Latest Podcast – Bad Faith with Briahna Gray
In Bill Mitchell: The yen, podcast, and book announcement – all on International Workers’ Day
(https://billmitchell.org/blog/?p=61714)
The other day I did an interview with Briahna Gray for her Bad Faith podcast.
The topic was centred around the work I have done on the demise of the Left and the role that class plays, all from an Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) perspective.
It was a really interesting interview and challenging at times, which makes a change from many interviews I do with the media.
It was scheduled to go for an hour. But when we were just exchanging post interview pleasantries, the conversation continued and Briahna asked me if we could include that ‘off the record’ material to which I agreed.
I got the sense we could have talked for much longer than we did, which means it was interesting1.
Nola korporazio-jendeak AEBak usteldu zituen Ezkerraren konplizitatearekin
How Corporatists Corrupted America w/ the Left’s Complicity (w/ Bill Mitchell)
Bideoa: https://youtu.be/Z_9NMXH7eDs
The man who coined the term MMT joins Bad Faith pod to explain how liberals failed to resist the rise of neoliberalism, how conservatives were able to wrest back control after the progressive movements of the first half of the 20th century, and how progressives can offer an alternative critique of globalization that resist both conservative culture war politics, and liberal weaponization of identity politics.
Transkripzioa:
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it’s an incredible pleasure for me to welcome Professor William Mitchell to
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bad faith podcast I first came across Bill Mitchell when listening to an episode of macro and cheese people who
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listen to both uh of these podcasts will know that I frequently find myself so stimulated by conversations that happen
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over there that I want to continue them over here on bad faith but for those of you who don’t already know William
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Mitchell is one of the world’s leading heterodox economists and professor of Economics at the University of Newcastle
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Australia his books include Eurozone dystopia and this one which I have had the pleasure of getting into over the
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past week or so reclaiming the state a progressive vision of sovereignty for a post neoliberal World welcome to B bad
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faith podcast Professor thank you thanks for having me so what was so compelling
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about both your interview on Macar and cheese and this book which I found
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myself immediately wanting to grab when I read the synopsis of it is that it does I think Prov somewhat of an antidote to I think the
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stagnation and frustration that’s been breeding on the left in what we’ve come to call the Post Bernie era and it also
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gives a diagnosis of sorts for what the left the broader left has been getting wrong about how to meet the challenge of
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addressing um neoliberalism and right populism so I wondered if we could start
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by you giving your theory of the case of what the left has been getting wrong well I
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mean I’m old enough now to know to have seen a broad span of developments over
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the last 50 odd years and uh the left really started
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losing traction and direction in in the 1970s in my view
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and that’s what the book you you you were holding um discusses traces the
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Tipping Point of when that happened and you know what happened in was that
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during the postc World War period from you know 50s 60s into the early
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70s the the left was fairly well organized and had good message that they
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they wanted uh within a capitalist system they wanted governments to
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mediate the capital labor conflict um
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they wanted uh governments to mediate that and deliver returns to workers in
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the form of Full Employment uh good good Public Services
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good public infrastructure and what we observed was Full Employment reduced in
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in inequality uh um upward mobility of the
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working class into a middle class and um and all of those things that we Define
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as that period of prosperity now there were problems of that period of course
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uh uh particularly relating to gender issues race issues and uh those type of
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issues that subsequently become a focus but uh broadly the working class were
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were improving their position after the second world war now that by the end of the
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um 60s the uh capital if you like as a broad aggregate representing the
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recipients of profit they were becoming discontented and uh and at that and at
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that time of course Global Capital was starting to emerge we had Financial Capital you know capitalism was evolving
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from industrial Capital into Financial Capital uh where where manufacturing
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centers were shifting into Asia and and uh Eastern Europe Etc and finance
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Capital was becoming more powerful and and more transnational and at that time Capital
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started to fight back if you like and uh uh started to build this story that the
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nation state the you know the governments of our lands were becoming
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uh powerless against the uh dominance of international
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capital and that uh uh governments who had previously
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been using their fiscal capacity their spending and Taxation capacity to
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deliver these more prosperous times for lower inome uh families and
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workers um the the narrative that came out of the right and the and representatives of
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capital the big peak employer organiz ations and was that um uh we couldn’t
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continue like that that uh what governments now had to do was worry
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about uh uh Returns on Capital and uh
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and if they didn’t do that then uh Financial flows would work against the nation and destroy the currency that was
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the narrative in the early 70s and then Along Came the OPEC oil shocks which you
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know doubled the oil price overnight almost and that created the first real
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uh episode of inflation for many years it was Global oil dependent companies
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were uh countries were severely impacted by the rising price of oil and the
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response of that was to impose of the fiscal authorities was to impose austerity and that’s when we saw the
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first era of stagflation which is The Coincidence of inflation and
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unemployment previously those two things were were separate and um what the what
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we’re leading up to here is that the right were very clever they they were
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well organized uh they they created think tanks they bought big media
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organizations and uh they they spun a narrative that that look you know this
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this period where governments took responsibility for Full Employment that’s over now the first statement of
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of of that was a British labor party prime minister James Kahan in um
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September 1976 at the labor party annual conference where he famously got up and
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announced that uh uh the the days where governments could could in create jobs
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and and uh provide jobs for all over the role of government now has to be to
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manage inflation and uh and Target fiscal
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surpluses running surpluses spending less than they are receiving in tax
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revenue now you know that was Monumental because the left at that time were
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completely disoriented by the the inflation and and unemployment that was
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Rising they didn’t know how to handle a raw material shock like an oil shock and
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and Senior People Scholars on the left started to articulate the same sort of
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macroeconomic statements about governments have will run out of money the financial markets will destroy the
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currency and all of the things you know that are taxes will go through the roof if governments keep spending like this
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like drunken Sailors you know all of the nomenclature that came with this this scare mongering and uh the left bought
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it and uh from there on that you know in the mid 70s they got distracted by
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postmodernism uh by identity issues and and don’t get me wrong those issues are
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extremely important for society to to work through but at the same time they
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surrendered the main contest in macroeconomics that the government has
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this role to play and uh uh to mediate the sort of competing uh desires of
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capital and labor and the left just abandoned that terrain all together to the right and from then on we’ve been
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how to pay for it you know you’ll run out of money the financial markets will destroy your currency there’ll be
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inflation interest rates will go through the roof all of the things that that I call sound Finance
