanding doctor and heres leslie kind of nodding and im waiting for the key question which is a if you want other people to pay for your education once you become a doctor, are you willing to work for free and the answer is obviously not. He wants the bmw lifestyle and pool in the backyard, the big house and so on so heres my point he wants the privileges and perks but once some other person to pay for his education. The shamelessness i think its a little shocking and i dont think that marx would have any sympathy for this guy. He would consider him a part of the class to be thrown on his back when the working class became angry. The problem today they are less likely to be found at a union revolt began at a trump rally. Host the working class rather than becoming wildly prosperous over the last 150 years. One of the new policies that is being proposed on the face of environmentalism that has a lot of components to so why is it a new deal . Guest if you look at the Green New Deal and member of the remedies have nothing to do with Climate Change and many of the politicians pushing the Green New Deal neither know nor care whether the arctic is getting hotter or colder. The experience is the same as when they were kids so this is ultimately a pretext as a ruse. Why the need for a ruse at all. You touched on a moment ago when news of the working classes and going to deliver what the socialists want. An economist about 100 years ago raised the question why has socialism not become mainstream in america and all socialist utopias have come to greece on roast beef enddoublequote in other words the working guy wants to join the capitalist class officer of violently fling it to the ground. The leftists figured this out and realized we need to sort of pick it. We need new ways to get the socialism without the kind of revolt that is never going to happen so now the politics of fear. Fdr learned in the new deal fear is a way to getting stoned you couldnt do otherwise. So i would say since the 70s when i first came to america i have been hearing this. Had been hearing this. The world was running out of food. In the 80s it was a Nuclear Apocalypse and in the 90s that was dissipating. The glaciers are melting and then coronavirus. In every case the idea is to create panic and try to get people in a crowd mentality to do with it what to do if they thought about it and act in a calm and deliberate manner. That is now the strategy of the left and the organs of Climate Change. Host you also identified this period as kind of how america began its tradition of. Could you elaborate on that . Guest one of them fdr favored 100 tax rate. He thought if you made over a certain amount of money that the government should take everything and at one point he had even said why should any american makeover 25,000 a year and he didnt mean 25,000 in our purchasing power but it was revealing he wanted a limit. The other thing fdr did is introduce the politics of demonizing the rich which has been very critical to the politics of the american left not just the socialists but the Democratic Party in general. Its worth noting because its not necessarily a characteristic of the socialist country. Look at scandinavia. You will never see people demonizing the guy running no kika. We will make him pay. All of this is absent from the scandinavian specialisms when thesocialism so whenthey say wee scandinavian model, no, youre actually following the fdr model and a model that the politics dividing society in many different ways. We are kind of all in this together to be contrasted with what can be called division socialism which is absolutely critical in the politics of today. Look at the racial divide. They literally seized upon it because it is part of the socialist strategy. Host i found it surprising when i was researching i wrote a book called socialism [inaudible] while we traveled the world we finish by going to the social prophets of the United States and the there is basically nobody in our age range. They were in their 70s now or 35 and under, mostly 35 and under. I went there to understand what do they mean by socialism and what are they talking about. I heard from some hardcore [inaudible] but the blacklights immigration issues, Climate Change issues, gender issues, going across the spectrum of Different Things none of them traditional socialism. Abortion is a big one. I dont remember seeing that in marks anywhere. I was a little bit surprised by that and we did have some differences pointed out that there solutions seem wrong. You called the site into the socialism would you like to elaborate what is going on with some of those . Guest identified and try to guide the nose if you will this new type of socialism which is a marriage of classic socialism and identity politics. So think of classic socialism eventually as a strategy of marxist division between the rich and the poor loosely speaking. For the modern american socialist life divided society is that its not just that. Its also black against white, it is a gender divide male against female, it is a Sexual Orientation divide and also in immigration divide legal against the illegal so when we say he was trying to carve a society the left is trying to slice the society in many different across many different lines. Why are they doing this . Because they think if we divide society into use differen and e, we can assemble a Majority Coalition that can come together and take on everybody else so they try to get the 51 and the belief that democracy is helpful than legitimize them oppressing the other 49 . This is what they called the socialism and to me it is a form of gangsterism because it isnt a whole lot different if i was a kid going to school with ten marbles in my pocket whether one guy jumps me and seizes my marbles ordering with a group of ten and the other nine jumpy in the majority and take them either way i am being robbed. Host what do you think it is about the banner socialism that gets the various individual issues that dont necessarily stick together what is it about the banner of socialis banner os them altogether . Guest i think they are unified by a hatred of capitalism but more broadly what can be called the infrastructure of the western societ western ss made capitalisms moorish so in other words they dont just hate the market or Insurance Companies but they also hate the families and the idea of a judeochristian structure of morality. They hate the idea of the churches which are a vehicle for people to express their freedom of conscience. I think if the left had their way to target with the family, property and church. This isnt unique to me they settle socialist target these institutions and if they do it right away. Host that was certainly true in the former soviet union as well wasnt that . Guest it was and its striking to me even though we have advocates how greatly they become tyrannical and say you cant go over here we are going to have to drones monitoring the movement and how quickly we are shutting them down. No one is denying that there is a virus but the truth of the matter is theres also a First Amendment and nothing in the constitution that says unless there is a disease or Health Authorities say otherwise but the truth of it is they are not up for a democratic referendum. It doesnt matter if the majority opposes them i still have the right to say what i think and have freedom of conscious. The idea that even without debate even if there was some agony you say on the balance we still think, know you have the governor of new jersey he wasnt even thinking of the constitution. It didnt even cross his mind. Host lets explore this for a moment because the book was entirely written before the corona virus pandemic. What you are seeing now in the United States and around the world in terms of crackdowns [inaudible] guest i have to say that the book has been vindicated and painted a chilling way not only by coronavirus but the aftermath of the George Floyd Killing. If i could socialism in america and defunding the police basically disbanding the police force i think i would have considered that an extreme thing to say and people would say you are a little crazy. What happened here and i will pay that if i made a little bit to the right and the mayhem we are seeing an attempt to enforce a social conformity that goes to anything foreseen in orwell. Even white people kissing the feet of blacklight activists, defacing of statutes not only confederate statues but those of columbus, church of england, abraham lincoln, the unknown soldier. It shows what is going on. Not only about george floyd. There is a specific and justice and truth of it is that there was a unified outrage from the left and righ the right concludd when the video first surfaced. It was an opportunity for the National Unity before the identity socialistic cant work like that. They need racism so they took the George Floyd Killing and put on top of it a much larger narrative and the larger narrative isnt what you would think would be the normal narrative which would be that costs extra try to make good costs a that their view is lets have no costs because the cops are racists and the institution is racist and thats no surprise because the Free Market Society is allied with White Supremacy and it is racist and its been that way since 1619 so youve got this remarkable narrative and its account of the George Floyd Killing because if you disagree with the narrative you are then accused of being insensitive to george floyd said this is the strategy of the socialists. They force you to embrace the larger narrative even though you are more than willing to go along with them on the original injustice you just are not on the other stuff that has nothing to do with. Host i want to see if i can fit this into the theme o