Conservative socialism?

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Summary

Sean Illing welcomes Saurabh Amari, author of ‘Tyranny, Inc.’, to discuss the shifting ideological landscape of American politics. Amari, a cultural conservative with a left-leaning economic project, argues that private power and economic coercion have created a form of tyranny that undermines American liberty. The conversation traces Amari’s intellectual evolution from Iranian-born Marxist atheist to Catholic post-liberal thinker, exploring the through-line of his search for universal truths and comprehensive worldviews.

The core of the discussion focuses on Amari’s analysis of how neoliberalism has subordinated democracy to market logic, creating widespread precarity and unfreedom for working-class Americans. He challenges the conservative notion that tyranny only comes from the state, demonstrating how private actors and employers exert coercive power through employment agreements, wage suppression, and the erosion of worker protections. Amari advocates for a return to New Deal principles, particularly the restoration of countervailing power through strengthened labor unions and sectoral bargaining.

Illing and Amari explore the tension between Amari’s economic populism and his cultural conservatism, questioning whether a sustainable coalition can bridge the gap between the left’s commitment to social justice and the right’s traditional values. They discuss the Republican Party’s failure to address working-class economic concerns despite gaining their votes, attributing this to the influence of billionaire donors and small capital interests. The conversation concludes with cautious optimism that reducing economic precarity might lower the temperature of culture wars, even as fundamental disagreements about liberalism’s future remain unresolved.

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Recommendations

Books

• Tyranny, Inc. — Amari’s own book, discussed throughout the episode. It argues that private power and economic coercion crush American liberty and advocates for a New Deal-inspired restoration of countervailing power for workers.

Concepts

• Countervailing Power — A central concept in the episode and Amari’s book. It refers to raising the power of those subjected to coercion in imbalanced markets, often through collective action like labor unions, supported by government intervention.
• The New Deal Tradition — Amari champions this as a broad blueprint for a new consensus. It represents the use of political power to ameliorate unjust inequalities generated by markets and to raise the countervailing power of workers.
• Sectoral Bargaining — Presented as a potential model for the U.S., inspired by Europe. In this system, workers in an industry are automatically part of a union, and negotiations over wages and conditions happen at an industry-wide level between management, government, and labor, avoiding adversarial workplace-by-workplace battles.

People

• John Kenneth Galbraith — Cited by Amari as the economist who popularized the concept of ‘countervailing power.’ Described as an ideologically elusive mid-century genius whose work Amari relies on heavily.
• Robert Hale — Referenced as a great early 20th-century writer whose 1923 essay on ‘coercion in supposedly non-coercive societies’ is foundational to Amari’s argument.
• Michael Lind — Amari’s friend whose argument about the dangers of a ‘low-wage, high-benefits society’ is used to illustrate the dual subjection of workers to both employers and welfare state administrators.
• Matthew McManus — A political theorist and former guest on The Gray Area who wrote a sharp review of ‘Tyranny, Inc.’ from the left, questioning the separation of economic justice from cultural liberation.
• Zara Wagenknecht — Head of the Left Party in Germany (D-Link), mentioned by Amari as someone who points out how identitarian ideology can work against building workplace solidarity by emphasizing differences.

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Topic Timeline

• 00:03:40 — Saurabh Amari’s Intellectual Evolution — Sean Illing asks Amari to explain his journey from Iranian-born Marxist atheist to Catholic post-liberal thinker. Amari describes rebelling against both the Ayatollah’s Iran and the Mormon culture of Utah, finding appeal in Nietzsche and Marxism’s universalist accounts of history. He explains his conversion to Catholicism as another search for a total, universal account of morality and social order, with the through-line being a seeker’s desire for ultimate truth and a legible world.
• 00:09:32 — The Surprising Solidarity of ‘Tyranny, Inc.’ — Illing expresses surprise at how much he agreed with Amari’s book despite their political differences. Amari clarifies he identifies as a ‘pro-life New Dealer,’ arguing this isn’t an oxymoron given the historical context. The book’s core is about economic coercion in American life, exemplified by exploitative employment agreements where workers relinquish rights to their voice and persona. He frames this as a continuous problem in American history that the New Deal tradition sought to address by raising the countervailing power of workers.
• 00:13:14 — The Failure of Conservative Populism — Illing asks why there aren’t more conservatives with Amari’s genuine concern for the working class. Amari expresses disappointment that the GOP wasted the opportunity presented by Trump’s working-class support. Beyond tariffs and decoupling from China, Trump’s administration failed to deliver substantive pro-worker policies, maintaining a typical Republican stance on labor and healthcare. Amari identifies the power base of the GOP as regional small capital—a ‘genuinely reactionary class’ that hinders a populist transformation.
• 00:23:01 — Tyranny Beyond the State — Illing asks Amari to challenge the conservative vision that tyranny comes only from the state. Amari argues this view is incomplete, obscuring how private actors can tyrannize and coerce. He critiques the neoclassical economic dogma that all transactions are consensual, pointing out that oligopolistic markets and power imbalances create coercion. Conservatives’ ideology of the private sector as a zone of freedom, based on a lost 18th-century Arcadia, actually benefits ‘market tyrants’ by making their coercion invisible.
• 00:30:36 — Neoliberalism as the Governing Villain — The discussion turns to neoliberalism as the main antagonist in Amari’s story. He distinguishes it from classical liberalism, arguing neoliberalism is more radical because it seeks to reconfigure the state and society to resemble the market. Its chief characteristic is depoliticization—removing issues of power imbalance from political contestation and offering market solutions (like apps) instead of political ones. This subordinates democracy to market logic and makes private power immune to democratic accountability.
• 00:41:48 — Restoring Countervailing Power — Illing asks about the path forward, focusing on the concept of ‘countervailing power.’ Amari explains the term, popularized by John Kenneth Galbraith, as raising the power of those subjected to coercion in imbalanced markets, often through government intervention. The prime example is labor unions, enabled by the Wagner Act. He argues for restoring and strengthening the Wagner Act and possibly moving to sectoral bargaining, as seen in Europe, to rebuild workplace democracy without the current adversarial gauntlet.
• 00:46:05 — The Limits of Left-Right Coalition — Illing raises a critique from the left, questioning if resisting economic power is sufficient without also battling patriarchal and cultural hierarchies. Amari acknowledges the tension but argues many working-class people share his social views. He suggests the left must be less absolutist on cultural issues to avoid further de-alignment from the working class. He also criticizes identitarian leftism for potentially undermining workplace solidarity and providing legitimation for corporations, citing the example of an REI diversity podcast advising against unionizing.

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Episode Info

• Podcast: The Gray Area with Sean Illing
• Author: Vox
• Category: Society & Culture Philosophy News Politics News Commentary
• Published: 2023-08-28T09:30:00Z
• Duration: 00:55:50

References

• URL PocketCasts: https://pocketcasts.com/podcast/the-gray-area-with-sean-illing/1d3ce9a0-ae3d-0133-2e33-6dc413d6d41d/conservative-socialism/7b255603-1c90-4b1e-bd78-47d603a7ea27
• Episode UUID: 7b255603-1c90-4b1e-bd78-47d603a7ea27

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Podcast Info

• Name: The Gray Area with Sean Illing
• Type: episodic
• Site: https://www.vox.com/vox-conversations-podcast
• UUID: 1d3ce9a0-ae3d-0133-2e33-6dc413d6d41d

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Transcript

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[00:00:38] One of the most confusing features of American politics over the last decade or so

[00:00:44] has been the shifting ideological landscape.

[00:00:49] Donald Trump was a disaster in almost every sense.

[00:00:53] But one potentially useful thing he did

[00:00:56] was shatter the stale consensus in Washington.

[00:01:01] He also exposed the Republican Party in a way no one else could.

[00:01:05] For decades, the party was an incoherent mix of laissez-faire economics and religious traditionalism.

[00:01:11] Trump blew all that up.

[00:01:14] The Democrats, for their part, have spent most of their time battling Trump,

[00:01:19] which was both necessary but also kind of depressing because of all the opportunity costs.

[00:01:26] But here we are.

[00:01:28] And one of the big questions moving forward is what will American politics look like on the other side of this era?

[00:01:35] Even if Trump wins in 2024, and I sure as hell won’t make any predictions about that,

[00:01:42] what it means to be a liberal or conservative moving forward

[00:01:45] will not be the same as it was 10 or 20 or 30 years ago.

[00:01:50] And that makes me wonder if in all this disruption and chaos,

[00:01:54] there might be potential for a new coalition.

[00:01:56] A coalition in American politics.

[00:01:58] One that actually addresses the roots of so many of our problems.

[00:02:04] I’m Sean Elling, and this is The Gray Area.

[00:02:17] Today’s guest is Saurabh Amari.

[00:02:19] He’s the author of a new book called Tyranny, Inc.

[00:02:22] and a co-founder of Compact Magazine,

[00:02:25] an intellectually heterodox outlet.

[00:02:26] that includes writers on the far right and left.

[00:02:30] Amari became one of the faces of the post-liberal American right early in the Trump era,

[00:02:36] but has since emerged as a critic of conservative orthodoxy.

[00:02:41] And that makes him a worthwhile read, especially for someone on the left.

[00:02:46] His latest book is a great example of this.

[00:02:49] It’s written from a conservative point of view,

[00:02:52] but it’s also a full-throttled embrace of New Deal,

[00:02:56] democratic socialism.

[00:02:58] And it’s a book that shows genuine concern for the working class.

[00:03:02] Something I can’t say about many books I’ve read on the right.

[00:03:06] But this is also what makes Amari so tricky to pin down.

[00:03:10] He’s a cultural conservative with a lefty economic project.

[00:03:14] And it’s never entirely clear to me how all this aligns in his worldview.