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became the Mantra of the left and effectively uh hamstrung it from any
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creative and Innovative policy and meanwhile the right knew it was a myth
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but they used that myth to then uh bully governments all around the world to to
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shift from being a mediator in that conflict to being an agent of capital and as an agent of capital they then you
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know privatized and outsourced and imposed user pay systems uh uh cut
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public spending uh and and basically gave the right a party and uh you know
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they were partying on this and what what effectively happened was that the right reconfigured government in their to to
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for their own agenda and told everybody else that oh no the government had to do
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this because it would run out of money and that’s that’s sort of where we’re are where we’re still to die I think that’s all a a lot and
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important and we’re going to get into the details there just quickly to the point about identity politics I made my
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bones uh in many respects in journalism by critiquing the left liberals
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adaptation of identity to Politics as a sort of um distraction or a um veneer
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which disguises the extent to which they are completely out of touch and perhaps disinterested in um at on some b level
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uh class politics and meeting the class needs the economic needs of all the various identity groups that they have
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focused on I I might choose to frame it as being identity Poli being used as a
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shield as instead of being an actual distraction um I do wonder how much you
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think the shift away from substantive class politics was really because people sort of forgot about them and found
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identity politics more appealing or how much it was a concertive decision to
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realign um a there there’s a narrative um that says that’s kind of largely
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plotted out by the power memo of the 1970s that says there’s an understanding that given the shifts in the way
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advertising works the rise of Television the uh Power that television advertising
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now has means that if the left wants to succeed if liberals if Democratic party in the United States wants to succeed
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then they have to also be currying favor with the large institutions that will give them enough money to compete in
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that ad space and so then if you are going to be constructively taking the same money uh from the same sources as
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Republicans are how do you distinguish yourself and you do that via focusing on identity politics which don’t actually
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implicate any of the underlying class terms um I want to give you a a chance
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to to respond to that if you disagree at
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all I don’t I don’t necessarily disagree but and I think say in the US the power
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Manifesto in 1971 was incredibly powerful uh and that demonstrated how
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well organized and well funded the right in the political Spectrum had become and
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and I think you know for an ordinary citizen out there just going to work every day uh the the formation of those
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uh crazy media compan you know like Fox and sky and all of these things that was
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a well-designed strategy and the the development of think tanks that were masquerading as you know independent
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research centers pumping out propaganda that that looked as though it was coming
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from authoritative research but it was just basically ideological
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propaganda and uh you know the invasion of the schooling system uh uh into
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influencing curriculum and uh so you know they worked out that if you start at age five and between 5 and 10 and
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into secondary school you know you can influence uh condition people’s thinking and so you know that’s what happened and
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uh so if you think for the average citizen you know it’s pretty hard if you’re just making ends meet going to
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work every morning and coming home at night with a big mortgage you’re getting berad in the evening news the morning
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news in your newspaper you read at lunchtime uh with this sort of stuff so I think that’s that definitely happened
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it was organized and well well designed I mean these research institutes these think
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tanks were really marketing organizations they weren’t research centers and I think that that that makes
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it really hard for an average citizen to to know what’s going on and and at the same
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time inflation was the F for the first time in many decades had become a real
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problem for all of us and you know that made the cost of living pressures uh really substantial
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and so thinking about higher order things were was not really easy for uh
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the ordinary citizen but I think also the left
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uh the the left bought the the spin uh they the the left has always felt
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insecure on economic matters uh because the right say we’re the representatives
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of business and you know we know what’s best for the economy and the left has
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always behind being sort of behind the eightball on those issues in particularly in English-speaking
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countries and so when the when when monetarism came along Milton
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fredman’s
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monitormusicpatternphotographyproductssci employment Etc that that was unsustainable the left had no real
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intellectual capacity to to fight against that and so to salvage their
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academic Pride they became interested in um you
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know I went to conferences as a young Progressive in the’ 70s into political
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economy conferences and all the talk was feminism race Herman
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methodology and all of that stuff and uh and and the analysis of class economic
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class had just gone and uh you know that evolved into an idea that oh class is
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irrelevant now you know we we we’re differentiated more by these these identity distinctions and you know and I
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sat in conferences where uh women would get up and women bosses in corporations
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would be speaking at Progressive conferences and the women in the audience the workers would would think
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that they had more in common with the the CEO who was a boss or the supervisor
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who was a a boss or a woman than they had with the other men on the on the
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assembly line and you know this this is what happened to the left and they got
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distracted by that yeah I want to ask you about how that happened because I I see that as more of a void that existed
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and people filling it with other very important things like uh a racial apartheid system here in the United
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States of America or deep gender disparities I don’t fault anybody for talking about those in the void but it
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seems to me that the crucial problem is the left’s insecurity talking about economic issues not the existence of
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deeply important R issues like racial and gender segregation and in um inequity in the workplace housing
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markets and beyond that of course have a economic bent to them as well the March on Washington um the Civil Rights march
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on Washington was a March for jobs and freedom right it was an economics March and it wasn’t just an accident that the
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racial Legacy of that is carried on and valorized in our history it was a choice
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to try to segregate a class the class aspect of those movements the communism
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and socialism that so often came in tandem with black liberation movements in the United States of America from the
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identity aspects of those movements to neuter them in these interesting ways so speak to me you you’ve alluded to this
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um Capital labor conflict and how at least in this postwar era there did seem
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to be a kind of Victory um for Labor uh we saw the emergence of all of what we
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consider to date our most basic and Lasting social safety night protection
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station net protections um an 8- hour workday Social Security
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Medicaid programs like that uh but you write in the book that that was sort of
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a AIC victory that wasn’t necessarily the result of the kind of Labor power
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struggle uh that the left believes is the narrative that we sort of embrace
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today what how would you complicate how we understand the postwar victories of the
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left yeah I mean just go just to go back to the
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identity issue just don’t get me wrong those issues were are extremely important for society to
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evolve and I and I think the point you make about the March was that that did
