Speaker 1: I'm Bethany McLean and this is making a killing interviews,
Speaker 1: exploring the headlines you thought you understood, and finding the
Speaker 1: long term lessons we can all learn from today's business stories.
Speaker 1: I'm at Bethany mac twelve on Twitter. My guest today has,
Speaker 1: among other things, a talent for writing catchy titles. Malcolm Harris,
Speaker 1: who's an editor at The New Inquiry and an admirably
Speaker 1: outspoken writer, published a recent piece in MIT's Technology Review
Speaker 1: entitled Canes was wrong, gen Z will have it worse.
Speaker 1: Malcolm is also the author of Kids These Days, and
Speaker 1: his forthcoming book is entitled Shit is Fucked Up in
Speaker 1: Bullshit History Since the end of History. Let's get some
Speaker 1: generational clarity out of the way for context and disclosure,
Speaker 1: I am squarely in gen x. Malcolm, as you'll hear
Speaker 1: in the interview, is deeply gen y. In other words,
Speaker 1: a millennial. My kids still elementary age are gen z.
Speaker 1: I have no idea what any future grandchildren would be
Speaker 1: called or what kind of world they'll be living in.
Speaker 1: John Maynard Keynes, on the other hand, thought he knew
Speaker 1: what his grandchildren would be facing. In his popular essay
Speaker 1: from the early nineteen thirties called economic possibilities for our grandchildren.
Speaker 1: The founder of macroeconomics wrote about the world a hundred
Speaker 1: years in the future, which is pretty much now. He
Speaker 1: imagined that capitalism would be almost over by now, having
Speaker 1: simply been a means to greater ends. In his books
Speaker 1: and in his articles, Malcolm seeks to understand where Canes
Speaker 1: got it wrong and defies the cultural impression of millennials
Speaker 1: as tantrumy teenagers. Instead, he tries to understand what made
Speaker 1: millennials the way they are, burned out, waiting later and
Speaker 1: later to get married or have kids, terrified of debt
Speaker 1: yet saddled with it, focused on technology inefficiency, but also
Speaker 1: trying to have a larger purpose in life than work
Speaker 1: for work's sake. Malcolm writes that a yuk of poll
Speaker 1: found that support for capitalism among Americans under thirty fell
Speaker 1: from thirty nine percent to thirty percent between two fifteen
Speaker 1: and twenty eighteen. That's fourteen percentage points below the average.
Speaker 1: At the same time, the prime age workforce of twenty
Speaker 1: thirty was born between nineteen seventy six and two thousand
Speaker 1: and five. So if Malcolm's right, his answers helped paint
Speaker 1: a portrait of the economy of the future, and who
Speaker 1: doesn't want to know more about that. I'm so excited
Speaker 1: to dig into this today and grateful to Malcolm for
Speaker 1: coming from Philly to meet me in New York. Hi, Malcolm.
Speaker 1: So let's start with John Maynard Came's. I think it's
Speaker 1: a name most people have heard, but you hold different
Speaker 1: things out of his writing than other people have. What
Speaker 1: made you gravitate toward him? Well, one of the reasons
Speaker 1: I picked Cane's to focus this essay around was this
Speaker 1: prediction about twenty thirty and realizing that the workers he's
Speaker 1: talking about are all of them are already born, so
Speaker 1: we could sort of assess this pre foundational prediction in
Speaker 1: his thought empirically. Now it's about time we can look
Speaker 1: around and see if that was true or not. And
Speaker 1: he gets a lot of credit for being empirically right
Speaker 1: about a lot of things throughout his work. But when
Speaker 1: you look at this this sort of foundational question of
Speaker 1: what is capitalism for, he seems like not right. And
Speaker 1: what was his answer to this foundational question what's capitalism for?
Speaker 1: It's to relieve us of necessity so that we could
Speaker 1: focus on our species energy on things that aren't necessary
Speaker 1: to being alive, like art and music, creativity, knowledge. I'm
Speaker 1: I'm going to come back to that in terms of
Speaker 1: what the meaning of life? Maybe, Oh dear, that's a
Speaker 1: weighty conversation for today. But why do you think he's
Speaker 1: wrong when you talk about the empirical evidence showing that
Speaker 1: he didn't get it right? What do you look at
Speaker 1: since the crisis two thousand and eight, there's been a
Speaker 1: reassessment about achievements of capitalism, you know, or past the
Speaker 1: Cold War. We don't have something else to compare it to,
Speaker 1: so we can sort of look by its own standards
Speaker 1: how capitalism is doing. And what we're seeing is not
Speaker 1: the sort of accelerated pace of people's lives increasing in quality. Instead,
Speaker 1: we've seen wages for most people level off, technology advantages
Speaker 1: few instead of many. And that's not what was predicted.
Speaker 1: And why do you think that is what's gone wrong?
Speaker 1: Was Cans wrong or has something gone wrong to make
Speaker 1: him wrong? Have there have been policy choices that have
Speaker 1: made him wrong? What he misunderstood was the system is
Speaker 1: built on exploitation at its very base, so that over
Speaker 1: time things are going to get worse. Like that is
Speaker 1: the nature of capitalism, and that's what marks it predicted
Speaker 1: years before. So I'm going to come back to that.