[00:03:18] Which is why I wanted to have him on the show.

[00:03:21] We have our disagreements, to be sure.

[00:03:23] But Amari is trying something truly unique.

[00:03:26] Something really useful in this book.

[00:03:28] And I wanted to explore that.

[00:03:32] Saurabh Amari, welcome to The Gray Area.

[00:03:34] Thank you for having me, Sean.

[00:03:36] I have been looking forward to this chat for a very long time.

[00:03:40] And I think a good way to start this conversation is to ask about your intellectual evolution.

[00:03:46] You were born in Iran.

[00:03:48] You become a Marxist and an atheist in your 20s.

[00:03:50] And you later convert to Catholicism in your 30s.

[00:03:54] And now you’re the face of the post-liberal American right.

[00:03:56] Whatever that means, exactly.

[00:03:58] It’s hard for me to find a through line in there.

[00:04:00] Though I suspect I could if I really looked.

[00:04:02] But instead, I’ll just ask how you explain that evolution to people when they do ask.

[00:04:06] Because I’m sure they ask.

[00:04:08] Yeah, they certainly do ask that.

[00:04:10] I think my less charitable critics will just say that Saurabh Amari just can’t settle on a worldview.

[00:04:16] And he’s been this, that, etc.

[00:04:18] To me, first of all, it’s not that exotic of an ideological story.

[00:04:22] Yes, I was born in the Middle East, in the U.S.

[00:04:24] I was born in the Middle East, in the Ayatollahs’ Iran, where I became an atheist at age 13, 14.

[00:04:32] In part because I came from an educated, urban, upper-middle-class milieu.

[00:04:36] And there it was just sort of expected that religion was something for sort of silly provincial people.

[00:04:42] You’ve aspired to be an intellectual, whatever that meant.

[00:04:46] Which I didn’t quite understand as a teenager.

[00:04:48] It meant that you were an atheist.

[00:04:50] And also it meant that you were just broadly of the left.

[00:04:52] And when I say of the left, I don’t mean…

[00:04:54] I don’t mean a liberal.

[00:04:56] I mean of the kind of various stripes of socialism or Marxism.

[00:05:00] So when I came to the United States, I had those attitudes.

[00:05:02] As it happens, I landed in northern Utah, which was where our relatives who had obtained us visas through the family preference program, aka chain migration.

[00:05:12] That’s where they had settled.

[00:05:14] So I suddenly found myself in a heavily Mormon state where alcohol and beer was capped at 3%.

[00:05:20] And Mormon seminaries were somehow located right next door to the high school.

[00:05:22] So I rebelled against that.

[00:05:24] I rebelled pretty strongly against that.

[00:05:26] Just sort of as I had against the mullahs of Iran.

[00:05:28] And like many teenagers, 16, 17-year-olds, I read Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

[00:05:34] And it spoke pretty powerfully to me of what it means to not be a created creature.

[00:05:40] It means you can utterly emancipate yourself from all natural or traditional limits and then create your own world.

[00:05:46] What did that mean in the 20th century or the late 20th century in my case?

[00:05:50] Well, it meant you could reconfigure the economy completely.

[00:05:52] To be one without any alienation, one without any exploitation.

[00:05:58] And hence why I became a Marxist.

[00:06:00] And that’s all pretty, in some ways, despite the Iranian backdrop to it, it’s a pretty typical or in some ways mundane story.

[00:06:08] And likewise, my ultimate decision to choose to be received in the Catholic Church or to be called to be received into the Catholic Church is not that exotic.

[00:06:16] You know, there’s lots of atheists and Marxists of various stripes who later in life embraced Catholicism.

[00:06:22] For me, the through line, first of all, I have a very universalist cast of mind.

[00:06:27] So what speaks to me in Marxism is the idea that, you know, the world is largely legible.

[00:06:33] That there’s a kind of total way of understanding the universe.

[00:06:37] And more than that, there’s a kind of romance in that kind of youthful Marxism of history itself setting right every wrong.

[00:06:43] And history having an ultimate telos or direction.

[00:06:46] It’s the most kind of Hegelian type of Marxism that appealed to me in those early years.

[00:06:50] And likewise, Catholicism.

[00:06:52] Obviously is a total account of the world, of human beings, of what makes us feel so broken and how we can maybe overcome that brokenness.

[00:07:02] It’s an aspiration for a universal account of the world and of especially of morality and social order.

[00:07:10] Maybe the through line there is that you are a seeker.

[00:07:15] Like someone who looks for and needs a higher, fixed, ultimate goal.

[00:07:22] Truth.

[00:07:23] And maybe that’s what connects all of those different systems or worldviews.

[00:07:27] Which is interesting to me because I sort of have the opposite instinct.

[00:07:30] Where I sort of, I’m not sure the world is nearly as legible as we would like it to be.

[00:07:34] Or as we would prefer it to be.

[00:07:36] And I sort of lean into the uncertainty in that way.

[00:07:40] And at least in my worldview, I have found as comforting as certainty can be, lots and lots of ill has come to the world.

[00:07:48] Through people who were convinced.

[00:07:50] That they were.

[00:07:51] That they were absolutely right.

[00:07:53] Certainly, you know, one of the reasons I no longer am an old-fashioned, you know, orthodox Marxist is because of my revulsion.

[00:08:01] I mean, at some point you stop reading sort of hagiographies of Trotsky and reading actually about how, you know, the Russian Revolution turned out in its aftermath.

[00:08:10] And, you know, if you’re intellectually honest, you sort of recoil from that.

[00:08:13] I would argue that just because some universalisms are horrifically violent inherently, right?

[00:08:20] Because of the…

[00:08:21] Because of the sort of zeal that they give their supporters doesn’t mean that all of them are like that.

[00:08:25] So in the case of Catholicism, there’s…

[00:08:27] Or it’s supposed to be all sorts of backstops and limits against that.

[00:08:31] The idea that human beings are fallen is supposed to give us a certain humility about how much we can act in the world.

[00:08:37] You know, the idea of natural laws, which is complicated and we don’t need to unpack it here.

[00:08:42] But it sets up all sorts of limits to trying to reconfigure society in a total way.

[00:08:47] That doesn’t mean that Catholics in history over two millennia…

[00:08:50] This kind of institutional church haven’t tried to do that and haven’t made mistakes.

[00:08:55] But…

[00:08:56] So just to say that not all universalisms are equally awful.

[00:09:01] But we’re becoming overly philosophical perhaps.

[00:09:04] Yeah.

[00:09:05] But our audience happily comes along with us.

[00:09:08] Let’s pivot a little bit more to sort of the subjects of this book and what fascinated me about it.

[00:09:15] I’m sure you have a vague sense of my own politics.

[00:09:17] I would very loosely define myself as…

[00:09:19] Define myself as a supporter of democratic socialism.

[00:09:23] And I found myself agreeing with you a ton in this book, much more than not.

[00:09:28] And that was surprising to me.

[00:09:30] Help me make sense of that.

[00:09:32] Why in the world was I feeling all this solidarity with you while reading this book?

[00:09:36] It feels very Twilight Zone-y for me.

[00:09:39] You’re right.

[00:09:40] Well, hopefully it’s not too discomforting.

[00:09:42] No, not at all. Not at all.

[00:09:43] Okay, good.

[00:09:44] Well, I think the reason for that is because…

[00:09:47] Although I wouldn’t describe myself as a democratic socialist,

[00:09:50] I would describe myself and have been described this way as a New Dealer.

[00:09:56] Specifically a pro-life New Dealer, which isn’t such a paradoxical or oxymoronic label because of the actual New Dealers.

[00:10:04] Many of them were pro-life because that was just the norm in the 1930s.

[00:10:08] So I have been trying to grapple with the American tradition,

[00:10:13] specifically with the problem of economic coercion.

[00:10:17] In American life.

[00:10:18] And so the book, just to unpack the title, is Tyranny, Inc.

[00:10:22] It’s about the way our supposedly non-coercive society is in fact suffused with coercion,

[00:10:29] with people being forced to do things in unjust ways.

[00:10:33] So there are many examples of this in the book, and it’s largely a reported book.

[00:10:38] But one easy one is, you know, I actually bring out the report on this employment agreement

[00:10:45] for a very large company in the United States.

[00:10:46] Which, as part of becoming an employee, in order to earn a paycheck,

[00:10:52] you agree to relinquish your voice, your singing voice, your persona, everything about you.

[00:10:59] For commercial purposes, the employment agreement goes on.

[00:11:02] Which your employer can then license in perpetuity, if it wants to, to any licensee.

[00:11:07] And you have no recourse to sue either your employer or the subsequent licensee

[00:11:13] for any abuse of your voice that might be made.

[00:11:15] Or any abuse of your voice that might be taking place for commercial purposes.

[00:11:18] So that’s a kind of obscene form of coercion made possible by vast disparities in power and income

[00:11:27] between a relatively small asset-owning few and a large group of asset-less many,

[00:11:35] workers and lower middle class people, middle class people.

[00:11:39] And it’s been a problem in American, it’s a kind of continuous thread in American history,

[00:11:43] and it has long belied our highest ideals.

[00:11:45] And there’s always been a counter-tradition to that and efforts to reform that,

[00:11:51] I would argue beginning with the Jacksonian era,

[00:11:54] but that they find their fullest flowering in the New Deal.

[00:11:57] This idea that we recognize that markets may be good,

[00:12:00] but that they can also, unhindered markets can generate these unjust inequalities

[00:12:05] that make a mockery of democracy, they make a mockery of just the politics.

[00:12:10] Politics as such is the pursuit of the common good.

[00:12:13] And so we should try to ameliorate that.

[00:12:14] And sort of raise up the countervailing power of the people who are subjected to this kind of coercion.

