Global Capitalism: Post-Election Special [November 2020]

good evening friends this is richard wolff thank you very much for joining me today these are indeed tumultuous times and we are all doing our best to cope with what is being called the new normal we've just been through an extraordinary election here in the united states and i'm going to be talking about that but before we jump in i want to make a couple of announcements this uh presentation which we offer every other month is called global capitalism live economic update it's brought to you by democracy at work and is co-sponsored by the left forum and the judson memorial church on washington square in new york city these presentations are fundraisers fundraising events for democracy at work we urge those of you watching and listening especially if you have never donated before to please consider supporting this project indeed your support is what has made this series of presentations possible you can become a monthly donor on patreon or you can make a one-time donation on our website direct links to both of those options can be found in the video description below please be sure to like this video below and click the red subscribe button thank you for your support and we hope you all stay safe and healthy in times that do not make that easy we waited this month until the third wednesday even though our normal schedule is every other wednesday and we did that because when we planned this program we anticipated the election might be contested here in the united states and indeed it was indeed it is and that is part of the kind of government we have had over the last four years uh which is now clearly over and i will be talking about that election and its meanings and implications this evening as a major part of what we want the evening to discuss another difference is that it won't just be me this evening i requested six people some of whom perhaps all of whom you may know or you may have seen or heard in the past i've asked them to join me tonight to make which they've done in recent days short four five minute videos and you're going to see them this evening uh interspersed with my own presentation so it will be you might say roughly half me and half people like laura flanders nomi prince lee cam giannis varufakas lee carter and jessica gordon nemhart all of these people have much to say have different approaches different priorities and i believe their comments together with my own will make an interesting evening an interesting set of ideas about where we are in the world today with special emphasis on the united states because of the election and that it will all together be a worthwhile enterprise so let me begin here in the united states the election that we have just completed cost many many billions that's with a b billions of dollars in our country here the united states uh two political parties have a completely stranglehold monopoly on politics at least of the parliamentary electoral kind the billions that they spent each of them to run for office and we're talking many billions of dollars this they both agree is a perfectly reasonable approach they have had many opportunities to change the law to limit the amount of money that can be spent to limit the amount of time that the campaigns cover at great cost and they have chosen not to stop it not to end it not to put limits and so the money goes more and more each time our election is the costliest we have ever had and so the many billions of dollars spent on the election which both parties agreed to happened at the same time that the two parties could not agree on a national strategy to cope with the kovit 19 crisis which is why one major reason why that crisis is more devastating in the united states than perhaps any other country on the planet they also couldn't spend those billions on a stimulus economic program here in the united states to do something about the tens of millions of people that are unemployed underemployed or underpaid a catastrophic economic crisis for which these billions could not have been spent because the two parties couldn't agree in the months leading up to the election it's an extraordinary testament to the reality in this culture here in the united states that the two political parties that operate together and let me underscore together the economic and political monopoly over our politics it is interesting that both of these parties are 98 pro-capitalist the two parties fall all over each other in supporting celebrating subsidizing capitalism why do i say 98 well because 2 percent it's a number i picked out of the hat it's a very small number two percent represent the socialists those who are critical of capitalism who say something inside the democratic party about some issues when they are not marginalized silenced or excluded which happens to most of them most of the time so in our monopolized politics we do not have in the united states freedom of choice the way other countries do we pride ourselves in the united states on having freedom of choice and in some areas we do if you go into a supermarket and you want to buy breakfast cereal you have many different kinds many different brands to choose from if you go into an automobile dealership you have different brands and different models to choose from we want choice we want the freedom to choose except in our politics that minor area of life you know where we only need two and we need two that on the great question of capitalism the system we live with there is no choice because choosing between one or the other lets you choose between one pro-capitalist political party and another pro-capitalist political party they don't disagree on capitalism they disagree on how best to support subsidize and build capitalism when you choose between them you're choosing between who will support capitalism if you want to choose against the support of capitalism you have no real political contender to vote for the two parties have arranged things so you have no freedom of choice it's charming because they preach the freedom of choice but they don't practice the freedom of choice and for those of you who care it's even worse the system in europe for example is called proportional representation it's a simple idea it goes like this if 20 of the people want a socialist party enough to vote for it then 20 of the people sitting in parliament writing the laws should be representatives of that party the 20 percent want their voice heard when it comes to writing the law they do not allow somebody who gets 51 of the vote to have all the seats in parliament for whatever area they represent in other words in the united states it's a winner take all no proportional representation if you don't win you lose completely if half or just below half the people voted for you they have no representative writing the law it's a bizarre way to minimize to exclude to marginalize new emerging political movements it's what monopolists do in economics we call what monopolists do the erection of barriers to entry making it impossible for new proudly innovative companies to get off the ground because they can't afford the advertising that the monopolists do or they haven't had the laws written for them the way the monopolist did oh they don't have the money to get the attention of the politician the way the monopolist did you know barriers to entering a business or an industry our political monopolists have created barriers to anybody who's critical of capitalism so you can't find it you can even find many americans who can't imagine it and so we have a system that reflects the monopolization of politics by two pro-capitalist parties who hand each other the government every few years in a ritual of political make-believe and so we have deepening inequality and so we had a system unprepared for a virus and we had a system incapable of containing the virus and a system that wasn't prepared for the latest capitalist business cycle crash and that is now incapable of containing the social disaster that crash produces we have all the costs of a dysfunctional monopolized political system but all with the polite agreement of the two monopolists never to discuss the monopoly they operate but to pretend instead that they are fierce competitors insisting that we all join with them in pretending that the competition between them is anything other than the collusion to squeeze out everybody