Divide and Conquer or Divide and Subdivide? How Not to Refight the First International (2017) by Dr. Mark Leier

05 Wednesday Jul 2017

Posted by ztnh in Anti-Capitalism, Anti-Imperialism, Civic Engagement (Activism), Dr. Karl Marx (1818-1883), History, History of Economic Theory, Political Economy, Political Science

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Against the Grain, C.S. Soong, Divide and Conquer or Divide and Subdivide? How Not to Refight the First International (2017), Dr. Karl Marx (1818-1883), Dr. Mark Leier, KPFA, Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin (1814-1876), Pacifica Radio Network, Simon Fraser University (British Columbia), transcript

LUMPENPROLETARIAT—One of the biggest schisms on the left of the political spectrum has manifested itself over the last century or more between two broad groupings—namely, anarchists and socialists. The anarchists see no validity (moral or otherwise) in the authority of the state form. Conversely, the socialists have proven to be more optimistic about the possibilities for progressive or radical reforms within the state form. Dr. Mark Leier, a Professor of History at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, has just published a new pamphlet about this long-running division on the left, taking Dr. Karl Marx and Mr. Mikhail Bakunin as figureheads for these two political tendencies on the left. Indeed, in their time (late 19th century), Marx and Bakunin were (as today) two of the most well-known figures on the left. And this schism eventually shattered the First International (or the International Workingmen’s Association), the first international attempt to unite the left against capitalist exploitation of the world’s working classes.

On today’s edition of free speech radio’s Against the Grain, host C.S. Soong spoke with Dr. Leier about the new pamphlet entitled “Divide and Conquer or Divide and Subdivide? How Not to Refight the First International”. This is a fascinating interview, which provides us with useful background on Marx, Bakunin, the First International, and one of the deepest and most enduring divisions on the left. Dr. Leier compared and contrasted the two hugely influential leftists. And, in so doing, Dr. Leier’s research seemed to suggest (reading pending) that the limitations of their respective temperaments definitely hindered their ability (and, by extension, the ability of their respective followings) to unite an effective and sustainable broad-based anti-capitalist left movement resistance.

Messina

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[Transcript draft by Messina for Against the Grain and Lumpenproletariat.]

AGAINST THE GRAIN—[5 JUL 2017] “Today on Against the Grain, the battle waged between Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin within the First International was, according to historian Mark Leier, some of the nastiest sectarian fighting we have seen on the left. I’m C.S.

“Mark Leier discusses the lives and ideas of Marx and Bakunin, and argues that the two men had more similarities than is commonly believed—coming right up.”

[Against the Grain theme music continues]

“And this is Against the Grain on Pacifica Radio. I’m C.S. Soong.

“Two leading radicals—Karl Marx and anarchist Mikhail Bakunin—famously clashed in the 1860s. They bickered and fought and heaped invective on each other. And, as a consequence, the International Workingmen’s Association, known as the First International, split in two in 1872. Hostility and tension between socialists and anarchists continue to this day. And Mark Leier, for one, wonders whether it could have been different. (c. 1:36)

“Leier a Professor of History at Simon Fraser University has compared the background and ideas of Marx and Bakunin and has found many similarities, similarities ignored by or unknown to many who’ve written about or analysed the momentous breakup of the First International. Leier has also analysed the temperaments of these two men for clues into why they disliked and distrusted each other so much. Leier, who wrote a biography called Bakunin: The Creative Passion, has come out with a new pamphlet about Marx and Bakunin. The pamphlet’s title is ‘Divide and Conquer or Divide and Subdivide? How Not to Refight the First International’.

“When Mark Leier joined me from British Columbia, I asked him what the First International was.” (c. 2:23)

DR. MARK LEIER: “The First International was an attempt of a number of left-wing and communist and working class and anarchist political groups to come together to create the organisation, that would help workers across the world build a new kind of solidarity. It was started in 1864. And its first meeting was in London. And its first congress, although they had delegates mostly in Europe, it was helped a year later in Geneva.”

C.S. SOONG: “And what were the roles of Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin within the First International?”

DR. MARK LEIER: “The two organisers and radicals represented different wings and different ideas about how the socialist revolution was going to come about. I think the differences have really been overstated.

“But what we see in the First International is a deep feud between Bakunin and his followers ,and the Proudhon followers that were allied with him with a small group of Marxists in there. (3:37)

“And they used—as anyone, who’s been at a co-op meeting or a left-wing meeting or a [] council meeting or a departmental meeting of some kind knows how these things can develop. And they can become very nasty long after everyone has forgotten what the original battles were all about.

“So, one of the things, that happened was the two different sides used some small differences on small matters to become trigger points to engage in a kind of schismatic in-fighting.” (c. 4:04)

C.S. SOONG: “And this in-fighting climaxed with a final split between the two men, between their two factions at the Hague Congress of the First International in 1872. Tell us what happened there.”

DR. MARK LEIER: “Yeah. You know; again, it was very typical of the kinds of things. But, basically, two sides lined up and held various votes on matters. And voting goes back and forth. And, finally, however, Marx and his allies win a couple of crucial votes. And they use that as a way to kick out Bakunin and the Bakuninists.

“And they, then, moved the International’s headquarters to New York City, so virtually nobody could get to the next congress. And the whole thing pretty much wraps up by 1876.

“So, the bitter irony for the left is this attempt to forge a new solidarity, greater unity dissolves into factional fights, into fueding. One side takes its marbles and goes home.

“The anarchists do create another International shortly after that, which continues for some years. And, of course, in the 1880s there was a revival of something called the Second International, which was very much an International of the social democratic party. It does not have the same broad range of left-wing members and ideas in it.” (c. 5:37)

C.S. SOONG: “So, in this pamphlet you have written for PM Press—it’s called ‘Divide and Conquer or Divide and Subdivide? How Not to Refight the International’—you actually go back in time. You look at the upbringings and the years of youth and young adulthood of, both, Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin, Michael Bakunin. And it’s very revealing. And it tells me, at least, as one reader of the pamphlet, a lot about who these men were, where they came from, and how, in some ways, similar they were. And that’s part of your point—isn’t it?—that these two men were more similar than one might think based on everything we’ve heard about the antagonism between them. (c. 6:27)

“So, let’s start with Bakunin. You write that Bakunin’s family was part of the Russian nobility. Does that mean, Mark, that his family was rich, was part of the idle rich?”

DR. MARK LEIER: “No, it doesn’t. One of the things, that’s happened in this long feud between anarchists and Marxists between 1864 and the present is that both sides are quick to point out the other as being absolutely unrepresentative of any kind of working class or real left wing movement by saying, in this case, that Bakunin was not a worker, but was an aristocrat. And it is true. But his family was not in the circles of the czar. His estate was pretty far from Moscow and from St. Petersburg. And it did not mean what we tend to think of when we think of aristocrats. You know; we think of Queen Victoria, when we think of the czar. That’s not what life was like.

“The family did control the lives of about two thousand serfs. But that did not confer huge wealth. This was a family, that had more many than peasants—absolutely—but had to pay strict attention to housekeeping, had to pay strict attention to the books in order to keep going. When you look at the letters from Bakunin’s father, it’s filled with—you know; we’re not sure if we’re gonna make it this month. We’re really having a difficult time making ends meet. It did mean that they had the luxury of educating the children. And, so, Michael and his sisters and his brothers got a very good education by tutors, that were brought into the home. They were given the training appropriate for gentlemen and ladies. But it was a training, that was very much instrumental in the sense that you prepare the men to step into careers in the army or as professionals or, perhaps, as people able to manage the estate and to provide the sisters of Michael Bakunin with the graces and skills and personal characteristics, that would allow them to make good marriages. (c. 8:38)

“This is not a family rolling in wealth, although it was certainly enough to send Bakunin off to school where he went to a military academy and took up service in the czar’s army. But he was not one of the idle rich in that sense.” (c. 8:54)

C.S. SOONG: “So, what about Karl Marx’s parents? Obviously, he grew up in Germany, not in Russia. Where did his parents fall within the ranks of German society? And how important was education in Marx’s family, you know, when he was a kid?”

DR. MARK LEIER: “Marx’s family was very similar to Bakunin’s. They were not aristocrats. But his father was a lawyer. He had vineyards, that he ran. So, he had enough wealth to educate the children, enough social status, that Marx’s father would meet with local politicians and had some interest and some political sway, as did Bakunin’s father, but not enough to guarantee careers, not enough to allow them to stop working and simply live off the income produced by workers. That was not their situation at all. (c. 9:49)

“What is interesting to me is that both sides have looked at the parents of Bakunin and of Marx to say: We can dismiss either of them, depending on your side, as being petit bourgeois elements. That cuts both ways. And it is easy for both sides to overestimate the class position of Bakunin and Marx. So, I wanted to pay attention to that to say that they were not unlike rebels, that we see all over the place. If you look at the make up, for example, of the Students for a Democratic Society [SDS], in their very title, they were students. They had some access to education. The Weather Underground, very similar. It’s not true of all organisations, of course. But it’s not a surprise that many people of the left had, at least, some exposure to education. It’s pretty difficult to work all day and, then, go home and become an expert in all the arcane matters of the political economy, that we need to think about on the left.” (c. 10:51)

C.S. SOONG: “Mark Leier is his name. He is a Professor in this History Department at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia. And he’s author of ‘Divide and Conquer or Divide and Subdivide? How Not to Refight the First International’. And he’s also the author of a biography of Bakunin, Michael Bakunin. I’m C.S. [Soong]. And this is Against the Grain on Pacifica Radio.

“So, Bakunin, like Marx, was the oldest of the male children in his family. And you said that he was sent to a—or he went to a military academy. So, I understand that demands were placed on young Michael. But he would develop into some type of military officer. How did he do in school at that academy?”

DR. MARK LEIER: “Well, he was not a great student. His passion for rebellion surfaced early, though not in episodes of organising resistance among his fellow cadets, but in that kind of passive-aggressive behaviour, that is often how people, who don’t have much power, respond. He was, like many students, slow at turning in his assignments. He didn’t do very well on many of his exams. He was considered to be very bright. And, if only he would apply himself, the theory went, he would do very well at that.

“The point of going to military academy was not just to become a soldier, but enlist in the army, with any luck, to have a good war, if such a thing is possible. And it certainly was for officers; it meant escaping and acquitting yourself with some honour, so that you would be rewarded by the system for playing that important role in it. (c. 12:40)

“So, the idea was not to become a career officer, but to be exposed to the circles of power through your service and in that way, actually, add to the family income. But it didn’t work out.

“He did some military service, but finally just went AWOL. He just left. And his family, later, then, had to scramble and say: Well, he was sick. He wasn’t well. That’s why he’s here. He had something of a breakdown. That wasn’t the case. He was sick to death of the military life, sick to death of the discipline, the pettiness of it. In that sense, we can look to some of his personality, leading to his ideas about anarchism, about freedom, and the lack of discipline imposed imposed from above.”

C.S. SOONG: “And Marx, as I understand, he was expected, or at least his parents hoped that he would engage in the study of law. He went to the University of Bonn in Germany, where he studied law. How did that go?” (c. 13:42)

DR. MARK LEIER: “Not so well. He was more interested in writing poetry and in drinking an in dueling. You know? It’s the 19th century equivalent of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. And so was Bakunin, of course.

“Both of them—lots of their early correspondence, letters back home saying: Trying really hard. Working really hard. I could just do better if you send me more money.”

C.S. SOONG: “[chuckles]”

DR. MARK LEIER: “It didn’t fool anybody. Both fathers respond: We sent you a pile of money. Most people could live for a year or two. You seem to have burned through it all for months. Maybe you should apply yourself more carefully.

“So, these are some of the parallels, at an early age, between the two men. And I stress the parallels because our sense of them, based only on the feuds of the First International, is that they must have been so very different. They must have been very different approaches to political and economic questions. And they really don’t. I think they have much more in common, which is not surprising, given they had similar backgrounds.

“And the similarities in their upbringings, in their educations, and in their early moves, first, into Hegelian philosophy, as a way to make sense of the world, and, then, into working class politics and left-wing politics—so very similar, that I had to stop and say: What exactly was the huge difference between them? Why couldn’t they get along? Why couldn’t they become—you know—the hottest duo in the pamphleteering world, ’til, say, Gilbert and Sullivan?”

C.S. SOONG: “[chuckles]”

DR. MARK LEIER: “Or some other famous team. You know? [chuckles]”

C.S. SOONG: “G.W.F. Hegel, an immensely influential philosopher, who, as you began to suggest, influenced Bakunin and Marx and so many other people of their generation and subsequent generations. Which ideas of Hegel’s most appealed to Marx and to Bakunin?” (c. 15:49)

DR. MARK LEIER: “Or some other famous team. You know? [chuckles]”

C.S. SOONG: “I think, to both of them, what was so appealing about Hegel is he presented for the first time the idea that change, not stasis and stability, was the human condition.

