Guerrilla History - Sanctions & Dedollarization (+Cornel West chat) w/ Richard Wolff

Episode Date: June 9, 2023

In this episode, we continue our previous conversation with Professor Richard Wolff about the process of dedollarization and specifically focusing on how this process will impact the United States's ability to sanction anyone they see fit as they see fit, and a brief discussion of Cornel West's Presidential bid.  We then follow up the conversation with an extended wrap-up conversation! Richard Wolff is a Professor Emeritus of Economics at UMass-Amherst and a Visiting Professor at The New School.  He is also the host of Economic Update and the founder of Democracy At Work.  You can follow him on Twitter @profwolff.  The websites to find his work are rdwolff.com and democracyatwork.info Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory 

You don't remember Dinn-Vin-Bin-Bou? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello and welcome to guerrilla history. a podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims to use the

lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm one of your co-hosts, Henry Huckimacki, joined unfortunately by only one of my usual co-hosts. Professor Ednan Hussein is unfortunately unable to make it today, but we are joined by our other usual co-host, Brett O'Shea, who, of course, is host of Revolutionary Left Radio and co-host of the Red Menace podcast. Lo Brett, how are you doing today? I'm doing very well. Great. Before we get into the introducing our guests and the topic at hand, I just want to remind the listeners that if you want to keep up with the show and see what we're putting out, you can follow us on Twitter at Gorilla underscore Pod. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-L-A underscore pod. And you can help support the show and help us keep doing what we do by going to patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history. Again, Gorilla being spelled G-U-E-R-R-I-L-L-A history. So today we have. have a very special guest, one of our old friends and somebody who were always very happy to have on the show. We have Professor Richard Wolp, who of course is a Professor Emeritus of Economics

from UMass Amherst and at the New School. Hello, Professor. It's nice to have you on the show again. Thank you. I'm glad to be here. So the conversation that we're going to be having today is an extension and continuation of the conversation that we had with you last time. So listeners, if you haven't listened to the previous episode that we did with Professor Wolf, make sure to go back and do that now before we get into this conversation, because this is going to continue on from that point. What we talked about last time was de-dollarization, the processes of de-dollarization and some impacts of de-dollarization. But we were only just starting to touch on sanctions as we had to wrap up that conversation. So that's where we're going to open up today.

Professor, if you're able to give a very brief summary of what de-dollarization is for listeners who haven't heard that previous episode, and then let's talk about sanctions are primarily almost exclusively led by U.S. policy and the role of the U.S. dollar historically and even very recently has been what has made sanctions led by the United States to be so effective, effective from the standpoint of causing devastation and misery in people, not in terms of any actual strategic goals, but de-dollarization may undermine that in some ways. So if you can take those two questions, what is de-dollarization, and how would this process impact sanctions?

Okay. Every empire in the history of the human race that occurred at a time when there was such a thing as money, and not all of them did. But when there was money and there was an empire, typically the empire's own currency became the currency of the entire empire. In other words, having everybody over whom you operate an empire reliant on and used to using your particular currency is really part of what holds an empire together. It's a way of organizing the economics of an empire so that wealth flows from the margins to the center. So, for example, the British Empire of the 18th and 19th century basically made the British pound sterling into a global

currency. And when the British Empire gave way to the American, Empire, roughly 100 years ago, give or take, the transition was accomplished. The British pound became less and less important, and the dollar effectively, the U.S. dollar replaced it. This became almost official in the aftermath of World War II. And the reason is that in World War II, all of the old empires, not just the British, but what was left of the French, a bit of the German, the Belgian, and so on. Those were all destroyed by the war, and those metropolitan countries in Europe lost the ability to hold on. It became possible for revolutions from below to basically not necessarily win in each case when they made a revolution, but the

handwriting, as we say, was on the wall. The old empires were done. Best example I know of because I wrote a book about it is the what was called the Mao Mao Revolution in Kenya against the British. The British squashed it, but it cost the British so much money, so so many lost lives, and so much animosity in the population, that continuing to control that empire was impossible. And even though the Mao happened in the early part of the 1950s, by the end of that decade, the British gave up and left, and Kenya became independent. And at that point, there was, in a sense, a vacuum which the United States eagerly and

determinedly rushed to fill. It literally moved in wherever the British moved out with their foreign aid, with their military advice, and with the dollar. And the argument was always that the United States was so dominant, remember, other than at Pearl Harbor at the beginning, no bombs fell in the United States. There was no destruction. You could not have a more graphic gap between the experience of the United States and that, say, of Russia or China or much of Europe, etc., etc. So they were all destroyed those economies, often physically as well as organizationally, and the United States wasn't. The United States had lent the money to the Europeans to fight the war. They lent the money for the Europeans to recover from the

war. They were absolutely dominant. And they used that dominance to create an empire. And this is important. And to say to the world, don't worry, we won't be like the British, the Belgians, the Dutch, the French, and all of them. We are a... ourselves, an ex-colony, we are ourselves a fighter against imperialism. That's how we were born. And so we will operate this informal empire, which we will never call an empire. We won't. And we'll operate it in a neutral, fair, judicious way. Yes, you will use the but it will be used fairly. We will not discriminate against one of you against another.