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have a class aspect to it an economic class aspect to it as well as an identity issue as well as a race type
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issue in the United States context and I think it what happened was event through
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the 70s and the 80s that Nexus got got got lost and uh the focus became just on
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identity and and and separate from class now going back to the postc world war
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period I think one of the important things that defined that period was the
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beginning of the Cold War and uh the the the fear you
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know the second world war was really a complicated effect Fair between you know
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communism and capitalism as well as between ideologies and and Nations and
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uh the sort of narrative that America won the war for us is is not exactly
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correct uh because probably the second world war was won by mistakes made by
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Hitler on the Eastern front with Russia and uh you know the the bad
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winter and uh spreading troops too far and not being able to make progress uh
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in in the East and the the fierce fighting of the Russian soldiers who you know who knew their their terrain better
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than the Germans in the Dreadful winter that that that last winter and you know
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there were fears you know Churchill who was you know the big big player in in
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the west at the time you know he he had plans to Mar to continue the March into and and uh
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run through to over Stalin and of course sty the fears were that Stalin had the
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opposite Ambitions and would uh keep marching to the west and uh spread
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communism into into Western Europe and I think the the West did fear had had
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great fears of the spread of Communism you know in Australian uh foreign policy was was
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dominated by this Theory called the domino theory that China communist China
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would March progressively through Vietnam Cambodia Philippines down
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through and take over all of the the English speak you New Zealand and Australia and there were this communism
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was you know at the end of the second world war everyone was uh terrified in the west of Communism you know and
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that’s that in America that that’s spawned the party uh travesties or scandals or
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whatever you want you know disgraces whatever you want to call it and the purging of Communists in throughout the
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West in important positions and and so that conditioned
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the way in which not only not only that but also the Great Depression also
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demonst you know in the 1930s uh created a break in economic
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thinking because up until you know at the early stage of the 1930s the
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dominant economic Paradigm said that all just cut workers wages and employment
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will rise and uh of course that made matters worse in the early 30s and and it wasn’t
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really until the prosecution of the second world war where government spending was very substantial that governments learned and
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and of course in the meantime John mayard canes had written had published his book in 1936 that really red defined economic
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theory uh to give a fundamental role to the nation state as a a ball walk
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against the sort of vagaries and fluctuations of capitalism and uh so by
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the prosecution of the second world war really taught governments that if they spend big they can create employment and
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prosper material prosperity and so you put the that knowledge together the
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question in 1945 was how do we do that with when we’re not building tanks and
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missiles and equipping troops to fight each other how do we maintain that in
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the peace and the way they maintain the vision that they formed was that they
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would build Bridges and schools and hospitals and and uh have public sector
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employment and you know and generally uh deal with M the peace time Prosperity
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that way but also the of Communism was significant in the west and they knew
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that uh uh the appeal of Marxism was uh was strong among workers because you
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know workers in uh uh pre-war factories weren’t exactly
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uh uh dealt with uh good occupational health and safety conditions and good
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pay and you know the oppressive nature of capitalism hadn’t been dealt with by then and so they knew that that if they
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didn’t deal with those issues and give workers some stake in the growing
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Prosperity then they would could be uh lured away to Marxist thinking through
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their Trade union organizations through their uh other workingclass
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organizations and in America through through racial identity and uh and if
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they didn’t so if they didn’t give some stop to their workers then there could
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be dangerous destabilization of capitalism and and capital sort of understood that too that they had to
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give some material stake to to the working class
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or else their hedgy might be threatened and I think that that sort of more
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balanced view on both sides of the conflict and the fact that the
24:59
governments PL sort of walked the walked the tight route between the two competing interests and gave something
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to workers and something to Capital through procurement contracts and you know the development in of the military
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industrial State and all of that that that defined that postwar Peri immediate
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post-war period and and that fear of Communism can’t be
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understated so then what happen uh why is it that that when there was a uh
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economic crisis in the 1970s the OPEC crisis that you alluded to there wasn’t
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a and correct me if I wrong this is the wrong way to frame it a kind of Kian response that the left could adopt that
25:44
could offer a solution to how to address the problem without leaning into the
25:50
austerity politics that have defined the neoliberal era which followed
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well the problem was that because because typically prior to the 1970s if
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you had any inflationary pressures you had low higher low
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unemployment and when you had high unemployment in the short periods that
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we had had fluctuations where unemployment Rose there was never an inflation problem and so keesy in theory
26:30
had really constructed inflation as an excessive spending problem when unemployment was very low you know in
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technical the technical stuff was the Phillips curve that said that if you had
26:43
high inflation you had low unemployment and vice versa and so the
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inflation theory that Keynesian had in their head was it must be something to do with high demand High
26:56
spending now and so when the when the OPEC situation came along and it was a
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cost cost shock not a demand a pressure issue it was it was just purely because
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the supply side had become extremely expensive overnight and uh the the Technologies in
27:16
place were all dependent on the product that had become very expensive and that is oil uh the kanen academics really
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didn’t know how to deal with that they were a little bit uh lost in in the debate and uh now the
27:33
ones who knew what had what was going on were the Marxist economists uh and they
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they knew they knew well that uh distributional struggles so so
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effectively what OPEC presented the world and this class conflict was a
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question as to who was going to take the real income loss from the imported oil
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uh price Rises because that meant that more of national income had to be devoted to imported oil and less could
28:04
be distributed to wages and profits and so the question then was well who was going to take that loss and of course by
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the by the early 70s uh trade unions were still quite
28:18
powerful were very powerful and of course uh uh corporations had become
28:24
more uh industry become more concentrated with very large powerful
28:29
corporations and both of those powerful bodies on either side of the struggle
28:35
had had the capacity to inflict damage on each other and so the question as to
28:40
who was going to take the real income loss was H was a battle and uh firms
28:46
were trying to get margin push to to protect themselves from the past the or
28:51
costs on and of course there was real wage resistance from the the the working
28:57
side in the form of you know nominal wage demands to protect themselves from those price Rises and that’s what
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created the inflation and the kin had no no no real understanding of that type
29:11
of dynamic and uh that that that gave them a credibility gap in the debate in the
29:18
early 70s and meanwhile uh Milton fredman and his Chicago gang were had
29:25
had were developing you know they and the power Manifesto on the industry side
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they were all coming together with this narrative that oh the kany era was just spend spend spend look what it’s done uh