“If you think about the time, in which Hegel is writing, a time when Europe is changing so drastically, when the economies are in the middle of that shift from hundreds of years of feudalism to this new industrial capitalism that changes everywhere.

“That doesn’t sit very well, if you are a king and want to hold [power] with the divine right of kings, that says: You’re family has been on the throne forever and should be on the throne forever. So, Hegel, by suggesting it was change, that marked human history opened up a whole new world.

“[snip]

[snip] (c. 59:59)

Learn more at AGAINST THE GRAIN.

***

[Image of book cover by source used via fair use rationale for educational purposes.]

[7 JUL 2017]

[Last modified at 14:59 PDT on 15 JUL 2017]

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Opposing Capitalist Imperialism: A Speech by Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist Chris Hedges in Berkeley

26 Friday May 2017

Posted by ztnh in Anti-Capitalism, Anti-Fascism, Anti-Imperialism, Anti-Totalitarianism, Democratic Party (USA), Free Speech, Political Science

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Chris Hedges Mdiv (b. 1956), Commodus (161-192), Dennis Bernstein, Flashpoints, Greg Bridges, KPFA, Pacifica Radio Network, Salima Hamirani, transcript, UpFront

LUMPENPROLETARIAT Award-winning journalist and human rights activist Chris Hedges delivered a speech on the current state of the nation at the First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, California yesterday. [See transcripts below.] It is a scathing indictment of US imperialism and capitalism, itself. This is, perhaps, the most courageous, honest, and enlightened public presentation to date by Chris Hedges about the state of the nation and capitalist society. Mr. Hedges has come a long way from the disappointing rhetoric he espoused circa 2008 when he stood squarely in support of the Obama Presidential Campaign (and against the politically progressive Ralph Nader Presidential Campaign). It was obvious in 2008 to keener political observers that an Obama Presidency would surely disappoint, in terms of advancing progressive political principles, socioeconomic justice, and reining in America’s imperialist tendencies.

Chris Hedges’ logical break from the Democratic Party after witnessing eight years of failures and betrayals by the Obama administration and the Democratic Party comes a bit late. But it is better late than never. And abandoning the corporate-controlled Democratic Party is something all people of conscience, liberals, and the left, generally, must do, if they want to get behind a real people’s party. Liberals must recognise and finally admit the inability of the Democratic Party to function as a sincere opposition party on behalf of the working classes. Only, then, can liberals and the left galvanise their political will into a real people’s party, which can oppose the corporate two-party system. For his part, Chris Hedges would even go so far as to sue Obama. He was joined in his lawsuit by other activists and concerned citizens, such as Alexa O’Brien of US Day of Rage, one of the original organisers of Occupy Wall Street.

In last night’s speech, portions of which were previously published in printed form (see “Reign of Idiots“, Truthdig, 20 APR 2017), Chris Hedges provided a sincere left critique of our society. And he disabused many liberals of their fixation on President Trump as the bad guy, which conveniently and problematically takes the Democratic Party off the hook for its role in perpetuating the socioeconomic ills of neoliberalism, capitalism, and imperialism. “Trump is the symptom. He is not the disease.”

Too often (especially during Republican presidencies) liberals are quick to fixate on a Republican figurehead, such as President Trump or President Bush. But, often, this fixation on a lone bogeyman functions as obfuscation of, and apologism for, the anti-working class agenda of the Democratic Party. The focus is placed on one figure, which, if removed, changes little to nothing about the structure of our political process. It feels good for liberals to bash Trump or focus their energies on his ouster; but that doesn’t fundamentally transform the sociopolitical conditions, which give rise to a President Trump or a two-party system, which blocks all other alternative political parties from meaningfully participating in the national political discourse.

The American working classes must recognise that supporting the Democratic and Republican parties, who are driven by a pro-corporate agenda, is politically against their own economic interests. We need only check the historical record, which is something Chris Hedges helps the public do. Free speech radio KPFA (Berkeley, CA, 94.1 FM) has broadcast excerpts of this new speech and is offering copies of the speech in CD or DVD format, among other thank-you gifts, for donating to keep free speech radio alive and well. [1] Listen (and/or download) here or here. [2] [3] [4]

Messina

***

[Transcript by Messina for Lumpenproletariat, UpFront, and Flashpoints.]

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and human rights activist Chris Hedges

UPFRONT—[26 MAY 2017] [station identification]

“Good morning. It is Friday, May 26th. This is UpFront. I’m Salima Hamirani.

“On today’s show: Last night Chris Hedges spoke at the First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley. We bring you that speech today. He talks about the dying empire; Trump; the cronies that rise from the ashes to take power; and how to take back. Getting rid of Trump isn’t the answer, he says. Instead, we have to come to terms with the counterrevolution, that began at the end of the ’60s. All this, after the [KPFA] News [Headlines]. (c. 00:38)

[News Headlines (read by Max Pringle) omitted by scribe] (c. 8:14)

SALIMA HAMIRANI: “Good morning. It is 7:08 [am]. You are listening to UpFront. I’m Salima Hamirani. Thank you for joining us this morning.

“So, last night Chris Hedges spoke at the First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley to address a totally packed church. Um, so this is hot off the presses. We edited this last night to get it to you this morning. I’m particularly tired this morning.

“Uh, Chris Hedges is a KPFA luminary. He’s a writer, a journalist, a minister. He’s a social justice thinker and activist. And he often talks about war, which he covered, and the government—big government, or what he calls the deep state, sometimes.

“But, this time, his talk was a little bit different. I think, coming on the heels of [the] Trump [Presidency], he felt more powered up and a little bit more angry. And, so, he talks a lot about something called the dying empire. And he compares what’s happening with [President] Trump and the rise of the fascists in the U.S. to what comes out of the ashes of the empire as it collapses. But he also some news for how to take the country back and how to fight back.

“And he thinks that the—well, I don’t wanna give too much away. But he thinks that getting rid of [President] Trump isn’t the right answer. Let’s go right to Chris Hedges, from last night.” (c. 9:27)

[First audio excerpt from the Chris Hedges speech in Berkeley, CA on 25 MAY 2017]

AUDIENCE: [applause, cheers]

CHRIS HEDGES: “Thank you. [applause continues, then subsides]

“I was at a talk a few weeks ago, given by the great Noam Chomsky. He came in with a sheet of papers about this thick and said: A lot of people say I’m boring. And I’m proud to be boring.”

AUDIENCE: [laughter]

CHRIS HEDGES: “[chuckles] So, this is thick. But we live in a dangerous moment. [pregnant pause]

“The decision by the deep state in ancient Rome, like the United States in 2017, dominated by a bloated military and a corrupt oligarchy, to strangle the emperor Commodus in his bath in the year 192 did not halt the growing chaos and precipitous decline of the Roman Empire. Commodus, like a number of other late Roman emperors, and like [President] Donald Trump, was incompetent and consumed by his own vanity. He had commissioned innumerable statues of himself as Hercules and had little interest in governance. He used his position as head of state to make himself the star of his own ongoing public show. He fought victoriously as a gladiator in the arena in fixed bouts.

“Power for Commodus, like [President] Trump, was primarily about catering to his bottomless narcissism, hedonism, and lust for wealth. He sold public offices, so the ancient equivalents of Betsy DeVos and Steve Mnuchin could orchestrate [applause] a vast kleptocracy. (c. 11:42)

“Commodus was replaced by the reformer Pertinax, the Bernie Sanders of his day, who attempted to curb the unchecked power of the Praetorian Guards, the ancient version of the military-industrial complex. This effort saw the Praetorian Guards assassinate Pertinax after three months in office. The Guards, then, auctioned off the office of emperor to the highest bidder.

“The next emperor, Didius Julianus, lasted 66 days. There would be five emperors in 193, the year after the assassination of Commodus.

“[President] Trump and our decaying empire have ominous historical precedents. If the deep state replaces Trump, whose ineptitude and imbecility are embarrassing to the empire, that action will not restore our democracy any more than replacing Commodus restored the Republic in Rome. [words of agreement; applause]

“The choice will be between inept fascists, like [President] Trump, and competent fascists, like [Vice President] Pence. [applause] Our republic is dead. The idiots, seeing in the decay the chance for personal advancement and profit, take over in the final days of crumbling civilisations. Idiot generals wage endless, unwinnable wars, that bankrupt the nation. [6] [7] Idiot economists call for reducing taxes for the rich and cutting social service programmes for the poor and project economic growth on the basis of myth. [8] Idiot industrialists poison the water, the soil, and the air, slash jobs, and depress wages. Idiot bankers gamble on self-created financial bubbles and impose crippling debt peonage on the citizens. Idiot journalists and public intellectuals pretend despotism is democracy. Idiot intelligence officers orchestrate the overthrow of foreign governments to create lawless enclaves, that give rise to enraged fanatics. Idiot professors, experts, and specialists busy themselves with unintelligible jargon and arcane theory, that buttress the politics of the rulers. And idiot entertainers and producers create lurid spectacles of sex, gore, and fantasy. (c. 14:45)

“There is a familiar check list for extinction. We are ticking off every item on it. The idiots know only one word: more. They are unencumbered by common sense. They horde wealth and resources until workers cannot make a living and the infrastructure collapses. They live in privileged compounds where they eat chocolate cake and order missile strikes. [sparse laughter, then applause] They see the state as a projection of their own vanity. The Roman, Mayan, French, Habsburg, Ottoman, Romanov, Wilhelmein, Palavi, and Soviet dynasties crumbled because the whims and obsessions of ruling idiots were law.

“And [President] Donald Trump is the face of our collective idiocy. [hesitant applause] He is what lies [applause] behind the mask of our professed civility and rationality, a sputtering, narcissistic, blood-thirsty megalomaniac. This face, in the past, was hidden—at least to white Americans [9]. But with the destruction of democratic institutions and the disempowerment of the citizen, the oligarchs and the kleptocrats have become brazen. They no longer need to hide the pillage. They can steal and lie in the open. They can wield armies and fleets against the wretched of the Earth, blithely ignore the looming catastrophe caused by global warming and canibalise the nation on behalf of global oligarchs, while at night, like some monster from the grande gueule, the Idiot-in-Chief, overseeing our self immolation, sits slack-jawed in front of a television set before opening his beautiful Twitter account. [audience laughter] (c. 17:02) [Hedges’ breath trembles]

“Forget the firing of James Comey. Forget the paralysis in Congress. Forget the inanity of a press, that covers the tyranny as if it were a sports contest between corporate Republicans and corporate Democrats, or a reality show starring our maniacal president and the freaks, that surround him. Forget the noise. The crisis we face is not embodied in the public images of the politicians, that run our dysfunctional state.

“The crisis we face is the result of a four decade-long, slow-motion, corporate coup d’état, that has rendered the citizen impotent [wide audience applause], left us without any authentic democratic institutions and allowed corporate and military power to become omnipotent.

“The crisis has spawned a corrupt electoral system of legalised bribery and elevated public figures, that master the arts of entertainment and artifice.

“[President] Trump is the symptom. He is not the disease. [cheers; applause]

“Our descent into despotism began with the pardoning of [President] Richard Nixon, all of whose impeachable crimes are now legal, and the extrajudicial assault, including targeted assassinations and imprisonment, carried out on dissidents and radicals, especially black radicals.

“It began with the creation of corporate-funded foundations and organisations, that took control of the press, the courts, the universities, scientific research, and the two major political parties. It began with empowering militarised police to kill unarmed citizens [with impunity] and the spread of our horrendous prison system, mass incarceration, and the death penalty. [applause] (c. 19:16)

“It began with the stripping away of our most basic constitutional rights: privacy, due process, habeas corpus, fair elections, and dissent.

“It began when big money was employed by political operatives, such as Roger Stone, a close Trump advisor, to create negative political advertisements and spread malicious gossip and false narratives, all eagerly amplified by a media devoted to profits and ratings, not truth, to deceive the public until political debate became burlesque. [10]

“It began in the 1960s and ’70s with a war on dissidents and radicals, especially black radicals, which included FBI assassinations of leaders, such as Fred Hampton.” (c. 20:07)

AUDIENCE MEMBER: “Yeah!”

CHRIS HEDGES: “This war against radicals, President Nixon’s so-called battle for law and order put the police, the FBI, and other organs of internal security beyond the reach of the law. And this power has steadily expanded.

“We are all under state surveillance. And we can all become victims, if the state deems us to be a threat. The ruling elites, terrified by the mobilisation of the left in the 1960s, or by what the political scientist Samuel Huntington called ‘America’s excess of democracy‘, built counter-institutions to deligitimise and marginalise critics of corporate capitalism and imperialism. They bought the allegiances of the two main political parties. They imposed obedience to the neoliberal ideology within academia and the press. This campaign laid out by Lewis Powell in his 1971 memorandum entitled ‘Attack on American Free Enterprise System‘, was the blueprint for the creeping coup, that 45 years later is complete. [11] (c. 21:16)

“And our failure to defend the rights of those, who were demonised and persecuted, leaves us all demonised and persecuted. Our failure to demand justice for everyone leaves us all without justice. Our failure to halt the crushing of popular movements, that stand unequivocally with the oppressed, leaves us all oppressed. Our failure to protect our democracy leaves us without a democracy. The persecution of the radicals of four decades ago is not ancient history. It is the genesis of the present. It spawned the corporate coup and the machinery of state terror. We will pay for our complacency. We are trapped, like rats in a cage. (c. 22:05)

“A narcissist, an imbecile, may be turning the electric shocks on and off. But the problem is the corporate state. [pounding the podium] And, unless we dismantle the corporate state, we are doomed.” [applause] (c. 22:21)

[End of first audio excerpt from the Chris Hedges speech in Berkeley, California.]