else don't be fooled this is a good moment for me to introduce the first of my guests this evening her name is laura flanders she's an independent journalist who runs and produces a very interesting long-standing television and radio show of important commentary both on what is going on politically and what ought to be going on or is emerging or is beginning to change the political outline of the countryside it is a pleasure for me to invite laura to speak with us for a few minutes hi i'm laura flanders of the laura flanders show you can watch every week at youtube or at lauraflanders.org or subscribe to the free podcast i'm recording this message for rick and your friends uh surrounded by trees and dead leaves because with respect to election 2020 i don't think we're out of the woods yet we are in a dangerous moment that moment when the lens of our media narrative narrows and having been for a few glorious moments on masses of people in action registering to vote getting out to vote voting the lens narrows to just a couple of people in washington dc and yes we've got some history being made in our vice president kamala harris our vice president-elect and our president-elect are going to be new faces with any luck in washington but there's an awful lot about them that reminds us of the past joe biden especially takes us back to that moment in 2008 when we had a financial crisis on our hands a mortgage disaster a house a houseless homeless crisis looming and an administration came into power that demobilized the masses demobilized the activists who had helped to bring them to dc we're in a moment just like that again and if you were around and paying attention in 12 years ago um you'll remember that the so-called relief package that the um obama biden administration brought in was nowhere near enough for the people's need now joe biden needed we the people to get elected we the people have needs that are urgent today whether you're talking climate change or recession or racism or the pandemic the people's needs are worse today than they were 12 years ago so while we are going to be going to need to be active in washington and all around this country at the level of government and we're going to be we're going to have to be active in our movements at the level of keeping those fascist forces at bay we i think particularly we the we that watches um my show and that watches this show and that listens to our podcasts the way that talks about economic alternatives has got to get really serious we are not the same as we were 12 years ago biden may be the same guy but we have lived for more than a decade and coming out of 2008 i think many of us said you know you got a point we can't just be anti-capitalist we have to be for something else well we have spent 12 years laying out alternatives and saying that another world is possible i think our agenda this particular we our agenda now is to give people the confidence that those alternatives can actually change their lives so i think the message that i would like to send today is that what we're going to be doing on the laura flanders show is following alternatives as they play out talking about the obstacles that exist to really organize in the workplace and education and housing and healthcare differently there are some extraordinary initiatives in the works but can they get to scale what stands in their way because i believe the experience of making a democratic society not waiting for someone else to do it but for of making one right now where we live where we are in woods like these that experience can help us build our movement power for the next time whether that's two years or four years or eight years from today one of the things that we've been reporting on is the comparative success of worker-owned co-ops in this covet economy in this pandemic poverty worker-owned co-ops have unlike most small businesses come out fairly well there have been fewer layoffs more expansion even new hirings at the businesses where the workers themselves could decide sometimes on a dime how to change their mo we've seen people decide that they would take pay cuts to keep everybody employed check out the report from the u.s federation of worker-owned cooperatives that kind of experience of how an alternative works differently can change people and i think that's what we have to build today what happened in this last election people got terrified and voted against trump people decided to hold their nose and vote for the old guy biden people got excited about the history breaking um nomination of kamala harris as vice presidential as bison's vice presidential candidate and then a whole lot of other people did what they always do which is organized no matter who um get busy doing no matter what just to keep reactionary forces at bay and win some breathing room we won some breathing room now we have to build in that breathing room so that people cannot just see alternatives as ideas but experience them lived and live the experience of making their lives different from the bottom up do we need federal help absolutely are we going to wait for that we can't afford to whether it's giving one another care defunding our police and finding alternative ways to keep our communities safe addressing the recession especially the she session that is affecting women and women of color most or becoming sanctuary communities um we have to start that work where we are and don't let anyone tell you that it's all and only now about what happens in washington dc for the laura flanders show i'm laura flanders check us out at lauraflanders.org podcast tv show we're probably on a public television station near you i'm a big subscriber and regular listener to economic update thank you rick for all you do thank you laura let me introduce next an old friend nomi prince a former banker at goldman sachs who has changed her direction and applied her wonderful research and analytical capabilities to really telling us how the banking system works in the world she writes she's an author let me welcome nomie prince with her thoughts on this election and what it means the world and slightly more than half of the united states did breathe a collective sigh of relief last saturday as the united states election was finally called for the biden harris ticket and though president trump can mount any number of legal battles they're not going to change the well the meth but it's also important to note that around 70 million people voted for trump and it would be dangerous to just discount that proportion of the population their concerns or even their positions in terms of the rest of the lay of the land on the hill the runoff in georgia would have to be a sweep in favor of the democratic party in order for the democrats to even make the senate even but from a practical standpoint even if there are tie vote situations where say vice president-elect kamala harris would be casting that deciding vote the reality is that biden would need bipartisan support in case he loses a democrat or two in any vote in order to get any major legislation passed and that means the sort of legislation that he will be able to propose and get passed cannot be perceived to be rocking too many political boats also since the house lost seven democratic seats though it did retain the more progressive seats it means that nancy pelosi as speaker of the house will have less of a margin there and that's going to be both with respect to the republicans and between the more centrist and the more progressive arms of the democratic party and what all that means is that passing legislation will just not be a walk in the park for anyone and the biden harris administration is going to have to pick its battles which probably will therefore require them staying very much in the center of the road now there's also a very strong likelihood that from a financial economic perspective that say the biden white house and a republican or even a split senate could reach compromises on a larger pandemic related stimulus package and that could also include extra vaccine-related funding and possibly and hopefully actually any infrastructure plan or package which is something that trump promised again and again during the 2016 election but absolutely never delivered and in fact he thwarted the possibility of that by imposing various supply chain tariffs and trade wars along the way this could also translate