We will not take as full advantage of it as we could, or as the British, for example, did. We won't. And for a while, to be crude and because we don't have much time, for the second half of the 20th century, they sort of did that. There were many advantages to the United States from the world using the dollar. I won't go through them more, but let me give you just the simplest way to understand it. By having the dollar be a world currency, be the currency used when exports go from, I don't know, Nigeria to Panama or from Russia to India or if I will pick anyone you want, if dollars have to be used to do that, then basically the world accumulates dollars. The central banks of the countries do, and the merchants and the capitalists and

everybody needs the dollar available. So what you have is the need for the rest of the world to acquire dollars, which they do. The United States provides those dollars, but only as payment for goods and services that come into the United States. So the whole world is engaged in what would in another setting be called tribute, which is what in the old days it was called. You know, French wine, Japanese software, Chinese technology are shipped to the United States to be consumed or to be used productively in further production. And all we give things, them are little green pieces of paper that costs nothing to produce. It is an unequal exchange

in the simplest way people could need to understand it. The only other wrinkle that's worth mentioning because of the irony is that when people abroad got all these dollars and didn't need all of them to service their ongoing activity, they would take the extra and lend it back to the United States government, purchasing the treasury bills of the U.S. government, helping the government to run the deficit, which is, by the way, how the United States, in large part, paid for its major wars.

Vietnam was paid by borrowing, and so have recent activities. So the rest of the world becomes the financier of the warfare that threatens the rest of the world. These kinds of ironies you need to enjoy because they are the truth of what the dollar was. Anyway, this was all called dollarization. Foreigners, especially those who had some economics training,

understood all this perfectly. They understood the inequality here. They understood that the United States, States was getting the benefit of the dollars that they had accumulated, rather than making them to the benefit of their own country's development, and on and on and on. And they also wanted to play their same game. They would have liked to use their currency alongside the dollar to get some of these same advantages. And for a while, even in the present, the euro has been able to do that, to some extent. The Japanese yen at varying moments, and now the Chinese Yuan are

beginning to figure in all of this. And the arrival, particularly in recent years, of the Chinese economic, in German, it's called Wurchaftwunda. The Chinese, I'm sure, have an equivalent economic miracle, is usually how this is translated. But Chinese, Chinese development over the last 20 years is, by all comparison in human history, a miracle of economic growth and development, and that has changed the equation. And the United States, and this is a very clear process, is now suffering the diminution, the reduction of reliance and willingness to deal in the dollar. It's led by the Chinese because they are such a colossus.

It's important for your audience to remember. Just big numbers, but I'm constantly shaken by realizing how few people have learned this. The GDP is a simple number. It measures the total output of goods and services. a year from a country, gives you an idea of relative size. Lots of problems with that statistic, but for this purpose of comparison, it's roughly useful. Okay, so the GDP of the United States last year, about $21, $22 trillion, more or less. The GDP of Russia last year, $1.5 trillion. dollars. Really important you understand the relationship here. The GDP of Italy is larger than

that of Russia, but not by much. The GDP of Britain and Germany, single digits, four trillion, five trillion. No one is near the United States with one exception. The GDP of the People's Republic of China, $18 trillion. It's our completely new world, radically different from what it was 20 years ago. So in this century, the 21st century, we have seen the rise of China, the rise of other countries that want to get in on this bonanza of world currency. And so the United States dollar has shrunk in terms of its role. and I give you an example. More and more trade is done between countries or between companies across national boundaries

using currencies other than the dollar, for various reasons that that may be advantageous to the traders. Therefore, likewise, central banks don't need to hold the dollars that they're corporations don't need to access. Number three, more and more countries discover they don't need the dollar because they're buying more and more not from the United States, from whom they used to buy, but now from competitors, Europeans, Japanese, and now increasingly Chinese, and even now Indian, Brazilian, and some others. So the whole role of the dollar, the dollar, the

The power of the United States politically and militarily, they're all shrinking. It's a very dramatic period of human history when an empire that has been unchallenged for a long time may have been challenged by the Soviet Union militarily, but it was never challenged by the Soviet Union economically. And because of that, it wasn't much of a challenge politically either. Much was made of it in the United States, but that's for domestic political advantages to sustain our military and so on. That's not about a genuine threat. We are in a new place now because for the first time in a century, the United States has a real economic competitor in China.

And you can see it again. Here's just another statistic to keep in mind. The world economy has now two major blocks. One of them is called the G7. That's basically the United States, its major European allies, Canada, and Japan. That's one group. Then the other one is China and the bricks. Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, and a whole list of countries that have applied. to join the BRICS, okay? In the year 2020, the total GDP of the G7 and the total GDP of the BRICs were equal. Two and a half years later, now, the GDP of the BRICS is about 32, 33% of global GDP and that of the United States and its allies of G7, about 29. It's unmistakable what's going on if you look at some of the, and I could give you, you know, an hour more of statistics, I won't, but it's important to understand the dollar, the de-dollarization as part and parcel of the shrinkage of the American economic, political, and even military footprint. Vietnam was a war the United States lost. Afghanistan was a war that the United States lost.

Iraq was, I could continue, and the outcome in Ukraine is not at all clear, to say the least. So it's important to understand we are at a point in which an old empire is declining. That is a traumatic experience for the country whose empire is declining. Half of Britain still doesn't understand that the British Empire is over. You could see it in the funeral for Queen Elizabeth. You could see it in the coronation. These are absurdities. This is a country that has savaged its working class worse than any place else in Europe

wasting hundreds of millions of dollars in a fantasy carnival as if they were what they had been. And the United States is likewise really bizarre. I'll give you one example. All of the major leaders are practicing what psychologists call denial. We are powerful. We are there. The sanctions is an exercise. as I'll point out in a minute

of economic domination. But the mass of the people understand perfectly. The Pew Charitable Trust, P-E-W, probably the most respected polling, non-partisan polling

institution in the United States. Last month asked a sample of Americans, will the United States be stronger in 2050 than it is now or weaker. 80% said weaker. I could go through.