SALIMA HAMIRANI: “Good morning. It is 7:22. You are listening to UpFront. That was Chris Hedges. I’m Salima Hamirani.

“And I want to remind you I’m cutting into this amazing talk to remind you that it’s actually the last day of fund drive. Today is the last day. And, folks, we’re really behind.

[Salima Hamirani continued appealing for listener support and donations for listener-sponsored free speech radio KPFA on the final day of the 2017 KPFA Spring Fund Drive] (c. 28:21)

[Second audio excerpt from the Chris Hedges speech in Berkeley, CA on 25 MAY 2017]

CHRIS HEDGES: “Racist, violent, and despotic forces have always been part of the American landscape and have often been tolerated and empowered by the state to persecute poor people of colour and dissidents. These forces are denied absolute power as long as a majority of citizens—white citizens—have a say in their own governance. But, once citizens are locked out of government and denied a voice, power shifts into the hands of the enemies of the open society.

“When democratic institutions cease to function, when the consent of the governed becomes a joke, despots fill the political void. They give vent to popular anger and frustration. While arming the state to do to the majority what it has long done to the minority. This tale is as old as civilisation. It was played out in ancient Greece and Rome, the Soviet Union, fascist Germany, fascist Italy, and the former Yugoslavia.

“Once a tiny cabal seizes power, monarchist, communist, fascist, or corporate, it creates a mafia economy and a mafia state.

“Trump and his coterie of billionaires, generals, Christian fascists, criminals, racists, and deviants, play the role of the Snopes clan in some of William Faulkner‘s novels.

“The Snopeses filled the power vacuum of the decayed South and ruthlessly seized control from the degenerated former slave-holding aristocratic elites. Flem Snopes and his extended family are fictional representations of the moral rot unleashed by unfettered capitalism. The usual reference to amorality, while accurate, is not sufficiently distinctive, and by itself does not allow us to place them, as they should be placed, in a historical moment, the critic Irving Howe wrote of the Snopeses. (c. 30:39)

“Perhaps, the most important thing to be said is that they are what comes afterwards, the creatures that emerge from the devastation with the slime still upon their lips. Let a world collapse, in the [American] South or Russia, and there appear figures of coarse ambition driving their way up from beneath the social bottom, men to whom moral claims are not so much absurd as incomprehensible, sons of bushwhackers and musics drifting in from nowhere and taking over through the sheer outrageousness of their monolithic force, Howe wrote. They become presidents of local banks and chairmen of party regional committees and, later, a trifle slicked up, they muscle their way into Congress or the Politburo. Scavengers without inhibition, they need not believe in the crumbling official code of their society, they need only learn to mimic its sounds. Societies, that once were open and had democratic traditions are easy prey for the enemies of democracy. Demagogues pay deference to the political ideals, rituals, practices, and forms of the old democratic political system, while dismantling it.

“When the Roman Emperor Augustus—he referred to himself as the first citizen—neutered the [Roman] Republic, he was careful to maintain the form of the old republic. Lenin and the Bolsheviks did the same when they seized and crashed the autonomous soviets. Even the Nazis and Stalinists insisted they rule democratic states.

“Despotic government, as Thomas Paine wrote, is a fungus, that grows out of a corrupt civil society.

“This is what happened to older democracies. It is what happened to us. (c. 32:48)

“Corporations cannibalising the federal budget are legally empowered to exploit and loot. It is impossible to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs or Exxon Mobile. [sparse, hesitant applause] The pharmaceutical industries are legally empowered to hold sick children hostage, while their parents frantically bankrupt themselves trying to save their sons or daughters. Banks are legally empowered to burden people with student loans, that cannot be forgiven, even by declaring bankruptcy.

“The reality is that our telephone calls, emails, text, financial, judicial, and medical records, along with every website we visit and our physical travels are tracked, recorded, and stored in perpetuity in government computer banks.

“The state tortures, not only in black sites, such as the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or Guantánamo Bay, but in supermax ADX facilities, such as the one in Florence, Colorado, where prisoners suffer psychological breakdowns from prolonged solitary confinement. When prisoners are released, they have lost their right to vote and receive public assistance. They are burdened with fines, that, if unpaid, will put them back behind bars. They are subject to arbitrary searches and arrests. They spend the rest of their lives marginalised as members of a vast criminal caste system. And that is why 76 percent of those released from state penitentiaries return to prison within five years. (c. 34:43)

“But our system of mass incarceration is not broken. It works exactly the way it is designed to work. [audience applause]

[End of second audio excerpt from the Chris Hedges speech in Berkeley, California.]

SALIMA HAMIRANI: “Good morning. It is 7:34 [AM]. You’re listening to UpFront. I’m Salima Hamirani. I’m actually here with Quincy [McCoy] our [KPFA] station manager.”

QUINCY MCCOY: “How are you?”

SALIMA HAMIRANI: “I thought I was gonna be here by myself. (c. 35:06) [snip]

[Salima Hamirani and Quincy McCoy continued appealing for listener support and donations for listener-sponsored free speech radio KPFA on the final day of the 2017 KPFA Spring Fund Drive] (c. 41:36)

[Third audio excerpt from the Chris Hedges speech in Berkeley, CA on 25 MAY 2017]

CHRIS HEDGES: “We are entering the twilight phase of capitalism, which, as Karl Marx understood, would see capitalists unable to generate past profits by expanding markets; and they would, he predicted, begin to cannibalise the state like ravenous parasites. Wealth is no longer created by producing or manufacturing. It is created by manipulating the prices of stocks and commodities and imposing a crippling debt peonage on the public. (c. 42:14)

“Our casino capitalism has merged with the gambling industry. And it is designed to prey on the desperate young men and women, burdened by student loans, underpaid workers burdened by credit card debt and mortgages, towns and cities forced to borrow to maintain municipal services.

“This moment in human history marks the end of a long, sad tale of greed and murder by the white race [i.e., ethnic grouping].”

FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: “Yeah!”

CHRIS HEDGES: “It is inevitable that, for the final show, we vomited up someone as grotesque as [President Donald] Trump. [mixed audience reactions; applause] Europeans and Americans have spent five centuries conquering, plundering, exploiting, and polluting the Earth in the name of human progress. They used their technological superiority to create the most efficient killing machine on the planet; and they directed it against anyone or anything, especially indigenous cultures, which stood in their way. They stole and horded the planet’s wealth and resources. They believed that this orgy of blood and gold would never end. And they still believe it. (c. 43:50)

“They do not understand that the dark ethic of ceaseless, capitalist, and imperialist expansion is ultimately dooming the exploiters as well as the exploited. But, even as we stand on the cusp of extinction, we lack the intelligence and imagination to break free from the myth of human progress.

“Walter Benjamin wrote in 1940:

Amid the rise of European fascism and looming World War, a [Paul] Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring. His mouth is open. His wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe, which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise. It has got caught in its wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistably propels him into the future, to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. The storm is what we call progress.

“The more the warning signs are palpable—rising temperatures, global financial meltdowns, mass human migrations, endless wars, poisoned ecosystems, rampant corruption among the ruling class—the more we turn to those who chant, either through idiocy or cynicism, the mantra that what worked in the past will work in the future, that progress is inevitable. Factual evidence, since it is an impediment to what we desire, is banished. The taxes of corporations and the rich, who have turned much of our cities into wastelands, are cut, and regulations are slashed to bring back the supposed golden era of the 1950s, at least for white Americans. Public lands are opened up to the oil and gas industry as rising carbon emissions doom our species. Declining crop yields stemming from heat waves and droughts are ignored. War and the huge profits that war generates for corporations becomes the principal business of the kleptocratic state. (c. 47:04)

“Magical thinking is not limited to the beliefs and practices of pre-modern cultures. It defines the ideology of capitalism: Quotas and projected sales can always be met. Profits can always be raised. Growth is inevitable. The impossible is always possible. Human societies, if they bow before the dictates of the marketplace, will be ushered into a capitalist paradise. It is only a question of having the right attitude and the right technique. When capitalism thrives, we are assured, we thrive.

“The merging of the self with the capitalist collective has robbed us of our agency, creativity, capacity for self-reflection and moral autonomy. We define our worth not by our independence or our character but by the material standards set by capitalism—personal wealth, brands, status, career advancement. We are molded into a compliant and repressed collective. This mass conformity is characteristic of totalitarian and authoritarian states. It is characterised by the Disneyfication of America, the land of eternally happy thoughts and positive attitudes. [scant audience laughter; applause] And when magical thinking does not work, we are told, and often accept, that we are the problem. We must have more faith. We must envision what we want. We must try harder. The system is never to blame. We failed it. It does not fail us.

“And all of our systems of information, from self-help gurus in Hollywood to political monstrosities, such as [President] Trump, sell us this snake oil. What, now, does this resistance look like? It will not come by investing hope in the Democratic Party [slightly delayed cheers and applause], which has steadily lost power, not because of Comey or the Russians, but because it betrayed working men and women on behalf of corporate power [applause], because it used its machinery to deny the one candidate—Bernie Sanders—who could have defeated Trump, from getting the nomination. [applause] (c. 49:50)

[End of third audio excerpt from the Chris Hedges speech in Berkeley, California.]

[The following two paragraphs are patched into this transcript from the previously published article by Chris Hedges entitled “Reign of Idiots“, as they followed from the last audio excerpt in the previously published printed form.]

“We blind ourselves to impending collapse. Our retreat into self-delusion is a career opportunity for charlatans who tell us what we want to hear. The magical thinking they espouse is a form of infantilism. It discredits facts and realities that defy the glowing cant of slogans, such as “Make America great again.” Reality is banished for relentless and baseless optimism.

“Half the country may live in poverty, our civil liberties may be taken from us, militarized police may murder unarmed citizens in the streets and we may run the world’s largest prison system and murderous war machine, but all these truths are studiously ignored. Trump embodies the essence of this decayed, intellectually bankrupt and immoral world. He is its natural expression. He is the king of the idiots. We are his victims.”

SALIMA HAMIRANI: “Good morning. You’re listening to UpFront. I’m Salima Hamirani. And we’re just listening to Chris Hedges from last night, a talk he gave at the First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley [California].

Learn more at UPFRONT.

***

KPFA RADIO—[26 MAY 2017, 10:00 PST]

[Introduction by Philip Maldari]

[snip] (c. 59:59)

Learn more at KPFA RADIO.

***

KPFA RADIO—[26 MAY 2017, 14:00 PST]

[snip] (c. 59:59)

Learn more at KPFA RADIO.

***

FLASHPOINTS—[26 MAY 2017] [KPFA station identification by Mike Biggs] “Today on Flashpoints, a powerful new speech by radical activist and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges. In fact, he was in Berkeley [California] last night and he blew the roof off of the house. I’m only speaking metaphorically. This is Dennis Bernstein. All that straight ahead on Flashpoints. Stay tuned.

[Flashpoints theme continues]

DENNIS BERNSTEIN: “And you’re listening to Flashpoints on Pacifica Radio, this is Dennis Bernstein. And I’m gonna go home and practice saying my own name. I’ve only been doing this for 27-and-a-half years. And the half, the last half year, may have been the hardest. But it is a pleasure and a privilege to be here with you today. This is the last day, the last hour or two of the [KPFA] fund drive. We’re about $60,000 dollars down. It would take a miracle to raise that money. But we can raise that money. And you can start calling now. We’re gonna give you the [Chris] Hedges [speech as a thank-you gift for your monetary support to free speech radio]. But, right now, we’re gonna give you some sound from Chris Hedges, speaking on fire last night in Berkeley. Mike, let’s hit ’em hard.”

[First audio excerpt from the Chris Hedges speech in Berkeley, CA on 25 MAY 2017]

CHRIS HEDGES: “[applause] Thank you. I was at a talk a few weeks ago, given by the great Noam Chomsky. He came in with a sheet of papers about this thick and said: A lot of people say I’m boring. And I’m proud to be boring.”

AUDIENCE: [laughter]

CHRIS HEDGES: “[chuckles] So, this is thick. But we live in a dangerous moment. [pregnant pause]

“The next emperor, Didius Julianus, lasted 66 days. There would be five emperors in 193, the year after the assassination of Commodus.