into continuing though to keep taxes lower for corporations which is something that the biden campaign platform said it would raise although they never said that they would raise those taxes back to what they were before trump anyway so any ground that's gained on fiscal stimulus will of course be so positive for all of those americans around the country that are struggling with the loss of jobs or money or loved ones due to this pandemic and in that respect it would also be positive for the general economy and for regaining global status and respect and adopting some sort of a stronger leadership position with respect to the virus to mask wearing and any other protocols that are necessary in fighting this pandemic but all of that combined is the reason that global stock markets relief rallied since the election the thing is neither wall street nor the financial markets nor bankers particularly like uncertainty but having the election out of the way and with it the threat of random trade wars and tweets coming on top of the ongoing no limit monetary policy or the central bank support that's led by the federal reserve and copied around the world by every other central bank is also why we're likely to see an ever widening disconnect between the financial markets and the real economy or what i have coined a permanent distortion now there will be items that will be done by executive order in the meantime biden will re-sign the paris climate accord he will rejoin the world health organization and he will have a national coronavirus plan which we deeply have needed i also think that he's going to push investment in green energy platforms and in projects and that's not even just because of climate change and science but it's also out of sheer economic and environmental dis necessity that would help companies in the sustainable energy and infrastructure space create more jobs that's also a reason that wall street has been putting its money behind that policy and all sorts of green and esg types of funds and private equity companies and so forth so nothing will fundamentally change though for wall street or the fed or other central banks the markets are going to continue their disconnect from the real economy as we move on to 2021 perhaps even more so than they did under trump because of the removal of that tweet uncertainty element the economic uncertainty and disparity that drove many of those suburban voters that even voted for the biden harris ticket to the suburbs to begin with because they are cheaper that's a phenomenon that's going to grow and that's because of where we are right now in terms of the state of the economy it's because of the pandemic it's because of the associated work from home patterns and the general economic fragility amongst all of our citizens plus let's not forget biden was heavily favored by wall street in fact wall street provided him more in campaign donations this election than for both of obama's elections combined and absolutely more than it gave to trump's re-election bid that's because again wall street values democratic centrist certainty over trump capriciousness so it's unlikely a biden-harris white house would do much to decrease wall street influence or increase regulations on wall street or therefore to cut into permanent distortion overall absent more grassroots pushing there's still an opportunity to reduce the gap between the markets and the real economy it's just that numerically it's not something that's an obvious outcome from this election i'm nomi prince and that's my take thank you know me and for the third in a row before i make a few comments myself again let me introduce lee camp many call him a comedian which indeed he is but he's also a very astute commentator on the passing political scene here in the united states but also beyond so it is a pleasure with a smile and a twinkle as well as an appreciation for me to introduce to you lee camp hello i'm lee camp host of redacted tonight so the election is finally over but that doesn't mean the mainstream corporate media is actually talking about the things they should be talking about by design and that's because they only cover surface level analysis you see there's three or four levels of reality that we should be discussing when we talk about this election or any american election and by discussing i mean screaming about and by screaming about i mean freaking the out so let's freak out shall we can we freak out together quick tangent i actually got made fun of a lot as a kid for freaking out or spazzing out as they called it but when you think about it when you really look around the reality should we all be freaking out i mean so few people are enjoying their lives so many people are struggling or oppressed and there's new bizarre illnesses and viruses to worry about and all of our so-called leaders are goddamn corrupt morons and then you've got like a wedgie that's riding up your crack and you can't you can't grab it because you got to do your hands full you got a drink in one hand you got a video game remote or a baby or something in the other so the wedgie just gets worse and worse and worse until it all comes crashing down point being shouldn't we be passing out if you look at reality it's all spaz worthy i think everyone can agree on that anyway we have three or four levels of reality that we should be talking about all of the time because they're incredibly important but most of the time average people and our media don't talk about the all the layers in fact they only talk about the surface layer because our media is corporate tools that's what they are that's why they're there so using this past election using this this election that we just saw as an example layer one was who's gonna win buy a new truck that's the surface layer right it was it was fair to talk about that i'm not saying don't talk about it fair to have a debate about it but if you leave it at that and never dig deeper you don't know what you're talking about it would be like uh licking the top crust of an apple pie and saying all right i get it it tastes like crust but that's not all there is you gotta you gotta gotta dig down idiot now let's get to layer two which is already a layer beyond what your mainstream corporate media will ever talk about they only ever allow discussion on layer one layer two is slightly deeper it's that the oligarchy in america wins every election no matter what they win it in multiple ways one is by making sure progressives and socialists and libertarians etc are purged from the process the other is by money and the third perhaps most important way is that our system simply does not pass anything through our government that isn't beneficial to the business community aka corporate america a large princeton study found i like to talk about it a lot it found it studied 1779 policy initiatives policy topics and it found that the american public has zero impact on what gets passed what we want doesn't matter they tell you it does they act like they care but nothing you and i want ever gets done unless it aligns with corporate interests it's like being in an emotionally and mentally abusive relationship they gaslight us they tell us they that we matter they tell us they love us they tell us they'll change and they never do they're they're they're just sitting there they're just sitting there not changing sitting there in their pajamas eating ice cream out of the box with their feet on the coffee table putting coconut sprinkles in there into the ice cream into the box when you you don't like like coconut sprinkles because tasteless in ice cream and two days later you find three in your mouth and it it it tastes like hair or scabs or something you know i can get ready for a coconut sprinkle if i know it's common but it's surprised it's just you think you have scabs and your ice cream they know that and they don't care they don't care but that's my life point being at the end of the day we the people get nothing done in our government unless it aligns with business interest look at obamacare for example america wanted health care but in order to get it passed the ruling elite made sure it was a giant giveaway to the health insurance industry wow sounds like layer 2 is kind of important but no let's never mention in the mainstream media let's pretend it's never happening layer 3 we should really be talking about capitalism and environmental