Speaker 1: But there is this great quote by Cans about capitalism
Speaker 1: that I've always loved, which capitalism is the astounding belief
Speaker 1: that the most wickedest of men will do the most
Speaker 1: wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone. Does
Speaker 1: that kind of sum it up to you? Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: it's certainly justified a lot of wickedness, right, and that
Speaker 1: this is the natural state of being. It's only through
Speaker 1: this wickedness, through this self interest, that we can achieve
Speaker 1: our collective interest. That's certainly the bill of goods we
Speaker 1: were sold for a long time, at least as American.
Speaker 1: You're one of the grandchildren that Caines wrote about. How
Speaker 1: do you feel about where we are? Not optimistic, especially
Speaker 1: in the face of ecological crisis. So my parents live
Speaker 1: in a small town called Cloverdale in northern California, and
Speaker 1: this year they had to evacuate from their evacuation because
Speaker 1: of fires. You know, That's that's the level of crisis
Speaker 1: we're looking at. Is our country's on fire, their whole
Speaker 1: continents on fire. It does that's who we're looking at
Speaker 1: and that's going to be an annual phenomenon for a
Speaker 1: lot of people. Is that a metaphor to you is
Speaker 1: the ecological state? And the fire a metaphor to you
Speaker 1: for the state of capitalism? Well, it's it's very literal, definitely,
Speaker 1: but we can also read it as a metaphor, right.
Speaker 1: And I got involved in politics through the anti war
Speaker 1: movement when I was when I was a kid or whatever.
Speaker 1: We invaded Iraq two thousand and three and there was
Speaker 1: a group, a coalition called World Can't Wait, and their
Speaker 1: their logo was a World on Fire, and there said,
Speaker 1: we can't we can't wait to get rid of the
Speaker 1: Bush regime. You know, the world, world can't wait. The
Speaker 1: world's on fire. And now I look at those posters
Speaker 1: and I've been thinking about them a lot lately because
Speaker 1: you can see the fires in Australia from space like
Speaker 1: these are these are literal? Is that what shaped you
Speaker 1: the anti war movement? Is that what made you start
Speaker 1: thinking about these broader economic questions? Or were there other
Speaker 1: forces at work in shaping your worldview? That was my
Speaker 1: entred into organized politics. I think left wing politics. I
Speaker 1: came of age under under the Bush administration, the George W.
Speaker 1: Bush administration, and it was a very scary time to
Speaker 1: be alive. And a lot of the things that we're
Speaker 1: seeing now the consequences of the Trump years, those things
Speaker 1: were set in place during the Bush years. And so
Speaker 1: we saw, you know, the Department of Homeland Security being built.
Speaker 1: We saw this crackdown on domestic protest that's gone on. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was the state of the world to push me here,
Speaker 1: and it hasn't gotten any better. What made you turn
Speaker 1: your eyes toward economics instead of continuing to focus on
Speaker 1: anti war? What made you decide that economics was fundamental
Speaker 1: to understanding where we were. So I graduated from the
Speaker 1: University of Maryland in twenty ten, which means I was
Speaker 1: a sophomore when the financial crisis hit, and at the
Speaker 1: time I was organizing with a left wing student group
Speaker 1: to organize against tuition increases on campus because this was
Speaker 1: a central ide question for students on campus for accessibility
Speaker 1: of education and a national issue of educational affordability, and
Speaker 1: when the crisis hit, we were looking for some way
Speaker 1: to link this to our campaign around tuition increases. So
Speaker 1: you're saying, what's the relationship between these tuition increases, the
Speaker 1: huge increases in college educational costs and housing prices, and
Speaker 1: we didn't really know what the answer was, or if
Speaker 1: there really was answer. We just sort of figured there
Speaker 1: had to be at the time. But that yielded this
Speaker 1: whole research project that me and a friend worked on,
Speaker 1: and out of that came sort of my first work
Speaker 1: on student debt, which is where my project started. And
Speaker 1: so you have maybe I'm going to call it counterintuitive,
Speaker 1: maybe contrarian, but you've got a view on student debt.
Speaker 1: Tell us about that. Well, I don't know if it's
Speaker 1: it's contrarian these days. I mean when I first started
Speaker 1: writing about it was twenty eleven, which was Preoccupy Wall Street,
Speaker 1: and I wrote this piece for this journal n plus
Speaker 1: one about the way that student debt had been set up,
Speaker 1: in the way it was increasing out of control, and
Speaker 1: that it wasn't clear that people were going to be
Speaker 1: able to pay this debt back at the time. Up
Speaker 1: until then, the assumption had been that all educational debt
Speaker 1: was good debt, because for every dollar you invest, you're
Speaker 1: going to get one x back in terms of wages
Speaker 1: for your better qualified job, you learn to code or whatever, whatever, degrees.