“The choice will be between inept fascists, like [President] Trump, and competent fascists, like [Vice President Mike] Pence. [applause] Our republic is dead. The idiots, seeing in the decay the chance for personal advancement and profit, take over in the final days of crumbling civilisations. Idiot generals wage endless, unwinnable wars, that bankrupt the nation. [6] [7] Idiot economists call for reducing taxes for the rich and cutting social service programmes for the poor and project economic growth on the basis of myth. [8] Idiot industrialists poison the water, the soil, and the air, slash jobs, and depress wages. Idiot bankers gamble on self-created financial bubbles and impose crippling debt peonage on the citizens. Idiot journalists and public intellectuals pretend despotism is democracy. Idiot intelligence officers orchestrate the overthrow of foreign governments to create lawless enclaves, that give rise to enraged fanatics. Idiot professors, experts, and specialists busy themselves with unintelligible jargon and arcane theory, that buttress the politics of the rulers. And idiot entertainers and producers create lurid spectacles of sex, gore, and fantasy.

“And [President] Donald Trump is the face of our collective idiocy. [hesitant applause] He is what lies [applause] behind the mask of our professed civility and rationality, a sputtering, narcissistic, blood-thirsty megalomaniac. This face, in the past, was hidden—at least to white Americans [9]. But with the destruction of democratic institutions and the disempowerment of the citizen, the oligarchs and the kleptocrats have become brazen. They no longer need to hide the pillage. They can steal and lie in the open. They can wield armies and fleets against the wretched of the Earth, blithely ignore the looming catastrophe caused by global warming and cannibalise the nation on behalf of global oligarchs, while at night, like some monster from the grande gueule, the Idiot-in-Chief, overseeing our self immolation, sits slack-jawed in front of a television set before opening his beautiful Twitter account. [audience laughter] [Hedges’ breath trembles]

“The crisis has spawned a corrupt electoral system of legalised bribery and elevated public figures, that master the arts of entertainment and artifice.

“[President] Trump is the symptom. He is not the disease. [cheers; applause]

“It began with the creation of corporate-funded foundations and organisations, that took control of the press, the courts, the universities, scientific research, and the two major [American] political parties. It began with empowering militarised police to kill unarmed citizens [with impunity] and the spread of our horrendous prison system, mass incarceration, and the death penalty. [applause]

“It began with the stripping away of our most basic constitutional rights: privacy, due process, habeas corpus, fair elections, and dissent.

“It began in the 1960s and ’70s with a war on dissidents and radicals, especially black radicals, which included FBI assassinations of leaders, such as Fred Hampton.” (c. 20:07)

AUDIENCE MEMBER: “Yeah!”

“Racist, violent, and despotic forces have always been part of the American landscape and have often been tolerated and empowered by the state to persecute poor people of colour and dissidents. These forces are denied absolute power as long as a majority of citizens—white citizens—have a say in their own governance. But, once citizens are locked out of government and denied a voice, power shifts into the hands of the enemies of the open society.

“Once a tiny cabal seizes power, monarchist, communist, fascist, or corporate, it creates a mafia economy and a mafia state.

“Trump and his coterie of billionaires, generals, Christian fascists, criminals, racists, and deviants, play the role of the Snopes clan in some of William Faulkner‘s novels.

“Despotic government, as Thomas Paine wrote, is a fungus, that grows out of a corrupt civil society.

“This is what happened to these older democracies. It is what happened to us.

“Corporationss cannibalising the federal budget are legally empowered to exploit and loot. It is impossible to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs or Exxon Mobile. [sparse, hesitant applause] The pharmaceutical and insurance industries are legally empowered to hold sick children hostage, while their parents frantically bankrupt themselves trying to save their sons or daughters. Banks are legally empowered to burden people with student loans, that cannot be forgiven, even by declaring bankruptcy.

“The reality is that our telephone calls, emails, texts, financial, judicial, and medical records, along with every website we visit, and our physical travels are tracked, recorded, and stored in perpetuity in government computer banks.

“But our system of mass incarceration is not broken. It works exactly the way it is designed to work. [audience applause]

“We are entering the twilight phase of capitalism, which, as Karl Marx understood, would see capitalists unable to generate past profits by expanding markets; and they would, he predicted, begin to cannibalise the state like ravenous parasites. Wealth is no longer created by producing or manufacturing. It is created by manipulating the prices of stocks and commodities and imposing a crippling debt peonage on the public.

“This moment in human history marks the end of a long, sad tale of greed and murder by the white race [i.e., ethnic grouping].”

FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: “Yeah!”

“Walter Benjamin wrote in 1940:

Amid the rise of European fascism and looming World War, a [Paul] Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring. His mouth is open. His wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned towards the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe, which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise. It has got caught in its wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistably propels him into the future, to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. The storm is what we call progress.

“The more the warning signs are palpable—rising temperatures, global financial meltdowns, mass human migrations, endless wars, poisoned ecosystems, rampant corruption among the ruling class—the more we turn to those who chant, either through idiocy or cynicism, the mantra that ‘what worked in the past will work in the future’, that ‘progress is inevitable’. Factual evidence, since it is an impediment to what we desire, is banished. The taxes of corporations and the rich, who have turned much of our cities into wastelands, are cut, and regulations [i.e., public protections] are slashed to bring back the supposed golden era of the 1950s, at least for white Americans. Public lands are opened up to the oil and gas industry as rising carbon emissions doom our species. Declining crop yields stemming from heat waves and droughts are ignored. War and the huge profits war generates for corporations becomes the principal business of the kleptocratic state. (c. 26:35)

“And all of our systems of information, from self-help gurus in Hollywood to political monstrosities, such as [President] Trump, sell us this snake oil. What, now, does resistance look like? It will not come by investing hope in the Democratic Party [slightly delayed cheers and applause], which has steadily lost power, not because of Comey or the Russians, but because it betrayed working men and women on behalf of corporate power [applause], because it used its machinery to deny the one candidate—Bernie Sanders—who could have defeated Trump, from getting the nomination. [applause]

“And, in war, especially when the heavy shells landed on crowds in Sarajevo, sites so gruesome that, to this day, I cannot eat a piece of meat, you could feel, as frantic family members desperately sought out loved ones among the wounded and dead, the concentric circles of death and love, death and love, like rings from the blast of a cosmic furnace. A life of faith—and we are all called to faith—is a life of confrontation. [applause] (c. 30:17)

“As Flannery O’Connor writes of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, and instructing catechumens,

The dragon sits by the side of the road watching those who pass. Beware, lest he devour you. We go to the father of souls. But it is necessary to pass by the dragon. No matter what form the dragon may take, it is this mysterious passage, past him or into his jaws, that stories of any depth will always be concerned to tell.

“And this being the case, it requires considerable courage, at any time in any country, not to turn away.”

[End of first audio excerpt featured by Flashpoints from the Chris Hedges speech in Berkeley, California.]

DENNIS BERNSTEIN: “Wow. Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, investigative reporter, human rights activist, a canary-in-the-global coalmine of disinformation and resistance to fascism. That was Chris Hedges on fire last night, in Berkeley, at the First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley last night, tearing down the place. A powerful event hosted by Hard Knock [Radio]‘s Greg Bridges. [12]

“Um, and um—well, this is it, folks. Here’s the cold, hard truth: We have about $50,000 to go to make it. We have not a lot of time. Now, I’m not sure we can make the 50. But I’m hoping, with some really powerful support, and standing with Chris Hedges on this final day, we can get, we can really take a chunk out of that final bit. We’d love to make it. We could, we could—you have the power, you listening now, you all have the power to make it, to help us make this goal. We can really make a dent. That, I’m sure of. (c. 32:36)

“So, if you want to get a copy of that mighty powerful speech just made last night by Chris Hedges celebrating free speech radio, you can get a CD copy for a $75 contribution. You can do it by dialing, by hitting the buttons 1.800.439-5732. 1.800.439-5732. You can go online, kpfa.org, hit the pledge button and you are with us. You can use your smartphone. (c. 33:12)

“Again, $75 dollars gets you the CD version. $100 dollars, you can get the same speech last night, tearing down the house, really powerful stuff, uh, $100 dollars for the DVD.

“We have a Chris Hedges collection you can get for $150. And, then, we have a Chris Hedges Magna-Pack. They all have this speech given last night. So, the Chris Hedges Magna-Pack is all Chris Hedges CDs, $375. And the Chris Hedges speech—well, let’s just say: Chris Hedges Magna-Pack, that’s everything, $375. You want last night’s speech? As simple as can be: $75 as a CD, $100 dollars as a DVD.

“It is a most extraordinary speech. It would be—if I could get a hundred of you to stand up right now [for free speech radio], it would make a real big difference in a hurry. It would make a big dent. Can I do that? I’m gonna count them. (c. 34:31) [snip] (c. 34:44)

“If you wanna subscribe for $100 dollars, you can get the [KPFA] hoodie. You can get the pullover, the zipper, in all the sizes. You tell [the phone volunteers] the size. [snip] Somebody gave us a $1200 contribution and gave me 12 hoodies to do with as I please. Can you imagine? All my friends are gonna be walking advertisements—um, not exactly advertisements—right?—’cos we’re non-corporate. They will be our walking representatives. You will be. Get this beautiful hoodie and use it as a talking point. There goes my Brooklyn accent. When I get tired, it comes charging back. And let your hoodie be a talking point for free speech radio. (c. 35:36)

“Frankly, for my money—and I don’t have much of it—this Chris Hedges speech is off the edge. It’s incredibly powerful. And we need somebody speaking with this emotion behind the information. It’s a combination of information and emotion. As I’ve said before, the people, who were founded this radio station, KPFA [in 1949], they were not interested in newscasts, in which you did not feel the broadcaster and the story. They did not like the soap suds advertisement right after the news of war, sounding the same way with the same melodic voice. They wanted the people’s emotion in the work—emotion and information. Information is power. (c. 36:25)

“Chris Hedges puts it together, a Pulitzer Prize-winner reporter saw it all as a New York Times reporter and couldn’t take it, couldn’t be silent. He couldn’t get it in the news page. And he began to speak out. And he has become one of the most powerful social critics of our time. He gave a speech for KPFA/Pacifica [Radio Network] last night in Berkeley, blew the roof off. And we are in the last hour of our [KPFA fund] drive here, the last hour or so of our drive here. It’s 5:37 [pm]; and I’m hoping we can pull out all the stops. 1.800.439-5732.

[Dennis Bernstein continued appealing for listener donations to free speech radio.] (c. 37:24)

“Please stand up. We only have a few minutes left. This is our last chance to really drive this, uh, fundraiser home, to make sure we remain powerful here at KPFA, that we can have these microphones for the people, who need them, that we can build the infrastructure, rebuild the infrastructure here at KPFA and across the [national radio] network. We need your help to do it now. This radio station—you know it. You cannot argue with me on the fact that this radio station is more important now than it has ever been, since its invention, in the age of [President] Trump, in the age of corporate television and radio. We are there to hold them accountable. We are there to give voice to the voiceless. We are there to monitor the centers of power and reveal what the people need to know to make decisions about their own lives, what we all need to know. And we use this marvelous, scrappy, fight-back media as our university. (c. 38:30)

“Make us stronger now. Stand up now for free speech radio! Please! Stand up now. We’re trying to catch up. We’re trying to get close to that goal. And you can make a difference. There are hundreds of you out there, who have not done this yet. Won’t you do this now? I mean let’s make some history. 1.800.439-5732. 1.800.439-5732. 1.800.HEY-KPFA. Or online at kpfa.org. Hit the pledge button and join us. (c. 39:12)

[Dennis Bernstein continued appealing for listener donations to free speech radio.] (c. 39:42)

“But, either way, we love sharing Chris Hedges. We live—this radio station lives to give a platform to the likes of—there’s nobody quite like Chris Hedges. But we are here to give a platform to Chris Hedges, Ralph Nader, Alice Walker, you name it, all the extraordinary people you have heard over these airwaves. Name them. Think about it. Think about how you’ve heard Noam Chomsky, Noam Chomsky, who can not get [on the corporate media], who is censored, who is one of the smartest people in the world, the most important linguist in the world [next to Dr. George Lakoff], the most powerful critic of U.S. social policy in the world. (c. 40:07)

[snip]

[snip] (c. 59:59)

Learn more at FLASHPOINTS.

***

[1] Do yourself, and your community, a favour and support free speech radio as a counter to profit-over-people radio, which doesn’t keep us informed or connected with our communities. For profit radio prioritises its profit motive over the well-being of our communities. Listener-sponsored free speech radio prioritises community, regional, and national well-being over profit motive. In fact, the nation’s largest (and oldest) listener-sponsored free speech radio network, Pacifica Radio does not operate for profit and is even democratically governed, with listener-members having a democratic vote in the governance of the radio network.

We, the people, need at least 50% of the radio spectrum to be public radio for public purpose, to keep our communities informed, so that they are empowered to make informed decisions in terms of civic engagement and political participation in developing truly participatory and emancipatory democracy. There is no reason why virtually all of our radio stations should be dominated by corporate, for-profit agendas. We need unfettered news and information, which is free from corporate censorship and obfuscation. The radio airwaves belong to the people. The radio airwaves do not belong to for-profit corporations, who don’t speak for the people.

