Cable Television Companies and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. Next a conversation on american socialism, bhaskar of sunkara discusses american left in Donald Trumps america. Harvard university shoren stein center on media hosted the event. Our guest today is bhaskar sunkara, the editor of publicker jacobin magazine, describes himself as quote, leading left offering socialist perspective on politics, economics and culture. Hes the editor among other volumes of the abcs of socialism and coeditor of this book, the future we want, radical ideas for the new century. You can also encourage you to pick up and subscribe to jacobin. I came across jacobin because i was looking for new ideas, new ways of thinking of where the country is going. Its a moment of politics and media. I was looking for fresh voices in that. I just want to read to you a i printed out the headlines of the jacobin website today. The woman of the atright, your boss big little secret, you have the right to know how much your coworkers are paid and if you want to close the wage gap, you should. Which he work to death, the american pension crisis and capitalism versus privacy. A number of interesting and compelling arguments and ideas. Im looking forward to a vigorous discussion. Lets go. Welcome to harvard. Thank you for having me. [applause] i want to start and request you for your diagnosis and the politics in the country right now . Youre starting big. I was expecting oak. [laughter] its all right. Next time. Theres cubicles evens. You have a lot of people who are alienated with politics and in danger of having voice from the populist right. The situation to me is a depressing one. Trump doesnt have a huge mandate yet. He sweeped by the election. Democrats continue on the current course he could develop one over time. It doesnt take much. It doesnt even take trump and the right to convincing people that they have a much better alternative, all it takes is a little bit of depth of financing and them being smart enough and paul ryan allowing a big infrastructure and jobs program and feelings that a lot of people are having. Now 1020 years down the road but immediately. Kind of rhetoric of sanders campaign, you work hard, you sacrificed a lot, youre trying to do right and you deserve more and not only that, we know the people responsible for not having enough and its a millionaire and billionaire class. Broadly, thats the only fighting alternative to the rhetoric we are having from the populist right and, you know, we are in a situation now that seems to be a pretty dire one with the rise of the right and with them having trump at the helm and obviously trump has certain things to his credit, oppositional figure, embodies some of the rhetoric, some of the antiestablishment pose and what not. He does feed his base with red meat and hes made a lot of crucial errors around trumpcare and other things and the way with some of his proposals have been layed out. Can you imagine how dangerous the situation would be if the populist right had someone with more kind of vision. So im afraid not just now but after we defeat trump and i also thought he didnt have a chance in 2016 so who am i to say, but what about trumpism. Could we be in a situation that resembles french politics, theres still there as a major force. I really think that the only alternative is, im not saying its socialism or. Barbarism. Thats why im a socialist and we need a socialist poll in american politics because of the pragmatic of the Democratic Center in unpragmatic way allowing this rightward drift. You mentioned Bernie Sanders, but hes approaching 80 and many of the leaders of the Democratic Leaders are approaching 80 if not older. Yeah, i think this is not the fault of this generation Democratic Leaders, this is often framed in the way that fdr and lbj were of a certain character and Hillary Clinton is of another and a very personalized way which i dont think makes sense. The Democratic Party has always been a party of capital and that dont mean its always represented certain business interests, big oil, we now society with george w. Bush, Democratic Coalition from 1930s to the 80s. Now, if you have party that represents labor interests and capital at the same time, it means that when times are going well, theres a boom, you could actually say that the pie is growing because of this businessled growth and we are going to make sure that some of the share of the growing pie is going to workers. Now, when the pie is at best the same size or if anything is shrinking, the best the democratic can say, you know, we are going to give you more of the pie, more of the pie than the republicans could and also to historically apress and marginalized groups and make sure that the drinking pie is more split up. So, in other words, they can promise social inclusion but they promise without any of the economic gains that went with it. They could offer both. So you can obviously see the way in which not just white workers but whole segments of population, 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 ones responsible for the other. And i think, you know, the approach of the populist left that emerged around sanders and also represented by people like Keith Ellison and Elizabeth Warren or that the pie is going to continue to strengthen in this direction. My view of the Democratic Party because of the broader structural kind of factors that have emerged since the 1970s, there needs to be a strong affirmative program of redistribution and alternative models growth. They have been unable to provide it. Often on the left we personalize this inability but, you know, the fact unless you actually have the will and the capability to mobilize a different source of power than Traditional Democratic base and by base i dont mean the people voting for the Democratic Party, the