[00:12:21] And in that sense, I’m, you know, yes, a New Dealer.

[00:12:24] And in fact, the book, in the second half of the book, I championed the New Deal tradition as

[00:12:29] kind of a broad blueprint that could form a new consensus against kind of the current abuses.

[00:12:35] And just very quickly, I mean, so you’re not the only one.

[00:12:38] The book has received largely positive reception so far among left of center outlets.

[00:12:44] Why aren’t there more pro-life New Dealers, to use your phrase, right?

[00:12:47] I mean, one thing I have to say, and I mean it sincerely, whatever our disagreements,

[00:12:51] and I’m sure we’ll run into a few here,

[00:12:54] I see in this book a real concern for working class people.

[00:13:00] And I frankly don’t see that in the vast majority of conservatives who, to my mind, pretend to care about such things.

[00:13:06] Why is there so much faux populism on the right?

[00:13:11] Why aren’t there more conservatives who are serious in the way that you are?

[00:13:14] About these sorts of issues?

[00:13:15] So this is an issue that I grapple with all the time.

[00:13:18] It’s been a source of tremendous disappointment over the past few years.

[00:13:22] I mean that in the sense that I saw myself as part of a cohort of mainly Catholic intellectuals

[00:13:28] who were really serious about remaking the GOP as a populist vehicle,

[00:13:34] given the fact that in 2016, decisive margins of working class people voted for Trump.

[00:13:40] A ballot which she then subsequently consolidated four years later.

[00:13:44] 2020, despite losing, he expanded that into notable sort of shares of working class people of color as well.

[00:13:51] And I was much more, let’s say, optimistic about this as recently as two, three years ago,

[00:13:58] such that when this book was conceived, was actually on election night 2020,

[00:14:03] before it was clear that Trump had lost, already the early polling numbers, as you remember,

[00:14:08] showed that, again, working class people, including working class people of color,

[00:14:12] were voting for the GOP.

[00:14:13] So it’s like, wow, OK, well, we can do something with that.

[00:14:16] And you’ll remember the buzzword among Republican officials

[00:14:20] and kind of the commentariat of the right, of the multiracial working class.

[00:14:24] But then looking back now, I see that much of that opportunity was wasted,

[00:14:29] including during the Trump era.

[00:14:31] I will say something for the tariffs, which, you know, not even his Democratic successor has lifted,

[00:14:37] and the wider decoupling from China, which kind of has brought forth

[00:14:41] what may be a post-neoliberal era,

[00:14:43] but it’s a post-neoliberal moment now.

[00:14:45] I know we’ll get into neoliberalism and that discussion later,

[00:14:47] but it’s something that’s now become kind of,

[00:14:49] the fact that we should have more regional supply chains

[00:14:52] and more manufacturing closer to home or at home

[00:14:55] is now conventional wisdom, you know, for the Biden administration,

[00:14:58] for the editorial board of the Financial Times.

[00:15:01] But beyond that, which I think is Trump’s one achievement,

[00:15:04] nothing was done.

[00:15:05] You know, his Department of Labor was as kind of all too typically Republican as any,

[00:15:11] stuffed with union busters.

[00:15:13] He tried to undo the Affordable Care Act,

[00:15:16] which I think was an imperfect achievement,

[00:15:18] but nevertheless a big achievement.

[00:15:20] I personally, as an immigrant, I remember my first few years here,

[00:15:23] when we first immigrated to the United States,

[00:15:25] my mother and I, you know, although we were upper class,

[00:15:27] or I shouldn’t say upper class, but upper middle class in Iran,

[00:15:30] you know, my parents had gone through a divorce in Iran,

[00:15:32] and then there was a kind of brutal exchange rate,

[00:15:34] such that when we first ended up here,

[00:15:36] we were actually in pretty dire straits,

[00:15:38] and we lived in, you know, a trailer park in Utah.

[00:15:41] And what I remember the most of,

[00:15:43] about those years,

[00:15:44] was the fact that we were very precarious about our insurance.

[00:15:46] My mother could only access this, like,

[00:15:48] very shoddy forms of insurance available

[00:15:51] while she was a grad student,

[00:15:53] available at these low-wage jobs.

[00:15:55] And our fear was never of getting sick.

[00:15:57] The fear was, what would the bills be like

[00:16:00] that were sure to invade our mailbox

[00:16:02] a few days later after going to the doctor?

[00:16:04] It was experiences like this that were sort of in the back of my mind,

[00:16:07] like, you know, that precariousness,

[00:16:09] which is a result of powerlessness,

[00:16:11] is so pervasive.

[00:16:12] So pervasive in the American economy

[00:16:14] for working-class people.

[00:16:16] The Republican Party failed to do much about it.

[00:16:18] It complained about Wall Street,

[00:16:20] but the best reforms are still to be found

[00:16:22] among, like, Senator Boren.

[00:16:24] They complained about big tech,

[00:16:26] but it’s Lina Khan,

[00:16:27] who’s now President Biden’s competition czar,

[00:16:29] who was putting forward the best investigations and reforms.

[00:16:33] So why is that?

[00:16:34] I mean, it’s causes, I think, several.

[00:16:37] One is the influence of a few sociopathic billionaires.

[00:16:41] The way, it’s not like the Democrats don’t have billionaire donors,

[00:16:44] but the way they,

[00:16:45] and I’ve seen this because I’ve been in some of these rooms,

[00:16:48] the way Republicans relate to their donors is different.

[00:16:51] It’s a sort of just utterly,

[00:16:52] well, what do you say, great man?

[00:16:54] You know, whereas because the Democrats have other bases,

[00:16:57] including labor,

[00:16:58] the relationship is a little bit more complex

[00:17:01] and Democrats can sort of tell their

[00:17:03] political class,

[00:17:04] sometimes they can tell them to sort of shut up.

[00:17:07] That’s one.

[00:17:08] The other one is the lack of personnel

[00:17:10] that is actually interested in this stuff.

[00:17:12] You have a lot of young hotshot populists on the Capitol Hill,

[00:17:15] but they don’t have the language for it.

[00:17:17] And they ultimately easily fall back into kind of typical Republican grooves

[00:17:21] because they have to beat up the left to their minds.

[00:17:24] But the biggest of all,

[00:17:25] which is a very uncomfortable topic to talk about,

[00:17:27] is that the power base of the Republican Party

[00:17:30] is not these new working class people that increasingly vote for it.

[00:17:34] And nor in some ways is it just the billionaires.

[00:17:36] The power base of the Republican Party is regional

[00:17:39] and small capital.

[00:17:40] It’s like the tire distribution chain owner

[00:17:43] in the Research Triangle of North Carolina or something

[00:17:46] who goes to rubber chicken dinners and toasts the self-made man.

[00:17:49] And this is a kind of,

[00:17:51] especially kind of,

[00:17:52] it was a word they used about me,

[00:17:55] but in this case,

[00:17:56] I think it’s justly applied,

[00:17:57] is that it’s a genuinely reactionary class.

[00:18:00] Since the Jacksonian era,

[00:18:01] the kind of small entrepreneur or small time rich

[00:18:04] rightly sees that large corporations and finance or banking

[00:18:08] have unjust privileges that they decry,

[00:18:11] whereas they themselves are always sort of victims of the vagaries

[00:18:14] or the vicissitudes of the market.

[00:18:16] They see that,

[00:18:17] but their answer is always,

[00:18:19] if only we just got rid of government.

[00:18:21] So they would only smash the few regulatory structures

[00:18:24] that still kind of constrain the market system to an extent.

[00:18:28] And that’s the one that’s hard to talk about

[00:18:30] because you’re supposed to celebrate small business,

[00:18:33] but it can actually be a kind of a hindrance to a populist GOP.

[00:18:37] Well,

[00:18:38] my theory has always been that the people who run the Republican party

[00:18:41] have never really cared about any of the culture war stuff

[00:18:45] or they’re working in middle class

[00:18:47] and that they used culture war politics

[00:18:51] in large part as a distraction and a laundering device

[00:18:54] for essentially plutocratic economic policies.

[00:18:57] Sounds like you and I may not diverge too much on that.

[00:19:00] No,

[00:19:01] it’s sort of the what’s the matter with Kansas thesis.

[00:19:04] I mean,

[00:19:05] I would say,

[00:19:06] in some cases,

[00:19:07] the cultural issues can cut in favor of the Republican position.

[00:19:11] So in this one,

[00:19:12] we may disagree.

[00:19:13] I only mentioned it in a footnote in Tyranny Inc.

[00:19:16] But like for a very long time,

[00:19:18] the labor movement in this country was opposed to loose restrictions on immigration,

[00:19:23] in part because it recognized

[00:19:25] if you have a vast reserve army of labor

[00:19:28] that’s always willing to work for less

[00:19:30] and is vulnerable in various ways,

[00:19:32] that undercuts wages.

[00:19:34] So it’s not always neatly,

[00:19:36] what’s the matter with Kansas thesis,

[00:19:38] the Tom Frank thesis,

[00:19:39] as you say,

[00:19:40] but it very often is,

[00:19:42] right?

[00:19:43] So like corporations have too much power,

[00:19:45] but in the Republican frame,

[00:19:47] that becomes just about wokeness,

[00:19:49] so-called wokeness,

[00:19:50] like in the workplace,

[00:19:51] right?

[00:19:52] So it doesn’t follow that next step is,

[00:19:54] hey,

[00:19:55] what if we empower workers

[00:19:56] so that they can resist ideological pressure from employers,

[00:20:00] whatever the ideology may be,

[00:20:01] whether it’s the leftist or right wing ideology.

[00:20:06] So how does tyranny actually work?

[00:20:10] That’s coming up after a quick break.