There are many other questions, but they all come together. The prognosis is this, and they know it, and they don't know what to do about it, and they are aware that their political leaders are blowing smoke. But until there's an alternative

of the sort that Cornell West, over the last 48 hours, has announced he's going to try, and I have worked with Cornell many, many years. We're friends, so I'm aware of what that's about. But that's an effort to intervene in this bizarre disconnect between the Republicans and Democrats denying everything and the mass of people feeling in their guts, that there's something long-term decline are the words that they use. All right, now the sanctions. The way to understand the sanctions is not to get caught up in the specificity of them. Sanctions have been used by the United States for most of the last half century. They are

not new. Cuba has been under sanctioned by the United States since 1961. But that's a very long time. And the Cubans have suffered the consequences of that in a variety of ways. But the Cubans are also a very clear piece of evidence that they don't work. Because if they were meant to overthrow Castro or everything that Castro represented, then they have to be counted one huge failure. But you got to be carefully. You have to be a good Hegelian here. You have to understand the failure and the success. Did they isolate the Cuban experience from the rest of Latin America? To some extent, the sanctions did that. It was a wake-up call not for revolution. so much, but for the ruling classes in Latin America, that the United States would be prepared

to smash any country that even flirted with all of that. And that would frighten them. Otherwise, they might find it funny and even a little bit exciting to poke back at the United States. It was good for the American military because it justifies military spending. And on and on and on. But the sanctions then have also been applied in various ways to Iran, for example, many times, to Russia at various points, not just now, to South Africa in a different time around the Mandela issue. that all kinds of, but most of the time they were imposed, they were very narrow, very specific, and very limited. And why? Because it was understood in Washington that there's a contradiction between being the benevolent manager of a global currency versus, weaponizing that position to advance your own interest at the expense of lots of other people

who become collateral damage as you abuse your position as the global currency. Part of de-dollarization is a reaction against the weaponization of the dollar's position in the world, starting 10, 20 years ago in various forms. But much accelerated, I don't want to downplay it by what has happened over the last 18 months. That is a quantum leap in the use of sanctions. Now they become general. There's a threat against companies that do business with a sanctioned entity, so it's not just the direct object of this sanction, but anybody who – the United States is trying to control global trade, the world system of trade by deciding who wins and who loses. And don't underestimate. This is a direct violation of the ideology here. And you can't

societies cannot act in a contradiction with their ideology and expect there to be no noise and no trouble from that. We've had 25 years of so-called neoliberalism in which the cardinal idea was that you keep the government at arm's length and you focus on free markets, free trade, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The number one violator of all of this now is the United States, which is using its power, including the dollar, to control, with sanctions, to control. This is a problem for the, I can tell you that. I'm sitting here in New York. All kinds of people don't understand how to think about this.

They're still living in the universe of neoliberalism, even though the country is engaged in gross economic nationalism, which used to be the anathema. You know, it took a long time after the alliance with the Soviet Union in World War II to get Americans to understand that Uncle Joe, Stalin, wasn't our uncle, but was it scary, dangerous, whatever, right? It takes time, and in that time, there's confusion, there's wondering, there's asking questions for which this system has very good, very few good answers, etc. So the sanctions have to be understood, like the de-dollarization, as an effort of a society, frightened and threatened by the decline of its empire, to grasp at any mechanism available and use it.

And the dollar was available. And make no mistake, the dollar is still the dominant currency. in the world. It has lost its preeminence, but it is still more dollars are used in international trade than any other currency, and by quite a margin. More dollars are held in central bank reserves than any other country's currency, although if you add up all the other then it's about 50-50 now between the dollar as the reserve in the central bank and the combination of euros, gold, yen, and yuan, which are the alternative. And all of that is in a process of flux that's going on.

Last but not least, I would urge you not to underplay the plus and minus story of sanctions. Sanctions do hurt countries, which they are intended to do. They do hurt trade in various ways, which they are intended to do. But they have two other qualities which need everyone that needs to understand. They do not hurt the other countries anywhere near as the hype that accompanies them. So, in other words, the sanctions are portrayed as this powerful, monstrous blow against the other. It'll bring, you remember the statements early in the war in Ukraine. The Russia will fall to its knees.

The Russia will become weak. The rubble will become worthless. This hyping, they're very, very dangerous. Why? because it doesn't happen, and everybody has to now ask the question, why doesn't it happen? Sanctions have a long history of failing their strategic objectives. That isn't new. That isn't unusual. Yes, the one against Russia after Ukraine might be called the mother of all sanctions, but it has proven to be as ineffective strategically.

as most of them have been. Cuba's still there. The Iranians are still there. Blah, blah, blah, blah. It doesn't work. The second thing that sanctions do is play to the domestic political audience. The president is being tough.

Right? He's scared of being tough with nuclear weapons for obvious reasons. So he hoped, or they hoped, these sanctions would somehow magically worked by being more and more

intense. But they didn't. But the domestic effect is still the same. Mr. Biden has a chance to stay as president in large part because he's Mr. Duff guy and it doesn't cost the United

States dead people in large numbers which would change the situation. On the other hand, the sanctions are having boomerang effects. They are hurting Europe. Badly. They are hurting the United States, not as bad as Europe, but badly. There is a link between the sanctions and the inflations here. Let me give you again a statistic that you're not going to hear because

it's so obvious and gross. Europe's inflation rate right now, as we speak, in the neighborhood 10%. Some countries more, some countries less. Inflation here in the United States, 5%. And it's not clear whether it's going up or down. Inflation in the People's Republic of China, as I speak to you, 0.7%. There is no contest. Economic growth of GDP, first three months of this year, January, February, March, In Europe, it's flat. It's almost no growth at all. Okay. In the United States, 1.3%.