Speaker 1: You get it's going to rebound to you. All Educational
Speaker 1: investment was a good idea, And around twenty eleven is
Speaker 1: when people start looking at the totals, when we're looking
Speaker 1: closely to a trillion dollars or whatever it was at
Speaker 1: the time, and say, this doesn't make any sense. This
Speaker 1: can't possibly be true, especially after wages had tanked during
Speaker 1: the recession and had not rebounded in the way the
Speaker 1: people expected. And you're looking at the numbers of the
Speaker 1: average student os tens of thousands of dollars in debt,
Speaker 1: and they're just making enough to get by, especially at
Speaker 1: increased housing costs and transportation costs, and it just wasn't
Speaker 1: lining up, and people kept paying because there really isn't
Speaker 1: any alternative at the individual There is not right, they
Speaker 1: come after you in bankruptcy well, and people kept in
Speaker 1: rolling as well, although the enrollment did level off a
Speaker 1: little bit around this time when people start drawing these
Speaker 1: numbers into question, But people keep in enrolling because you
Speaker 1: have an individual level. If you ask any expert, what's
Speaker 1: the best thing I can do to increase my wages,
Speaker 1: they'll still tell you to go to school, and they'll
Speaker 1: still be right but you look at a collective level,
Speaker 1: clearly that same dynamic isn't operating. It's not working. So
Speaker 1: I think you're right. It's not contrarian now to be
Speaker 1: terrified about the levels of student debt and what that means,
Speaker 1: and even very hardcore capitalists are worried about what it
Speaker 1: means in terms of financial crisis. But I think you
Speaker 1: are contraying and that you've taken that into a broader
Speaker 1: critique of the educational system at large. Yeah, and that
Speaker 1: when we look at these jobs that aren't showing up
Speaker 1: the way they're supposed to, and you still look at
Speaker 1: young people who are putting in tons of not just money,
Speaker 1: but also their time and their effort, huge amounts of
Speaker 1: time and effort to get these educational degrees whatever certifications
Speaker 1: at a time when there's more competition for them than ever.
Speaker 1: Where is this value going Who is benefiting from all
Speaker 1: of this? And there are some people who like to
Speaker 1: throw up their hands and say, well, no one's really
Speaker 1: benefiting from this, But that doesn't make any sense to me.
Speaker 1: And so you can look at the economy and look
Speaker 1: at who has been benefiting from this acceleration in human
Speaker 1: capital development and the shift in costs from the state
Speaker 1: and from corporations. Two workers themselves to train themselves on
Speaker 1: behalf of companies that are going to hire them later.
Speaker 1: And you can look at corporate profits which have never
Speaker 1: been higher. Right, the DAO is at new records every year.
Speaker 1: It seems like while people seem to be still suffering
Speaker 1: out there, and it's because that's who's harvesting the profits
Speaker 1: from this. You know, better trained workers are easier to
Speaker 1: find than ever before. So we're making ourselves fodder for
Speaker 1: the system. I shouldn't say we, You the millennials have
Speaker 1: been making themselves fodder for the system. I mean the
Speaker 1: equation was supposed to be the better educated you get,
Speaker 1: the better job you get. And at an individual level
Speaker 1: that still sort of makes sense. But if you look
Speaker 1: at a societal level, if a bunch of people educate themselves,
Speaker 1: they take it upon themselves, they spend the money they
Speaker 1: invest in themselves to educate themselves, well suddenly they are
Speaker 1: a lot more educated people and the cost that you
Speaker 1: need to spend to hire one of them goes down.
Speaker 1: In the old educational models, that's supposed to mean increased
Speaker 1: scale of production. Right, They're like, well, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of cheap, smart workers, we can expand production. That
Speaker 1: hasn't happened. Instead, we've seen the ruling class just basically
Speaker 1: grab as much of those profits as they can jack
Speaker 1: up their own stock prices, and they've been very successful
Speaker 1: at it. And for you, that shows up in the
Speaker 1: gap between the stupendous rate of productivity increases and the
Speaker 1: same time flat wages. Absolutely, and that whole wedge is
Speaker 1: just increased ruling class share of the economy. That's nuts.
Speaker 1: Why do you think it is that millennials and all
Speaker 1: of us have been complicit in that system because it
Speaker 1: takes all of us being complicit to make it work. Well,
Speaker 1: it's hard to say what complicity looks like, right, say, like, well,
Speaker 1: given this, there should be a nationwide rebellion of young people,
Speaker 1: you know, in all of our major cities. They should
Speaker 1: just like you know, run into the streets and say, no,
Speaker 1: we won't do it, We don't want to pay this anymore.
Speaker 1: This is wrong. And that happened. That happened in twenty eleven,
Speaker 1: and happened again, you know, during Black Lives Matter years after,
Speaker 1: of different groups of mostly young people in both cases
Speaker 1: refusing the status quo, and they called in the army
Speaker 1: in both cases, and you have to understand that, like
Speaker 1: they've been called in the army in Hong Kong, right,
Speaker 1: Like that's a really it's a really aggressive step to
Speaker 1: take by a state to crack down on their own population,
Speaker 1: and they did it in city after city in the
Speaker 1: United States. When you look back Unoccupied, do you think
Speaker 1: it was a success. It's too soon to tell. I
Speaker 1: guess I think there are some limited ways in which
Speaker 1: it was a success. That we put this sort of
Speaker 1: class language back on the map. Yeah, back on the
Speaker 1: national radar. I think you don't have the Bernie Sanders
Speaker 1: campaign the way you do now without Occupy changing the discourse.