collapse under our economic system the most powerful people the corporatocracy will eventually own everything no matter what the gravity in capitalism will always be towards corporate hegemony every time in every way you can sometimes score roadblocks that slow them down but that's all it does slow them down as they take control the environment as in the natural world will suck i learned that word from reading medical textbooks sucks take for example monsanto roundup herbicide we know it's causing cancer it's killing people but more importantly it's killing the bees and the insects and unfortunately the natural world needs those little right yeah you can't can't exist without you might love that there aren't any naps left but nature is screwed and as all the bees disappear and the insects disappear we eventually will disappear maybe not this week but it won't be long point being how could this happen how could we let why hasn't monsanto been stopped at any point well they're too freaking powerful they own the market they own the officials they own the regulars they even own the science how can a a squad buy up the science i don't know but they did it so that's what talking about level three looks like it's talking about the economic system the global impact and yet again the corporate media will never get to that discussion level three is more off limits for a cable news anchor than for the female anchors to not shave their pits and yes i know that's a standard old-school gender role but i'm just saying point is the odds of seeing that on one of those reporters is not a big not not not common it's it's as screwed up you know it's as common as them digging into our capitalist system uh that that that's all i meant but i'm i'm totally down if you want to have a giant crusty the clown hair under your pits i totally cool level four now we really get deep this is the true analysis of our reality and there are a lot of different topics on level four you know there's things like what is money really what what is is it anything where's it come from what does it really mean or here's another one what the hell are nation states why is everything have to be put in a box of national interests what does it matter if i was born on this side of the line or that side of this line that was who even drew these dumb lines hundreds of years ago or it could be something like why do we live the way we do in houses why do we live inside seclusion boxes hardly interacting with our fellow humans except on our at our wage slavery jobs where we go hey jim it's hump day that's level four what the hell is that for existence that's getting pretty deep into the philosophical realm but how is it our media don't think that's important ever they don't think it makes sense to occasionally discuss level four of our reality really dig down figure it out ask the questions right i'm not i'm not saying it has to be the the beginning of every news guest hello nation it's 6 p.m and remember you're a victim of wage slavery forced to live in a seclusion box i'm not saying that but can't the deepest echelons of our reality ever come up in the mainstream narrative or we just have to go buy some some hidden book down in a basement somewhere uh a bookstore run by a guy with food stuck in his curly mustache and one glass eye is that the only place we can learn about this stuff point being those are the four layers of our reality there are more layers such as the fact that we're all energy waves and crazy like that but we'll just stop at four for now there are four crucial levels of our reality and your media your teachers your leaders most of your information sources never and i mean never get past level one that's like going to school and they just never teach you anything beyond how to color inside the lines with your crayons that's it through all of high school middle school it's just color and satellite that'd be the entire education we are left at level one because it serves as a beautiful distraction never talk about the economic system never talk about our nations are used to divide us never talk about how corporations own our society you just discussed level one who will win the presidential election who will win the race for governor etcetera etcetera blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah dig deeper if you don't do it for your own curiosity do it because they don't want you to thank you lee folks i'd like to turn to another dimension of our election that has been particularly in evidence in the final months before the vote and in the days since the vote the phrase saving our democracy have been articulated over and over again interestingly they've been articulated by both sides in the monopolized political race by the trump republicans and by the biden democrats each one wraps himself or herself in the mantle of the savior of democracy the fact that people so otherwise opposed can both use that phrase although i admit it's more often heard from the democrats than the republicans but nonetheless each side believes it represents the majority it represents the real america in fact many on the republican side believe that the democracy is what they turn to as the guarantor that they in fact won the election in contrast biden harris and the democrats who use the phrase more often saving democracy like to picture mr trump and the republicans as writing roughshod over democracy ignoring democracy doing it now by not conceding the electoral defeat but doing it earlier by using governmental power rather than getting the mass of people to choose in a democratic way whatever direction is to be taken so i i found it interesting that the saving of democracy or more particularly the saving of our democracy was so often on the lips okay i want to comment on the use of the phrase democracy or our democracy having just gone through this election well in a way i have already commented on it it's not a democracy if two political parties monopolize political discourse it's not democracy if a presidential candidate's debate excludes all but the representatives of those two parties it's not democracy if you allow an extremely unequal economic system like ours to pour virtually limitless amounts of money into the electoral process because any notion of a democratic decision-making is undermined when some people have the kinds of resources to spend literally billions of dollars as we know was spent promoting one or another candidate and of course the billions that were spent promoted republicans and democrats the tiny other parties in this country kept tiny in and by this system could not of course raise anything like these amounts of money which is part of why they are so small that perhaps many of you don't even know that they exist or that they contested the election but you know the absurdity of calling this system democratic runs deeper than our political system let me explain let's turn to the economy let's turn to whether democracy is a concept that applies to the economy of the united states and let me be clear on what definition of democracy i'm working with here so there's no misunderstanding by democracy i mean a system which works according to the following basic rule if you are affected by a decision you therefore have the right to participate in that decision you cannot be excluded from that decision and therefore you don't have a democracy if there is a systematic structurally enshrined exclusion of many people directly affected by a decision from any role in it so i'm going to give you just two examples of how the economic system of the united states is not only not democratic but is actively anti-democratic let me start with the market perhaps the most celebrated institution in the american economy and indeed in many around the world an institution variously celebrated for being mankind's highest achievement for being a paragon of efficiency and so on here's a quality of the market you might want to think about let's suppose something in a market becomes scarce and that all that i mean by scarce is that there are more people who want something who demand it then there are supplies of that something to meet that demand we have excess demand demand is greater than supply okay now some distribution has to take place whenever and wherever that happens in a market and the way the distribution works in a market is that the demanders become aware that the demand exceeds