[2] UpFront, 26 MAY 2017.

Broadcast summary from the archive page at kfpa.org:

On today’s episode, host Salima Hamirani plays clips from a speech Chris Hedges gave on May 25 at the First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley. Chris Hedges, a journalist, Princeton professor, and minister, discusses the “dying empire” and Trump. He says that to resist Trump, we much look to a counterrevolution that began in the 60s.

[3] Special Programming [filled in for Letters and Politics]. [This broadcast archive has lamentably been removed from public access.]

Broadcast summary from archive page at kpfa.org:

Forget the firing of James Comey, forget the paralysis in Congress, forget the innanity of our dissent into tyranny as if it were a sports contest between corporate Republicans and corporate Democrats or a reality show starring our maniacal President and the freaks that surround him. Forget the noise, the crisis we face is not embodied in the public images of the politicians that run our dysfunctional state. The crisis we face is the result of a four decade long slow-motion corporate coup d’etat that has rendered the citizen impotent. Left us without any authentic democratic institutions and allowed corporate and military power to become omnipotent. The crisis has spawned a corrupt electorial system of legalized bribery and elevated public figures that master the arts of entertainment and artifice.

Trump is the symptom he is not the disease

[4] We have included two transcripts below. The first transcript below is of UpFront. The second transcript is of Flashpoints, whose broadcast featured more of the Chris Hedges speech. The other two special broadcasts listed below also featured excerpts of the Chris Hedges speech, but were removed from public access before we were able to transcribe them or patch together as much of the speech as possible from the various excerpts. Thus, we have transcribed both broadcasts (UpFront and Flahspoints) separately, despite the repetition of text. This gives readers a better sense of the actual broadcasts, as well as some of the context provided by the two broadcasters, Salima Hamirani and Dennis Bernstein.

[5] Time-stamps in transcript correspond to the running play-time of the audio stream file.

[6] For an example of contemporary satirisation of idiot generals, see the recently released Netflix Original film entitled War Machine (2017) starring Brad Pitt based on the nonfiction book The Operators by Michael Hastings. It is a fictionalised version of the events in the book, based on the firing of United States Army General Stanley McChrystal.

[7] With regard to the United States facing fiscal insolvency, or going “bankrupt” as Chris Hedges said, we must recall modern monetary theory (MMT, or modern money theory), which shows that a sovereign currency issuer, such as the United States can never go bankrupt. In other words, the USA will never face fiscal insolvency, as it can always afford to spend in its own currency.

Our modern monetary system, unlike our monetary system prior to 1971, makes it possible for the US federal government to spend without fiscal constraints. In fact, it was the American desire to perpetuate the occupation of, and escalate the military aggression against, Vietnam, which did bankrupt the United States. But, back then, the U.S. dollar was backed by gold. In other words, the U.S. had agreed to international convertibility of the U.S. dollar to gold prior to 1971 under the Bretton Woods system of monetary management. After 1971, the U.S. dollar became a purely fiat currency, which means that the U.S. government can spend without fiscal constraints. This is why the U.S. government’s unprecedented military spending, not to mention the roughly $29 trillion dollars in Global Financial Crisis of 2008 bail out spending, does not create inflation problems nor destabilise the economy in any way. However, it bears noting that the American public has engaged in significant political demonstrations to oppose war, oppose war spending, and to advocate for social spending, such as for jobs, education, and health care.

[8] As with footnote [7] above, for an accurate understanding on the purpose and function of taxes and taxation, see MMT. MMT debunks many economic myths perpetuated by corporate media and misinformed or mendacious legislators and politicians. Many economic myths are also exposed, given a close examination of the contentious academic struggle between neoclassical economics and heterodox economics.

It’s safe to assume, by idiot economists, Chris Hedges means neoclassical economists.

[9] For example, we recall the historical record on Donald Trump’s history of racial residential segregation associated with his rental properties. Or, for another example of Donald Trump’s history of racism, we recall his racist campaign against the Central Park Five.

[10] For an introduction to the right-wing political operative Roger Stone, also (critically) see the Netflix Original documentary, Get Me Roger Stone (2017). This documentary, however, tends to romanticise the dirty politics of Roger Stone, a man who dropped out of college to work in Richard Nixon‘s storied Committee to Re-elect the President. As The Wall Street Journal‘s John Anderson has written:

Get Me Roger Stone… ought to come with a bottle of Purell—not just because it immerses the viewer in squalid politics, but because the filmmakers seem so shamelessly infatuated with their subject.

Manohla Dargis, of The New York Times, has called the film a “sometimes illuminating, often slapdash and frustrating affair …”

[11] For more on this history of the right-wing, anti-working class, political backlash against the progressive, pro-working class, gains made between the time of the Great Depression and the 1960s Civil Rights and social justice movements, see the excellent documentary film entitled Heist: Who Stole the American Dream? (2017).

[12] Radio host Greg Bridges is a contributor to free speech radio’s Hard Knock Radio. But Davey D and Anita Johnson are the primary hosts for Hard Knock Radio. Greg Bridges is the host of free speech radio’s Transitions On Traditions, “a soulsonic rhapsody of sound”, which emphasises the intersections between jazz, fusion, soul, and R&B.

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[Trump image by source, used via Creative Commons.]

[26 MAY 2017]

[Last modified at 16:43 PST on 3 JUL 2017]

Against the Grain Presents Dr. Immanuel Wallerstein On the End of Capitalism

12 Wednesday Apr 2017

Posted by ztnh in Anti-Capitalism, Anti-Imperialism, Political Economy, Sociology

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Against the Grain, capitalism, Capitalist Mode of Production, Dr. Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (b. 1930), financial instability hypothesis, French Revolution (1789-1799), Kondratiev cycles, KPFA, Pacifica Radio Network, Russian Revolution (1917), Sasha Lilley, social change, socioeconomic change, transcript, world history, world-system, world-systems analysis, world-systems approach, world-systems theory, Yale University

LUMPENPROLETARIAT—GONZO: As Lumpenproletariat readers may recall, your author earned his Economics BA from the pluralistic/heterodox economics department at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Those years of study included a course on the History of Economic Thought, for which your author’s thesis paper addressed “Theories of Capitalist Imperialism”. And included therein were some of the more prominent theorists to address this topic, such as Marx, Lenin, Luxemburg, Hobson, et al., which included the world-systems approach to capitalist imperialism, or centre-periphery model, developed by sociologist Dr. Immanuel Wallerstein, for example, in The Modern World System (1974). [1]

Dr. Wallerstein, a Senior Research Scholar at Yale University, is a name, of which many listeners of free speech radio (and TV) may be aware, especially on free speech radio’s Against the Grain, where he’s been a recurring guest over the years of the show’s existence. On today’s edition of Against the Grain, Dr. Immanuel Wallerstein returned to discuss various aspects of the capitalist mode of production, including its global and cyclical dimensions, in an interesting discussion about the possible scenarios, whether emancipatory or enslaving, which might succeed the end of capitalism. Listen (and/or download) here. [2]

Messina

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[Working draft transcript by Messina for Against the Grain and Lumpenproletariat]

AGAINST THE GRAIN—[12 APR 2017] [KPFA community announcement for a KPFA-sponsored book event for The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America by Andrés Reséndez hosted by Project Censored’s Mickey Huff (Diablo Valley College educator)]

[KPFA station identification]

[Against the Grain theme music]

“Today on Against the Grain: Our capitalist world seems mired in crisis, beset by low growth and instability. Immanuel Wallerstein argues that the current malaise goes beyond the periodic fluctuations of the business cycle. According to him, capitalism’s days are numbered. In 20 to 40 years, it will be gone, he says. What replaces it may be something better, or something worse.

“I’m Sasha Lilley. Wallerstein will join me today to talk about the end of capitalism as well as resistance to [President] Donald Trump and the recent attack on Syria. That’s after these [KPFA] News Headlines with Aileen Alfandary.”

[KPFA News Headlines (read by Aileen Alfandary) omitted by scribe] (c. 5:35)

SASHA LILLEY: “From the studios of KPFA in Berkeley, California, this is Against the Grain on Pacifica Radio. I’m Sasha Lilley.

“Capitalism appears to be a permanent fixture in our world. As chaotic and unequal as it is. We are told that there is no alternative to it and any attempts to get rid of it will end badly. But my guest today argues that in the next to two to four decades, capitalism will be gone. What replaces it has everything to do with the strength of the forces of right and left. To talk about the end of capitalism, I’m joined by sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein. He’s the father of world-systems analysis and Senior Research Scholar at Yale University. His many books include the multi-volume Modern World System [1974]. And he’s contributor to the recent work, Does Capitalism Have a Future? [2013].

“Immanuel, let’s talk about where we got to where we are now. It’s so easy to focus on the particulars of [President] Trump in the American context. But far-right, quasi-populist politics have found significant support elsewhere in the world, especially in Europe. What were the forces, that took us to this place? What has risen? And what has been displaced?” (c. 7:12)

DR. IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN: “We, all of us, have been operating within the framework of what I call the modern world system, which is a capitalist world economy and has been in existence for 400 to 500 years. It was originally in a relatively small part of the world, west and northern Europe and parts of the Americas. It expanded by its internal processes until it englobed the entire Earth.

“That structure is the structure, which was the basis of our lives and within which we operated. It was a historical system, meaning—by system—that it’s something that is stable and repetitious and—historical—meaning it changes at every mini-second. So, that’s a—it’s not a contradiction. It’s a reality. You have to take that reality and live with it.

“Now, like all systems, whether we’re talking of the universe as a whole or the most micro-system, that you can think of, it has a life. It comes into existence. It has a—what I think of as its—normal life. And, because of its internal processes, it comes to a point where it can no longer operate and renew itself in its proper way. And, then, we call that a structural crisis. And a structural crisis is not a crisis of a second. It’s a crisis of quite a long time. (c. 9:10)

“And, when you’re in a structural crisis of the world-system, which is what we are in, there’s a bifurcation. By a bifurcation, what, technically, physicists mean by a bifurcation is that there are two solutions to the same equation, something theoretically impossible, but in fact occurs. And it makes it a fork. You can move in one direction or the other direction. And, while at one—you can’t know, which way the thing will end up going. You can, in fact, affect it enormously. So, that’s where we are. We’re in a structural crisis of the modern world-system.

“A structural crisis of a modern world-system is, by definition, highly chaotic. By chaotic, you mean that it swings wildly in all directions—alright?—at all times. So, that’s extremely confusing. And people don’t know how to handle it. But they do, one way or the other. (c. 10:20)

“Now, people are talking about the neoliberal effects and the, shall we say, the, uh, right-wing populism, etcetera. All that are responses, modes of responding, to this crisis, how people handle it in various ways. And this crisis, however, poses itself as a struggle, as a struggle between people, who would like to move the hand, who would like to strengthen one prong of the outcome.

“So, what are the prongs? And I created names for them. But names are unimportant. For me, one is the spirit of Davos. And one is the spirit of Porto Alegre. And what do I mean by that? The spirit of Davos are those people, who have accepted the reality that capitalism no longer works for capitalists and want to replace it with another system, which has all the worst features of capitalism, and perhaps could be even worse than capitalism. Right? That’s the spirit of Davos. And the spirit of Porto Alegre is the spirit of those people, who would like a system, that has never existed in the history of the world, which is one that is relatively egalitarian and relatively democratic.

“So, there we are. We are pushing in two different directions [i.e., left and right]. Now, when people talk of what to do about it, what I say to them is, of course, you do those things, which will push you in many ways in the direction of the spirit of Port Alegre.

“The problem is even more confusing than that because, in each of these two prongs, there are two versions of what you do. In the spirit of Davos, one version is the way powerful people could handle this challenge is to hit the others over the head and to hit them as hard as possible. And they will quiet down. And we will have our way. And there’s another group, who says: That won’t work because, when people are hit over the head, they resist even more. And what you have to do is you to follow the path of di Lampedusa in—what was the name of his book?”

SASHA LILLEY: “The Leopard?”

DR. IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN: “Of course. The protagonist says to his very conservative grandfather: We must change everything in order that nothing change. Right? So, you have to persuade people that they are changing when they are not really changing. [3] So, there’s already there—they are split.

“And, on the side of the spirit of Porto Alegre, there are those, who say, what we have to do is create a situation, in which everybody does their own thing and tries to listen to each other. It’s called horizontalism. [4] Right? And, because, if you have a vertical structure with control, you are in fact not going to change the system. That’s the horizontalist. And the verticalist says: That’s very well. That’s all well and good. But, in fact, at that point, you’ll be hit over the head by those other guys. And you won’t get anywhere. [5]

“So, instead of two positions, we have four positions. And that’s even more confusing. And, then—”

SASHA LILLEY: “Sure.”