Speaker 1: You also have student debt as an object of discussion
Speaker 1: in the way that it wasn't before the people recognize
Speaker 1: that it's out of control, and you have this sort
Speaker 1: of coalescing of a generational political perspective that I think
Speaker 1: starts would occupy. On the other hand, it shows the
Speaker 1: sort of limits of protest as a strategy, which is
Speaker 1: ultimately what Occupied turned out to be is what kind
Speaker 1: of national protest, and protest only works until the point
Speaker 1: they don't want to listen to you anymore, and they've
Speaker 1: shown the government, and these are democratic mayors and democratic
Speaker 1: cities who called in their police and used chemical weapons
Speaker 1: in city centers to clear them. It's an interesting point
Speaker 1: because I think part of the point you're making is
Speaker 1: that this question that's going on by millennials of the
Speaker 1: system actually is a bigger threat to the system than
Speaker 1: most people realize, and maybe that response to the occupy
Speaker 1: movement shows what an existential threat it is. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: going to be interesting to see what the next cohorts
Speaker 1: draw from our experiences or draw from their own experiences,
Speaker 1: what people like the Sunrise movement or Extinction rebellion, especially
Speaker 1: the climate protesters in general, draw from those experiences and
Speaker 1: their own experiences. We'll see tactically what they end up thinking.
Speaker 1: Coming back to millennial how would you explain to a
Speaker 1: politician or someone my age what's made millennials the way
Speaker 1: the way they are? I mean, I think it goes
Speaker 1: back to the exactly what we've been talking about, which
Speaker 1: is this break in correlation between productivity and wages, and
Speaker 1: up until this nineteen seventy nine early eighties, you see
Speaker 1: these numbers rising together in a way that indicates a
Speaker 1: sort of shared national prosperity, and that shared national prosperity
Speaker 1: was the grounds for sort of Keynesian type thought that
Speaker 1: this is getting better for everyone, sort of along the
Speaker 1: same line, and for a number of reasons. When you
Speaker 1: hit nineteen eighty, which is also when this millennial cohort
Speaker 1: starts being born, those two break and wages stay flat
Speaker 1: and productivity keeps going up, and that gap between the
Speaker 1: two of them is an increased rate of exploitation. So
Speaker 1: you'd argue that it's not so much that millennials have
Speaker 1: had unrealistic expectations about what the world should be like
Speaker 1: for them. It's that there's something fundamentally wrong with the
Speaker 1: world as it's currently structured, so that millennials are right
Speaker 1: to be dissatisfied. Yeah, well, I think you see that.
Speaker 1: With me. That's a break between sort of millennial gen
Speaker 1: z categories is that I was raised in the era
Speaker 1: of you can be anything you put your mind to,
Speaker 1: you know, the world is yours, etcetera, etcetera. We were
Speaker 1: sort of supposed to be this Keynesian generation where we're
Speaker 1: finally able to be creative. We'll all be able to
Speaker 1: be creative in our own ways, etcetera. Etcetera. At least
Speaker 1: that was the bill of goods sold to our parents younger.
Speaker 1: When I talk to scholars who work on the younger cohort,
Speaker 1: whatever we want to call it, currently, they don't see
Speaker 1: that same sort of expectation. There is a lowered level
Speaker 1: of expectation where they don't expect to win every time.
Speaker 1: They're not expected to win every time. They're just trying
Speaker 1: to like cobble together enough good experiences to make them employable.
Speaker 1: And then that can become a self fulfilling prophecy. Right,
Speaker 1: if you don't believe in a better future, how do
Speaker 1: you possibly get a better future? That's fart of it.
Speaker 1: You've talked about this idea of helicopter parents, and you're
Speaker 1: actually less critical of helicopter parents than some of us
Speaker 1: who are older are, And you think there's a reason
Speaker 1: for it. So explain that when I started writing Kids
Speaker 1: These Days, when I was working on that book, i'd
Speaker 1: sort of had a pretty critical view of helicopter parents
Speaker 1: because I had the stereotype sort of built in my
Speaker 1: mind of an upper class mostly moms who are putting
Speaker 1: their thumb on the scale to help their kids who
Speaker 1: are already pretty advantage within the system. But the more
Speaker 1: I read research about other classes of parents who are
Speaker 1: stuck doing the same kind of work, the more I
Speaker 1: realized that that was a rarefied picture. That most of anything,
Speaker 1: they are not rich. Most helicopter parents are working class,
Speaker 1: because most people are working class, and so you have
Speaker 1: most what we'd call helicopter parents helicopter moms because again,
Speaker 1: mostly moms, while we're talking about, are just trying to
Speaker 1: get their kid by, right, They're people trying to create
Speaker 1: some level of generational progress for their child, which if
Speaker 1: their child has a learning disability or trouble in school
Speaker 1: and one way or another they're laned badly, that can
Speaker 1: be a full time job just trying to keep your
Speaker 1: kid on track academically to go to a state college
Speaker 1: or a community college such that they might be able
Speaker 1: to participate in the twenty first century economy in some
Speaker 1: way that's not totally stagnant. So you'd see helicopter parenting
Speaker 1: not as a sign of entitlement, but rather as a
Speaker 1: sign almost of terror. Yeah, well, just most people aren't entitled, right,
Speaker 1: it's not the reality of American life, and the stereotypes
Speaker 1: that we are given of entitled people are mostly written
Speaker 1: by entitled people. You wrote this in kids. These days,
Speaker 1: every authority from mom to presidents told millennials to accumulate
Speaker 1: as much human capital as we could, and we did,
Speaker 1: but the market hasn't held up its end of the bargain.