business interest attached to it and today a lot of it in the finance industry, real estate, Silicon Valley and what not, unless youre able to conceive politics in a different way, more popular way, i think that we are doomed to have the democrats continue along this path. So that in that framework, why did you start this magazine . I started the magazine, honestly, i have lots of reasons why i could say, right, its easy two or three years, in this case, five or six years come by with narrative and vision. I had extra spare time. [laughter] and my sophomore and junior year as undergrad, 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 so i figured, why not take the smart people and facilitate a project so we are not just talking amongst ourselves and based on the idea that socialist idea, ive been a member of the democratic of america and for me these ideas, the moral and ethical idea and the core of the socialist project, the idea that we should live in a World Without exploitation and oppression, these are ideas that should have appeal beyond the 5 or 6,000 people in discussion of the idea. Even at a time of historic defeat, we are trying to evangelicallize and try to win liberals with vision and purpose. At first it was online magazine, utter failure. My first day we had 636 visitors on the site and the reason i went to print, i figured it would make it how many of them were your mother . My mother and my aunt. Refreshers throughout the day a little bit. So my thinking was that i needed an actual revenue mechanism and that doubled down and continued to fail for a while but no one was really watching. And this kind of narrative that we have two more deeply understand the trump voter and the Democratic Party. So i actually have only read about half of that and it seemed to me at least from that half, again for me thats basically what the most books i read. I read the introduction, skin to the end, see the notes and then i said i read the book. But if youre an editor all you need is general knowledge, to treatments of the conversation. It will be tough for me, this as a whole hour. But its almost like the cultural poverty arguments of the 80s and 90s that were very racist, including publications like the new republic but for like white people. And here is a potential informed i think was only in these communities in like the summer and whatnot. Like now pushing the started of there something wrong at the roots of the culture of these communities that reinforce poverty and all these other things. I think there should be a level of understanding the situation that people live in. But things are diagnosing that these people should be more flexible that enables, willing to move the cities and whatever else, i think that some of the wrong conclusion. When i see poverty i see something simple, people who need money. I see people who need goods and services. When i think of the state i think this day as the only vehicle large enough to efficiently deliver these goods and services. If we have an epidemic, hair with addiction and huge parts of the country, i see people in need of High Quality Services to get over these addictions or counseling for medical services and whatnot. Also see people who need jobs. I think as a last resort the state should be a provider of those jobs and whatnot. I see the problem i think more simply than a lot of people. Its not a leap into the unknown. We are proposing in the short term nothing more than a scandinavian welfare state, which in a country as wealthy as of yet should be common sense. Thats part of our project and thats part of the project Bernie Sanders contribute so much to. People should expect more of the state. Not asking for the state to alleviate heartbreak and suffering and angst forever. Like even communism wouldnt do that. Certain things are parts of it. The human condition. What were asking for the states to provide a basic level of Human Dignity to allow people to reach their potential and so on. I think often theres a kind of voyeuristic view of poverty, whether in africanamerican meteor among poorer whites where people make it seem like these are impossible to decipher solutions. I see 60,000 Homeless People in new york and i think hey, maybee we should build more highquality Public Housing instead of letting the Public Housing we have deteriorated. I see poor people i think we should go build homes. At the level of politics i think its common sense what direction our policy should be driven and that in a lot of ways is a war on ethical vision. What role do you see technology playing in that come in the direction of our economy . On technology this is one place where i cant even really feigned to her three minutes because im only, think like a lot of people unconvinced by blasting a bit. Something will say Driverless Cars and mass automation of existing jobs is coming like in ten years, another article with the 20th. I agree with the last thing i read general. I would say if you think about places in which like why in europe one of the more capital intensive and why of a slightly more innovative edge in American Companies and factories. Traceable. They have more wage pressure. When a look at the lowwage workforce in the u. S. I kind of think why would p want to automate some of these jobs . Because theyre being paid almost nothing and theyre introducing new technologies and so on. To some degree, about half past some of these automation will be pushed through. I also think that generally youre a skeptic because theres a potential that automation will increase pressure on no. Im skeptic just because i think as far as these will all be introduced, but as far as the pace of the introduction, if we had, even a social democracy and yes, i think we would have a quicker pace of job displacement through ottomans asia and because that more wage pressure and