DR. IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN: “So, today, some people are saying: Well, what we should do is resist. Now, I’m all for resistance. But what does it mean to resist? You see.” [6] (c. 14:48)

SASHA LILLEY: “Indeed. And I wanna ask you more about the conundrum. And you’re describing it from above and from below. So, getting into this moment of crisis and what comes out of the crisis and the contending ideas—let’s just say—on the left and on the right, for that moment.”

DR. IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN: “I’m more than happy to say the left and the right. I have no trouble with that.”

SASHA LILLEY: “Alright. [chuckles] But let me talk to you, before we get to those competing forces and questions. Let’s talk about the nature of that crisis. So, you’re not talking about a crisis, that developed over the last couple years. You’re talking about something deeper. And I wondered if you could tell us when you see the crisis of the modern world-system beginning. And, what’s the nature of the crisis? You alluded to it. You said that the conditions for the renewal of the system have been impeded in some way.”

DR. IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN: “Well, the way that the system got renewed always is that, uh—how shall I say?—it operated in terms of cyclical rhythms, that went up and down, except that’s how we think of them. But, in fact, if you look at it carefully, they went up and then level, and then up, and then level. Okay?

“Well, if you do that, and you begin to measure what’s happening, at a certain point, you get pretty close to the top. You go up and level, and up and level. If the, uh, if the vertical axis is a percentage of something—for example, a percentage of people, who are earning wage labour, or so forth—and you go up and level, then, you get to a point where you can’t go up anymore because you’re approaching the asymptote. And it seems the estimate of people, who do these analyses, is that when you reach about about the 80 percent point you begin to shake. [laughs] And, when you begin to shake, instead of—how shall I say?—a big change resulting in very—a big thrust resulting in very little change, it becomes a little change results in very big change. Okay?

“So, what basically happened is that the mechanisms, which enabled a capitalist to make their profits have reached this point of shaking. And they aren’t guaranteed any longer the possibility of profits. Or they’re not guaranteed the perspective of making more. And, therefore, they—most people think that a crisis, like this, is only because the people on the bottom are unhappy. The people on the bottom have always been unhappy—”

SASHA LILLEY: [soft chuckle, like a sigh]

DR. IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN: “—so to speak. What’s added to that is that the people on top are unhappy as well. That’s new. That’s the crisis. That caused the crisis. When did this—I date it from the, um, early 1970s onward, more or less, as this period in which we are in, in this—what I call in one of my books—hell on Earth because it’s so devastating. [7] We don’t know what is going to happen in the short run, in the middle run, and so forth. And we find ourselves extremely frustrated by the—how shall I say?—the wild swings, that occur?”

SASHA LILLEY: “Now, is this unhappiness from top evenly distributed around the world-system?”

DR. IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN: “Uh.”

SASHA LILLEY: “That is are the—”

DR. IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN: “They’re—”

SASHA LILLEY: “—conditions of reproduction in capitalism—”

DR. IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN: “Yeah.”

SASHA LILLEY: “—equally a problem?” (c. 19:05)

DR. IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN: “But capitalism has always been a world-system. It’s never—the idea that capitalism exists in a [separate] country is a mad idea. It has no reality whatsoever. So, if I am a capitalist located in country X, my inputs and my potential sales are calculated in terms of the world-system as a whole. Right?

“So, um, when you say: Is it all evenly distributed? The negative effects may be greater or less in one part or another; but in terms of the system, as a whole, it’s the people on top, who are not able to make the kinds of, be assured of the kinds of, profits, that they look for and, therefore, look for alternatives, alternative ways of retaining the kind of unequal income, that they profited from for several hundred years. And that’s where we are.” (c. 20:15)

SASHA LILLEY: “The programme is Against the Grain on Pacifica Radio. My name is Sasha Lilley. And, today, I’m speaking with renowned sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein.

“So, in terms of thinking about how we got to this moment and the forces, that have produced this crisis—and I do wanna talk to you more about thinking ahead beyond this moment. But, just staying with this moment, you were talking about different, um, cycles, that take place, and the intrinsic problems, that happen along the course of the cycle. And I wanted to ask you more about that.

“How should we think of history moving in cycles? What constitute these cycles? And I know that you write about more than one kind of cycle. How should someone, who hasn’t thought of any of this in cyclical terms, understand what may seem like a whole lot of economic chaos as being cyclical?” (c. 21:12)

DR. IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN: “Well, all of life is a series of cycles. It’s just a question of which are the sort of most important ones, or that have the most effect on our lives. But, you know, think of it as breathing. You breathe in. You breathe out. You breathe in. And you breathe out. There’s no way of not having a cycle, in that sense. The question is what happens when you breathe out, as opposed to when you breathe in, and so forth. So, that’s the idea of having this [set(?)].

“So, there are some things in which we put a great deal of effort. Uh, we have cycles, that have to do with the economy. They have a name, too. They’re called Kondratiev cycles. Right? And what seems to happen is that the economy expands steadily for, roughly, 25, 30 years. And, then, it can’t expand anymore. [8] Why? Because the way the economy expands in a capitalist system is you have relative monopolies. You can’t make money, if you don’t have a relative monopoly. [9] But relative monopolies are self-liquidating for a whole series of reasons. One reason is: If you have a good thing going, then other people wanna get in on it. And there are various ways of getting in on it. And, if enough of them get in on it, [laughs] then, they’re no longer as profitable as they once were. And that’s when you have to pull back. And all I’m saying is that when you pull back for various reasons you don’t pull all the way back because it’s—the resistance to pulling back also exists. So, the compromise is to be more or less stable for another 25, 30, 40—these numbers are arbitrary. But they’re real. I mean we can measure Kondratievs over 500 years and see that the A phase and B phase, the expansion and the contraction phase have been, on the whole, 50 to 60 years combined—okay?—until they reach the point that they can no longer operate. So, that’s one major cycle.

“And a second major cycle is the geopolitical cycle. One of the important things about capitalism as a system is you need a kind of relative stability in the geopolitics of the world system in order that people can create those monopolies. [10] So, in order to create a monopoly in the economic sphere, you have to create a monopoly of geopolitical power. Those are even harder to create. But we’ve had, in my view, three of them, historically, which I can name in terms of the zone that was on top of the system at a given point was, first, the United Provinces, which is what we now call the Kingdom of the Netherlands or the Netherlands, plus Belgium. And, then, there’s the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. And, then, there was the United States—always United. But that’s a small point. (c. 25:23)

“And what happened is, after the Second World War, after 1945, we entered into the most extensive monopoly Kondratiev cycle, that we had ever had, so that it went further up and more extensively than prior to that. And, at the same time, it was the high point of the geopolitical cycle with the U.S. as the dominant power. Now, what happens is, therefore, that we have the biggest of each of these. And they both begin their downturn circa the 1970s. So, it’s the biggest. And, then, it’s the biggest difficulty.

“And that’s how we enter in this situation in which we are today and which we don’t know the outcome—intrinsically impossible to predict the outcome because it is a function of an infinity of many micro-actions, um, and micro-moments at micro-levels. Right? But we can’t predict. But because it’s, uh—how shall I say?—so chaotic, we can affect it because during the normal previous couple hundred years is what would happen is we would put in enormous social energy into changing things. And very little would happen. I usually use, as my examples, both, the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution.

“The French Revolution was an incredible input of effort to change the system. And, if you just look at it, in terms of where we are, not in 1789, but in 1850 or 1873, we had basically moved back considerably, so that the change, the real change was very little—the same with the Russian Revolution, an immense input. And, when you look at it, in 1970 or so, and you say: How much has really changed? It turns out that very little has actually changed.” (c. 28:04)

SASHA LILLEY: “So, what you are suggesting, if I understand you correctly, is that although there are these cycles, that we can see over periods of time, that these don’t necessarily, then, predetermine the kinds of changes, that happen at these junctures.”

DR. IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN: “Absolutely. They don’t predetermine it at all. They just predetermine the fact that we are in a crisis where every mini-action affects us. And that’s what brings us, then, to resist. Right?

“The concept of resist is a concept, that says: Oh, goodness, these right-wing forces are basically strong everywhere, in my country and in other countries and so forth. And they are reinforcing one another. What can we do about it? And the answer is: Resist!

“But resistance—also, there’s a problem with resist.

“It’s a question of temporality. There’s what I call a short-run and a middle-run. It turns out that people think, live in the short-run. We have to eat every day. We have to sleep every day. Right? We have to survive every day. So, we’re very concerned with what happens today. And today is, maybe, a maximum of three years.

“A capitalist entrepreneur who tries to—who invests his money, he has a perspective. His perspective is: Can I make my basic money back within three years? Otherwise, who knows? I can’t predict further than that. If I can’t expect to make it back in three years, I’m not gonna invest. Okay?

“So, what is happening is that people have to worry about the short term. And a movement, that attempts to move them, cannot ignore these things. So, they have to do things, that will help people in the short-run. I call that minimising the pain. [11] You can try to pass a bill through a legislature. You can try. There are all kinds of ways, in which you can try to move things in the short-run. And you can succeed, perhaps. You can minimise the pain by increasing the amount of [income] redistribution here or there. But minimising the pain is not transforming the system. That’s the point to remember. Minimising the pain is minimising the pain. And it’s a good thing to do. But it isn’t changing the system. And changing the system requires a kind of—minimising the pain requires compromises with all sorts of people—a lesser evil kind of idea. (c. 31:28)

“But the medium term, when transforming the system, requires quite the opposite. It requires saying: You’ve got to move in this direction. There’s no compromise with the other direction.

“So, that’s again the problem of the movements, of resisting. Are they thinking about the short-term? Or are they thinking about the middle term? Or do they know how to think about them, both, simultaneously? Well, it ain’t easy. That’s the real point.

“None of this is easy. Right? And we all make mistakes all over the place. Looking back on what we’ve done a hundred years from now, people will look and say: My god, why did they do X? That was so stupid. We should’ve done Y. Yeah. But that’s a hundred years from now, looking back. And we’re in the middle of it. So, we can make mistakes all over the place. And all I can say is: Try your best. Do what you can. Resist by minimising the pain. Resist by not compromising with the other side whatsoever. And hope.

“It’s, in effect, you hope that all of this adds up because what happens with the bifurcation is, at one point or another, enough forces are on one side rather than the other, so that it tilts. And that side becomes the new system.” (c. 33:00)

SASHA LILLEY: “That’s the voice of sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein. We’ll take a music break and be back with him.”

[Music break: vintage musical recording of 1940s-ish cabaret music in non-English language]

SASHA LILLEY: “You’re listening to Against the Grain. I’m Sasha Lilley. And, today, I am speaking with sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein. His many books include the multi-volume Modern World-System. He’s Senior Research Scholar at Yale University. And my name is Sasha Lilley.

“So, we were talking about—you’ve been talking about your prediction that in 20 to 40 years, approximately, from now the crisis, that we’re already in, the crisis that the modern system is going to come to a head in some way. And, in a sense, echoing Rosa Luxemburg‘s notion of socialism or barbarism, it could either go in a positive anti-capitalist direction or a very negative direction, that would be not capitalism, but potentially something worse. [12] What does that bleakest option, how might you envisage that looking? The worst-case scenario.” (c. 35:06)

DR. IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN: “The worst-case scenario. I think the worst-case scenario is we have a new system, which is inegalitarian and undemocratic, but which is—how shall I say?—solidly based, begins ts own process of whatever rules they set up. The normal period of a system is the system operating by the rules they invent. Right? And you can’t know what all the rules are. You can’t predict what all the rules are, that they will invent. For example, I often say: Look, suppose we were sitting around a table in the year 1500 and we said to each other: Boy, this feudal system in western Europe is coming to an end for X, Y, and Z reasons. So, let’s create a new one. We’ll call it capitalism. And here are the kinds of institutions, which we’ll need to set up.

“Do you really think that anybody sitting in 1450 or 1500 could imagine all the structures, that would get created. And the answer is, of course, obviously not because these structures come into existence in the process of the operation of the system. So, if you ask me what the system will look like, I can’t tell you. I can only tell you whether it tends to be inegalitarian, hierarchical, polarising—that’s what we now have or we’re coming out of—or whether it’s relatively egalitarian and relatively democratic. Again, I say relatively because nothing is perfectly anything. But we can do a lot better than we’ve ever done before.

“And I wanna emphasise that there’s never been a case; none of these so-called past socialist, or blah blah, systems of various kinds were in fact relatively egalitarian or relatively democratic. So, it isn’t a question of sort of trying to revive one of those systems. It’s trying to create a system, which the world has never known, but is theoretically possible.” (c. 37:40)

SASHA LILLEY: “Would you think of the worst-case scenario and, perhaps, not the worst-case scenario—I’m not sure—as both being forms of class society? Would it be fair to say the bleakest option of all would be some form of class society? Just not this one? And the other form would be—”

DR. IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN: “They—”

SASHA LILLEY: “—would transcend that?”