Speaker 1: Do you think there's something wrong just inherently with the
Speaker 1: notion of human capital. There's definitely something wrong about how
Speaker 1: we understand the concept of human capital. We think about it.
Speaker 1: It's something that belongs to you once you've achieved it, right,
Speaker 1: because it seems like a wage. Right, I got a degree.
Speaker 1: I earned a degree. The degree belongs to me, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't belong to me in a way that other
Speaker 1: commodities do. I can't sell it, right. All I can
Speaker 1: do is work. And so human capital is how labor
Speaker 1: appears to capital once it's been hired. Right, human capital
Speaker 1: or to a state that's trying to compete with another state.
Speaker 1: So human capital theory emerges in the sixties from these
Speaker 1: neoliberal ideas of national competition. Can America keep up with
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union in regard to human capital production? Are
Speaker 1: we producing enough scientists and engineers so that we don't
Speaker 1: get wiped out by the USSR? At the time, the
Speaker 1: answer was no, we weren't. And that's where the Higher
Speaker 1: Education Act comes from. Right. They're assessing a work force
Speaker 1: that belongs to either the state or to a company
Speaker 1: that's trying to think about them in terms of say
Speaker 1: human resources or whatever. It's workers capacities as interpreted by
Speaker 1: people who are putting those workers to work. The worker
Speaker 1: themselves doesn't own your human capital. You can't sell your
Speaker 1: human capital. All you can do is sell your labor,
Speaker 1: which is the only commodity you have. And so we
Speaker 1: get this idea twisted because you think that you can
Speaker 1: accumulate human capital and that it's something that it's somehow
Speaker 1: accrues to you. Yeah, that's that's something to belong that
Speaker 1: belongs to you. But the truth is it just is you,
Speaker 1: that is who you are. Only other people can put
Speaker 1: that human capital to work. You're not actually a capitalist,
Speaker 1: You're just a person. Right. What do you make of
Speaker 1: the role that we all play in enabling this. I'm
Speaker 1: coming back to this idea of complicity because you break
Speaker 1: out these lines between consumers and workers, and yet we
Speaker 1: who are workers are also consumers. Right, So in other words, yes,
Speaker 1: we all enable an Amazon, right because we use the service.
Speaker 1: Maybe you don't, But how do you break out that
Speaker 1: line between who's a consumer and who's a worker when
Speaker 1: all we're all some of both. Yeah. Well, that's why
Speaker 1: I try not to look at consumption as a basis
Speaker 1: for politics, because that just means being alive on a
Speaker 1: capitalism right. You have to buy things. You have to
Speaker 1: buy food, you have to buy shelter, and so when
Speaker 1: you start talking about people as consumers, you're already just
Speaker 1: talking about a very limited kind of choice where what
Speaker 1: you can buy is what's for sale on a market,
Speaker 1: and you have to buy something, especially when it comes
Speaker 1: to say food and shelter. That's why I think it's
Speaker 1: important to look at class as a question of capitalists
Speaker 1: and workers and the question of do you work for
Speaker 1: someone else or do other people work for you, and
Speaker 1: that this is the central division that explains everything that's
Speaker 1: going on in our economy. You know, we're calling the
Speaker 1: one percent of the nine nine percent, but that's what
Speaker 1: we're talking about is people who own assets, people who
Speaker 1: make money by owning things, and people who make money
Speaker 1: by working, who's only thing they have to sell is
Speaker 1: their own labor. Time, the central division that explains everything
Speaker 1: I like that. It's a big one. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: definitely everything. There's still other divisions, you know, other class
Speaker 1: divisions within our society that are all still important. So
Speaker 1: I don't want to make it sound like there aren't,
Speaker 1: but that's a key one right there. Right. I guess
Speaker 1: it strikes me that, if that's right, that millennials are
Speaker 1: still somewhat complicit in their own fate. In other words,
Speaker 1: a lot of this is being engineered by millennials. But again,
Speaker 1: break it down that it's not necessarily millennial versus gen X,
Speaker 1: it's one percent versus ninety nine percent. Is that perhaps
Speaker 1: a better way of thinking about it? Right? The generational
Speaker 1: analysis is important to understand the capital relations. Right, it's
Speaker 1: through these generational identities that we're sort of starting to
Speaker 1: understand the relation between capitalists workers. The divisions that constitute
Speaker 1: society aren't I think, generational divisions. It's not like we
Speaker 1: need to get the baby boomers. They're all responsible for
Speaker 1: what's happened. And like you said, there are millennials whose
Speaker 1: fault this is, right, Mark Zuckerberg's little millennial, Jared Kushner's millennial.
Speaker 1: They are people who are profiting from this who are millennials.
Speaker 1: They're underrepresented among people who have profited from what's going on.
Speaker 1: It's age skewed. So generational analysis points us to a
Speaker 1: direction where we can start to understand these questions. But no,
Speaker 1: it's not fundamentally a question of age. We've related to
Speaker 1: these developments differently depending on how old we are. First
Speaker 1: of all, do you think it's possible that Canes isn't
Speaker 1: wrong but we're just getting there more slowly? No, I don't.
Speaker 1: People have suggested the possibility. He's you know, he put
Speaker 1: some caveats in people. Some people say it's population growth,
Speaker 1: which I don't really believe. I don't think. I think
Speaker 1: population growth is always a distraction when people bring it up.