more incentive for companies to invest capital, capital intensive technology. As it is, i think its more important than ever to actually develop a moat of politics in the foreground in the interests of workers. That doesnt necessarily mean that society would be like on the cutting edge of technology whatnot. It might create wage pressure that will increase the pace of technological innovation but it been at the same time be able to protect these workers through active labor market policies and jobs through training and a welfare state in case they displace and can put them in a different sector of the economy and whatnot. I think where to start from the premise the most important thing is in the bottom line. The most important thing is social welfare. When we think about 1970s, i hate t to point to it, its noty model but its as close as we have gotten, you know, human endeavor. This is a society that has free trade, right . This is a society that had lots of firms failure and things like that. I think, in other words, we developed the politics that foreground worker class interest, then from there we can see technology as the thing that helps rather than hurts. Certain jobs should in fact, be automated. The people in the sectors might want to do something else. But if it on the present course or the working class has less and less power but also their more and more the whims of globalization and technological change i think its dangerous. The best way after this described was by a British Member Parliament in the labour party. You trying to explain why in his district almost 90 plus of the population voted leads. He said its like youre on a runaway train and you dont know what direction the train is going. Its going faster and faster. He said people in his district did what was pretty logical special if it didnt even know if there were a conductor or not. They looked around at the people in the car and he decided [inaudible] obviously theres a different alternative. Theres a socialist vision of maybe trying to community with people in other cars and join together and try to take control of the train but in the present private i think for a lot of people they are not against technology, for the sake of being against technology. They are against a train that they dont know what the direction is and they dont know what their fate will be in the future. But through conscious discussion to actual bring politics into this seer, bring politics in the spirit of technology i think we do both. I think would have technological advance. We could embrace the positive aspects of automation. If im 27, i am the plaintiff kids anytime soon, but i would hope Driverless Cars i would have to worry the parents my head one of 17 and 18 trying to learn how to drive and so on. Maybe in fact, it would be nice living in a society where human beings are in control of the vehicles. Maybe there will be certain social goods and we can think about it. But im more apt to envision the future ones were at that stage done and now when i know how many truckers and cabdrivers whoever else will be displaced would just go from being employed in the working class to being just for. So thats kind of my take on Technology Without being antitechnology. Theres this kind of media narrative about young people in america being very far left and arguably the farthest left generation, the country has ever seen, kind of a new generation of socialists. 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 that is often ascribed to like you or the other like cultural factors. But if you look at france for example, not to turn back to france, but the National Front might actually win a polarity of young people, of millennials. These are people of course exposed to a very similar mass culture that americas young people are exposed to and whatnot. Theres reasons for this but the point being that i think yes, young people are moving to the left, but a lot of that has to do with politics. Has to do with the success of organizers. It has to do yes, a certain degree of cultural trade that makes america better than certain european countries. Its hard to build a xenophobic ethnic nationalism in a state that can see itself at least the nation of immigrants. Its a harder project. I think steve bannon is project, building a social majority of anything he wants to build a social majority is, in fact, harder than my project which is pretty damn hard, then Bernie Sanders the link of the majority social democratic kind of consensus. So i think he finally just just in the fact a lot of these people are well educated. They are the sons and daughters of the professional middle class. They are finding out that the promises told to them that if they work hard, keep your head down they will be able to get a stable job and be able to at least maintain their Living Standard is a lie. And i think thats leading to people to look for solution. If you are young you might have to find a coherent worldview, agree or disagree with it. In other places on the socialist left then you would in the venues of the center that actually dont have anything else to offer. But i dont want to just assume that demographics will take care of everything. I think thats part of the problem that got us into this mess to begin with. Trumps election. I have one more question and then i will open it up to the audience. So please get your questions ready. I didnt want to ask you about, you know, race and class in america, and to what extent, both race and class were seems like very high relief in this last election. And how do you understand that in america right now . It seems to me that if you look at actually the situation in america, you have, first of all this question is often seen as this very kind of broad kind of language but i think in particular in the United States went to grapple with the