the supply because that information is supposed to be available and readily available in a market especially one that functions the way markets are supposed to so now the demanders know and the suppliers do that the demand is greater than the supply what happens well in a market the suppliers begin to raise the price because they know they can because there are so many more people who want it that what they'll get is the purchase even at the higher price of those who can afford it meanwhile the demanders understand the same thing they know that there are more of them than there is available supply so what those who are rich will do is bid up the price of the scarce items that will force the poor to drop out to stop demanding it because they can't pay the rising price and in the end you will distribute the scarce supply to those who will pay the highest price for it in short a market distributes to the richest buyers when there's an excess of demand what would be the democratic way to handle this simple all those affected by this situation that is the people who demand more than there is all of those people could together make a decision one person one vote namely how do you handle scarcity who should get the scarce items and who should not that's the real issue here and that could be decided democratically so for example if the scarce item were milk and the rich people wanted to buy it for their pets and the poor people wanted to buy it for their children you might might have a democratic decision to give it to the people who are using it to feed their children you might markets are not a democratic institution are they here's another example how is a capitalist enterprise organized well here here's the answer a tiny group of people sitting at the top of a capitalist organization and you know who they are the owner of the business perhaps the one who started it or the one who inherited or the one who stole it or the one who bought it the owner sits at the top if it's a corporate form of business it's a group of major shareholders those who own the bulk of the common shares issued by the company and they in turn elect these major shareholders a board of directors that sits at the top of a corporation board of directors usually 15 20 people employees dozens hundreds thousands hundreds of thousands or within amazon and a few others millions of workers of employees all the power sits in the hands of the top a tiny minority of those involved in the enterprise they make all the key decisions what to produce how to produce where to produce and what to do with the profits that all of the employees helped to produce the decision the disposition of all of those prophets all of that's done by a tiny unaccountable minority there's nothing democratic about it could there be democratic decision making inside enterprises you bet it has a name it exists worker co-ops one person one vote everybody involved in an enterprise one person one vote and we decide democratic majority rule what to produce how to produce where to produce and what to do with the output the revenue the profits sure you could have a democratic enterprise but in capitalism you don't so then what in the world is the meaning of saving our democracy it is very hard to save what you do not have but that honesty that self-awareness is not allowed into public discourse no not in the united states where we have everyone pretending they're a democracy trump uses it the republicans use it biden uses it the democrats use it everybody is saving democracy the only problem is it isn't there let me introduce you to my next friend and guest for this evening someone who practices real democracy around the world he is the former finance minister of greece he's an economist and an author it is a pleasure to introduce you to janice varufakis i'm jennifer with a quick message to friends comrades colleagues in to the united states and beyond regarding what else the general election the presidential election in america how do i see the prospect of a very thin marginal victory by joe biden as the worst possible outcome and let me explain that i'm deeply happy that trump is not going to be in the white house but on the one hand we have a resurgence not a diminution of trumpism and of the old right and of the fascist racist republican right wing they feel strengthened by the outcome they got millions more votes and also this sense that they have which is of course completely false but nevertheless it is shared amongst them of having been robbed of the white house by the liberal establishment this occurs ill for all of us because of the radicalization of this movement of that combines racism and a complete embracing of everything which is misanthropic xenophobic and particularly regressive now let's look at our side of politics progressive politics the one good thing the silver lining for us supporters of bernie sanders after sanders was yet again impeded by the establishment within the democratic party from becoming a jain in opposition to donald trump from winning the nomination of the democratic party the silver lining was that at least there was some collaboration between the centers team and the biden team that produced a green new deal of sorts not what i would have liked but an interesting nevertheless economic policy to be implemented if biden and harris won the presidency and also the senate the fact that biden is not going to control the senate and the fact that he has not had this landslide that he was banking on means that now a president that was originally unwilling to implement a genuinely progressive green new deal now has been liberated from the obligation to do so as a result of not controlling the senate so in contrast to the trumpist right which is going to be united radicalized and also strengthened and reinforced by the fact that they are going to be in opposition not to mention the fact that the next two years are going to see a great depression descending upon the united states which is going to energize their opposition in contrast to that think of our side we will have spent the last few months arguing amongst our own progressives that always saw biden quite correctly as a representative of big business that nevertheless they should hold their nose and vote for biden because of the green new deal now there will be no green new deal we will have in other words have helped put in the white house a president who is acting simply on behalf of big business if he's acting at all given the paralysis of the administration in view of the fact that it's not controlling the senate had trump won the white house i would have been mourning of course but at least democrats would be facing two or four years of radicalization of rethinking and reorganizing but now the next two years will be a period during which only the trumpists are going to be organizing while we progressives are going to have to be defending a president who does not want to be on this in the same camp as us against big business as for the rest of the world i very much fear the neocons that sided with biden and who will be returning to the pentagon and the state department i hope those fears are proven false i'm pleased that the bolsonaros modis pennsylvanians and the rest of the nationalist xenophobic internationale are going to lose their great support in the white house but at the same time we have let us not forget the radical center back in control of the white house and the pentagon and they have a very sorry record of interventions of military adventures i hope that they do not jeopardize the only good thing that trump did on the international stage which is effectively not to start a new war with greetings from greece and the sincere hope that joe biden is going to prove me wrong this is yanis vikis on behalf of dn25 carpe diem let's continue the struggle we have a lot to do thank you janis i would like to turn now to say something else that is too often unsaid for which the words are thought to be too daring too premature not yet ready and so on but i would like to move the conversation forward so i'm going to talk about it what the united states lacks and needs is a new political party it needs to break the stultifying dilemma of two monopolistic parties to stop this process in which the allowable discourse in the society is limited to what the right will tolerate and what the left will tolerate when right and left are