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[00:23:01] I would say that the central argument in the book,

[00:23:04] or certainly one of them,

[00:23:06] is that we have had in our heads a vision

[00:23:10] of how tyranny works.

[00:23:12] And this is especially true for conservatives.

[00:23:14] And that vision, put simply,

[00:23:16] is that tyranny comes from the state.

[00:23:18] Tell me why that’s wrong or misleading

[00:23:20] or, very importantly, incomplete.

[00:23:23] I would say it’s incomplete

[00:23:25] because certainly there can be tyrannical states.

[00:23:27] Sure.

[00:23:28] And to the credit of the American tradition in general,

[00:23:30] that it’s very alert to the possibility of state tyranny.

[00:23:34] But the sense that tyranny can only come from the government

[00:23:38] risks obscuring another more complicated reality,

[00:23:41] which is that private actors,

[00:23:43] as classical kind of philosophy has long recognized,

[00:23:46] private actors can tyrannize us.

[00:23:48] They can certainly coerce us.

[00:23:50] And in fact, that economic life in general

[00:23:54] is full of coercion,

[00:23:56] as Robert Hale, whom I cite in the book,

[00:23:58] is a great early 20th century writer,

[00:24:00] his famous essay was in 1923

[00:24:03] about coercion in supposedly non-coercive societies.

[00:24:06] In a way, all economic interactions

[00:24:08] are premised on coercion,

[00:24:10] contrary to the kind of Milton Friedmanite

[00:24:12] or neoclassical economic dogma

[00:24:15] that suggests that every transaction is consensual

[00:24:19] because there’s always competition

[00:24:22] and everyone can walk away from a deal

[00:24:24] to find a better one elsewhere.

[00:24:26] In reality, especially after the Industrial Revolution,

[00:24:29] there’s only so many sellers in any given market

[00:24:32] and so many employers

[00:24:34] and many, many more employees

[00:24:35] who have to compete with each other.

[00:24:37] And that fact,

[00:24:38] the fact that markets are typically oligopolistic

[00:24:41] and rationally oligopolistic in some ways,

[00:24:43] means that competition isn’t such a panacea

[00:24:47] in terms of responding to coercion.

[00:24:50] But conservatives, especially in this country,

[00:24:52] labor under,

[00:24:54] and it’s not just conservatives,

[00:24:55] it’s like our business schools,

[00:24:57] a lot of the economic,

[00:24:58] economics departments, etc.,

[00:25:00] the sort of ideological apparatus

[00:25:02] that helps us think about the economy,

[00:25:04] operates on the basis of

[00:25:06] essentially a lost Arcadia

[00:25:08] of the late 18th century

[00:25:10] where, you know,

[00:25:11] this brief period when capitalism

[00:25:13] was dominated by so-called masterless men.

[00:25:16] So yeoman farmers

[00:25:18] and mechanics, artisans, etc.,

[00:25:20] who basically worked for themselves,

[00:25:22] owned their own land,

[00:25:23] owned their own tool,

[00:25:24] and they really could walk away from any deal

[00:25:26] and find a better one elsewhere.

[00:25:27] And the price mechanism

[00:25:29] was probably a more pristine

[00:25:31] index of supply and demand.

[00:25:33] But that world hasn’t existed for

[00:25:35] nearly two centuries now,

[00:25:37] since the mid-19th century at least.

[00:25:39] And so the ideology that

[00:25:41] the private sector is a zone of freedom

[00:25:44] and only government can be a source of tyranny

[00:25:48] actually redounds to the benefit

[00:25:51] of actually existing market tyrants

[00:25:53] because we don’t,

[00:25:54] especially we on the right,

[00:25:56] not you,

[00:25:57] don’t think of the market

[00:25:58] as a place where we could be coerced

[00:26:00] and especially unjustly coerced.

[00:26:02] I would say what I appreciate

[00:26:03] about your argument here is that

[00:26:05] I do think the conception of freedom

[00:26:07] we inherited from people obsessed

[00:26:08] with state tyranny,

[00:26:09] with all the focus on negative rights,

[00:26:12] you know, which is about the things

[00:26:13] people can’t do to us.

[00:26:15] This way of thinking obscures

[00:26:17] a very real but different type of unfreedom,

[00:26:20] which is what happens

[00:26:21] when people don’t have meaningful choices

[00:26:24] in their life

[00:26:25] because the things they need

[00:26:26] to survive and thrive

[00:26:28] are so precarious and contingent.

[00:26:31] Like it’s great to not live

[00:26:33] in a totalitarian state,

[00:26:35] but what’s the point of living in a state

[00:26:37] where you may not have the boot

[00:26:38] of big brother on your neck,

[00:26:40] but you’re one medical diagnosis

[00:26:42] removed from bankruptcy

[00:26:43] where your access to healthcare

[00:26:45] is tied to very tenuous unemployment.

[00:26:48] That’s not real freedom.

[00:26:50] Is it the same as being in a labor camp?

[00:26:51] Nope.

[00:26:52] Is it better than living in Stalinist Russia?

[00:26:55] Yep, no question.

[00:26:56] But it’s not the kind of freedom

[00:26:58] we ought to aspire to.

[00:26:59] And for me, I think the left

[00:27:00] has always been more alive

[00:27:02] to this truth than the right.

[00:27:04] I absolutely agree with that.

[00:27:06] I absolutely agree with that.

[00:27:07] You can find statements to that effect

[00:27:10] of what really it takes

[00:27:12] to have human flourishing

[00:27:14] and what really it takes,

[00:27:15] what human liberty is.

[00:27:16] You can find rich accounts of that

[00:27:18] in the Catechism of the Catholic Church

[00:27:20] and Catholic social teaching,

[00:27:22] which jived with the social democratic

[00:27:24] and Christian democratic movement,

[00:27:26] especially in Europe

[00:27:27] in the kind of mid-century era.

[00:27:29] That said, I mean, it’s hands down,

[00:27:31] it’s the left that is

[00:27:32] far more deeply attuned to this.

[00:27:34] And to give you an example

[00:27:36] of what that kind of precarity looks like

[00:27:38] and how it translates into…

[00:27:40] I mean, this is a well-known example,

[00:27:42] but as most of your listeners know,

[00:27:44] 40% of Americans,

[00:27:46] the Federal Reserve tells us,

[00:27:47] would struggle to come up with $400 in cash

[00:27:50] to pay for an emergency.

[00:27:53] Half of fast food workers

[00:27:54] and a quarter of adjunct college teachers

[00:27:57] have to rely on public welfare

[00:27:59] to make ends meet.

[00:28:00] Now, that latter one is especially important

[00:28:02] because the worst kind of economy to have,

[00:28:04] as my friend Michael Lind argues,

[00:28:06] is a low-wage, high-benefits society.

[00:28:10] When he says high benefits,

[00:28:12] it doesn’t mean that the benefits

[00:28:13] are really generous.

[00:28:14] In fact, they’re quite miserly.

[00:28:16] It just means that as a share

[00:28:18] of the amount of money

[00:28:19] that people need to make ends meet,

[00:28:21] benefits are disproportionately high.

[00:28:23] So that subjects you in two ways.

[00:28:25] It subjects you to the employer

[00:28:27] because you’re always desperate for work

[00:28:29] and your wages are never enough,

[00:28:30] so you never have that sense of security

[00:28:32] that makes it possible

[00:28:34] for you to venture out into the world

[00:28:36] and really kind of exercise your freedom

[00:28:39] rather than just being sort of tyrannized

[00:28:41] by just your need to make a wage

[00:28:43] that just barely…

[00:28:44] that in fact doesn’t make ends meet.

[00:28:46] But you’re also, in some ways,

[00:28:48] you’re at the mercy

[00:28:49] of the welfare state administrator as well, right,

[00:28:51] who can discipline you in various ways.

[00:28:53] Oh, did you spend $12 of your food stamps

[00:28:56] to buy beer or cigarettes or what have you,

[00:28:58] which is the kind of petty tyranny

[00:29:00] that poor and working class people face

[00:29:02] on the other end of the system.

[00:29:04] And so that altogether amounts to

[00:29:07] kind of a tremendous sense of, as we said,

[00:29:09] precarity and ultimately unfreedom.

[00:29:11] And here’s my frustration with most of the right,

[00:29:14] which if you follow my Twitter,

[00:29:16] you begin to see more and more,

[00:29:18] especially in this book,

[00:29:19] is that the right sometimes correctly decries

[00:29:22] the symptoms of this, right?

[00:29:24] It’s like, well, why aren’t people having children?

[00:29:26] Why aren’t they farming families?

[00:29:28] Why is all this alienation so pervasive,

[00:29:31] deaths of despair, et cetera?

[00:29:33] But the right largely,

[00:29:35] there are exceptions to this,

[00:29:36] but largely the right kind of blinkers itself

[00:29:39] to the possibility

[00:29:40] that this might have some material roots,

[00:29:42] that there might be some nexus.

[00:29:44] No, it’s worse than that, right?

[00:29:45] They stoke the resentments

[00:29:47] produced by those material conditions

[00:29:49] while reinforcing those very conditions

[00:29:51] Totally.

[00:29:52] I mean, it’s an absolute political doom

[00:29:54] that we’re all stuck in.

[00:29:55] Totally right, totally right.

[00:29:56] And so to go to your original question,

[00:29:58] the left has always been more attuned to this,

[00:30:00] I would say yes.

[00:30:01] And the reason for that is

[00:30:02] because there was this serious turn

[00:30:04] toward understanding the role of the material order

[00:30:08] in the shape of our culture

[00:30:10] and recognizing that our material order

[00:30:12] is not sort of naturally ordained.

[00:30:15] Market societies don’t grow on trees.

[00:30:17] It’s the choices we make politically

[00:30:19] and especially elites make politically

[00:30:21] that make for the shape of our economy.