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you know when I was uh when I was still at high school all of the debates in Australia were about Trade union
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power uh corporate you know all of the the the media debates were trade unions
29:52
have become too powerful we’ve got to do something about it now the the the kein
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had no answer to any of that to power I’m sorry to interrupt but too P the the
30:04
implication is that the power of the trade unions caused oil prices to rise I mean what was the logic behind rooting
30:11
the crisis and the power of the trade unions well see that that was in the the
30:19
this the fight back of capital began before OPC OPC became a
30:26
convenient convenient uh scap coat episode that yeah yeah that that sort of
30:33
ratified what they were already talking about you know with the power Manifesto in the late 60s you know fredman was
30:39
saying no we wages are too powerful you know uh are growing too fast and and and
30:46
so that was the struggle was already happening but too powerful for what what
30:52
before OPEC what was the negative consequence of wages grow growing essensially in the
31:00
1960s well the profit share was getting squeezed and uh and uh you know the
31:08
business so it was the crisis of capital it was yeah okay there was a the
31:14
discussion in the 60s was Trade union power and rate of return on
31:19
Capital and uh and and the the Full Employment era forced Capital to share
31:25
some of the booty and give it to work workers in the form of increased wages and and uh conditions of work safety and
31:34
all of the occupational issues and and eventually that became a you know
31:39
Capital became paranoid that they were their rate of return was getting squeeze too much and so they wanted to work out
31:46
a way that they could restore their their rate of return and grow it and the
31:52
only way they could do that was to run these narratives about Trade union power
31:58
squeezing them out of control Communists all of this stuff I guess what I’m getting at is it
32:05
seems it seems like that narrative would be would have no appeal to anyone except for the small percentage of Americans
32:14
who are capitalists and who not who aren’t wage workers so you know how how
32:21
are they selling it at that point I mean I get when OPEC happens that everyone is impacted by high fuel cost and people
32:28
are looking for someone to blame for that but prior to that I I’m really struggling with because with how the now
32:37
predominant narrative that spending is the problem um that the national debt is
32:44
like a household budget and inflation is being caused by um uh a lack of
32:52
thriftiness on the national level um that all of these things I I I understand that they how they are kind
32:58
of entrenched now but in a period of time where a different economic model
33:04
was predominant and uring to the benefit of working people the way it was in the
33:10
late 60s it’s hard for me to comprehend how the arguments that were so uh iner
33:15
to today took hold in the first place like who who was who was who was buying it
33:22
who was how was this pitch appealing to working people well remember that you know there
33:27
was a shift on the working people Side Of The Ledger after the war because you
33:34
know we created a middle class in our countries there previously hadn’t really
33:39
been a middle class and uh we also hadn’t hadn’t experienced an
33:47
era of mass consumption like we did from the 1950s you know all of those
33:52
advertisements on the TV shows with the the the housewife
33:58
reflecting the era uh with the new Kelvinator fridge and the new uh
34:06
stove and all of the stuff that you just you know and and the the the
34:11
introduction of TV uh into our families in the 50s well
34:16
in Australia it was the 60s but you know just continually being bered by this
34:21
middle class Mass consumption narrative and reality and uh
34:27
and and of course that was made possible by the the
34:33
development of credit and so credit cards and you know big mortgages evolved
34:39
as being important parts of our lives and uh uh so if you’re a middle class
34:45
person you know you you don’t no longer associate and trade unions were even though they were quite powerful they
34:51
were starting to lose traction because the middle class were less interested in trade unions and the industrial working
34:59
class and I think you know that that that that Evolution into a
35:06
materially well-off middle class uh with debt hanging out Mortgage Debt uh that
35:13
created a dynamic that uh uh Capital could introduce these scaring tactics
35:19
that oh you know you if if if if governments spend too much you’ll be
35:25
taxed the taxes will rise and uh you know you don’t want you’re a hardworking
35:30
American a hardworking Australian you don’t want the government to be on your back with these huge tax increases and
35:37
and but and you know as we said the power
35:42
Manifesto and the related developments all around the world that were spawned by capital and financed by Capital they
35:49
were strategic they they they exploited that middle class Mass
35:56
consumption uh status of our families you know I in
36:04
those days people would say you know as I was at University oh well I think the
36:09
work there you know you you can’t talk about the working class anymore we we’re actually evolved beyond that you know
36:16
we’re we’re middle class aspiring entrepreneurs you know people were
36:21
bought all that I I was on a panel not long ago where a young 18-year-old she was the uh Youth of the
36:28
year in New South Wales which is the state of Australia she got up and said there’s no workers anymore we’re all
36:35
entrepreneurs now that sort of evolution began in the 70s that’s how it
36:42
happened okay so this is this is great so I want you to move us forward a little bit because one of the more novel
36:49
arguments novel to me I’m sure uh perhaps not no to other people uh who
36:54
are more familiar with the field is the way you Center
37:00
globalization and nationalism as kind of uh competing
37:08
ideologies and framing nationalism specifically as a an ideology that has
37:14
opportunities for the left as opposed to one that is more commonly framed especially in Contemporary American
37:21
discourse as um necessarily right-wing uh regressive uh bigoted uh xenophobic
37:30
and the like um you make an argument about globalization occurring in the
37:37
broad left acquiescing to it as an inevitability when the reality is that
37:43
they should have been making the case for nationalism a a a focus on the role
37:49
the nation state could play in using spending to create public goods can you
37:54
unpack unpack that for us yeah I me that’s very interesting
38:02
um the the the the argu I mean the left has always believed in sort of an
38:09
international perspective you know there’s this movements about cosmopolitanism and uh uh going Beyond
38:17
you know creating an international workingclass
38:22
solidarity and uh you know you go back to the 19th century and there were efforts to build the so-called great
38:29
Internationals and they all failed uh and and were reduced to you
38:37
know chaos in the attempts of organ international organization
38:43
and you know you can see it today in the the way in which the left supports the
38:50
the EUR European Union for example now the European Union is the is the most
38:56
advanced for form of neoliberalism uh it’s the most advanced
39:01
form of anti-left uh procedure and ideology and it’s even built neoliberalism into its
39:09
actual legal structures which you know America and Australia and other countries haven’t done the European
39:16
Union has built neoliberalism into its treaty structure which is intrinsic legal
39:21
framework but the left still hang on to it and say oh we’ll just reform it
39:26
because it’s their expression of of cosmopolitanism and
39:32
internationalism and uh and for them and there was sort of reason for them to
39:37
doing uh believing all of that because for them the focus on the
39:44
nation is xenophobic as you said that it that it’s it breeds U it breeds uh
39:51
Marshal conflict it breeds uh you know uh military type
39:58
conflicts uh it believe it breeds um racism and uh this is what you know and
40:06
attitudes about immigration that are negative and all all of this stuff and and it breeds fascism
40:14
ultimately you know and and I think a lot of the left thinking still is terribly influenced by what happened in
40:21
the second world war with the sort of uh the Reich in Germany you know the
40:27
the supremacy of the white the Aran and all of that sort of stuff uh has
40:34
influenced all of that now my view on all that is that nationalism is a
40:39
Scourge nationalism as described you know as a superiority of a of a race uh
40:47
is a Scourge and the left should never Broach it and pro and never will I don’t
40:52
think uh but you’ve also got to understand the
40:58
idea of a currency and uh the power of the the the
41:04
a government currency uh and what it and and this is where we talk about mmt of course modern
41:11
monetary Theory this sort of my work and that
41:17
uh there there is a you know the government’s currency is
41:22
incredibly powerful and and and it has to be used in a way to to advance
41:28
prosperity and and illuminate our you know take us
41:34
Beyond just where’s our food coming from into higher order things you know like
41:39
education and philosophy and art and uh the higher order things that we can deal
41:46
with once we’ve satis we’ve been able to find food for for our
41:52
families and uh then the question then is well what gives that currency legit
41:57
imacy and uh you can’t have a worldwide currency it wouldn’t work uh because
42:04
what gives it legitimacy is a concept called like demos a demos you know a
42:11
coherent a coherent group of people that are willing to work together to look
42:16
after each other uh simply stated you don’t think that’s possible in a global I mean I’m
42:23
not trying to be naive or polanish about how we are from that point today
42:29
obviously do you think it’s impossible to conceive of a kind of global
42:36
Community look I think right now it’s impossible I think look I think we can
42:41
have a global Community to deal with to deal with some things that that are on
42:47
the right scale to deal with across borders like climate change and uh and
42:53
uh R you know rule of law type rights treating people who you know boat people
42:59
you know Australia is obsessed with boat people coming from from Asia so I think
43:04
we those things should be dealt with on an international scale with International agreements but I do not
43:11
think that culturally and historically and uh
43:17
linguistically we’re we we see each other
43:22
as in international terms uh I think we see it CH as as a
43:29
national demos and uh the the the question then and that gives you know I don’t in
43:37
Europe for example it’s a classic case because they’ve got a common currency in 20 of the 27 states of the European
43:45
Union and you saw it during the global financial crisis how reluctant Germany
43:52
and France and the northern wealthy States were to provide unconditional
44:00
trans fiscal transfers to Greece and Portugal and
44:05
Spain you know and and there all of the negative uh race attitudes came out
44:13
during that era you know the Germans talking about those proplate you know
44:19
lat Latinos down south and uh um I think
44:25
that demonstrates that there isn’t a paying demos a similar argument is often made in the United States a diverse
44:33
multiethnic multi-racial multi-religious pluralistic country where race has in
44:39
fact differences between people identity differences between people have been used to divide the working class very
44:46
purposefully so to the extent that there is truth to your argument isn’t that
44:52
also an argument against the uh the nation state being a
44:57
vessel for the kind of spinning and social up up uplift that you’re recommending on a nation’s on the basis
45:04
of a Nation yeah I think look America is an interesting an interesting country
45:11