limited by the republican and democratic parties let's take a look at what some of the costs of not challenging their monopoly mean for us right here right now the united states is a disaster when it comes to the covid 19 crisis before covet came we knew as a society that there are dangerous viruses in 1918 the united states suffered a devastating virus one that started in a military base in kansas right in the middle of the united states it killed nearly 700 000 people three times what we have already suffered now with covet 19. we know what viruses can do we learned again with sars with ebola with mers we know history has taught us and recent past history has taught us again we knew it would be possible likewise we know that capitalism as an economic system is stunningly unstable wherever capitalism has settled over the 300 to 400 years it has been the emerging and then dominant economic system in the world every four to seven years on average it has an economic downturn you know a crash a recession a depression a bust a crisis we have many words for something that is so prevalent in our environment so we know what the story is and we have no reason not to be ready for aware of the crises that capitalism imposes on us every four to seven years on average millions lose their jobs businesses go bankrupt cities towns whole countries have their budgets disappear because unemployed people can't pay taxes and so the revenues needed to provide public services dry up and in this capitalist system just as the private sector goes into a crisis by dragging down the revenues of the public sector you have fewer public services exactly when you need more to compensate for the failure of the private sector if that isn't a dysfunctional system what is we've had three crashes of capitalism in the united states in this new century we had the dot-com crisis in 2000 the subprime mortgage crisis in 2008 and now the kovid 19 crisis in 2020 20 years of a new century three crises works out to a little less than every seven years just in time just on schedule we knew we faced the crisis and since the last one was in 2008 we knew by 2019 by 2018 and by 2017 we were due for the next one we knew like we knew the virus could always come but we weren't prepared we weren't prepared and what do i mean by not prepared i mean the republicans didn't have us prepared and the democrats didn't either hospitals have been closing in the united states in recent decades closing why because it wasn't profitable to keep them open oh goodness you're allowing the capitalist notion of profit to be so understood by the monopolizing two parties that we closed the institution that might have enabled us to be prepared for a virus we know you need tests they should be produced accumulated stockpiled in warehouses around the country you know like masks and ventilators and everything else but we didn't did we the companies didn't do it because it isn't profitable you know to make masks and store them in warehouses where you have to watch them and clean them and repair them and replace them for who knows how long before the next virus hits too risky not profitable we won't do it of course the government could come in and buy all that and store it and preserve it and maintain it could do that that's after all what the government does with military equipment same issue but they didn't do it with the medical they didn't because the private medical producers didn't want the government in there that's for them socialist medicine and they won't have that because they're terribly afraid that the public will sooner or later realize what a rip-off profit-driven business medicine is so we weren't prepared the private sector didn't find it profitable and the control they have over the two monopolizing parties was more than enough that's why we don't have a national health system that's why we don't have medicare for all that's why we don't have single-payer medicine and that's why we weren't ready for the virus and why it is hurting us and killing us on a scale virtually no other country has allowed wow the failure is literally cataclysmic and the dealing with the economic crisis if anything it's even worse other than not being so deadly in the life and death sense so of course what do you need to do today when there are by rough estimate 20 to 40 million americans unemployed wow what are you doing answer nothing neither of the two monopolizing parties has been able to think for one sustained hour let alone for a year that the way to handle the unemployment in the private sector is to employ people in the public sector what are we doing giving millions of people money and not asking them to give something back to society sure with social distancing and masks and all the ways of keeping people healthy that we can learn from all the other countries who've done exactly that and who don't have tens of millions of unemployed and what would our unemployed do oh goodness we haven't tested most americans yet unemployed people could become an army of testers we have a million fewer people working in the public service in this country than we did a year ago as i just explained we need more public services now because of the broken economy because of covet 19 but we don't have more public services because we have fired one million of our public employees take the unemployed and put them to work for the cities and towns providing the public services we need now more than ever there is no problem this country did that in the 1930s when the government hired roughly 15 million unemployed americans and let me explain what the democratic system we have in quotations failed to do did we have a vote in this country whether we would like to see these people employed by the government or unemployed that was not put up for vote because the two parties know that what they support would lose so it isn't put up to democratic vote the mass of people who are unemployed want a job the mass of us who are not getting the product of what those unemployed people could do we would like them to be paid properly for work that we can all enjoy with them that's a logical democratic response but we don't have that we are denied that even though it's part of our history neither party at this point found it useful helpful for them to even debate the subject wow wow so what do i conclude we need to break up the monopoly we need to do what we have done in the economic sphere at least sometimes we need trust busters only the trust that has to be busted is the political trust the political monopoly and one of the easiest best ways to do it is to begin to build a party that we already know has mass support in the united states so it can be an effective challenger of the political monopoly and what do i mean here comes the thing not dared yet to be spoken we need a socialist party we probably need several because socialists disagree among themselves as they always have and as indeed they should we should have a range of socialist parties presenting their critiques of capitalism their alternatives to capitalism and why am i confident that this is the way to go because we've already had the evidence that there's a basis for it that's what two races by bernie sanders showed us that's what the occupy wall street movement by spreading to 350 cities in a matter of weeks showed us that's what the successful races of alexandria ocasio-cortez and the other members of the squad now doubled in size that's what they're telling us socialists in missouri in new york in california in minnesota yeah the basis for a socialist elected official obviously there millions of people obviously there millions not only willing to vote but willing to contribute as the bernie sanders campaign so dramatically showed the money is there the people are there and lord knows the demand in our monopolized politics is there for a long time general motors ford and chrysler kept everybody else out of the automobile market in the united states and they made fun of the tesla well then i'm making fun anymore turns out if you open it up if you allow a different perspective on the very idea of what an automobile is and what makes it run and how you power it yeah turns out you can do things and you know socialism is like that there are socialist parties important ones in virtually every european country there are in fact multiple socialist parties some with the name some with other names