[00:30:24] And that’s always been the left’s best insight

[00:30:26] that actually we could change that.

[00:30:28] Like it doesn’t have to be this way

[00:30:30] as I think sort of the best political economic insight

[00:30:33] of the left.

[00:30:34] Well, let’s talk about one reason it is this way.

[00:30:36] And the main villain,

[00:30:38] if that’s an appropriate word,

[00:30:39] in the book is neoliberalism,

[00:30:41] which is the successor ideology

[00:30:44] to laissez-faire capitalism

[00:30:46] and basically the governing economic doctrine

[00:30:49] of our society

[00:30:50] since the late 70s, early 80s.

[00:30:53] For the love of God,

[00:30:54] I won’t ask you to define neoliberalism,

[00:30:58] though you do a decent job of that in the book.

[00:31:00] But I do think it’s important to ask

[00:31:03] why neoliberalism is such an important character

[00:31:07] in this story you’re telling.

[00:31:09] What should people know about that?

[00:31:10] Yep.

[00:31:11] So neoliberalism is what came after classical liberalism.

[00:31:15] And I argue that classical liberalism

[00:31:18] is a kind of utopian ideology.

[00:31:20] It’s utopian in the sense that,

[00:31:22] I call it market utopianism.

[00:31:24] It imagines that there can be an autonomous market.

[00:31:29] It’s like a machine.

[00:31:30] You just set it.

[00:31:31] And by the way,

[00:31:32] they don’t acknowledge that the bringing about

[00:31:34] of the autonomous market in itself

[00:31:36] was a result of tremendous state coercion

[00:31:38] that displaced older forms of life.

[00:31:40] But setting that aside,

[00:31:41] you sort of set it and forget it.

[00:31:43] You never have a problem of coercion

[00:31:45] because there’s always competition.

[00:31:47] Of course, this is just, as we discussed,

[00:31:49] is not the case.

[00:31:51] The price signal in many industries

[00:31:53] and most industries and most markets,

[00:31:55] the price signal is nothing more

[00:31:57] than an index of relative bargaining power.

[00:32:00] When you have two or three big actors

[00:32:02] in any industry,

[00:32:03] which is a kind of oligopolistic condition,

[00:32:05] they get to set the price for their goods

[00:32:07] and also to set the price for labor,

[00:32:09] which is another way to say they set wages.

[00:32:12] There’s no sort of mysterious process

[00:32:14] that creates a wage

[00:32:16] that is just perfectly indexed

[00:32:18] to the workers’ marginal productivity,

[00:32:21] as classical economic theory insists.

[00:32:23] That’s just nonsense.

[00:32:25] But that’s just classical liberal theory.

[00:32:27] Except for antitrust,

[00:32:29] basically leave the market alone.

[00:32:31] Neoliberalism is far more sinister

[00:32:33] and radical than that

[00:32:34] in the sense that neoliberalism says

[00:32:36] not only should the state leave the market alone,

[00:32:39] but that the state has to be reconfigured

[00:32:42] to resemble the market.

[00:32:43] And that’s the kind of shift

[00:32:45] that we begin to introduce

[00:32:48] as ever more kind of market-like econometric

[00:32:51] and measures for what it means

[00:32:53] that a state is successful.

[00:32:55] Every element of life becomes

[00:32:57] more and more marketized.

[00:32:59] And so I quote Michel Foucault

[00:33:01] that neoliberalism seeks to govern society

[00:33:04] by the market.

[00:33:05] So it’s not just that society

[00:33:07] should leave the market alone,

[00:33:08] but that the market governs society.

[00:33:10] The society exists for the sake of the market.

[00:33:13] So, I mean, there’s many examples of this

[00:33:15] in public and private hospitals,

[00:33:17] increasingly.

[00:33:19] Even hospital chaplains

[00:33:20] are given productivity scores.

[00:33:22] So these are people who feel called by God

[00:33:24] to accompany the dead in their final moments,

[00:33:26] but they’re harried by these

[00:33:28] kind of computerized systems

[00:33:30] that determine how kind of productive they’ve been.

[00:33:32] I argue the chief characteristic

[00:33:34] of neoliberalism, though,

[00:33:35] is precisely because it redefines

[00:33:37] state and society in market terms,

[00:33:39] is depoliticization.

[00:33:40] That is, things that are ultimately

[00:33:43] up for political contestation

[00:33:45] get removed from the realm of politics.

[00:33:47] So that, you know,

[00:33:48] you might feel very harried.

[00:33:50] You can never find enough time

[00:33:52] to spend with your family

[00:33:53] because your bosses can email you at any time.

[00:33:56] And the expectation is that

[00:33:57] whatever time of day it is,

[00:33:58] you have to be able to respond

[00:34:00] to him or her immediately.

[00:34:02] This is something that’s a result

[00:34:03] of a political power imbalance.

[00:34:06] And, you know, a decent society

[00:34:08] would seek to use politics

[00:34:10] to ameliorate that

[00:34:12] and introduce greater balance.

[00:34:13] So, like, maybe, I don’t know,

[00:34:14] pass a law that says

[00:34:15] the employers can’t do anything.

[00:34:17] They can’t email you

[00:34:18] after a certain time of day

[00:34:19] or what have you.

[00:34:20] But neoliberalism doesn’t do that.

[00:34:21] It says, well, that’s not…

[00:34:23] Not only is that not political,

[00:34:24] but you know what?

[00:34:25] We have this great app.

[00:34:27] It’s a work-life balance app

[00:34:28] for only $4.99 a month.

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[00:34:35] And it tracks how much time spent

[00:34:37] you spend with your kids.

[00:34:38] Now, I made that up.

[00:34:39] But that’s the kind of

[00:34:40] supreme neoliberal move

[00:34:42] of removing from a realm of political

[00:34:44] or class contestation

[00:34:46] things that are eminently

[00:34:47] about political power

[00:34:48] and lack of power.

[00:34:54] Coming up after one more quick break,

[00:34:56] how do we move forward

[00:34:58] in the wake of neoliberalism?

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[00:37:43] The state has been subordinated

[00:38:00] to the market, right?

[00:38:01] And so what I take

[00:38:02] from what you’re saying

[00:38:03] here and in the book

[00:38:04] is that neoliberalism

[00:38:06] has actually supplanted democracy

[00:38:09] in a very real way

[00:38:10] because it relocates

[00:38:12] the source of our unfreedom

[00:38:14] in the private sphere,

[00:38:15] where for that reason exactly,

[00:38:17] it is immune to democratic

[00:38:19] checks and accountability.

[00:38:20] I mean that,

[00:38:21] is that a fair summation?

[00:38:23] Precisely.

[00:38:24] So if you’re right about that,

[00:38:25] if the private sphere

[00:38:26] has inhaled the public sphere,

[00:38:30] in what sense are we still

[00:38:31] doing politics in this country?

[00:38:33] And that may sound strange.

[00:38:35] What I mean is if politics

[00:38:37] is about contesting public power,

[00:38:39] but the real power in our society

[00:38:41] is private and beyond the scope

[00:38:43] of democratic accountability,

[00:38:45] then what the hell is the point

[00:38:47] of democratic politics?

[00:38:48] What are we doing?

[00:38:49] Well, you know,

[00:38:51] we certainly have a legislature

[00:38:53] that appears,

[00:38:54] you know, his members appear

[00:38:55] on Fox and MSNBC

[00:38:57] and sort of yell at each other

[00:38:58] from a distance.

[00:38:59] It’s a great TV show.

[00:39:00] I’ll give you that.

[00:39:01] It’s a great TV show.

[00:39:02] No, I mean, I think

[00:39:03] that’s very disheartening

[00:39:04] and it’s why it’s really important

[00:39:06] to reassert the primacy

[00:39:08] of the political.

[00:39:09] Any politician

[00:39:10] who comes and says X, Y, Z thing,

[00:39:12] which we’ve been told

[00:39:13] is beyond political contestation

[00:39:16] is actually the subject

[00:39:18] of political contestation

[00:39:19] will be rewarded, I think,

[00:39:21] because people feel this frustration.

[00:39:23] And I think the populace

[00:39:24] of left and right,

[00:39:25] especially in that sort of

[00:39:26] high point of American

[00:39:28] and I can say maybe

[00:39:29] Western populism,

[00:39:31] which was 2015, 16, you know,

[00:39:33] Syriza, Sanders, Trump,

[00:39:37] they all to one degree or another

[00:39:39] emphasizing different issues

[00:39:40] that no, no, no, no,

[00:39:41] like corporate led globalization

[00:39:43] is not the natural, rational result

[00:39:45] of just market forces unfolding.

[00:39:48] Those are political choices

[00:39:50] from which we didn’t get to have a say.

[00:39:51] For Trump, it would be

[00:39:52] for immigration, et cetera.

[00:39:53] It doesn’t mean like

[00:39:54] they got every issue right.

[00:39:55] In fact, in many cases,

[00:39:56] it was all very inchoate and messy

[00:39:58] as populist movements tend to be.

[00:40:00] What I try to tell people who,

[00:40:03] there’s a genre of writers,

[00:40:05] you know, some of them

[00:40:06] I consider friends like Yasha Munk

[00:40:08] or others of whom I don’t,

[00:40:09] you know, they always say,

[00:40:10] you know, we have to defend democracy.

[00:40:12] And the way they say it,

[00:40:14] it’s as though it’s a matter

[00:40:15] of just saying that,

[00:40:16] like if you just say enough

[00:40:18] that democracy is good or,

[00:40:20] you know, let’s preserve our order,

[00:40:23] it’ll convince anyone

[00:40:25] but people who are kind of comfortable

[00:40:27] in the current order.