DR. IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN: “They would be a class society, of course, but in the sense that they would be hierarchical—right?—and they would be exploitative. And they would be polarising, so they would get worse and worse as time goes on. So, you wanna call that a class society, I’m perfectly happy with the language. But, as long as we know what we’re talking about.

“The problem with all our languages is they’re all so laden over with historical usages that almost always I have to wonder, when somebody says something to me, what they mean by it. And I have to try to read into, or—how shall I say?—figure out what people mean by using a word like class society. But I have no objection to it. I would call that a class society. Sure.”

SASHA LILLEY: “So, what would be crucially different, then, just staying with the most sort of odious possibility for how society might go coming out of this crisis, how the world-system might go? What would not continue? I mean you talked about hierarchy and polarisation and exploitation, which are all hallmarks of capitalism. But there, obviously, have been societies, that have been hierarchical and exploitative, that haven’t been capitalist, obviously. And you’ve written that you see capitalism as a system of accumulation without end. Is that what would be fundamentally changed in a society, that was—let’s just say—highly reactionary, but not capitalist?” (c. 39:39)

DR. IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN: “That’s an interesting question. I’m not sure I know the answer to that.

“The endless accumulation of capital is my defining feature of a capitalist system. [13] So, if you had a non-capitalist system, that was nonetheless exploitative and so forth, would they center around the endless accumulation of capital? They might not. They might not.

“I can’t know exactly how they would organise things, except that they would organise it, such that the outcome was exploitation; the outcome was hierarchy. But, structurally, whether—I would doubt it, as a matter of fact because I think that’s a defining feature of the capitalist system. It would not necessarily be the defining feature of another kind of awful system.”

SASHA LILLEY: “But you’re, of course, also arguing that this is not the only way things could go, and that there is an opening, a possibility, of moving beyond capitalism in a more—”

DR. IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN: “That’s right.”

SASHA LILLEY: “—egalitarian way. Now, I know that you’ve just said we can’t look into a crystal ball and picture a society, that goes entirely beyond whatever we’ve experienced. But do you have—when you suggest that there’s this sort of Porto Alegre avenue—let’s just say. At its base, are there things, that you imagine would be essential in terms of getting beyond capitalism?” (c. 41:28)

DR. IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN: “Well, you know, I kind of believe in the human imagination. And what that kind of situation would do would be to release the human imagination to thinking about how they could maintain a system, maintain it as relatively egalitarian and relatively democratic because there would always be people within it, who would try to undo that. And [pause]—you know, they speak in, especially in Latin America, they speak of buen vivir, which is itself a translation of an Amara word and of a Quechua word. And it means to live well. But what does that mean in English? It doesn’t mean anything per se. But what they try to mean by it is that there would be some kind of human interaction of people, that would try to see what way we could choose something, that would end up being more egalitarian or more democratic, so that it would require a constant kind of discussion, that would not rule out possibilities.

“This is if the spirit of Porto Alegre wins. So, I see it as an open society, as one, that permits you to think of new possibilities all the time, present them to others, amend them, uh, and release your imagination. I think that’s very important as an idea, which you find very strongly argued by somebody like Ilya Prigogine [pronounced: eel-yuh preego-zheen], in terms of the structure of the world, that could be made, could be created.” (c. 43:56)

SASHA LILLEY: “Well, I realise, then, sort of pushing you to take the very long view with some of these questions. But you have mentioned, and have written, that capitalism is a system and, hence, has a beginning but also an end. But, thinking about life beyond capitalism, and thinking about the more egalitarian path beyond capitalism, should we also think about whatever comes next as also having a life cycle?”

DR. IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN: “Well, you know, it’s quite—in a sense, any system has a life cycle, by definition. Right? Any system has a life cycle. But, um, I do know someone, who argues that we are going to move into a roughly egalitarian one. And that, after about 500 years, we will move—he sees a cycle of moving between these two, back and forth. I’m not ready to say that. I’m not ready to say that. I don’t know that. That’s—how shall I say?—he has a cyclical process beyond my cyclical process. Okay? And, um, he may be right. He may be right. Or he may be wrong. [laughs]” (c. 45:25)

SASHA LILLEY: “[soft chuckle]”

DR. IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN: “I, I’m not trying to be evasive. I’m trying to give people a realistic idea of what their options are and what their best choices are in a difficult situation.”

SASHA LILLEY: “Immanuel Wallerstein is my guest. He is the noted sociologist. Amongst his many books, he is a contributor to Does Capitalism Have a Future? I’m Sasha Lilley. And you’re listening to Against the Grain on Pacifica Radio.

“I was wondering if you think there lies any danger in making grand predictions about the future, including that capitalism will be replaced by something worse or better in 20 to 40 years. [14] Are there pitfalls in doing so, especially if the prediction doesn’t, you know, end up coming to pass?”

DR. IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN: “There is a danger. The danger is that people will think it’s hopeless. And they will retreat into a shell, in a sense; and they will not be active. And, by not being active and not resisting, either in the short-run or the middle-run, they more or less guarantee, in a sense, that the other side will win.

“So, I do worry that anything, that I say will persuade people that they will reduce their willingness to push in the right direction. And, um, well, you know, it’s—there’s also the danger, um, that—how shall I say?—my arguments can be used against me by people, who are not on my side.

“Um, and, uh, I’ve been told: They are now quoting you to say, we are right and so forth.

“So, yes, it’s a danger. And, yes, I worry about it. And, yes, I do what I can. In the end, I do what I can. And I’m urging everybody to do what they can.” (c. 48:02)

SASHA LILLEY: “Well, um, in the time, that we have remaining, let’s talk about that struggle to fight, in essence, the good fight to influence things in one direction, rather than another in the midst of crisis.

“To what degree does how we understand the world, to what degree is that the terrain of struggle?

“In thinking about particularly the forces of the left, if you wanna call it that, or radicalism, there has been in many quarters a real rejection of the universalisms of the left of the past and, in many ways, a focus on the particular against such a thing. And I wonder if that turn leaves us in any way in any kind of quandary and, particularly, in terms of the kind of struggle, that you’re talking about. To influence the direction that things go in in the future, obviously, is a tremendous struggle.”

DR. IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN: “Well—”

SASHA LILLEY: “And does that need some kind of way of unifying people beyond the particular?”

DR. IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN: “Well, you know, I respond to that kind of question the way I respond to a lot of other questions, which is the impossible is the most possible.

“The impossible is to be simultaneously universalist and particularist, as it’s—the impossible is to be, both, structural and historic. And we have to learn how to do that, as that is not easy. Uh, [pause] I can only again say: Of course, you have to be—the simplistic universalisms were part of the dominant intellectual structure of the capitalist world-system, the binary splits, that all sorts of people in the last 20, 30 years have been denouncing. They’re right.

“To go to the other extreme and say, therefore, always be particularist. There’s no end to that. If you’re a particularist, your particularisms are within the particularisms within the particularisms. And, at the end, you’re left with absolutely nothing. If you follow particularism to the end of the stream, everything is disintegrated. And, so, it’s helpless. And, then, the other side can just walk in.

“So, how can you be, both, universalist—that is to say analytic; okay?; which I’m trying to be—and take into account particularisms, which I’m trying to do, both, in the short-run and in the middle-run? Right?

“And, uh, again, let me say it’s not easy. [chuckles softly]” (c. 51:21)

SASHA LILLEY: “Let me end by asking you about this particular moment, that we happen to be in.

“You’ve been stressing a much longer view and the culmination of forces over a longer span of time. But we do find ourselves in a moment, where the far-right is in power in this country. And much has been discredited, yet, in terms of what replaces what’s been discredited, it’s still very up in the air.

“Do you see that there are openings right now, both, in terms of domestic politics in the United States and, then, also the question of U.S. imperial ambitions, which were sort of on display recently with Trump’s attack on Syria, which was sort of a fascinating moment because, over course, some people have held on to the hope of a silver lining with far-right populist, kind of, isolationism against the hawkishness of Clinton.

“And it seems like we now—”

DR. IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN: “I, I wouldn’t give up the silver lining yet.”

SASHA LILLEY: “—have the worst of all possible worlds.

“You don’t think so?”

DR. IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN: “No. I think we have a [unintelligible]—look, we have a man in power named Donald G. Trump—or G. Is it G? I’ve forgotten. J. Trump. Anyway, Donald Trump, who had the astuteness to combine being the head of a social movement and being the candidate of a political party. Basically, his power has resided in combining the two, which no one ever did before, or never successfully.

“Now, that he is the President of the United States, with all the technical power that that gives him meant control of various things, like armies and so forth. He still wants to be the head of a social movement because his power in the United States comes not from being President of the United States or the head of the Republican Party. His power comes from the fact that he has a movement, which is behind him, which follows him, or seems to follow him for the time being no matter what he does. I mean he, himself, said I could shoot somebody on Broadway—or what was it? I forgot—I could shoot somebody in the middle of the street and they still would follow me. Right? And, in a sense, he was absolutely right.

“Now, he hasn’t given that up. And Syria is a good example. What has happened? Well, he’s been under pressure from all sorts of sides to bomb somebody. [chuckles] Okay? At a certain moment not too long ago he gave the order: Bomb. Okay? And, since he’s the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, they bombed. Um, and then what? Well, everybody says: Well, what next? Okay?

“So, has all sorts of people, who are presumably in his cabinet, in his inner circle, and in this, making statements about what our policy is, not what it should be, what it is. It turns out they’re making different statements. And everybody’s making a statement, except one person. That one person is Donald Trump.

“So, he is making a statement: We don’t know what’s next. What we do know is he will decide what next. But on what basis? And we don’t know.

“And, in fact, this uncertainty is part of his power. So, I don’t know. You don’t know, whether he’s going to send more troops in, or not send more troops in. He loses whatever he does. That’s the reality of the situation. But that doesn’t mean he won’t do something terribly stupid or stupid. So, something, which will have consequences so negative, uh, that the world will bemoan it. Right? Because he could do that. I give him a lot of credit for—how shall I say?—I don’t think he’s stupid. I don’t think he’s, um, ignorant. I think he’s very astute. And I think he’s—how shall I say?—feeling out the world and trying to figure out what he could do, that would be the least harmful to him, in his power and the United States, as its power.

“Well, okay. Fine. But I don’t know what that is, by the way. And I don’t know that he’s going to find out what that is. So, he may do nothing. That will not be good for him, either. He’s got a lose-lose situation. Um, and, uh, the one thing I’m not sure of is if he recognises that he’s in a lose-lose situation, or he thinks somehow that he can still get on top of it.” (c. 57:06)

SASHA LILLEY: “Well, on that cheery note, Immanuel Wallerstein, it’s been a real pleasure.”

DR. IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN: “Thank you.”

SASHA LILLEY: “I’ve been speaking with the sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein. He is Senior Research Scholar at Yale University, author of scores of books, including Decline of American Power and Uncertain Worlds.

“You’ve been listening to Against the Grain. I’m Sasha Lilley. Thanks so much for listening. And tune in again next time.”

[Against the Grain theme music]

“Against the Grain is produced by Sasha Lilley and C.S. Soong. Please visit us online at AgainstTheGrain.org, where you’ll find on-demand and downloadable audio and a way to sign up for our podcast. And you can check us out on Facebook at Against the Grain Radio, or follow us on Twitter at RadioAgainst. (c. 58:09)

[Against the Grain theme music]

[CART: Bob Baldock presents Ibram X. Kendi book event, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, First Congregational Church, 2501 Harrison on Third, Oakland, CA, Thursday, 4 MAY 2017, 19:30 PST, see Brown Paper Tickets and other indie outlets.]

[KFPA station identification] (c. 59:59)

Learn more at AGAINST THE GRAIN.

***

[1] The world-systems approach to capitalist imperialism, or centre-periphery model, developed by sociologist Dr. Immanuel Wallerstein in The Modern World System (1974) is also known as the centre-periphery model. The centre-periphery model is often found in studies of economic underdevelopment and economic dependency. According to A Dictionary of Sociology (1988, originally published by Oxford University Press):

The centre–periphery (or core–periphery) model is a spatial metaphor which describes and attempts to explain the structural relationship between the advanced or metropolitan ‘centre’ and a less developed ‘periphery’, either within a particular country, or (more commonly) as applied to the relationship between capitalist and developing societies. The former usage is common in political geography, political sociology, and studies of labour-markets.

In sociology, however, centre–periphery models are most likely to be encountered in studies of economic underdevelopment and dependency and tend to draw on the Marxist tradition of analysis. The use of the centre–periphery model in this context assumes that the world system of production and distribution is the unit of analysis. It also assumes that underdevelopment is not a simple descriptive term that refers to a backward, traditional economy, but rather a concept rooted in a general theory of imperialism.

According to the centre–periphery model, underdevelopment is not the result of tradition, but is produced as part of the process necessary for the development of capitalism in the central capitalist countries—and its continued reproduction on a world scale. The theory assumes a central core of capitalist countries, in which the economy is determined by market forces, there is a high organic composition of capital, and wage-levels are relatively high. In the peripheral countries, on the other hand, there is a low organic composition of capital and wage-levels do not meet the cost of reproduction of labour. Indeed, the cost of reproduction of the labour-force may be subsidized by non-capitalist economies, particularly rural subsistence production. Likewise, in peripheral economies, production and distribution may be determined largely by non-market forces such as kinship or patron-client relations.