Speaker 1: Or wars, which you suggests would be a problem, and
Speaker 1: there were some definitely some wars in between would push
Speaker 1: unders wars. But no, you can see that things are
Speaker 1: getting worse, right, like the questions of climate collapse. We're
Speaker 1: not on a positive trajectory, right, and to think that
Speaker 1: as and some people want to look at the world
Speaker 1: and look at the market and say, well things are
Speaker 1: getting better. Yeah, yeah, we have this like some climate issues.
Speaker 1: Think of it sort of like the hole in the
Speaker 1: ozone layer. They're like, yeah, there's this problem, but we
Speaker 1: can fix it and things are still going pretty good.
Speaker 1: There's a really strong contingent for that perspective, Yes, very strong.
Speaker 1: I might even put myself in all come back to that.
Speaker 1: But you can't brack it off the whole ecology, right,
Speaker 1: you can't brack it off the state of the earth.
Speaker 1: Like then you're the dog with the coffee cups saying
Speaker 1: things are fine as your house is on fire, like right,
Speaker 1: things are literally on fire, you know, And that's effect
Speaker 1: and die off in insect populations that are heating of
Speaker 1: the ocean. They're just things where the bees are seriously
Speaker 1: and we haven't begun to understand the impacts, or we're
Speaker 1: maybe just beginning to understand the impacts and the scale
Speaker 1: the impacts are and how they're going to affect people.
Speaker 1: And it's going to be continent wide at a time
Speaker 1: yea devastation. So to you, the ecology is front center,
Speaker 1: whereas my generation perhaps has segmented it or we've compartmentalized
Speaker 1: and said, well, there's this economy and then there's the ecology,
Speaker 1: and isn't terrible that this is happening to our world?
Speaker 1: But the economy is separate, whereas you and perhaps millennials
Speaker 1: see them all as a piece. Yeah, we are the world, right,
Speaker 1: we are the environment. And it sounds sort of hippy dippy,
Speaker 1: accept it's really true, except you know your factories are
Speaker 1: going to burn too. Do you think even if Canes
Speaker 1: had been right, do you think that is the primary goal?
Speaker 1: Would that have led to happiness, peace, and prosperity for
Speaker 1: all if we could just work lass No, because the
Speaker 1: question of the amount of hours were worked. Right, The
Speaker 1: idea was that we exist as a society and that
Speaker 1: we all together want to reduce the amount that we work.
Speaker 1: But that's not how we're composed. Right. If you view
Speaker 1: the world in terms of classes, you have a ruling
Speaker 1: class that wants to get the most out of all
Speaker 1: their workers, profit as much as they possibly can. And
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter that Jeff Bezos can't possibly imagine ways
Speaker 1: that he could spend as much money as he has. No, Right,
Speaker 1: it's kind of interesting to think about that, because that's
Speaker 1: just not how they're oriented, right. It's not about working
Speaker 1: less are having enough. It's just about emploiding as much
Speaker 1: as you possibly can out of the rest of the world.
Speaker 1: And then workers, you know, if you're trying to work less,
Speaker 1: you're trying to retire, right, that's the goal of every worker.
Speaker 1: That's about work, you know, getting your most you can
Speaker 1: out of your life. It's a diametrically opposed goal with
Speaker 1: the goal of the people who are employing you. Except
Speaker 1: I would challenge that in that the employers the one
Speaker 1: percent work harder than they ever have either. And maybe
Speaker 1: that goes to a more fundamental critique of capitalism or
Speaker 1: the current system in just a broad human context, that
Speaker 1: it's not working for anybody, but nobody's not working, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: at a certain point, work becomes a luxury good for
Speaker 1: some of these people. I think, does Mark Zuckerberg have
Speaker 1: to work? Like, of course, not working is a thing
Speaker 1: he chooses to do because he enjoys it, right, because
Speaker 1: his work is ultimately just bossing other people around. Well,
Speaker 1: perhaps I think work is more fun if you get
Speaker 1: to boss instead of be bossed and you don't actually
Speaker 1: have to do it. And absolutely well, and I think
Speaker 1: it's not structurally homologous with what the rest of us do,
Speaker 1: which is work to get enough money to pay your rent.
Speaker 1: Do you think that you'd be happy if you didn't work,
Speaker 1: if you didn't have work, and yeah, absolutely, really totally, really,
Speaker 1: what would you do with yourself? I mean, because there's
Speaker 1: an argument that work is the meaning of life, right
Speaker 1: that without it, without that feeling of productivity or that
Speaker 1: feeling of contribution, it strips life of its meaning. In
Speaker 1: other words, if we were headed into a Keynesian world
Speaker 1: where we didn't have to work, is that what we
Speaker 1: should be aspiring to. So in a post work world, though,
Speaker 1: I mean, we still do all sorts of things. The
Speaker 1: difference is that because we still have to clean up
Speaker 1: after ourselves, we still have to produce food, we still
Speaker 1: have to shelter ourselves, we still have needs as a
Speaker 1: society as well as you know, higher needs as a species.