because it does have those type of complexities that are a little bit different in other englishspeaking
45:18
countries but here’s a question for you if if I went
45:23
to let me say if I went to Mississippi some town in
45:30
Mississippi and I asked I asked somebody you know what
45:36
what were what are you do you think that they would say that they were
45:42
Americans well of course yeah of course they would say they were Americans now
45:47
they if they they wouldn’t if I went to Europe and I went down to a to a a Greek
45:55
Village and I said well where are you from they would the first question wouldn’t be they were from Europe they
46:01
would say they were from some small little community in Greece and and so America has been able
46:10
to evolve even though there’s all of these Regional differences and language differences you know if I go down to
46:16
Tennessee I can’t I can’t understand what they’re saying when I go visit
46:22
towns in Tennessee in the past and and there’s all these Regional different is
46:27
that’s true but but because of your history you’ve been able to unite a
46:32
nation as America well I would I mean that’s that’s so complicated right I
46:38
mean I I take your broader point to be that the the power of currency the point that
46:44
I am sorry if I interrupted but the power of currency comes from a sense of a deos and that we are it’s kind of a
46:51
well maybe I’ll just go ahead and let you finish your point because I do think this has some pretty significant implications because the kind of of
46:58
um I don’t know keian state that we briefly had where there was spending
47:05
that did create a middle class and a period that many Americans look to as a
47:11
kind of house on period of American History was contingent on huge swads of
47:17
the American public not being able to benefit from that social contract and when there was greater equality Racial
47:24
equality and other kinds of equality that gave people broad access to that
47:30
social contract at that point those social benefits began to be Stripped Away largely with an argument that you
47:35
shouldn’t be giving away this nice free stuff to poor undeserving people so it’s difficult for me to see to the extent
47:42
that America has succeeded or failed in that effort how that is so different
47:47
than what would end up happening on a global
47:53
scale the the the point I’m making is that
47:59
federal states like Australia and and America and
48:05
Canada uh those countries yeah they have
48:10
they have poverty they have uh uh disadvantaged groups they have uh
48:16
Regional differences but they have broadly been able to accept that they’re a nation and
48:24
that there is a federal government and the federal government represents everybody now for an individual in those
48:32
States someone in in the Southern States of America who’s who’s uh uh black or a
48:39
Native American uh out in some of those uh uh
48:45
settlements you know they they are less enamored with that Prospect but they
48:51
they they still see themselves as part of the American Experience
48:57
erence and uh uh you know in whenever there’s a military conflict the the
49:05
poorer Americans go to the into the army and represent America and of course the
49:12
elites uh treat treat those disadvantaged American soldiers as fod
49:19
but that’s beside the point they they see themselves as broadly belonging to
49:25
America and part of the American American Experience whereas in Europe for example the the Greeks and the spa
49:34
Spaniards their their cultural history has been so so strong and Rich that they
49:41
don’t really identify as Europeans first and foremost and the reason why why
49:48
Europe is in such a mess is because of that that they still they still see
49:53
themselves as belonging to this the demos like Spain or Italy and that they
50:00
haven’t become Europeans in in the same way as we’re Australians and EUR
50:05
Americans it’s a different type of evolution help me understand connected
50:12
to the point that you were M making about the how currency works and why you
50:18
don’t believe currency will work on a uh a a global level um with through the
50:25
lens of mmt well because if you if you want to have
50:31
a Global Currency you’ve got to have a single government and a single a single
50:36
central bank now do you really believe that the Americans are going
50:41
to who’s going to be who where’s that going to be located who’s going to make
50:47
decisions just to be clear I you’re not making a case based on how economic system works economic systems work but
50:54
rather on the contemporary political realities of a divided world and Nations
51:00
who have clear economic advantage over the others that they wouldn’t want to sublimate themselves and create uh
51:07
disadvantage themselves politically Vis A other countries which is not disputable but I I I thought you were
51:12
making perhaps a different point when you first brought up the idea that you know leftist think internationally and
51:18
that is an impossibility well an improbability or something that you have to fight for is a different thing than
51:23
an impossibility an impossibility I think of something as that something that might be precluded by the real
51:28
realities of how markets work or something like that as opposed to I think the LEF is as they aspire to a
51:36
degree of internationalism the reason isn’t the you know they understand it’s
51:41
aspirational and that it’s a fight but that they believe that it’s a fight worth having because ultimately if the
51:47
argument is that America is only able to
51:53
provide benefits through SP spending mmt style spending at the expense of the
51:59
rest of the world the way so many of the benefits that befall the West are at the direct expense of the rest of the world
52:07
then it’s not worth it that’s not really what our objective is as as leftists
52:16
right I mean you’re getting to the nub of it that uh I don’t believe that you can do that within a capitalist system
52:23
because the the capitalist the capitalist system is an exploitative
52:29
system across National boundaries and and you know there’s no way that uh the
52:35
first world industrial and financial Elites are going to say well let’s let’s
52:41
uh share all of this power with the African nations for example that we’re
52:46
that we’re busily uh exploiting in an extractive way to extract their wealth
52:52
and bring it into the first world I mean there’s just no way that that’s that
52:57
that’s not a reality that’s that’s possible and uh within a capitalist so
53:02
why how how me you explain then because you write that um neoliberalism has a
53:08
war against sovereignty and it seems to position sovereignty um which is perhaps a better
53:13
word than nationalism given the valences of nationalism um should be something
53:21
that’s embraced by the left because it is something that would allow you to
53:28
spend domestically do the mmt have the uplift of the working class do the
53:33
redistributional stuff all of that all of those things but are you then in in in these passages making an argument for
53:40
improvements within capitalism that are stepping apart from what your main argument might otherwise be which is
53:48
endian capitalism altogether progressing past it well well both um I mean personally I
53:57
think we and I think I’ve evolved that was written in 2017 and I’ve evolved as well since
54:05
then uh I mean my current position now is that the climate challenge is so so
54:14
immediate that I don’t think it can be solved within a system that
54:20
prioritizes private profit as being the the the guide to how we do you know
54:26
allocate resources I don’t think we can continue that way but that’s
54:32
but the other side of the story is that we have we have seen a Taming of
54:40
capitalism in that 19 postwar period second world war period and we did that because people
54:48
were forced their governments through Democratic processes to be
54:56
become a mediator rather than an agent for Capital now the argument in that book was that
55:04
we’ve we’ve the left should be focusing on that issues those issues uh first and
55:11
foremost to restore the to to take control of our governments again uh now I’ve evolved into thinking
55:20
that the climate change the climate challenges moving so quickly now
55:27
now uh that we’re we’re facing an existentialist
55:32
position uh that that really means we’ve got to not just reclaim the state but
55:40
also evolve the system of production and ownership that’s where I’m at today this
55:46
is this is what’s so interesting I would love to hear more specifics about what that looks like because what was so
55:51
compelling to me about what you’ve written here is that the diagnosis of how left political parties in America
56:00
and in Europe specifically consciously sort of abandoned what should have been their
56:06
role which is to make the case for resisting the what you describe as
56:11
macroeconomic myths that were being pushed by corporatists the pow mimal
56:18
crew and all of those and you you you’re right to make matters worse most
56:24
leftists have bought into the macroeconomic myth The Establishment uses to discourage any alternative use
56:29
of State fiscal uh capacities uh for example they have accepted without question the so-called household budget
56:36
analogy which suggests that currency issuing governments like households are financially constrained and that fiscal
56:41
def deficits impose crippling debt burdens on future Generations a notion that you go on to th debunk later in the
56:48
book you you seem to offer that there is a different direction that the left
56:54
should go and different priorities that the left should be talking about even in this moment um and you write elsewhere
57:01
how uh that the choice that the left made at this crucial juncture in the in the 70s basically um here’s I love this
57:10
quot quote effectively reduces the left to the role of defender of the status quo that’s allowing the political right
57:16
to he he hegemonize the legitimate anti-st systemic and specifically
57:21
anti-eu grievances of citizens this is tantamount to relinquishing the discursive and political Battleground for a post neoliberal hemony so
57:29
basically what so many of us on the left have observed that the right is able to capture a kind of a genu genuine
57:36
populist sentiment a kind of American first sentiment a kind of anti-globalization sentiment that
57:41
doesn’t get recognized as authentic or legitimate by the um liberal media of
57:47
political class because it is entwined with a lot of jingoism and xenophobia and racism and things like that but in
57:54
the absence of the left of liberals making an affirmative argument for left populism and in fact affirmatively
58:01
working to crush left populist movements like the one Advanced by Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbin that you are
58:08
effectively again creating this void that irreducibly is going to lead people increasingly to the right so you know is
58:16
this just a case of you saying yeah the solutions we know the solutions are there in terms of winning these more
58:22
immediate political battles including the ones that would have dramatic impacts on on an issue as important as
58:27
climate change but the liberal political class is simply unwilling to make those
58:32
moves simply unwilling to take those stands because of whatever moneyed interests political interests Etc keep
58:40
them keep them keep them from wanting to embrace the kind of U left populist
58:47
politics yeah I mean that that’s that’s it uh you know I mean we can’t discount the
58:54
fact that the financial resources that are on the right are substantially greater than the financial resources on
59:00
the left and the control of media and uh is substantially in biased towards the
59:08
right uh but but even saying that you know if you think back to
59:15
the the um 209 British
59:22
election uh every everybody thought that U you know Corbin would get completely
59:29
demolished but he didn’t do too badly and uh and one of the reasons for that
59:35
is he he gained a lot of the youth vot and uh the question then was well
59:41
you know Murdoch’s Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid press were incredibly against
59:48
Corbin as they are against any Progressive notion but they didn’t have Traction in