[00:40:28] But if you have lots of people

[00:40:30] who only experience

[00:40:31] this kind of privatized politics

[00:40:34] in which life just becomes

[00:40:35] a little bit more miserable

[00:40:36] and precarious all the time,

[00:40:38] to tell them like,

[00:40:40] you got to love democracy,

[00:40:41] you know, defend democracy,

[00:40:43] it means nothing.

[00:40:44] And so, you know, that’s a call.

[00:40:46] I mean, now to be fair to Yasha,

[00:40:48] he would say, yep.

[00:40:49] And my answer is we should have

[00:40:51] a greater democratic contestation.

[00:40:53] And my version of this kind of ideology,

[00:40:56] liberal ideology,

[00:40:58] permits greater room for,

[00:41:00] you know, social democratic reforms.

[00:41:02] And I respect that.

[00:41:03] But where it becomes,

[00:41:05] I think, very cynical

[00:41:06] on the part of, you know,

[00:41:07] on the part of the establishment,

[00:41:09] the centrist kind of

[00:41:10] uniparty establishment is where

[00:41:12] it’s just a matter of just telling people

[00:41:14] to love democracy more

[00:41:15] when it’s all been hollowed out

[00:41:17] as you described.

[00:41:18] Well, then there’s the question of

[00:41:19] what the hell can we do?

[00:41:22] What is the way forward here?

[00:41:23] I mean, something you talk about

[00:41:25] in the book is the creation

[00:41:26] and the subsequent destruction

[00:41:28] of what has traditionally been called

[00:41:30] countervailing power.

[00:41:32] Maybe it would help for you to say

[00:41:34] kind of what that term means

[00:41:35] and what a restoration of it

[00:41:36] for workers would look like

[00:41:39] in the 21st century,

[00:41:40] because presumably

[00:41:41] that is exactly the kind of thing

[00:41:43] that you think we need to do

[00:41:44] or have to do

[00:41:45] in order to rebalance the scales.

[00:41:48] Countervailing power was a term

[00:41:50] used, popularized, I should say,

[00:41:52] by an economist who’s very hard

[00:41:54] to ideologically pin down,

[00:41:56] John Kenneth Galbraith,

[00:41:58] a mid-century figure,

[00:41:59] you know, friend of the Kennedys,

[00:42:01] but not obviously a leftist per se.

[00:42:04] One of these ideologically elusive

[00:42:05] kind of slippery figures

[00:42:07] of the mid-century era,

[00:42:08] but I think like a genius.

[00:42:09] And so I rely on his work a great deal.

[00:42:12] And it’s quite simple.

[00:42:13] He argues that in any market

[00:42:15] where there are kind of

[00:42:16] oligopolistic formation,

[00:42:17] where there are just a few producers

[00:42:19] and sellers and buyers,

[00:42:21] basically, let’s just use those terms,

[00:42:23] or just a few buyers,

[00:42:24] which would be the case

[00:42:25] of a labor market,

[00:42:26] there are far fewer buyers of labor

[00:42:27] than there are sellers of labor,

[00:42:29] that typically the way to bring balance

[00:42:33] to what would otherwise be

[00:42:34] a highly coercive relationship

[00:42:36] is to raise up the countervailing power

[00:42:38] of the people on the other side of the market

[00:42:40] who are subjected to that.

[00:42:42] So sometimes this happens organically.

[00:42:44] For example, large department stores,

[00:42:46] they mount countervailing power

[00:42:48] against manufacturers

[00:42:49] and buy bulk cheaper,

[00:42:51] and then they pass on the savings

[00:42:53] to consumers.

[00:42:54] But in other markets,

[00:42:55] there has to be some government intervention

[00:42:57] to create and help raise up

[00:42:59] countervailing power.

[00:43:00] So new dealers, you know,

[00:43:02] as you know,

[00:43:03] MLC set up all these like farming co-ops,

[00:43:05] electricity co-ops, et cetera,

[00:43:06] which were government supported,

[00:43:08] but also somewhat voluntaristic, et cetera.

[00:43:10] That’s one example of it as, you know,

[00:43:12] the countervailing power

[00:43:13] of consumer communities.

[00:43:15] Another one is labor unions.

[00:43:17] That’s the most kind of famous,

[00:43:19] essential example of countervailing power

[00:43:21] and one where government intervention

[00:43:23] is essential.

[00:43:24] Why?

[00:43:25] Because of precisely the imbalance in power

[00:43:27] that we’ve been talking about

[00:43:28] this whole show.

[00:43:29] For any individual worker,

[00:43:30] it’s more rational to try to do their best

[00:43:32] on their own,

[00:43:33] succeed at work, et cetera,

[00:43:35] hope they don’t get sick,

[00:43:36] hope they don’t get into an argument

[00:43:37] with the boss

[00:43:38] and see the best they can do.

[00:43:39] So it doesn’t make sense for them

[00:43:41] to sort of do politics at work

[00:43:43] because they feel so vulnerable.

[00:43:45] That’s why in order to have countervailing power

[00:43:47] in the workplace,

[00:43:48] there has to be government encouragement

[00:43:50] to collective action

[00:43:51] and collective bargaining.

[00:43:52] And that’s the most important thing

[00:43:54] that new dealers did.

[00:43:55] They created us all these

[00:43:56] kind of alphabet soup of agencies,

[00:43:58] but the one that was most important

[00:44:00] to shifting the shape of our economy

[00:44:02] away from the sort of brutal 19th century

[00:44:05] and first three decades of the 20th century

[00:44:07] toward this period of mass prosperity,

[00:44:10] rising middle-class wages, et cetera,

[00:44:12] was by raising the countervailing power

[00:44:14] of workers through the Wagner Act.

[00:44:16] So there are certain conditions

[00:44:18] that were present then

[00:44:19] that are not here anymore.

[00:44:21] So for example,

[00:44:22] we’ve had a wave of globalization

[00:44:24] and automation in certain industries.

[00:44:27] But I argue and I show

[00:44:29] using research

[00:44:30] from the Economic Policy Institute

[00:44:32] that that’s overstated.

[00:44:34] The role of globalization and automation

[00:44:37] in chipping away at labor unionization

[00:44:39] in the U.S. is overstated,

[00:44:41] typically by people

[00:44:42] who want to say it’s inevitable.

[00:44:44] In fact, it is possible

[00:44:46] to restore union density,

[00:44:47] I think, in the United States.

[00:44:49] If we restore the Wagner Act,

[00:44:51] first of all,

[00:44:52] because it’s been kind of distorted

[00:44:54] by Taft-Hartley,

[00:44:55] which gave employers

[00:44:56] a quote-unquote free speech right

[00:44:58] to campaign against unionization,

[00:45:00] and then by lots of Republican-dominated

[00:45:01] National Labor Relations Board

[00:45:03] and Republican-dominated Supreme Courts,

[00:45:05] they chipped away at it such that

[00:45:07] in order to organize a union

[00:45:09] at your workplace,

[00:45:10] it’s become a gauntlet

[00:45:12] because of these kind of chipping away

[00:45:14] at the Wagner Act.

[00:45:15] So we have to restore it.

[00:45:16] But maybe we need to even go further

[00:45:18] and do sectoral bargaining.

[00:45:20] You know, in Europe,

[00:45:21] you don’t have to, like,

[00:45:22] join a union

[00:45:23] and it’s an immediate battle royal

[00:45:25] between you and the employer.

[00:45:26] In many industries,

[00:45:27] especially in continental Europe,

[00:45:29] if you join that industry,

[00:45:30] you’re already part of the union.

[00:45:31] Now, if you want to take

[00:45:32] a more active role,

[00:45:33] by all means.

[00:45:34] But otherwise,

[00:45:35] you can just sort of do your job,

[00:45:36] and it’s once a year,

[00:45:38] management, government,

[00:45:39] and the labor union will meet

[00:45:41] and, you know, hammer out

[00:45:42] working conditions, wages, etc.

[00:45:44] And it’s just a more healthy process.

[00:45:46] It’s not this kind of ugly battle

[00:45:48] with union consultants

[00:45:50] and union busting, all of that.

[00:45:52] You don’t have to go through that.

[00:45:53] So I think if maybe

[00:45:54] the next generation of populists,

[00:45:56] especially center-left populists,

[00:45:58] push for a new Wagner Act,

[00:46:00] we could restore something

[00:46:02] of workplace democracy.

[00:46:03] You know, what’s interesting to me

[00:46:05] is I feel like, in a lot of ways,

[00:46:06] your book is sort of an olive branch

[00:46:08] to the left

[00:46:09] to try to find this sort of common cause,

[00:46:12] which is one of the reasons

[00:46:13] I was sympathetic to a lot

[00:46:14] of what I was reading.

[00:46:15] And it’s something I…

[00:46:17] Matthew McManus,

[00:46:18] who’s a political theorist

[00:46:20] and a former guest on our show,

[00:46:22] he wrote a sharp review

[00:46:25] of your book from the left.

[00:46:27] I know, Matt.

[00:46:28] Which I thought was very good

[00:46:30] and his argument is that

[00:46:33] you can’t separate the left’s commitment

[00:46:35] to economic justice

[00:46:37] from its desire to undo patriarchal

[00:46:41] and cultural hierarchies

[00:46:43] because all of it springs

[00:46:46] from this common normative aspiration

[00:46:48] that’s always animated the left,

[00:46:50] which is the pursuit of liberty

[00:46:52] and equality for everyone

[00:46:54] regardless of their circumstances.

[00:46:57] And I think his point here

[00:46:58] is about the limits

[00:46:59] of the sort of left-right coalition

[00:47:01] you’re after

[00:47:02] and whether simply resisting economic power

[00:47:04] is sufficient without also

[00:47:06] waging these other battles.

[00:47:07] Do you share this doubt

[00:47:08] or do you not see a tension here?