Speaker 1: But the difference is the production thereof is not alienated, right,
Speaker 1: It's you're not doing it for someone else. So it's
Speaker 1: the difference between like working at McDonald's and cooking dinner
Speaker 1: for your friends. There's a big difference between that. One
Speaker 1: is a like rewarding, enriching experience that furthers our connections
Speaker 1: to each other, and one is subtractive. One you're waiting
Speaker 1: till the clock is done. You want to go do
Speaker 1: something else you want to get out of there, you're
Speaker 1: selling that part of yourself. Would you argue in the
Speaker 1: end that Marx has it right? Do you see any
Speaker 1: flaws in his thinking or that Marx had it right?
Speaker 1: I suppose it's a better way of putting it. Well,
Speaker 1: I think there are major gaps in his work. But yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I'm a Marxist. I understand the world as in terms
Speaker 1: of antagonistic class conflict. And what would you do with
Speaker 1: the argument that if you look at where Marxism has
Speaker 1: been employed, whether it's been the Soviet Union, Venezuela, Cuba,
Speaker 1: that that hasn't worked out particularly well. In other words,
Speaker 1: how do you think about the real world application of
Speaker 1: the theory? Well, I think there are a number of
Speaker 1: lessons that we can learn from the experience of state socialism.
Speaker 1: For the record, Cuba's bees are actually been pretty good shape.
Speaker 1: So if we're comparing, we're comparing along the lens of
Speaker 1: the population, the lens of the population, which is not negligible.
Speaker 1: Dental know their bees are actually really good shape. I
Speaker 1: did not know that. Yeah, well, and as is there
Speaker 1: they live longer than we, you know, as long as
Speaker 1: we do with a lot less healthcare expenditure. So it's
Speaker 1: not like every part of state socialism has failed in
Speaker 1: the way that we like to think about it. But
Speaker 1: that's not where my ideology is. And I think we
Speaker 1: can learn a lot from those experiments and where they failed.
Speaker 1: I think masculinism is like a huge, huge lesson we
Speaker 1: can take from the state socialist experiments that were ostensibly
Speaker 1: feminist projects and in some way seriously feminist projects. But
Speaker 1: we're still led by men overwhelmingly to failure. So you
Speaker 1: think it would be different if it had been led
Speaker 1: by women, if if feminism are within a feminist approach
Speaker 1: to socialism. I think it's absolutely crucial moving forward, and
Speaker 1: as a way to learn from the failures of state socialism.
Speaker 1: So you see the failures of state socialism more as
Speaker 1: specific to the ways those let's call them experiments were conducted,
Speaker 1: rather than necessarily pointing to a fundamental flaw with Marx's
Speaker 1: way of thinking. Is that a fair summary? Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: on the part of Marxism is developing according to our
Speaker 1: what we learn, right, it's a science, it's not a religion,
Speaker 1: and so Marxists have been plenty critical of those projects
Speaker 1: that we're done in Marx's name, and that's interior to Marxism,
Speaker 1: So it's a criticism is part of the game, right yeah,
Speaker 1: fair enough? Does something always go wrong with the implementation
Speaker 1: of a system, though, I mean, could you argue that
Speaker 1: perhaps capitalism hasn't been implemented is it theoretically was supposed to,
Speaker 1: But perhaps Marxism could never be implemented as it is
Speaker 1: theoretically supposed to either. In other words, it's practicality is
Speaker 1: always the rub. People certainly do argue that all the time.
Speaker 1: It might be one of the most common arguments, but
Speaker 1: I think the only the only capitalism we can judge
Speaker 1: is the one that exists, right It's a real worldwide
Speaker 1: system that has existed for x hundred years and it
Speaker 1: has it's rapidly on its way to destroying the entire planet,
Speaker 1: which is the only thing that we've ever had. So
Speaker 1: insofar as we can without the planet, we are for sure.
Speaker 1: So that's an issue, right, Yes, in terms of before
Speaker 1: like empirically reflecting on the qualities of our system, the
Speaker 1: fact that it's going to like burn down the ground
Speaker 1: that we're standing on or flooded, that's a pretty serious issue.
Speaker 1: And so you can construct in your mind, a different
Speaker 1: kind of capitalism that doesn't do this. But honestly, even
Speaker 1: the Canes is a good example, right of a different
Speaker 1: kind of capitalism that we haven't really seen, that's led
Speaker 1: by government led investment, social investment, etc. It still calls
Speaker 1: for this constant growth, which is the real basis of
Speaker 1: the capitalist system. Is this continual growth and the idea
Speaker 1: that you could just build and build and build and build,
Speaker 1: and that that would add up to more, and that
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have to pay for it in some way
Speaker 1: in terms of the resources you're drawing, so there wasn't
Speaker 1: going to be you know, a ying to that yang
Speaker 1: is really the basis of capitalist thought, and I think
Speaker 1: that that's wrong. There have been people who have said
Speaker 1: it's wrong. You know, from the first time they heard
Speaker 1: the idea, right, we have all sorts of indigenous thinkers
Speaker 1: who went in encountering this sort of colonialist capitalist accumulation mindset,
Speaker 1: had said that's nuts, Like you're going to break this
Speaker 1: whole thing really fast. And so you believe that need
Speaker 1: to feed the beast is inherent in capitalism and we
Speaker 1: can't keep feeding the beast? Is that another way to
Speaker 1: say it. Yeah, Well, here's let's try this. I think
Speaker 1: abundance is a social relationship. Capitalism believes that abundance is
Speaker 1: a question of technology and accumulation, that we're going to
Speaker 1: get enough stuff so that we finally have enough and
Speaker 1: then we can we can share it. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: think abundance is we have enough now. You know that
Speaker 1: if we shared what we have now, that would be abundance, right,
Speaker 1: it would be abundance. We had a lot less than
Speaker 1: we have now and we shared it. Abundance is a
Speaker 1: question of how we're relating to each other through objects,
Speaker 1: not this question of accumulation. Do you think humans are
Speaker 1: ever nice enough to share it willingly? Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: most people would be very happy to do so. I
Speaker 1: think we've been we've been set against each other in
Speaker 1: a system of exploitation for a long time, maybe five
Speaker 1: thousand years by some accounts, but that's actually not that
Speaker 1: long in terms of the history of our species. You know,
Speaker 1: we've got a prehistory is one hundred thousand years or whatever.