People's Republic of China, 4.5%. No contest. Okay, what does this mean? It means that everywhere in the world, if people are buying objects, they won't buy them from Europe, whose prices are going up 10% a year, or from the United States, whose prices are going up 5%, they'll buy them from China because the prices are going nowhere in China. This is a serious problem. The Europeans are dependent on Germany that's an export economy. The United States in many ways depends on exports. The Chinese depend on exports. One of them has no inflation. and the other two have bad inflation. I mean, only make-believe washes all of this away or sweeps it under the rug.

And I'm afraid, as I think we all should be, of what a declining empire will do, having lost the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, now engaged effectively in one in the Ukraine, they can't use nuclear weapons, I hope. The sanctions are not doing the job, that's clear. The Russian army on the ground is clearly doing reasonably well. Well, maybe you have to do terrible things, like blowing up dams. Maybe we're in for all kinds of catastrophic events, because to lose again in the Ukraine when we have 16 months from now a presidential election? No, no, no, no, no. They're very, very dangerous. Yeah, I'll be really brief with my question. Yeah, and I'll be brief with my answer.

Oh, that's okay. It was a great exposition on your part. I just want to follow up on one of the things that you said, and also pitch once again, as the listeners are probably tired of hearing, but we have our new translation of Domenico Lsertos, Stalin history and critique of a black legend coming out. You mentioned the changing image of Stalin, and that's the entirety of what the book is about. It's like 340 pages of talking about the construction of the image of Stalin and the changing image of Stalin from, you know, the time when he was allied and how that negative image was then fostered over the years.

Anyway, that'll be coming out on July 1st, listeners. So be prepared for that. And we also have an episode about the book that will be coming out within probably two weeks of this episode's coming out. But, Professor, you mentioned unequal exchange. And I don't know how much you, I don't want to say buy into, but how much you ascribe to dependency theory and things like this. Personally, and I know that the listeners probably don't care much about my

personal opinion, but I think dependency theory is not much of a theory in as much as it is. It attempts to explain the realities of how the world works. Of course, people would claim that about any theory, but I think that this is probably the most accurate representation that we have. And so when talking about unequal exchange and how de-dollarization, the process of de-dollarization is occurring, and in many cases, exchange in national currencies, is there a possibility that the mass unequal exchange that is led by the imperialist Western countries in their dealings with the global south, primarily is where we're seeing a lot of this drain via unequal exchange, is the process of de-dollarization going to make it so that the

pressure that is exerted on these countries in their dealings with the imperialist West is going to lessen the amount of unequal exchange that is occurring, and whether or not that's going to weaken the imperialist drive to exploit these countries more broadly. Well, one thing we can be sure of that the patterns where unequal exchange occurs, And remember, that term unequal exchange has a very particular meaning in Marxian economics and it has a different meaning when it is used in other theoretical frameworks. But I think it's fair to say that no matter what your framework is, the patterns of where unequal exchange occurred is shifting and shifting fast.

And part of this is very much a legacy of the loss of the colonies to the mother countries. I mean, the bricks are an alliance of people that either were formal or informal colonies. The Chinese were never anyone's colony, but they came real close, and they suffered many of the same kinds of economic conditions. What the bricks, led by China, are now doing, is giving every country. country in the world, options it never had before. If you can't sell in Europe, you can sell elsewhere. If you can't buy from Europe, you can buy elsewhere. If you can't get capital investments from Europeans, you can get them from others. This is, this, I cannot exaggerate.

This is mind-bendingly important because the British Empire and the American Empire, those were both examples of de facto European or Eurocentric empires. They were white people from the northwest of Europe that were settlers in one case, but you know what I'm talking about, that's over. Now, it'll take time. It's not altogether over. These are never processes that happen in months or a few years. They take time. But they've been underway now for a good quarter of a century, and there is no end in sight. You know, unless you think the United States is going to defeat Russia, build up NATO and all the rest of it, and somehow recapture what was lost in the last quarter.

century, if you imagine that, and you have to then imagine that China and the bricks will permit all of this to happen, sit there watching it and doing nothing to stop it. I mean, you can imagine that, but it flies in the face of what the last 25 years have been. I can't predict the future any better than anybody else can, which is to say I can't. But I think you're going to see a radical shift, and not out of some principle, but out of a demand of the global South to finally emerge from centuries of subordination, and the forms it will take, political, cultural, economic. I mean, it's hard to imagine. at first, I think they will replicate what was there before.

It's typically what happens. You know, the cultural forms here in the United States mimic to Britain even more intensively after the Revolutionary War than before. China is developing a private automobile mechanism of transportation. That's rather bizarre, right? That's not efficient. That's not going to be the future. Not with fossil fuels and not with electricity either.

Mass transportation is the only logical, rational response to populations of the sort we have now on a planet of the sort we have now. And that will sooner or later, and you might have thought China would go in that direction. And if you look at its fast trains, it has. but hesitantly, partially, slowly, and the same thing in here in the West. The United States just adopted a budget with lots of theater about a debt ceiling. But the budget is an austerity budget. It gives enormous amounts of money to corporations and takes away from the social safety net.

the agreement, in case you don't know, the agreement is for level funding. Same amount of funding next year, 2024 as this, and in 2025, funding to go up 1% for social services. But we have a 5% a year inflation. That means next year we will have a drop of 5% in the money for real social services. And in the following year, assuming 5% inflation, we'll have a 4% on top of the 5%. That's a one in $10 disappearance of money for students, for poor people, for medical care, for all. This is an amazing thing. This comes in the United States after the last 30 years during which the gap between rich and poor became much greater. This happens. Five years after the tax cut of 2017 under Trump, which was the biggest tax giveaway to corporations and the rich we've ever seen.