across europe civilization hasn't crumbled there the economic and political systems are in as many ways better than ours as we are better than them they show us it's feasible it's manageable and it can generate very good outcomes let me give you an example one of the countries most successful in emerging out of the crisis of 2008 in europe was a country that chose not to go the route of austerity as was done so devastatingly in greece in italy in britain and so on the country i'm talking about is portugal an old well-established country in europe portugal for the last five or six years has been governed by a coalition they and unlike the united states have multiple parties not just two they don't seem to want a monopoly of two they seem to want real freedom of political choice governments there tend to be coalitions because no one party runs the society you know the way it works here no multiple parties have to get together so they've been governed by a coalition these last years a coalition that refused to impose an austerity that instead spent money the portuguese are famous even before these crises hit they handled their drug problem in a completely different way from that in the united states much more successful anyway the coalition is a coalition of three parties the portuguese socialist party plus the portuguese communist party plus the portuguese green party that's right a coalition of various kinds of socialists and they're doing fine and they are a model for others there's no reason we don't have that here and i want to close my list of guests to present to you by offering two people who in different ways are moving in the direction i'm talking about wanting to see change activating it educating it mobilizing it the failures we are living through in our public health in our economics are more than enough but it's not a complete list to justify change so let me introduce a colleague of mine an economist a young woman who has been spearheading the intersection of economic change racial change and the centrality of cooperative enterprises dealing with those problems that are so deep in the united states so i would like to introduce you if you do not already know our work jessica gordon nemwar my name is jessica gordon-emhard i'm a black political economist and specialist in community economic development and cooperative and solidarity economics i actually have very mixed feelings about this election i'm heartened that so many people voted especially in the middle of a covered pandemic i'm disgusted by the long lines they had to wait in and the continued suppression and intimidation of black and brown and incarcerated voters i'm surprised and frustrated that so many people voted to keep the current administration which i thought had proven itself to be dysfunctional tyrannical racist and misogynistic misogynistic i continue to be against private financing of political campaigns i'm horrified at the billions of private dollars that were spent on the campaigns i believe more than ever that we need all political campaigns to be only and equally publicly financed and i think we have to eliminate the electoral college no way nothing no way around that we the people are not really in control of our elections i'm also disheartened that the democratic party bargained that it had to stay centrist in order to win but of course i'm excited that we have the first black woman vice president given all that i'm hopeful that these next few years will be ones where we can truly and honestly discuss the need for genuine economic transit and move toward the solidarity economic cooperative commonwealth that i have written and talked about for over the over 10 years if nothing else this past year has clearly pointed out that our current economic and political systems are not working we need universal health insurance and health care we need a real public health system we need transparency and accurate information from our government we need true democratic practices we need community and cooperative ownership and to democratize capital we can't achieve racial justice or racial and gender equity without economic democracy and economic justice but we also can't achieve economic democracy without racial and gender equity so we have to work intersectionally and on multiple fronts i'm convinced that we can achieve this in part by starting who or continuing to practice economic democracy in our everyday lives and demand it throughout our society we should commit to an extensive nationwide campaign for cooperative and solidarity economics education we should demand that public money be dedicated to support cooperative business development especially worker cooperatives co-ops especially worker cooperatives address community needs they generate income they create wealth they redistribute capital through democratization in production and distribution in addition there are spillover effects from economic cooperation such as leadership development uh collective decision making conflict resolution and transformation profit sharing and so um i need to think about how co-ops how we can make this a reality more a reality for more of us so i just want to make my plug co-ops provide access to quality goods and services they save costs they increase income they fairly distribute wealth they anchor resources we circulate them in a community they save or create decent jobs they develop economic agency and collective action they develop leadership as i said and they develop economic democracy what do i mean by that economic decisions and activities that are people centered not centered on profit maximization create grassroots economic frameworks based on solidarity cooperation and human dignity we reduce hierarchy and dominance in economic relations and decision-making economic democracy also allows multiple voices and multiple stakeholders to participate together workers and invisible laborers have the largest voice in what they make what it costs how they work together what they get paid what happens to the surplus you know and worker cooperatives workers have the voice in decision making and finally i want to add that the research i've done on black co-ops finds that co-ops help to combat racial discrimination to enable black community ownership and decision making leading to black self-determination co-ops mutual aid economic solidarity enable access to and control over culturally and geographically sensitive and appropriate goods and services co-ops and collective ownership increase black economic stability self-sufficiency and group independence and increase community wealth and prosperity for blacks these benefits are similar across all groups and for all humanity as usual none of this will happen or be achieved if we are not vocal and active with our demands both starting to practice and design the world we want to live in while demanding that our government enact policies and allocate money to support this vision now's the time thank you jessica for my last guest commentator i want to introduce you to lee carter he is an elected member of the virginia house of delegates the legislature in the state of virginia he is an ex-marine and he is a socialist he knows what he speaks about he's a critic of capitalism he ran some years ago and he was recently re-elected that's right he embodies what is possible already now under all of the adverse conditions of a monopolized political system he is the exception he is breaking the mold he is emerging like others he shows that it's possible he shows what is possible and his voice therefore is particularly important in reacting to the election process of which he is now an integral part people like him inside the democratic party where some are outside where more are those two parts of an emerging socialist movement and of an eventual socialist party or parties are very important voices to listen to so with pleasure i introduce you to lee carter hi i'm lee carter i'm a member of the virginia house of delegates and the only elected socialist in any southern legislature i'm here today to talk about the consequences of the 2020 election now this election is one unlike any other that we've lived through it's the first time to my knowledge the united states has had a presidential election during a global pandemic we've had pandemics before we've had consequential elections before but never once now those consequences of the