59:55
that election and the reason why the youth vote favored a sort of much more optimistic
1:00:02
Progressive agenda was because of the role of social media and because the youth read the
1:00:09
youth get their politics from social media not from buying a a a newspaper
1:00:15
from Murdoch in the morning which historically has been the way in which the popular
1:00:24
popular uh message get out and so you know that’s a very optimistic thing for the left in my view uh but then you get
1:00:32
you know the Takeover of uh the Takeover of the social media by by characters
1:00:38
like musk and uh uh and Facebook has be you know they’ve become agents of the
1:00:45
right again and uh uh I I think I think
1:00:50
my view on all of that is that the the left is really underfunded
1:00:57
uh is a complex is a complex structure the left is a much more complex
1:01:02
structure than the right the right is a single message that we just want to
1:01:07
maintain power for for profit and uh the left is much more
1:01:13
complicated it’s an intellectual much more intellectual uh
1:01:18
organizations uh they worry about philosophy and and complex issues about
1:01:24
identity I mean there’s a there’s a way I can describe the right project in much more complex terms as well if I chose to
1:01:31
and I could also describe the left project as wanting to maintain power for the people the same way that you frame the right pro project is wanting to mean
1:01:38
uh Power for profit no yeah now I agree with that but uh some some somewhere
1:01:45
along the the line um the right can uh narrow their message down and and fund
1:01:52
fund a very targeted message whereas the left gets get caught up in inene battles
1:01:59
and philosophical battles and what have you and uh are less less well funded and
1:02:06
less able to direct their message that’s that’s a I think that’s a big difference
1:02:11
uh the the left become sort of like a shotgun whereas the right become much
1:02:16
more targeted like a rifle and I hate to use uh military type analogies but
1:02:23
that’s that’s that’s the point that the left are much more sophist sophisticated
1:02:29
intellectually in my view in the way in which they Pro progress their politics
1:02:34
and that’s been a disadvantage well you know I think the point about money seems to be the big
1:02:40
one it seems to be the real elephant in the room and the measurable difference
1:02:45
between the two political factions I don’t actually know that I agree I I have a hard time looking at the
1:02:50
coordinated success of the what I’ve come to just refer to as the PO memo
1:02:56
strategy uh over the last 50 years and call that an unsophisticated operation
1:03:02
to look at the proliferation of think tanks as you’ve alluded to conservative think tanks and media institutions that
1:03:09
hold themselves out as um uh organic and
1:03:15
uh Grassroots when in fact they are astroturfed and deeply funded I can’t
1:03:21
help but look at the um uh consistent right-wing bent of uh
1:03:30
media ownership from a Elon Musk to Murdoch to
1:03:37
Jeff Bezos all the way down and see that the real Advantage the right has is that they interests in line with they are in
1:03:44
fact the vessel for corporate interests and any genuine left is going to be an antithetical to those and the Democratic
1:03:49
party has bought into those same corporate interests and so there simply is not there is simply just an enormous
1:03:55
asym between how much funding you know a leftist podcast like mine is going to
1:04:01
get versus bench Heros there are there’s an entire country that is very invested
1:04:07
in Ben Shapiro advancing a particular message right now given Global events right yep oh absolutely I mean you know
1:04:15
the the the the right have the power of of corporate money and the left
1:04:20
typically run cake stores to raise money at on Saturday morning at sport events
1:04:26
you know whatever they run their cake stores and their Raffles and their you
1:04:31
know they they raise pennies whereas the brothers donate billions and that
1:04:37
that’s always been the case and that’s uh and and that’s because the
1:04:42
brothers represent the power Elites and the cake stores represent you and I as
1:04:47
the citizens and we don’t have any particular power uh but the the real the
1:04:53
real problem also is that money has infiltrated our political systems such
1:05:00
that the labor parties or the Democrat Party in America relies on that that
1:05:05
money too to prosecute their political efforts and that compromises them and
1:05:12
that’s the pro that’s a the the big main political parties are totally compromised by corporate money so how
1:05:20
then you know do we go about reclaiming the state given those realities I mean
1:05:25
right here in the end of your chapter 1 summary um as to where this book is going you say after describing the
1:05:32
problem um and how we’ve basically bifurcated our politics into a reactionary nationalism and a
1:05:38
progressive globalism globalism being a problem the reactionary nationalism being a problem as well um how do we
1:05:45
find our way through you say need it be this way as we argue in the second part of this book a progressive emancipatory
1:05:51
vision of national sovereignty that offers a radical alternative to both the right and the neoliberals one based on
1:05:57
popular sovereignty Democratic control over the economy full employment social justice redistribution from the rich to
1:06:03
the poor inclusivity and the socioecological transformation of production in society is possible help
1:06:11
us help us Professor Mitchell to understand give us some glimmer of hope how is this possible especially since
1:06:17
we’re all sitting here in the middle in America the middle of a of a uh election season we’re being presented with two
1:06:23
options that we’ve all had before we’re not excited about the first time around neither of which presents that middleway
1:06:29
through yeah I mean possible doesn’t mean timely you know and and I’ve always seen
1:06:37
my role as a left scholar as being to educate so you
1:06:43
know it the the the changes that we now see the
1:06:49
neoliberal program didn’t emerge overnight anyway the neoliberalism took
1:06:55
30 years or 40 years to evolve into its current form and it took a long time to
1:07:04
you know those think tanks and the media barrage that that occurred it took years
1:07:09
to to change the debate and go from a
1:07:15
sort of collective vision of society to us seeing it ourselves as just
1:07:20
individuals you know that that that so social change evolves Much More Much More slowly than we think and
1:07:28
uh and what what the progressive Vision requires is a
1:07:35
re-education and you know my little my I see my role my little part of that story
1:07:42
is being an educator to educate people on Modern monetary Theory and to give
1:07:47
them a vision that give them knowledge and and Empower them with a notion that
1:07:54
when the government spend it’s not going to tax you you know uh out of existence
1:08:00
it’s uh it’s not going to run out of money it does have uh these capacities
1:08:05
that can help you then that’s a small part of the story uh and education
1:08:12
typically takes a generation to make some social changes now I think we’re pushing uphill
1:08:19
but that’s the why I see it well let me ask you about that though if I can because I remember during the Bernie
1:08:25
campaign I I I worked I worked on the Bernie campaign I remember there was this tension between how much we were
1:08:30
going to lean into mmt talk about mmt or whether that was too big a lift in the
1:08:37
context of an abbreviated campaign cycle to convince the public that I’m not some
1:08:43
crazy Looney socialist um or you know I’m just a normal Social Democrat kind
1:08:49
of socialist uh and you know and that we could we all know that we the government
1:08:56
doesn’t have to tax topend but let’s just provide the public with a tax plan
1:09:03
that could pay for these policies because you know we’re going to get banged on every MSNBC appearance with
1:09:09
well how are you going to pay for it because that’s that’s the neoliberal way to say that we would all like to have good things we’re just really the same
1:09:16
I’m just the Practical party he knows that we have to pay for things so I wonder how frustrated you are about the
1:09:23
framing that has been adopted by so many of us on the left about wealth taxes and
1:09:28
the like as opposed to taking the time between campaign Cycles or even now when
1:09:34
we’re in the middle of the campaign SE season to be pushing information and education about mmt especially because
1:09:42
such a big part of the national conversation right now is about inflation in the extent to which Joe
1:09:48
Biden is responsible for it yeah I mean I’m very frustrated and uh you you you
1:09:55
you go to all of our countries you know the labor party is in government in Australia now the labor party in Britain
1:10:02
is likely to be the next government uh and and the Democrats are
1:10:09
in charge in America at the moment
1:10:15
uh the question I’ve I have in my mind is why don’t they take take advantage of
1:10:21
that uh that power base you know in 2007 the Australian labor party won a
1:10:29
landslide after after years of uh frustration with
1:10:34
the with the conservative government and once again in 2022 they won a very substantial the
1:10:42
labor party won a very substantial victory at the federal election and and
1:10:48
you know wiped out the conservatives now why didn’t they take advantage then to
1:10:54
of that significant power imbalance in in seats in
1:10:59
Parliament uh to to start re-educating the the public and
1:11:06
uh that would have that would have been entirely possible but instead they they
1:11:11
they hunkered down on the the mainstream n economic narrative and that’s terribly
1:11:18
frustrating and the same thing with Biden you know he he won a famous Victory against
1:11:24
Trump in my view why didn’t he take advantage of that to to to shift the
1:11:31
debate now the debate’s not going to shift in a big way quickly but it can shift start shifting in small ways
1:11:39
relatively quickly why didn’t these uh why didn’t they take advantage of that and and that’s because I think that
1:11:46
those parties the Social Democratic parties you know Democrats labor parties
1:11:52
whatever you want to call them uh uh have been become coopted by Capital
1:11:57
that’s the problem and until we go back and and to me the only way out of that
1:12:04
dilemma is back to Grassroots and uh you know in Australia
1:12:09
the labor party is basically an aggregation of branches local membership
1:12:17
branches and uh they effectively push the the member the the candidates for
1:12:24
election up to the National level and I think it’s the same in the Democrat Party in
1:12:30
America so effectively as US citizens we’ve got to educate ourselves and then
1:12:36
take control of the political process at the branch level at the Grassroots level
1:12:42
and then aggregate that pressure upwards there was a reason
1:12:48
why there was a reason why welfare states formed in in the early 90 early
1:12:55
20th century there’s a reason why workers formed trade unions in the late 19th century it’s because their
1:13:02
conditions of society became intolerable and I think we’re heading we’re heading
1:13:09
towards that point where citizens will will realize that their economic situation is
1:13:15
precarious uh the the the climate situation is precarious the the the
1:13:21
standards of living are declining the middle class is getting followed out again uh and and we’ve got to fight back
1:13:29
and the only way we can fight back is through local organization and that’s the only way this is going to change and that’s a
1:13:36
that takes quite a long time I know we’re well past an hour so I’m going to let you go but I did just have this
1:13:42
quick thought um I’ve been interested on a couple of recent episodes uh by guests
1:13:49
talking about the role of globalization and the appeal of the um American the
1:13:55
first movement as a consequence of a instinctive understanding I think among
1:14:00
many working people of the negative role that globalization has played and I hear you saying um that it’s going to be a
1:14:07