There was never a time when corporations needed government support less, and they get it even more. And the mass of people needed more, and they get it even less. This is not sustainable. It works in our politics now, not a sustainable arrangement. and I think it's emblematic, symptomatic of a declining empire, because in a declining empire, here's what you always see. The people at the top with the wealth, with the political connections, try very hard in a declining empire to hold on to the wealth they enjoy, to offload the costs of decline down the hierarchy.

to the lower levels. That's what we're doing in this country. We're cutting social supports. We're taking away from the mass of people. They have a job, but it is insecure, it has no benefits, and the wages are crappy, and the social supports shrinking. Okay, it doesn't take a genius. What you're doing is creating in the United States the kind of bifurcating. system that used to be symptomatic of the so-called third world. Capital cities that are enclaves of the rich and masses of back hinterlands that range from horribly poor through poor through just above poor. That's where we're going as a society, and you're seeing the scapegoating, the cultural splits

that accompany, some moving to the right to some sort of fascist solution, and now some also to the left. And that's the prognosis I see coming out. And in that, the de-dollarization and the sanctions play their particular role as part of the larger drama. Yeah, absolutely well said. Crucial, crucial analysis. And people really need to understand all these elements and dynamics going on because it's not just a geopolitical international affair. It has deep ramifications for our domestic politics. And on that front, I know we only have about eight more minutes or so with you. You mentioned earlier, your friend Cornell West's presidential run. I was kind of hoping you could talk a little bit more about that,

what it might represent, right? What the left, how the left should respond to it. And if you have any thoughts as well on the vehicle he chose to use to run for this. presidential campaign, the People's Party. Just want to hear your general thoughts. I mean, I think most people don't think he's necessarily going to win, but he can take the fight to the two-party dictatorship. He can center anti-imperialism, center working class interest, and do it more effectively that I think even Bernie, possibly, at least. So what are your thoughts on all of that? Well, I think, I don't think he's doing this out of any illusion that he's going to win. the way American politics is structured, that's not in the cards, and he knows that, and that's

not an issue for him. It's the other thing you said. It's trying to insert into the consciousness of the American people an alternative narrative to what they get from the Republicans and the Democrats. Those Republicans and Democrats agreed on the austerity budget I just summarized for you. Mr. Biden is telling everybody how successful he was in preventing the cuts to the social services that the Republicans had wanted. Huge cuts. He prevented them. He is the winner who prevented those. In other words, we're only going to have about a 10% cut over the next two years rather than the 20 or 30% cut that the real. That's the Democratic Party. The same program as the Republicans, but not as fast and not as harsh. And so it is, as it has been

for decades now, a contest between awful and less awful. You know, choosing between the lesser evil, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Without a third-party candidate, at least in the primaries, the way Bernie Sanders had been, or even better in the general election, or even better in both, there is no chance for anything else to come in. No other candidate dares say anything. It's possible that Marianne Williamson, who shares a leftist perspective, much more than most people seem to understand. Yes, she's a spiritual advisor to Oprah Winfrey, but she really is a lot more.

And so, Cornell will not be the only if she stays in. She ran before, as you may do it again, and she's an effective communicator. Give you an example. She has a radio and television show, and she has interviewed me on that show. You know, and you have to be at a certain position in the United States to do that, since I don't run away from the label Marxist and all the rest of it. I think there's an enormous audience whether Cornell and Marianne will reach them. I don't know that.

yet. I don't know how the media will respond. They probably don't know themselves yet. I don't know what real resources Cornell will get so that he can actually spend the money. You cannot run for office in the United States, in most cases, without spending significant amounts of money. There are a few who don't, but they get in-kind contributions that substitute for the money and that's a problem also to

get. Cornel is a very effective speaker. He's quite well known. That will help him. He has his doctorate, so that will get him something. but we have had now several impulses politically. We've had the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011.

Then we had Bernie's runs in 2016 and 2020. As a result of that, people who openly call themselves social have been running for office all over the United States, and many of them, not all, but many of them have won. We have, therefore, demonstrated that if you have two things, a clear message of how and why you're different from Republicans and Democrats, if you have that, and if you have a real organization, you understand, you cannot do these things alone. You have to have a group of people who have to work together, notwithstanding their mutual irritations, disagreements. If you can get the message that you're better and different than the two parties,

and you have an organization, then you can win. Here in the United States, in many parts of the country, and even in parts of the country where you can't win, you can be the difference between the other two, and that's another ballgame that can also be played and played very advantageously. And the only thing that the Democrats will have is an attack on Cornell because he takes away votes that might therefore end up with Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis. as president of the United States, and that will be used, and that will persuade a huge swath of left-of-center Democrats not to vote for Cornell. Unless Cornell can make them

understand that they really don't have much sure, and that going with Biden is not sufficiently better than going with him. That'll be hard. That will be hard. The Democrats are very good at that. They've done it over and over again. They will likely say something awful about Cornell and hope that the media get distracted by that. I don't know. I'm not aware of anything, but that's all right. They'll find something. They have found something. They have found something with which to beat up Trump, but it didn't work either. You know, basically didn't work. They tried real hard, but they're holding on by their fingernails.