The centre–periphery model thus suggests that the global economy is characterized by a structured relationship between economic centres which, by using military, political, and trade power, extract an economic surplus from the subordinate peripheral countries. One major factor in this is the inequality between wage-levels between core and periphery, which make it profitable for capitalist enterprises to locate part or all of their production in underdeveloped regions. The extraction of profit depends on that part of the cost of the reproduction of the labour-force that is not met by wages being met in the non-capitalist sector. Thus, according to proponents of the core–periphery model, the appearance that capitalism is developing traditional and backward societies by locating enterprises in underdeveloped regions masks the structural relationship by which capital develops and prospers at the expense (or progressive underdevelopment) of non-capitalist economies.

The centre–periphery model has led to two main debates. The first concerns the elaboration of a theory of modes of production, which attempts to conceptualize different economic forms in terms of the relationship between production and distribution in each mode. The other tries to tease out the exact links between particular areas of the centre and periphery through examining the articulation of different modes of production. Both debates may often appear to be excessively theoretical—or at least of little practical significance. The centre-periphery model is also implicated in various types of world-system theories (see, for example, A. G. Frank, Dependent Accumulation, 1978, and S. Amin, Unequal Development, 1976).

[2] Terrestrial radio transmission, 94.1 FM (KPFA, Berkeley, CA) with online simulcast and digital archiving: Against the Grain, this one-hour broadcast hosted by co-host Sasha Lilley, Wednesday, 12 APR 2017, 12:00 PST.

Programme summary posted by Against the Grain on KPFA’s archive page:

Our capitalist world seems mired in crisis, beset by low growth and instability. Immanuel Wallerstein, the father of world-systems theory, argues that the current malaise goes beyond the periodic fluctuations of the business cycle. According to him, capitalism’s days are numbered: in 20 to 40 years it will be gone. What replaces it may be something better or something worse. Wallerstein discusses the end of capitalism, as well as resistance to Donald Trump and the recent attack on Syria.

[3] This point, which Dr. Wallerstein makes, about liberals, progressives, and radicals operating under an illusion of social change or socioeconomic progress is articulated brilliantly by Dr. Jane F. McAlevey on Against the Grain when she discussed class politics, how to organise working class power, and other themes relevant to working class emancipation, which she wrote about in her recent book, No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age (2016). Dr. McAlevey is also author of Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell): My Decade Fighting for the Labor Movement (2012), which The Nation called “the most valuable book of the year [for 2012]”.

Dr. McAlevey offered critical and empowering advice to left organisers (actual and potential) in the working class spheres of the workplace, the union, and the political party form, beyond the constraints of temporal mobilisations and defanged advocacy. A key case study addressed was that of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which largely operated under the apparent illusion of change, whilst no concrete goals were set nor was any enduring political grouping formed, such as a grassroots opposition party, which could galvanise political power. Much of the political energy of the 99% against the 1% was vented through the ruling class’ political safety valve of the Democratic Party (USA), which persuades many liberals and progressives (and even some left-wing radicals), that their political needs can be met through their political modus operandi.

Thus, mass mobilisations without any mechanism for embodying and sustaining enduring political power and the corporate Democratic Party (USA), both, function as safety valves by which political frustration with the status quo is vented but never galvanised into meaningful political power or political change.

[4] Dr. Wallerstein brought up the concept of horizontalism (not to be confused with the monetary concept), which is also known as horizontalidad. This concept was central to the Occupy Wall Street, as your author discussed with Alexa O’Brien in an interview originally published at Media Roots. Alexa O’Brien was one of the founders of US Day of Rage, which was one of the four or five groups, alongside We Are the 99%, Take Back the Square, and others as well as the Adbusters magazine, which initially organised and launched the Occupy Wall Street movement.

It’s interesting that, in a post-Occupy Movement world, the left is now discussing the limitations of horizontalism.

[5] Dr. Wallerstein noted one critique of horizontalism (or horizontalidad), which is interesting because the concern verticalists offer, in Dr. Wallerstein’s analysis, is precisely what happened to the Occupy Wall Street Movement. It was not so much that the lack of clearly defined goals or leadership of the Occupy Movement caused them to fail in their aspirations against income inequality and socioeconomic injustice. But it’s much more to the point that the Occupy Movement, literally, got hit in the head, to use Dr. Wallerstein’s words, as a coordinated nationwide crackdown against the Occupy Movement left many, such as military veteran Scott Olsen and others who were left bloodied across the nation. Many of the nation’s mayors even coordinated with the Obama administration via teleconference to ensure that police forces across the nation acted swiftly, uniformly, and effectively in their efforts to break up the Occupy Movement encampments. So, it wasn’t the case that the Occupy Movement failed in terms of sustaining itself. But it failed to endure the police state repression brought down by the Obama administration, which being a Democratic Party administration, highlights how the Democratic Party only offers an illusion of change. But, what’s most perplexing, is how most of those people, who contributed their energies to the Occupy Movement in 2011 and 2012, then went back to their default position and threw their electoral support behind a second term for President Obama in the 2012 Presidential Election. It’s as if they’d already forgotten about the brutal beatings, raids, and anti-democratic police state destruction of the Occupy Movement encampments.

[6] Again, the pitfalls for the left, which Dr. Wallerstein here alludes to are similar concerns addressed by Dr. Jane F. McAlevey, which concern shallow and temporal mobilising versus deeper, enduring, and more meaningful organising.

[7] Listeners of free speech radio, or readers of economics, generally, will note that dating the origins of our most recent cyclical economic downturn to about the early 1970s, as Dr. Wallerstein does here is consistent with other economists and observers of the economy. For example, we recall Dr. Richard Wolff, Dr. Dean Baker, Dr. Sylvia Allegretto, and others, as well as many other observers in the general economic literature.

Dr. Richard Wolff has described this crisis from a labour perspective. As he notes, wages have stagnated since the early 1970s, as prices and the cost of living has risen, which means depressed purchasing power, or, effectively, a wage cut. Meanwhile, during that same time, worker productivity has increased, which means further profits to capitalist owners of the means of production, or increased wage theft (depending on one’s perspective).

Dr. Richard Wolff has attributed the source of the wage stagnation as a function of supply and demand. Since the early 1970s, he has argued, our labour shortage in the United States has ended, which means there are no longer enough jobs for everyone. As Americans have lost many manufacturing jobs, the bulk of the economy has become a service sector economy. This shrinking and emaciation of the pool of American jobs has been further compounded by the capitalist’s wage labour race to the bottom, as companies and corporations outsource and off-shore more and more of their production and operations on foreign soil in pursuit of the lowest and most exploitative wages to boost their profits.

[8] The cyclical nature of two to three decades between economic booms and busts, or peaks and lows, has been analysed with great accuracy and insight by Dr. Hyman Minsky. Recall Minsky’s financial instabilty hypothesis.

[9] In addressing why economic growth peaks and falls in a society, Dr. Wallerstein seems to revert to standard neoclassical microeconomic analysis, or the theory of the firm. In neoclassical economic theory, when a firm is making economic profits in a given industry, this signals to other capitalists to put their capital, their financial power, their productive capacity into that particular industry. Then, as more participants enter a particular market, the profits are diffused amongst more participants, diluting or reducing the profitability of each participant, or firm, in that industry. This continues until economic profits are eliminated and there is no longer any incentive for capitalist actors to enter that industry and/or capitalists begin to leave that industry altogether.

For an example of such a neoclassical microeconomic analysis, on monopolistic competition, perfect competition, non-price competition and product differentiation, see here.

[10] Dr. Wallerstein notes the importance of “relative stability in the geopolitics of the world system in order that people can create those monopolies”, which generate economic profits. As economics, or political economy, is an interdisciplinary social science, we draw our attention to the field of Law & Economics. At the Law School at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, the course has been taught by Dr. William K. Black, who emphasises in his course the importance of the rule of law—in a historical sense in terms of the development of capitalism and in a contemporary sense—in creating the conditions by which economic actors can enter into contracts with one another in the pursuit of profits. If we think of times and places where societies were relatively lawless, the uncertainty was too great for anyone to consider investing, or risking, large amounts of resources into capitalist profit ventures or projects, which could generate jobs or stimulate economic activity or develop technologies, which could improve the general standard of living in the society. This point about the rule of law may seem to be a trivial one, or one, which we take for granted. But the rule of law is crucial to healthy economic activity in any society, or among societies.

[11] In Jonathan Kozol‘s 1991 book, Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools, he decried as amelioration those half-measures of the sort, which Dr. Wallerstein refers to as a means of minimising the pain.

Typically, as a society, when confronted with inequality and poverty, we view the right-wing of the political spectrum as less sympathetic claiming everyone is getting equal opportunities to education and prosperity. As explained by Dr. George Laikoff, there’s a different moral system at play, which ascribes socioeconomic misery as the result of one’s own moral terpitude. The right-wing strict father model, or moral system, conversely views wealth as a sign of moral virtue. Relevantly, Stephen Kruse has described how capitalists have co-opted, cherry-picked, and distorted biblical scriptures to rationalise individuality and self-interested capitalist logic.

So, on the right, we see the weaponisation of Christianity in the employ of capital; and we see a strict father figure model of morality. On the left, especially liberal or centrist politics, represented by the Democratic Party in the United States, we tend to see the politics of amelioration, as Jonathan Kozol put it back in 1991, or minimising the pain, as Dr. Wallerstein puts it today. The result is the same, liberals tend to pursue half-measures, which preserve the capitalist mode of production and, thereby, the origins of the social ills, which they ostensibly seek to remedy.

[12] Socialism or Barbarism is a concept frequently used in Marxist theory and literature. Attributed to Friedrich Engels, it became widely known through Rosa Luxemburg‘s “Junius Pamphlet” of 1916, where she wrote, “Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to Socialism or regression into Barbarism.”

In Rosa Luxemburg’s original use of the term, socialism or barbarism,

In her “Junius Pamphlet” of 1916, strongly denouncing the then raging First World War, Rosa Luxemburg wrote: Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to Socialism or regression into Barbarism.

Luxemburg attributed it to Friedrich Engels, though—as shown by Dr. Michael Löwy—Engels had not used the term “Barbarism” but a less resounding formulation: If the whole of modern society is not to perish, a revolution in the mode of production and distribution must take place.

Luxemburg went on to explain what she meant by “Regression into Barbarism”: “A look around us at this moment [i.e., 1916 Europe] shows what the regression of bourgeois society into Barbarism means. This World War is a regression into Barbarism. The triumph of Imperialism leads to the annihilation of civilization. At first, this happens sporadically for the duration of a modern war, but then when the period of unlimited wars begins it progresses toward its inevitable consequences. Today, we face the choice exactly as Friedrich Engels foresaw it a generation ago: either the triumph of Imperialism and the collapse of all civilization as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration—a great cemetery. Or the victory of Socialism, that means the conscious active struggle of the International Proletariat against Imperialism and its method of war.”

“Socialism or Barbarism” became, and remains, an often quoted and influential concept in Marxist literature. “Barbarism” is variously interpreted as meaning either a technologically advanced but extremely exploitative and oppressive society (e.g. a victory and world domination by Nazi Germany and its Fascist allies); a collapse of technological civilization due to Capitalism causing a Nuclear War or ecological disaster; or the one form of barbarism bringing on the other.

The Internationalist Communist Tendency considers “Socialism or Barbarism” to be a variant of the earlier “Liberty or Death“, used by revolutionaries of different stripes since the late 18th century.

[13] Dr. Wallerstein says that the endless accumulation of capital is his defining feature of capitalism. Indeed, capitalism is a mode of production, which is predicated upon capitalist wage labour, or capitalist labour relations. Capital is a social relation. So, capitalism, or the capitalist mode of production, is a set of social relations, which favour the capitalist owners of the means of production over the workers, which produce the value of the commodity (or goods or services) produced. As Dr. Karl Marx has laid out, and Marxian economics elaborates, capital is the constant extraction of surplus value from living labour.

[14] Interviewer Sasha Lilley asked Dr. Wallerstein if he thought there was “any danger in making grand predictions about the future”. Indeed, as we listen to (or read the transcript of) this interview, we may be wondering what might possibly be the benefit or purpose of all of these apparently predictive pursuits. Indeed, we recall that Dr. Karl Marx, for his part, eschewed utopian predictions in favour of a comprehensive description of the nature, origins, and dynamics of capital.

Admittedly, Dr. Wallerstein admits: “There is a danger.”

***

[Image of sociologist Dr. Immanuel Wallerstein giving a talk at a seminar at the European University at St Petersburg on May 24, 2008 by Alexei Kouprianov (own work), used via Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0]

[12 APR 2017]

[Last modified at 13:27 PST on 19 APR 2017]

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