Grassroots effort I would argue that the two major political parties are completely captured and third party
1:14:13
efforts are going to be uh are the most some of the most optimistic um outlets for me but I’m thinking about how Maga
1:14:22
Donald Trump was able to come out of nowhere largely with this populace messaging that was so effective and
1:14:27
wondering about the extent to which the left version of that could have a similar effect um and I wondered if if
1:14:35
you were in charge of a kind of left version of an anti-globalist messaging
1:14:41
campaign what would that what would that sound like well you know I’m I’m an
1:14:48
internationalist as well as a a localist because you know we’re I I we’re all on
1:14:54
one one planet and we’re all we’re all part of humanity and uh so you know I
1:15:01
think and that that sort of sentiment translates into you know in the book you’ll read
1:15:08
that we’re I I want the IMF and the World Bank to be uh scrapped and a new
1:15:13
multilateral institution formed so that the wealthy materially wealthy Nations
1:15:19
can make sure that that gets spread out to the the poorer material uh poorer
1:15:25
material Nations so in that sense I’m thoroughly International uh and and we’re not going
1:15:32
to solve the climate issue in in a in a uh by by going back into our
1:15:39
backyards uh but at the same time I also believe in
1:15:45
localism and uh I don’t think we’re going what the pandemic taught us I mean
1:15:50
in Australia the early days of the pandemic you know we’ve suddenly realized that we couldn’t get uh uh
1:15:58
protective medical equipment because we no longer made it we had to get it from China and the boats weren’t coming from
1:16:04
China because the factories were shut because of the pandemic and I think uh a
1:16:09
lot of a lot of people realize that uh uh by creating these very long Supply
1:16:16
chains you know Global Supply chains that we became very vulnerable in in
1:16:23
times of uh crisis uh and that that has spawned throughout
1:16:29
the world a an awareness that uh we have to shorten Supply chains again and bring
1:16:36
things back into a manageable geographically manageable uh uh spaces
1:16:44
to to insulate ourselves from those vulnerabilities so I think that you know
1:16:49
we talk about a retreat from globalism well that’s that’s that’s part of that r
1:16:54
ret treat that we’re now seeing that uh the long Supply chains leave us vulnerable but
1:17:01
moreover what we’re not seeing yet but we we’re going to have to see is that
1:17:06
one of the solutions to The Climate challenge if we can solve it and I’m not sure we can uh because social change is
1:17:14
moving more slowly than the the climate
1:17:20
is pushing us but one of the U things we’re going to have to do is bring
1:17:25
Supply chains back locally anyway uh for food security and you know
1:17:32
to to reduce our energy consumption to move into a degrowth type environment
1:17:39
and uh produce things more locally and uh uh you know that’s my narrative that uh
1:17:47
we’ve got to encourage uh a much better uh food supply chains so that we have
1:17:53
more uh um reliable and healthy food produced
1:18:00
locally and those type of things yeah I’m very interested in the kind of
1:18:07
targeting of organizations like the IMF and the World Bank I’ve seen how much
1:18:12
traction the right gets out of targeting let’s say National Security organizations or you know the FBI the
1:18:19
CIA and you know for reasons that sometimes liberals think are wrong and there’s been a weird
1:18:26
defensiveness from liberals of these organizations that historically have targeted the left and have conducted the
1:18:31
red scares that you alluded to earlier and the like but there seems to be a really natural understanding among the
1:18:37
public that these institutions are not created for the public benefit for the benefit of working-class people and it
1:18:43
it is interesting to me that while conservatives have leaned into this kind of like you know globalist um concern um
1:18:51
that’s sometimes anti-semitic coded there isn’t a kind of specific critique
1:18:57
that I’m hearing about the way that International financial institutions work to undermine their kind of
1:19:05
financial domestic financial goals or domestic Financial realities and I I am really curious to hear people who
1:19:11
understand it more come up with a sort of elevator pitch for why let’s say a
1:19:17
disgruntled independent voter should have a critique of the IMF on their lips
1:19:23
as readily as they have a crique crique of Davos or some of the other kind of benoir that you hear talked about on the
1:19:30
right yeah I mean the the I mean I’m ex I’m extremely critical of the IMF and
1:19:37
the World Bank they’ve become neoliberal institutions they were formed as part of
1:19:43
the postc world war consensus uh that you know fixed
1:19:49
exchange rates had gold convertibility and uh that was believed to be the way in which we would have Global Financial
1:19:56
stability after all of the ructions during the Great Depression and the IMF
1:20:01
was really a canian institution that was uh created to make sure that uh
1:20:08
countries that were struggling to defend their exchange rates according to the
1:20:13
the fixed exchange rate agreement would have the foreign exchange that would
1:20:18
allow them to maintain their exchange rate parodies according to the agreement
1:20:24
now when that system collapsed as it was always going to in
1:20:29
well effectively when President Nixon got on National Television in America and closed the
1:20:36
convertibility uh in August 1971 and then you know the JAMA Accords in 1975
1:20:43
ended that system forever uh the IMF didn’t have a role anymore but it reinvented itself as a
1:20:51
sort of a attack dog for neoliberalism and this is when we started to get all
1:20:56
of these very harsh conditionality programs to for to lend money to States
1:21:02
that had run out of foreign exchange it would then devastate public The public’s
1:21:08
sector uh cut funding to education and uh health care and uh uh this the the
1:21:16
whole export Le uh development ethos driven by the World Bank and the IMF of
1:21:25
there that you know you had to turn subsistence sustainable sub subsistence
1:21:30
agriculture into export L cash crops which devastated the natural environment
1:21:36
which was uh counterproductive because it just flooded the world markets with too much produce which then drove prices
1:21:43
down and and then meant that the country poor countries couldn’t pay their loans
1:21:50
to the IMF back and then you had more repressive structural adjustment programs and meanwhile back at the ranch
1:21:57
you’ve destroyed your natural ecology you’ve devastated your forests and uh
1:22:02
your soil Etc you know the IMF is uh is is a is is part of the neoliberal
1:22:09
machine and uh and and it has it has no role to play in a progressive n uh
1:22:16
International vision for for for the left in my view we’ve got to reform uh
1:22:22
scrap it and create a new instit tion that becomes a distributional
1:22:27
institution from from wealthier countries to poorer countries uh without
1:22:35
conditionality without devastating uh uh the public sector in
1:22:41
those poorer countries you know the the the neoliberal the neoliberal narrative
1:22:47
has impos this development Vision on poorer countries in in Africa and Latin
1:22:54
America America Etc Eastern Europe uh and the IMF
1:23:00
agenda and if the America and Australia had have followed that agenda back in
1:23:06
when we were poor countries developing we would have never become Advanced countries it’s
1:23:12
impossible to become an advanced country by following the IMF agenda so there
1:23:19
should be no support for those institutions from the left now I know
1:23:24
that runs contrary to what the a lot of the people in the left think but that’s that’s the
1:23:29
reality the left is very complex or much is more complex than the right as an
1:23:34
organization trying to create a collective out of all of those desperate
1:23:39
elements is quite difficult sometimes I think that’s true but sometimes I wonder if that’s just our vanity as leftist
1:23:47
wanting that to be the case because in some ways that we we have such the obvious winning argument hey most most
1:23:54
of us are workers and not capitalists most of us are closer to being homeless than we are being billionaires we have
1:24:01
all of these things in common and it’s the right that has to work over time to obscure that Reality by focusing on
1:24:07
identity to politics they’re the they’re the first identitarians they’re the ones that use racism and other forms of
1:24:14
bigotry to drive people apart and we’re playing defense on that and I think that sometimes if we played more offense on
1:24:21
our winning message then we would obviously win um but I do think the main problem is
1:24:26
that we don’t have anybody playing offense there is no political party that actually represents us because there’s
1:24:32
they’ve been so completely and thoroughly captured so is our argument really difficult or is it just that nobody’s making our argument and I agree
1:24:39
with all of that I mean uh identity has been used to divide and conquer and to
1:24:45
create and make this you know in Australia it was the labor party in 1974
1:24:52
that that introduced this term it’s probably an Australian term but do
1:24:57
blooder do blooder this was a so so not like welf Queen yeah what you know yeah
1:25:06
Welfare Queen and this is you know this was at a time when unemployment was Rising uh due to the state you know the
1:25:14
OPEC disruptions unemployment was rising and we had a bloody labor government out
1:25:20
there building this narrative and and a nomenclature terminology
1:25:25
uh uh about uh the unemployed being to blame for their condition when it was
1:25:32
obviously a systematic lack of jobs we had a we had the government of the day a progressive government building
1:25:40
this linguistic structure of doll bludgers and C Cruisers and job snobs
1:25:46
and all of this terminology that entered the Lexicon to describe unemployed who were lazy Idol and couldn’t be couldn’t
1:25:54
working you know and and and and that that that came from the left and
1:26:00
that that that distorted the whole thing and that was a divide and conquer strategy that oh us middle class
1:26:06
employed people who go to work every day we work hard for our living and look at them over there they’re not doing
1:26:13
they’re just bludging on on on uh unemployment benefit you
1:26:18
know and so identity’s always been used in that way and the left has fallen for
1:26:23
it what’s interesting I mean my only push back on some of the identity stuff is that I do feel like class identity is a
1:26:30
form of identity politics and I think being upset about identity politics
1:26:35
isn’t G to get you anywhere it’s being able to weaponize Identity for your own
1:26:41
political ends effectively and it’s not identity politics isn’t bad people have identities the the thing is you want
1:26:48
people to play into the ones that are mass movement building and create a big enough tent to actually being a to have
1:26:55
political change and that is reminding people of their class identity and so I don’t know there there I don’t think
1:27:01
that these things are mutually exclusive I do think that there’s a way that sometimes the left can harp on the
1:27:07
negative ways that liberals have weaponized identity to obscure their own complicity in
1:27:13
neoliberalism um that are alienating to groups that have only known political identity through their kind of racial
1:27:19
ethnic religious whatever identity and that you could be working with those things instead of working against them
1:27:25
and simply offering an an an additional identity that has been left by the webside which is class and Democrats
1:27:32
fundamentally will not pick up that mantle they’re they’re incentivized not to because they’re fully bought in
1:27:37
they’re fully they’re fully bought into the neoliberal project they they know better they’re not like distra I don’t
1:27:42
think they’re distracted by race I think they are cynically exploiting the reality of these other identities that
1:27:48
don’t actually cause need them to change anything about their class status or their or their um
1:27:54