And even if they can dump Trump through all the legal troubles he has, Mr. DeSantis is to the right of Trump in a number of ways. So not much, there's nothing there. There's nothing there. Yeah. It's going to be a fascinating thing to watch unfold, see how it plays out. And whatever the results are, we're going to take a lot of lessons from how this exactly plays out, how you can appeal to people by saying that you're outside of both parties, which I think is the route to go. But again, as you said, you have Marianne Williamson inside the Democratic Party running against Biden and a figure like West from outside the party, calling out both parties. It's going to be interesting. But I also know that you've been very generous with your time. So we're going to wrap it up here. And let me. you go. Thank you so much for your insight, for your analysis, for your education. It's a wonderful honor to speak with you every time and to have our audience listen and learn from you. Before we let you go, though, Professor Wolf, can you let listeners know where they can find you and your

work online? Yes. The easiest thing to do, we maintain two websites. One is my name, R.D. Wolf, that's spelled W-O-L-2Fs, R-D-Wolf.com. And the other one is called called Democracy at Work, all one word, democracy at work, dot info. And those will take, those websites will take you everywhere. We do a weekly radio and television show called The Economic Update, and that's available on YouTube. And again, just go to YouTube, Democracy at Work. You'll find it all there. Excellent. Of course, we'll link to all of that in the show notes. So listeners, You should definitely check out all of those things. Professor Brett said it was a pleasure to have you on the show again.

Thank you for your time. And listeners, we'll be right back with the wrap-up section. Thank you all. And I look forward to doing this again with you. Absolutely. Thank you so much. And listeners, we're back for the wrap-up. We just concluded our conversation with Professor.

Richard Wolfe about the dollarization and sanctions. It was a very interesting conversation as always when we get to talk with Professor Wolfe. And as always, a lot of threads that we wish that we could follow but didn't have time for. So things for us to chew over and perhaps explore in future episodes. But Brett, why don't I turn it over to you first? What are some of the things that struck you about the conversation or things that you wish that we had covered, basically anything that you want to say because I know we probably both have a lot to say with regards to

de-dollarization and sanctions. Yeah. Yeah, no, it was very interesting. I'll deeply appreciate how much she squeezes into one question and he's like, told us what de-dollarization is, told us about the history of the transfer of empire from the British Empire to

the American Empire, caught us up into modern times, talked about how sanctions do and don't work, their limitations, what they can accomplish, how the U.S. leverages dollarization to sanction. And so the de-dollarization process is going to continue to weaken the U.S.'s ability to impose punishments on countries that run afoul of its interests. And all of these things, of course, as he points out very clearly, have not only international, but domestic, deep, deep domestic implications. And the ideology of American hegemony and empire in the brains of many nations. American as the empire is in a perpetual state of decline, it's going to spawn and it already has begun to spawn all sorts of ugly and ridiculous absurdities that I think are only going to continue to pile up. Of course, a rational approach, you know, if we had such leadership would

be, you know, just from a pure U.S. interest perspective, okay, our days of complete hegemony are coming to an end. How can we transition out of this? How can we cooperate with other big important economies like China instead of trying to attempt to go to war with them. How can we manage the decline of our empire while bolstering the domestic stability through you know, reallocation of resources, through investing all the money we invest in being the world's police into the people, into, you know, social benefits, into health care, into education, housing, all of those things that this country so desperately needs. needs, right? And one of the most disgusting things about this debt ceiling was that the Republicans

who have played the anti-war party, right, pretended, hostured as this anti-war party since Biden and the Ukraine thing, you know, happened. Now they're the ones that pushed Biden to add another $40 billion a year to the coffers of the already bloated U.S. Empire, the Pentagon Department of Defense, et cetera, while cutting stuff like food stamps. and disallowing the Biden administration, which the Biden administration agreed to, right? They're not being held at gunpoint to do these things. They agreed to these things, cutting food stamps for people that need it the most, and making it so that you can no longer push back the student loan debt. So what's going to happen with the student loans in particular? Supreme Court, I'm willing to bet. It's going to come out in the next month or so,

say we found Biden's plan to give 10 to 20,000 of relief to student loan borrowers unconstitutional. And as that happens, they're also going to say, hey, in our debt-stealing negotiations, we can't push back the date any farther. So you're not getting any help. We dragged you along for four years, pretend like we were fighting for you. You're not going to get any help, and we can't even do the one thing that we were doing, which is continue to push it back and make a Republican restart it, right? That would be at least if you have no other option, you would say, okay, they shot us down in court. Reactionary court's not going to let you get help.

But we're going to do is we're going to continue. As long as you vote for Democrats, we're going to continue pushing it back. And if you vote for Republicans, they're going to be the ones that are going to have to make millions of Americans restart this insane fucking crime of bloated student loan debt. And of course, they're not going to do that because they both serve the bourgeoisie. They don't really care about helping people. It's not profitable to help regular Americans. So all this is very interesting. And I do want to have a quick conversation about Cornell West and all that. But I want you to talk about a de-dollarization and your thoughts on this before we get into that. Oh, sure. And I'll try to keep it brief because I really do have a lot of thoughts that almost would be enough for an entirely other conversation. But I just want to turn to some of the things that the professor said during the conversation that I think actually deserve a little bit more exposition than he was able to provide in the time that he spent on them. So one of the things that he talked about was how de-dollarization is a process that's been going on for actually a couple decades. at this point, but really has only ramped up in the last couple of years, and in part due to the sanctions that have been put in place on countries like Russia and China, the countries that actually have the wherewithal and the ability to try to do something to circumvent sanctions in an actual, like, material way utilizing their economic role within

the world system to try to circumvent sanctions regimes that are being placed on them by the West, you know, led by the U.S., of course. One of the things that the professor said was that the United States for decades has used sanctions to, of course, inflict harm on people. But he said that in most cases, it was limited. And the attempt was to not cause too much harm because the United States would still want to seem like a benevolent country within the global stage. believe is the term that he said, although I may be misremembering that, and that they are