election are a bit more subtle than you might be actually hearing about a lot of people are talking about how this election is the most important election of all time how this election has saved democracy but the differences between the outgoing president president trump and the incoming president president-elect biden are really a lot more subtle than most people make them out to be now donald trump certainly was a president unlike previous presidents in that he displayed the cruelty uh that he was exhibiting with the powers of his office really at the forefront of what he did he bragged about the cruelty behind his policies but those policies truly were different were a difference in degree more so than a difference in kind over his predecessors when you look at policies like family separation at the border yes donald trump had a much more cruel policy of family separation at the border but it was a a difference of how people were separated rather than whether or not people were separated his predecessor president obama and his predecessor president bush both had exceedingly cruel policies of deportation for people at the border his policies on the economy were a difference in degree not a difference in kind from his predecessors president trump used his powers as president to more directly intervene on behalf of big business giants but that's something that we've seen before president obama directed tens hundreds of billions of dollars in bailouts to the large corporate giants and president bush did before him the the policies that actually impact people on the day-to-day were differences in degree rather than differences in kind with president trump versus his predecessors health care policy people still have to pay exorbitant premiums that rise every year exorbitant deductibles that rise every year and still receive the lowest quality of care of any country in the industrialized world because again these policies towards health care towards the economy towards immigration towards foreign policy these were all differences in degree rather than differences in kind so this election has really been one of the system putting the mass back on the president that's leaving office is one who displayed his cruelty he bragged about it he was proud of it but the president that's coming in will have policies that will still have victims and we still have to organize to end those policies we still have to organize to create the kind of world where people have the freedom of motion uh to create a better life for themselves if they're escaping a war-torn country or a poor economy where they're coming from they have to be able to come here and actually create a better life for themselves and their families we have to create the kind of world where people don't have to choose between bankruptcy and going to a doctor we have to choose the kind we have to build the kind of world where people are actually in control of the economy rather than being controlled by it and that's something that's not going to be done in a single election that's something that needs to be done through constant effort through struggle through organization through people taking the initiative and building a cooperative economy one where working people own and operate the enterprise where they work on a democratic basis a one-person one-vote basis because that is the base of power in our society when we have actually built an economy that works for us because it's being worked by us that is when we will be able to actually change these policies in kind rather than in degree that is when we will be able to choose between a president that really serves us and one that serves the corporate interests rather than just two different versions of corporate presidencies that is the consequence of the 2020 election thank you lee i would like to conclude by asking all of you not only to thank our guests as i do for adding their commentaries to this important chapter in american history and indeed in the history of the world because the united states remains an important player in this world even though that importance is declining and indeed the notion of american decline and the decline of the united states is perhaps another theme that underlay this election and that like the need for a socialist party can't quite be spoken yet but the decline is there if you're willing to see it and the starkest example is the people's republic of china i'm not here to analyze to what degree their self-naming as socialist is or isn't reasonable socialism as i keep telling everyone has always been debated as to what exactly it means what its boundaries separating it from capitalism actually are and that's a good debate to keep going i'm in favor of that debate i have a position on that debate but that's not what we're here to talk about chinese technology now rivals that of the united states chinese production now rivals that of the united states in the last few days china was one of 15 countries that created the largest free trade zone in the world 30 of the world's product is now going to be traded over the next few years without tariffs or at least with sharply reduced tariffs in a movement towards multilateral open-ended trade the exact opposite direction that mr trump was taking this country and which the democratic party and its establishment allowed him to do the chinese are everywhere in the ascendant they're a rising power two weeks ago they sent up rockets with new 6g technology where the united states is still trying to catch up to china on 5g and there are many many more examples it is dangerous and difficult for countries to go through their decline one of the major ways of dealing with it is denial and that is extremely popular in the united states so we have competitive bashing of china denouncing that for issues real and imagined instead of trying to figure out a way not to have economic rivalry become military engagement between two nuclear powers the two-party monopoly hasn't figured out how to deal with this society how to deal with its own decline let alone with the ascendancy of the people's republic of china it's another in the long list of things this political monopoly could not and is not handling effectively let alone democratically so yes we need fundamental change and a message of all my guests is the one i want to close with more than anything else we don't need now to tell ourselves there isn't a basis for a socialist change we know there is we've gone out collectively and done the work to find them to name them to mobilize them and to get elected by them and we know people around the world are struggling in the same direction that's why it was important for yanis varufakas a leader of that effort in europe to join with us as a representative of all the others we are not small and we are not alone and what we're doing has a better claim for saving democracy and installing it in our world than the loudmouth champions who refer to a system that never was democratic and to themselves as the saviors of the system that never was we can do better than that politics and the reason is that we can do better than capitalism if our work and these every other month presentations have been useful for you please let me ask you to support what we do however much you can and the best possible way is to go to patreon p-a-t-r-e-o-n patreon and join with our initials g c l e u global capitalism live economic update patreon slash gcl eu will get you to our patreon page where you can support us or by going to our website where a one-time donation is equally possible thank you for joining us and let me remind you that we will be back here at our normal second wednesday of the evening next time january 13th 7 30 p.m in the year 2021 this is richard wolff for democracy at work good night

Channel: Democracy At Work

Views: 76,076

Rating: 4.9259968 out of 5

Keywords: Richard Wolff, democracy, work, labor, economy, economics, inequality, justice, capitalism, capital, socialism, wealth, income, wages, poverty, yt:cc=on, elections, Trump, Biden, GOP, Democrats, alternative, politics, political parties, monopoly, Yanis Varoufakis, Nomi Prins, Lee Camp, Lee Carter, Laura Flanders, Jessica Gordon-Nembhard, power, Republicans, presidential elections, one person one vote, economic justice, worker co-ops

Id: -lZfDf992To

Length: 94min 56sec (5696 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 18 2020