[00:47:10] I certainly see the tension

[00:47:11] and some of the reviews

[00:47:13] are already out

[00:47:14] as we’re recording this

[00:47:15] from center-left outlets.

[00:47:17] And I would say

[00:47:18] the entire pattern of the reviews

[00:47:20] is typically like,

[00:47:21] wow, he does such a great job

[00:47:23] of describing how coercion

[00:47:24] worsens the economy

[00:47:25] and how countervailing power

[00:47:27] is necessary to combat it.

[00:47:28] But, you know,

[00:47:29] he’s a Catholic

[00:47:30] and a political Catholic.

[00:47:31] I mean, I don’t deny that.

[00:47:32] And so therefore,

[00:47:33] some of his goals are at odds

[00:47:35] with the broad left.

[00:47:36] And I don’t deny that.

[00:47:37] I don’t discount the tension.

[00:47:38] I would say a few things.

[00:47:40] The first thing, though,

[00:47:41] is that a ton of working-class people

[00:47:43] in this country

[00:47:45] have social views like mine.

[00:47:47] It don’t mean they’re like

[00:47:48] in five decades of the Rosary a day,

[00:47:50] daily mass going,

[00:47:51] you know, da-da-da-da-da types.

[00:47:53] But they have this desire

[00:47:55] for their normative ideal

[00:47:57] of a family is one in which

[00:48:00] one income is enough

[00:48:01] to make ends meet.

[00:48:02] And their ideal of that

[00:48:03] is that typically, you know,

[00:48:05] it’s the man who is the father

[00:48:06] who provides that.

[00:48:08] Now, I would argue

[00:48:09] sort of like the policies

[00:48:10] that I promote in this book

[00:48:12] also apply to families.

[00:48:13] And it would help a single mom,

[00:48:16] you know, who’s just

[00:48:17] the sole breadwinner

[00:48:18] or whatever other family formation

[00:48:19] that doesn’t fit

[00:48:20] that normative model

[00:48:21] would still do well

[00:48:22] by the sort of proposals

[00:48:24] in the book.

[00:48:25] But they have these ideas.

[00:48:26] And so, you know,

[00:48:27] I think that unless

[00:48:29] the left is prepared

[00:48:30] to be even more alienated

[00:48:33] or de-aligned is the term

[00:48:35] that’s often used,

[00:48:36] the de-alignment between

[00:48:37] the left and the working class,

[00:48:39] it has to be a little bit

[00:48:41] less absolutist

[00:48:42] about its cultural positions,

[00:48:44] which is an interesting thing

[00:48:46] to point out.

[00:48:47] But like you say,

[00:48:48] the labor movement is maximal

[00:48:50] on reproductive rights,

[00:48:52] which it is, you know,

[00:48:53] the official labor movement.

[00:48:54] Well, that’s partly a sign

[00:48:55] of the weakness

[00:48:56] of the labor movement

[00:48:57] because that means

[00:48:58] that they have to be

[00:48:59] overly beholden

[00:49:00] to the policies

[00:49:01] of the Democratic Party.

[00:49:02] Wherever you are on abortion,

[00:49:03] there are lots

[00:49:04] of working class people

[00:49:05] who have a more restrictive view

[00:49:07] on abortion.

[00:49:08] It doesn’t mean

[00:49:09] they’re from conception,

[00:49:10] but they fall in various places.

[00:49:12] But a lot of people think,

[00:49:13] you know,

[00:49:14] after the first trimester,

[00:49:15] abortion is abhorrent

[00:49:16] or something like that.

[00:49:17] And there has to be,

[00:49:18] you know,

[00:49:19] a pro-worker movement

[00:49:20] that has a place

[00:49:21] for those people.

[00:49:22] Otherwise, you have a left

[00:49:24] that is very much aligned

[00:49:26] with suburban moms,

[00:49:28] neoconservatives,

[00:49:29] any number of people

[00:49:30] who have liberal social views

[00:49:32] but aren’t working class people.

[00:49:33] That’s one point.

[00:49:35] The other one I would just make

[00:49:36] is the current form

[00:49:38] of identitarian leftism

[00:49:41] has this tendency to,

[00:49:44] you know,

[00:49:45] the proliferation

[00:49:46] of these sort of

[00:49:47] different identities

[00:49:48] could work to the benefit

[00:49:49] of the employer

[00:49:50] in the workplace.

[00:49:51] And this is something

[00:49:52] that Zara Wagenknecht

[00:49:53] is a very interesting person,

[00:49:54] the head of the left party

[00:49:55] in Germany,

[00:49:56] D-Link,

[00:49:57] points out that,

[00:49:58] you know,

[00:49:59] that sort of ideology

[00:50:00] is always about finding

[00:50:01] what’s different about people.

[00:50:02] And so that comes hard

[00:50:03] to build solidarity

[00:50:04] if you’re always like,

[00:50:05] well, I am this and that,

[00:50:06] and that’s a point

[00:50:07] of contention with you

[00:50:08] who might be X, Y, and Z.

[00:50:10] So I think the emphasizing

[00:50:12] a kind of more universalistic

[00:50:14] and easy to identify with

[00:50:16] so that people

[00:50:17] who can join hands

[00:50:18] across their differences

[00:50:19] is worthwhile for the less.

[00:50:21] The last thing I would just say

[00:50:22] is that some of the,

[00:50:23] again,

[00:50:24] the kind of

[00:50:25] identitarian elements

[00:50:26] of the left today

[00:50:27] definitely redound

[00:50:28] to the benefit

[00:50:29] of corporations

[00:50:30] in the sense that they provide

[00:50:31] legitimation

[00:50:32] for a massively

[00:50:33] unequal society.

[00:50:34] You know,

[00:50:35] the REI outdoor gear chain

[00:50:37] had a podcast

[00:50:38] just a few months ago

[00:50:40] led by their chief

[00:50:41] diversity officer.

[00:50:42] And this person begins,

[00:50:43] you know,

[00:50:44] hello, I’m so-and-so,

[00:50:45] my pronouns are she, her.

[00:50:46] And I just want to acknowledge

[00:50:47] that I’m coming to you

[00:50:48] from the traditional lands

[00:50:49] of the alone people.

[00:50:50] And by the way,

[00:50:51] the topic of the podcast

[00:50:52] was why you shouldn’t

[00:50:53] join a labor union.

[00:50:54] So,

[00:50:55] those are elements

[00:50:56] where I think there’s,

[00:50:57] the tension is on Matt’s side

[00:50:59] where,

[00:51:00] go ahead.

[00:51:01] On that particular point,

[00:51:02] I’m with you.

[00:51:03] I mean, again,

[00:51:04] it’s similar to the story

[00:51:05] of a Christian small, say, right?

[00:51:06] The black Amazon worker

[00:51:07] who, you know,

[00:51:08] while Amazon was dumping

[00:51:09] millions and millions of dollars

[00:51:10] into their Black Lives Matter

[00:51:11] advertising campaign,

[00:51:13] he was actually trying

[00:51:14] to organize a union

[00:51:15] and defend their labor rights.

[00:51:16] And they cast him out for that.

[00:51:18] They cast him out

[00:51:19] and called him not smart

[00:51:20] or articulate

[00:51:21] in an internal memo.

[00:51:22] Right.

[00:51:23] So, I’m with you on that.

[00:51:24] But I will say,

[00:51:25] in the sense of,

[00:51:26] I think,

[00:51:27] where Matt is coming from

[00:51:28] is the sort of tyranny

[00:51:29] you’re rejecting in the book

[00:51:30] is real and worth toppling,

[00:51:31] but also bodily integrity,

[00:51:33] the right to self-determine,

[00:51:34] the dignity of being

[00:51:35] who you really are,

[00:51:36] that’s all essential

[00:51:37] to a free life as well,

[00:51:38] just as essential

[00:51:39] as not being tyrannized

[00:51:40] by unaccountable employers.

[00:51:43] And there is a branch

[00:51:44] of conservatism

[00:51:45] that does actually prefer

[00:51:47] the cultural hierarchies

[00:51:49] of yesterday

[00:51:50] that does think

[00:51:51] the patriarchy, say,

[00:51:52] was good and necessary,

[00:51:53] that does think

[00:51:54] gay and trans people

[00:51:55] don’t deserve full equality

[00:51:56] under the law.

[00:51:57] I’m not ascribing

[00:51:58] all that to you.

[00:51:59] I’m just saying

[00:52:00] that it exists.

[00:52:01] And I suspect

[00:52:02] the battle over these things

[00:52:03] will persist,

[00:52:04] regardless of what we do

[00:52:05] in the economic sphere.

[00:52:06] You may actually

[00:52:07] disagree with all that.

[00:52:08] Believe me,

[00:52:09] I have this conversation

[00:52:10] on different levels.

[00:52:11] And, you know,

[00:52:12] I try to convene people

[00:52:13] of left and right together

[00:52:14] and try to think,

[00:52:15] okay,

[00:52:16] how do we propose

[00:52:17] a post-neoliberal vision

[00:52:19] or consensus

[00:52:20] despite our differences?

[00:52:22] And there are some ways,

[00:52:24] and they’re not

[00:52:25] going to satisfy me

[00:52:26] and they won’t satisfy you.

[00:52:27] They don’t satisfy me completely

[00:52:28] because I’m, you know,

[00:52:29] I have my views,

[00:52:30] you know,

[00:52:31] in some ways

[00:52:32] my revulsion

[00:52:33] at exploitation

[00:52:34] in the workplace

[00:52:35] is inspired

[00:52:36] from the same place

[00:52:37] that makes me recoil,

[00:52:38] for example,

[00:52:39] at euthanasia, right?