going around and, you know, making sure that order is upheld, essentially, rather than being some malicious specter that, you know, utilizes its ability to inflict sanctions on people to devastating a fact, willy-nilly as they wish. And of course, that is what they did. But the point that the professor was making is that, for the most part, they would kind of dial it down a little bit so that at least they had the auspices of being a benevolent, you know, caring country rather than this malicious one. I think that there's something that needs to be said on this front in terms of that is true. If you just take a look at the gross number of sanctions and when you look at each individual country that has been sanctioned, how much of their

economy has been sanctioned, it's true that the majority of the times when you see a sanction imposed on a country, it's rather limited in impact. It's not like a blanket sanction over the entirety of the country's economy every time the United States imposes sanctions. But I think that that undersells the extent to which the United States is willing to impose absolutely devastating sanctions that cause misery, suffering, and death in various countries. I don't think that it was the professor's intention to undersell it. I think it's just worth underscoring it a little bit more. But also something that needs mentioning is that the United States, and I'm going to single out the United States, although again, many of these sanctions regimes are led by the

United States, but utilized by and followed along with by much of the imperialist West writ large. But whenever the United States and its allies are able to find justification to put more blanket-like crippling, devastating sanctions on a country, they will find any sort of excuse, real or imaginary, and then utilize the media apparatus present within the West, the mainstream Western media, which I know now I'm sounding like some like crazed far left person, which of course I am, but I'm actually sounding like it now,

you know, the mainstream Western media. But no, it is true. The Western media, when the United States and its allies find a justification for imposing particularly crippling sanctions on a country, they will take that justification at face value as given by the government of the United States or its allies, and they will run with it. Think about the incubator baby story. You know, that was ran with immediately, even though there was so many holes that could have been pushed through that story. And of course, for those listeners who are perhaps too young to remember the incubators babies, which I myself am actually, before I was born. But this is during the first Gulf War. There was somebody who supposedly said that they were working at or volunteering at a hospital, and they were seeing Iraqi soldiers come in and dump these babies on the floor to die on the floor in an act of just utter brutality during the early.

stages of that. And this is in terms of the invasion of Kuwait. And of course, it comes out afterwards that actually this person was essentially a paid actor and I believe was the daughter of the ambassador of the country. It's a very well documented case. But even when the story was first being presented, there was a lot of holes in the story and there was no checking in who this person was, was their story legitimate? And instead, they get brought in front to testify in front of the Senate. And then it's carried breathlessly on the media for ages until it comes out much, much later after the sanctions had already been put in place. And just think about how many people suffered and died as a result of sanctions on Iraq. Famously, 500,000, up to 500,000.

I know that some more recent estimates have actually estimated that number downwards a little bit, but up to 500,000 Iraqi children died as a direct result of sanctions in those years. And Madeline Albright famously said that the cost was worth it. Much of these sanctions, the justification comes down to things that are either outright lies like the incubator babies or things that are blown out of proportion and no alternative narrative is presented within the Western mainstream media. And what this allows the United States and its allies to do is to then instill these crippling and devastating and deadly sanctions regimes on various countries and still to the

eyes of most of the people that are residing within those countries because these are the people who are exposed to that media still look like a benevolent and caring country on the world stage despite what death and destruction they are they are exacting as a result of sanctions they can cause up to 500,000 Iraqi babies to die and still think that it's just and that they that they are the benevolent country and most of the people in the United States probably would have also thought that they were the benevolent country in the sake. You know, they're caring for other people by killing these children. It was in many cases based on lie, distortion, and without being allowed to have any counter-narrative

in that same media that's being given to the people of those countries. So it's important that we point that out. And I know that I talk about that much longer than I probably should have, but it's something that did come up. And it's also worth mentioning before I give it back to you, Brett, because again, I have a lot of notes, actually, but I'll just hit one other one, is that when we're talking about how it has ramped up dramatically, in terms of the process of de-dollarization, that is, has ramped up dramatically. it's in large part due to more and more countries deciding that they are going to conduct bilateral trade in their national currencies. This is, of course, something that the professor said. I'm not saying that he missed that. But I think that a further examination of which countries are pushing for an adoption of bilateral trade and national currencies rather than trade being conducted in U.S. dollars or euros or things like this. you know, these world currencies, you do have to examine it and think about why is it happening

at a given point. And of course, the most obvious example. And I'll just go with one in the essence of time, but really you can look through many, many cases going back in terms of countries that have made proposals of conducting trade in national currencies. But the most obvious example is of course Russia, where as a result of the operation that's currently going on in Ukraine, the sanctions regime that has been put on Russia has been massive and blanket-like, you know, they keep using that same term. And I know that I've talked a little bit about it off and on as I live in Russia, and so I get to see the impact of sanctions firsthand here. And it is very extremely tight sanctions regimes that are put in place on Russia.

And so as soon as these sanctions packages, these individual sanctions packages that feed into the overall sanctions regime, as soon as these started to be proposed and then implemented, the calls for conducting bilateral trade and national currencies by representatives of Russia, including Putin, but also a little. Lavrov, the foreign minister, and many other members of the Duma, which is the lower house of the parliament, essentially. They have been increasing their calls almost daily. Every time you see that there's going to be a new sanctions package enacted or even that it's proposed, all of a sudden you see more and more calls for bilateral trade to be

conducted in national currencies. And there's many specific examples. And there's many specific examples. people, China and Russia have been in talks to conduct all of their trade in national currency for basically the entirety of the operation. Brazil and Russia have also been in talks about conducting basically all of their trade in national currencies. Pakistan and Russia had been in talks. India in Russia have been in talks for the last year and a half on the same issue. The list goes on.