Speaker 1: So maybe this is just a blip. So you think
Speaker 1: we're innately better than we are, that our real selves
Speaker 1: are human truth is better than we're acting, not that
Speaker 1: we're actually acting out the true ugliness of humanity. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know if there's any anything more innate about
Speaker 1: us than there is anything innate about panda bears. But
Speaker 1: I think we're certainly capable of a lot better. If
Speaker 1: you had to predict how things shake out, if you
Speaker 1: were to be writing Kames's letter to your grandchildren, what
Speaker 1: would you say? Oh, jeez, I hope there's still something
Speaker 1: worth building on at that point. So you've got to
Speaker 1: be optimistic even to write that letter at this point,
Speaker 1: And you wouldn't even necessarily be optimist. I am, I
Speaker 1: think I am. And so I think that you're a
Speaker 1: cynical optimist. Yeah, well, I'm a realist. I think people
Speaker 1: often say what I'm saying is cynical because I believe
Speaker 1: that the system can't fix itself and we got to
Speaker 1: tear the whole thing down. But I think looking back
Speaker 1: at the fifties or something and saying, oh, we had
Speaker 1: things right there, we need to go back to that
Speaker 1: relationship between capital and labor by strengthening the unions or whatever,
Speaker 1: I don't think that's optimistic. I think that's delusional. That's
Speaker 1: fundamentally misunderstands the last sixt seventy god seventy years now
Speaker 1: of history, and so I don't think I'm being pessimistic.
Speaker 1: I think I'm trying to be optimistic and realistic about
Speaker 1: where we go from here, which is that we're still
Speaker 1: in history. And so if I'm writing a letter to
Speaker 1: whatever grandchildren, that means that history has kept going in
Speaker 1: a hundred years from now, we're going to be in
Speaker 1: something really really different from what we are now. One
Speaker 1: way or the other. I think that's indisputable, and so
Speaker 1: I gotta keep hope in my heart that it's going
Speaker 1: to be the good way and not the bad way,
Speaker 1: which means that the basic orientation of people toward the
Speaker 1: planet has changed from one in attitude that's extractive to
Speaker 1: one that's you know, participatory, imminent, right, you know, you
Speaker 1: recognize yourself as part of the world. So I think
Speaker 1: they're going to have a lot more to teach me
Speaker 1: than I'm going to have to tell them. That's interesting,
Speaker 1: and perhaps it's deeply optimistic to believe that there is
Speaker 1: a different way, right, to not feel trapped by history
Speaker 1: as it's been, and believe that there's a history your
Speaker 1: future as it could be. Right, Yeah, I think it
Speaker 1: definitely is, but I still got it, you know, so
Speaker 1: we're going to call you the terrified optimist. I'm going
Speaker 1: to work on the right phrase anyway. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for coming to talk. It was really interesting. I'm
Speaker 1: still perhaps two mired in my gen x outlook to
Speaker 1: agree wholeheartedly with Malcolm. I see where capitalism has gone
Speaker 1: off the rails, but I still tend to subscribe to
Speaker 1: Winston Churchill's famous maxim that capitalism is the worst possible
Speaker 1: economic system, with the exception of everything else that's ever
Speaker 1: been tried. Perhaps the answer is that I'm just more
Speaker 1: cynical about human nature than Malcolm. Is. That said, we
Speaker 1: use the word indisputable a few times in this conversation,
Speaker 1: and what is indisputable is that whether you think Malcolm's
Speaker 1: critique is right or wrong, the numbers show that belief
Speaker 1: in capitalism is indeed faltering, and the ways in which
Speaker 1: that plays out will determine the world our children and
Speaker 1: grandchildren live in. And if you're interested in hearing more
Speaker 1: from Malcolm, please pick up a copy of his new book,
Speaker 1: Ship is Fucked Up in Bullshit History Since the end
Speaker 1: of History. Maki a killing is a co production of
Speaker 1: pushkin Industries and Chalk and Blade. It's produced by Ruth
Speaker 1: Barnes and Laura Hyde. My executive producers are Alison McClain
Speaker 1: no relation in making Casey. The executive producer at Pushkin
Speaker 1: is Mia Loebell. Engineering by Jason Rostkowski. Our music is
Speaker 1: by Jed Flood. Special thanks to Jacob Weisberg at Pushkin
Speaker 1: and everyone on the show. I'm Bethany McClain. Thanks so
Speaker 1: much for listening. Find me on Twitter at Bethany mac
Speaker 1: twelve and let me know which episodes you've most enjoyed.