[00:52:40] A treatment of lives

[00:52:41] under perfectly

[00:52:42] kind of nice-seeming

[00:52:43] liberal mode

[00:52:44] of life,

[00:52:45] certain lives

[00:52:46] being not worthy

[00:52:47] of life.

[00:52:48] Say,

[00:52:49] wouldn’t it be better

[00:52:50] if you, you know,

[00:52:51] euthanized yourself?

[00:52:52] You’re so old.

[00:52:53] Oh, you’re so ill.

[00:52:54] So anyway,

[00:52:55] some of my

[00:52:56] pro-worker commitments

[00:52:57] come from

[00:52:58] a place of morality

[00:52:59] or a set of moral commitments

[00:53:00] that, frankly,

[00:53:01] are in tension

[00:53:02] with those of, like,

[00:53:03] Matt

[00:53:04] and probably you, Sean.

[00:53:05] That said,

[00:53:06] there are two ways

[00:53:07] to deal with this.

[00:53:08] One, I think,

[00:53:09] is a mode

[00:53:10] of,

[00:53:11] look,

[00:53:12] we will continue

[00:53:13] to agree to disagree

[00:53:14] about culture,

[00:53:15] that’s just politics,

[00:53:16] but we can build coalitions

[00:53:17] the way, for example,

[00:53:18] the Nixon-Eisenhower

[00:53:19] tradition

[00:53:20] of the Republican Party

[00:53:21] came to uphold

[00:53:22] the New Deal

[00:53:23] despite having

[00:53:24] ferocious disagreements

[00:53:25] with New Dealers

[00:53:26] on other stuff.

[00:53:27] So, you know,

[00:53:28] that’s just kind of

[00:53:29] retail politics,

[00:53:30] it’s consensus politics.

[00:53:32] We will have those disagreements

[00:53:33] another day

[00:53:34] is the kind of…

[00:53:35] Yeah, and look,

[00:53:36] I would say,

[00:53:37] you know,

[00:53:38] while I don’t think

[00:53:39] creating a freer

[00:53:40] and more economically

[00:53:41] just society

[00:53:42] will solve

[00:53:43] all of our cultural

[00:53:44] and political problems,

[00:53:45] I do believe,

[00:53:46] and maybe this is

[00:53:47] my leftist sensibility

[00:53:48] coming through,

[00:53:49] that a population

[00:53:50] that isn’t living

[00:53:51] under precarity

[00:53:52] and unfairness

[00:53:53] will be much less likely

[00:53:54] to succumb

[00:53:55] to the sort of resentments

[00:53:56] and anxieties

[00:53:57] that can lead

[00:53:58] to very ugly

[00:53:59] nativist politics,

[00:54:00] which is why

[00:54:01] I’m very happy

[00:54:02] to join you

[00:54:03] in this fight.

[00:54:04] Yeah, no,

[00:54:05] I…

[00:54:06] That’s certainly…

[00:54:07] That’s…

[00:54:08] I agree with that

[00:54:09] as well.

[00:54:10] I think that

[00:54:11] this is really

[00:54:12] just echoing

[00:54:13] what you just said,

[00:54:14] so forgive me,

[00:54:15] but it’s…

[00:54:16] I’m putting it

[00:54:17] in my own words,

[00:54:18] but a lot of these

[00:54:19] different kinds

[00:54:20] of identitarian resentments,

[00:54:21] and I’m really

[00:54:22] terrified of

[00:54:23] some of what’s happening

[00:54:24] in the online right

[00:54:25] because a lot of my friends

[00:54:26] tell me,

[00:54:27] oh,

[00:54:28] it’s just shit posting,

[00:54:29] but there’s a kind of

[00:54:30] racist e-right

[00:54:31] that gets under my skin

[00:54:32] in such a profound way,

[00:54:33] but I do think

[00:54:34] that a lot of it

[00:54:35] is precisely

[00:54:36] because we don’t have

[00:54:37] avenues for living

[00:54:38] a relatively

[00:54:39] less precarious life,

[00:54:40] a more decent life,

[00:54:41] and,

[00:54:42] for example,

[00:54:43] if we’re fired

[00:54:44] at the workplace,

[00:54:45] you know,

[00:54:46] some way

[00:54:47] of contesting that

[00:54:48] and not being

[00:54:49] so dispensable,

[00:54:50] you know,

[00:54:51] at the office,

[00:54:52] that people

[00:54:53] are more likely

[00:54:54] to be

[00:54:55] able to

[00:54:56] double down

[00:54:57] on various kinds

[00:54:58] of identitarian,

[00:54:59] they raise up

[00:55:00] these identitarian

[00:55:01] fortresses,

[00:55:02] you know,

[00:55:03] including left-wing

[00:55:04] and right-wing

[00:55:05] varieties of it.

[00:55:06] I think if we have

[00:55:07] a society in which

[00:55:08] even if you don’t

[00:55:09] have a college degree,

[00:55:10] you can make ends meet

[00:55:11] relatively well

[00:55:12] and retire in dignity

[00:55:13] and take care

[00:55:14] of your elderly parents

[00:55:15] and raise children

[00:55:16] without being worried

[00:55:17] that if they get sick

[00:55:18] you’re going to go bankrupt,

[00:55:19] if you have that,

[00:55:20] I think the temperature

[00:55:21] of the culture war

[00:55:22] will come down.

[00:55:23] It’s not going

[00:55:24] to resolve

[00:55:25] everything,

[00:55:26] you know,

[00:55:27] there’s some real

[00:55:28] profound disagreements,

[00:55:29] but it could kind of

[00:55:30] turn down the temperature

[00:55:31] a little bit

[00:55:32] and I think

[00:55:33] we’ll be a little bit less

[00:55:34] at each other’s throat

[00:55:35] on cultural issues.

[00:55:36] I think that’s right

[00:55:37] and I am with you

[00:55:38] in being a post-neoliberal,

[00:55:39] but I’m not

[00:55:40] a post-liberal

[00:55:41] in the way

[00:55:42] that you are

[00:55:43] and, you know,

[00:55:44] maybe where we really diverge

[00:55:45] is on this question

[00:55:46] of what comes

[00:55:47] after liberalism

[00:55:48] or what’s even possible

[00:55:49] after liberalism.

[00:55:50] You know,

[00:55:51] I for one think

[00:55:52] the Enlightenment

[00:55:53] set us on a path

[00:55:54] to liberalism

[00:55:55] where in the previous work

[00:55:56] you talk about

[00:55:57] the common good

[00:55:58] or the higher good

[00:55:59] and I never know

[00:56:00] what that means

[00:56:01] exactly because

[00:56:02] it implies

[00:56:03] some kind of moral consensus

[00:56:04] or a consensus

[00:56:05] about what the good life

[00:56:06] looks like,

[00:56:07] but liberalism

[00:56:08] exists

[00:56:09] precisely

[00:56:10] because humans

[00:56:11] conceded

[00:56:12] the absence

[00:56:13] of transcendent

[00:56:14] moral absolutes

[00:56:15] and decided

[00:56:16] our political order

[00:56:17] should aim

[00:56:18] at protecting

[00:56:19] the individual’s right

[00:56:20] to be whoever

[00:56:21] or whatever they want

[00:56:22] and I assume

[00:56:23] maybe that is

[00:56:24] where you and I

[00:56:25] point of disagreement.

[00:56:26] We don’t have to

[00:56:27] adjudicate it here.

[00:56:28] We don’t have to

[00:56:29] adjudicate it,

[00:56:30] but I think

[00:56:31] that you pinpointed

[00:56:32] where the disagreement lies.

[00:56:33] A lot of our

[00:56:35] political language

[00:56:36] and ideological

[00:56:38] categories

[00:56:39] have become

[00:56:40] so stale

[00:56:41] and scrambled

[00:56:42] and it often

[00:56:44] doesn’t feel like

[00:56:45] it maps onto the world

[00:56:46] that we’re living in now

[00:56:47] and I appreciate

[00:56:48] that this book

[00:56:50] cuts through

[00:56:51] a lot of it

[00:56:52] and at least

[00:56:53] tries to inch us

[00:56:54] a little bit beyond

[00:56:55] those dead categories

[00:56:56] and for that,

[00:56:57] I say thank you

[00:56:58] and well done,

[00:56:59] comrade.

[00:57:00] Thank you, Sean,

[00:57:01] and thanks for having me.

[00:57:02] I really enjoyed

[00:57:03] this conversation.

[00:57:04] Once again,

[00:57:05] the book is called

[00:57:06] Tyranny, Inc.

[00:57:07] How Private Power

[00:57:08] Crushed American Liberty

[00:57:09] and What to Do About It.

[00:57:10] It is a genuinely

[00:57:11] interesting read

[00:57:12] and I do recommend it.

[00:57:13] Saurabh Amari,

[00:57:14] this was a lot of fun.

[00:57:15] Thanks for coming in.

[00:57:16] Cheers, Sean.

[00:57:17] Thanks.

[00:57:25] Erica Wong engineered

[00:57:27] this episode.

[00:57:28] Alex Overington

[00:57:29] wrote our theme music.

[00:57:30] Serena Solin

[00:57:31] is our fact checker

[00:57:32] and A.M. Hall

[00:57:33] is the boss.

[00:57:34] As always,

[00:57:35] let us know

[00:57:36] what you think.

[00:57:37] Drop us a line

[00:57:38] at the gray area

[00:57:39] at Vox.com.

[00:57:40] If you dug this episode,

[00:57:41] share the link

[00:57:42] with your friends

[00:57:43] on all the socials.

[00:57:44] We’re off next week

[00:57:45] for Labor Day

[00:57:46] but we’ll be back

[00:57:47] with a new episode

[00:57:48] on Monday,

[00:57:49] September 11th.

[00:57:55] We’ll see you then.