I think that’s true but if you go back to the 70s the academics did become
1:28:00
distracted uh you you’re you know there’s a difference between the academic class and the activist class
1:28:06
the academics the research programs did become diverted into those issues away
1:28:12
from class away from E economic class and uh you know there was a book in 1973
1:28:18
by James Arona called the fiscal crisis of the state and that was the first statement from
1:28:24
extremely left thinking uh that the government would run out of money well the government could never run out of
1:28:30
money but it it bought that line and that influenced us so that was that was discretionary that
1:28:36
shift uh that was discretionary and I mean if you think you know we’ve now got
1:28:42
recent documents CIA documents that you know there was a boom of Continental Marxism in the 1960s and into the early
1:28:50
70s you know the the French marxists now they were doing tours of
1:28:55
America in in the the 70s and now now we
1:29:01
understand that and that completely diverted the marxists into a particular
1:29:07
way of thinking that sort of abstract uh Continental Marxist thinking and completely distorted the way in
1:29:15
which Marxist activism was was emerging in the early’ 70s now it’s now been
1:29:21
revealed and we’ve got documents that the CIA was funding those conferences and
1:29:26
tours you know because they realiz the CIA worked out that these French Continental marxists were
1:29:33
loonies and would would would so turn off people from Marxism that well why
1:29:39
not we why don’t we promote it you know I mean that seems to be what I mean that I mean that’s that that that’s kind of
1:29:46
That’s where I’ve landed and I can’t prove anything today but you look around the left media sphere and you see some
1:29:51
people who you think well uh maybe they have gone from being an
1:29:56
unknown quantity to having a million followers on Twitter over the course of three years because their their brand of
1:30:04
weird uh bigoted misogynist left I’m thinking of a particular guy named
1:30:10
Jackson hankle um is destructive to the left it makes us look bad and so let’s
1:30:16
make him the guy that’s the face to the left I mean you see I don’t know who can say what’s motivating what but I I I
1:30:22
struggle with arguments given the enormous power IM balance that
1:30:28
would blame individuals for caring about
1:30:33
issues that are important um rank Injustice is an inequality and that that
1:30:38
being the reason be you know attributing that as the reason that the left movements are failed when everyone in
1:30:45
the world with every dollar behind them is working overtime to shift our politics in a Direction that’s going to
1:30:51
be less effective and I don’t want to be blaming us internally when we need to be
1:30:56
like okay here’s what is effective let’s come together around those things well I mean I agree with that
1:31:05
but you know take take take the climate issue you know I’ve been on panel I’ve
1:31:11
been on panels over the last couple of years where I’ve been uh on the panels
1:31:17
have been leaders of green parties you know the green move in in
1:31:22
Scotland in Australia this sort of thing and you know they they say oh the only way we’re going to do this is if we
1:31:29
involve financial markets and create green bonds and get them behind this
1:31:36
well you know that’s eleth yeah and that’s it and that’s that’s just that’s
1:31:43
that’s an individual political leader representing a movement of green people who are all great people who are really
1:31:50
motivated to do well and to do good things for us but they’re completely boted by the
1:31:57
mainstream economics agenda that the only way we’ll be able to do this if the financial markets do it for us well
1:32:04
that’s that’s that’s a recipe for disaster if you let the financial markets into to this and and a complete
1:32:14
misund and a complete misunderstanding of what the motivations of the financial
1:32:21
markets are you know I should ask you um on Rising sometime last week we had a
1:32:27
guest uh a friend of my co- Rising is my morning show at the hill and my co-host
1:32:32
is libertarian it’s like a right left show and he had a friend of his who wrote a book about how conservatives
1:32:38
have to start paying attention to climate now mostly because it’s a losing political issue for them and young conservatives actually do believe in
1:32:44
climate change despite all of the propaganda to the contrary and so
1:32:50
like he’s trying to pitch it like conservatives have always loved clim Theodore Roosevelt was the conservationist Nixon started the uh EPA
1:32:59
and so this is really our Legacy and we need to reclaim it and so I asked him you know are one what do you have to say
1:33:04
about the intervening like 40 years of client Deni denialism between Nixon and now 50 50 years and also what do you
1:33:13
have to say about the incentives of various people in the Republican party and Democratic party not to
1:33:19
adopt green policies because of how captured they are as political actors I
1:33:25
mean you just waking up and deciding Republicans should stop being climate denialist doesn’t really change any of
1:33:30
the incentive structures here and we got into it and he’s been a real can I say on uh Twitter since then but I’d
1:33:38
love to have someone who knows what they’re actually talking about come on and respond to the claim that there aren’t that that you can basically get
1:33:44
out of the climate crisis through capitalism I don’t believe you can and
1:33:49
that’s when I said earlier that that’s where I’ve evolved to uh I’m really
1:33:55
annoyed about the whole green New Deal movement and the the whole the whole
1:34:01
green growth you know which is the mainstream left type agenda now green
1:34:08
growth and uh uh uh the financial Market involvement in it that you know well
1:34:14
we’ll just get the financial markets to to fund all of this well you know that’s
1:34:20
the that’s the now the mainstream left narrative and move movements around the world and even my mmt colleagues in
1:34:27
America get up and talk about the green new dealers you know Way Forward well
1:34:32
it’s not going to be the way forward at all we the the the the essence of
1:34:37
capitalism that we do things to make profits and the prophets are siphoned
1:34:43
off to a particular class and the rest of us are more or less in service of
1:34:50
that agenda and that’s the we we we can’t achieve DG growth with that and uh
1:34:58
just though of the isn’t the point I understood Like Bernie style green New
1:35:03
Deal transition policy to basically be trying to accommodate for the fact that there are workers who are going to be
1:35:10
disadvantaged by a transition away from um fossil fuels not that capitalism is
1:35:17
going to resolve it but that to get broad public Buy in you have to have a
1:35:24
offramp for people who are going to lose their jobs because we’re going to shut down all of these dirty energy sectors a
1:35:30
just transition yeah yeah your critique is not with that it’s
1:35:35
with if what what like what’s the aspect of the green New Deal then well you’re gonna what give Elon Musk a bunch of
1:35:41
money and we’re gonna electric car way out of this or something yeah I mean that I just don’t I don’t believe that
1:35:49
the world can continue prioritizing economic growth growth I just don’t
1:35:54
believe that I don’t think the the our planet can’t sustain that uh you know
1:36:02
what what’s the current estimate we’re now 1.7 times the the resource Capac we
1:36:09
we’re consuming at one point and producing at 1.7 times the capacity of
1:36:14
the world to Resource that so you know we that’s that’s that can’t
1:36:21
continue now the the the the the logic of capitalism and capital accumulation
1:36:28
go back to Marx is that we’ve got to keep growing that’s the that’s the ethos
1:36:34
and logic of capitalism well those two things are that are in commensurate we
1:36:40
can’t those two things can’t work together capitalism has to have economic growth continue we can’t continue to it
1:36:48
feels scary I think I mean what happens if you stop I think that’s the question that a lot of people to have answered
1:36:55
before they can kind of accept the idea of degrowth not to mention and I heard you talk about this on macro and cheese not to mention that people want to know
1:37:03
how we’re going to respond to developing countries who haven’t had the
1:37:08
opportunities to grow into the first world and modern standards of living and
1:37:14
all of those things being told oh now you’ve got to stop and I know that you’ve said well no there’s got to be redistributional things so they’re not
1:37:20
disadvantaged by saying oh now’s the point where everyone has to stop um but I think those that’s what people
1:37:26
worry about when they hear degrowth and also you know people have a lot of folks
1:37:31
think that without capitalism without the profit motive everyone will just sit around in their house playing video games all day and contemplating how to
1:37:37
murder their neighbor or something yeah no look I think I think
1:37:42
you know these are all related to the social change that would be required and
1:37:47
I think you know understanding of the way in which social change occurs it’s very slow it’s not
1:37:54
it’s uh it’s step forward step back it’s complex and it takes decades and
1:38:01
generations and that’s the dilemma I think we’re we’re facing as as Humanity
1:38:07
on this planet that the our ability to make the necessary changes you know you
1:38:13
you and I as middle class I’m presuming we’re both middle class people you and I
1:38:18
have got a have got to have a dramatic Traction in our material footprint
1:38:26
that’s the reality we’ve got Ian I have no issue with that I will say bill that I already
1:38:33
live in a 700 foot one-bedroom apartment and don’t drive a car so I kind of feel like I’m ahead of
1:38:40
the game you are ahead of the game and all all power to you uh and I live in an
1:38:48
echo I live in an echo Village that has a community farm and and we have
1:38:54
negative power bills because we use the Sun and and so we I’m probably a little
1:38:59
bit ahead of the game too but the the the you know you think of the average
1:39:05
American middle class person with the huge house and the and the yacht and the
1:39:11
the power boat in the driveway and the big four SUV the big four-wheel
1:39:17
drive like a tank as their car to drive their children to school uh this is
1:39:23
dramatic contraction is required and that’s required a to reduce our
1:39:29
footprint but also to share some of the footprint so that people in in uh in the
1:39:35
the poorer countries have at least some material security you know I’m not against material I think that’s made our
1:39:43
you know you and I are talking because of material Prosperity uh using cameras
1:39:48
and computers and networks I’m not against any of that but uh Al Ely we’ve
1:39:54
the middle class in in the wealthy countries are going to have to take a dramatic contraction in in their
1:40:00
consumption and we’ve got to produce different things and I don’t think Society can adapt quick
1:40:06
enough and I think we’re headed to some end point which is not going to be very
1:40:12
attractive to any of us yeah I think I definitely agree on that point I could pick your brain about this stuff uh for
1:40:18
another uh hour Bill Mitchell I but I’m going to let you go I really appreciate how generous you’ve been with your time
1:40:25
today and I really do encourage people to read uh reclaiming the state and your
1:40:30
other works can you tell people where to find you um online I know I understand you have a a substack is it or a some
1:40:39
other place that you write articles online I I run a Blog and I’ve been running a Blog it’s the 20th year now so
1:40:46
I was an early blogger uh you can just just search Bill Mitchell Economist you’ll find me I come up number one on
1:40:52
Google so thank you all right terrific thank
1:40:57
you again for spending your time with us here today thank you to all the bad faith listeners for tuning in and as
1:41:03
always take care of yourselves and keep the faith hey YouTube thanks for watching just a reminder that this is a
1:41:10
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