Really, you can talk about just the BRICS countries in general, plus all of the countries that have applied to join bricks, places like Iran, for example, and Pakistan. They are proposing this because they are feeling the impacts of sanctions and they understand that undermining dollar hegemony by conducting in this small way. I mean, there's many ways that you can undermine dollar hegemony, but perhaps the one that they can have the most direct role in is to switch from utilizing the dollar in international trade to utilizing national currencies or to develop new currencies specifically for the purpose of international trade, which I know was a proposal that's been put forth

in Latin America to develop a like pan Latin American currency specifically for international trade. You know, it wouldn't be used by citizens of a given country within their country at like the grocery store. But when two countries in Latin America are conducting trade, they would utilize this trade currency and it's completely delinked from the United States dollar and therefore you're able to get, you know, around any sanctions that could potentially be put on you where the United States would say, hey, you're not allowed to conduct trade and dollars. We're going to seize your U.S. dollars that are being held abroad.

We're going to limit the amount of new U.S. dollars that are coming in. And if that's the only currency that you can conduct trade in, if you don't have new dollars coming in, like that's a big problem, you can't buy things internationally anymore at that point. We can disconnect you from the SWIFT system, et cetera, et cetera. So it is important to consider that the countries that are pushing for bilateral trade being conducted in national currencies are primarily the ones that are either under sanctions, have been threatened by sanctions, or have just been threatened outright, you know, with violence or whatever by the United States. And you can find these calls for conducting trade in national currency all over the world. and you can find many examples of individual countries that have been in talks with each other.

So I'm just going to leave it there and call on the listeners, you know, if you're interested in looking at that, because I do think that it's a very important process for understanding how de-dollarization may be carried out and how to undermine dollar hegemony on the global stage. You should, on your own time, look up how these negotiations to conduct trade in national currencies are going between various countries because there's developments almost every day. I follow the news here. You see new things almost every day, whether it's Russia and another country or two different countries.

Anyway, Brett, sorry for that. That was way longer than I'm talking. Yeah, really interesting and really important. And I would just point out the irony of the more that the U.S. weaponizes the dollar, the more it incentivizes everybody else to leave it behind, and the more the dollar is ultimately weakened, which is hilarious. But also, the more that the U.S. goes into general imperial decline, the more they want to weaponize whatever advantages they might have to stay afloat. And then you further increase the process of de-dollarization through your zealot attempt to leverage and weaponize that as a reaction in part to your general decline and the lashing out that can sometimes occur. And based on the ruling class in the U.S., this is not going to be a decline in transition that's going to be rational and balanced and taking all interest in to account. It's going to be absolutely belligerent.

The people at the very top are going to try to get everything they can and the suffering, as Dr. Wick pointed out, will be shifted downward and imposed on the people at the bottom through basically austerity mechanisms in the face of general decline and the decline of the dollar, etc. But of course, these things are not going to happen in weeks or months. This is going to be a multi, multi-year, multi-decade perhaps process. So that's just worth thinking. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, yeah. So what you said actually brought up, I don't know why. Like, I just had this image enter my head as you were talking when you're talking about how the imposition of crippling sanctions is actually undermining the dollars hegemony in the global stage. And of course, this is true. We can see it happening in real time. It's not like some, again, insane left-wing conspiracy theory. No, we can see that when certain countries that have the ability to undermine in any way, you know, obviously they're going to be able to do it on their own and in one fell swoop, but when we see the imposition of sanctions on a given country, we can see that they do things that are going to undermine the dollars roll in the international

stage. Like, we see it happening again, every day you can look and find it. But it's like if you had a school bully who would, you know, he would bring cigarettes to school. We'll do something really subversive, you know, talking about cigarettes at schools. But anyway, this bully brings these cigarettes to schools and, you know, he's selling them to kids or he's trading them for, you know, Pokemon cards, you know,

these naive little kids bringing their Pokemon cards in and they want to trade their rare Pokemon cards for a cigarette. And they know how much their Pokemon cards are worth. They know that cigarettes aren't super expensive, but they can't really get it on their own. And so the bully knows that they can't get it on their own. He knows that he's much bigger and much stronger than them. So when the little Pokemon kids try to argue that this card is really rare

and they should get more than two cigarettes for it. They should get like six because this card's pretty rare. The bully punches them in the face and said, you get two or you get nothing. And I'm taking the card either way. That only can go on for so long before these kids that want to trade their Pokemon cards will find somebody else that brings them cigarettes. I know that was probably a very strange analogy,

but like really the image just like popped into my head while you were talking. So I figured I'd throw it out there while it was still fresh. Listeners, if you think it's a terrible analogy, let me know because it probably was. You can get like three cigarettes for a holographic charzar. Yeah, see? I don't know what exchange rates are like these days. But yeah, absolutely, that's interesting. I do want to shift to the Cornell West point really quick and then we can maybe wrap this up.

Sure. I'm interested in your thoughts as well, but I'll just throw mine out there. I think in general, you know, I think Cornell West running is a positive thing. This is awesome. I think it's the best person that ever really run even a somewhat serious campaign in our lifetimes. You know, I think he's more capable than Bernie ever was of taking on the Democratic Party. And I always think, like, imagine if Bernie really was willing to burn his connections with the Democratic Party and called that in 2016 and even in 2020, so much momentum behind him. But he insisted on tying himself to that dog shit brand called the Democratic Party. and he could not get over it. And then when Biden wins, he falls in line. And that really, you know, just deflates his entire movement and prevents what he could have done with all that energy that he helped Stoke. So it's really a lost opportunity. Obviously, I don't think Wes is going to make that mistake. There's a lot of, you know, one thing I want to get out of the way is the electoral question. And I think when we're doing critiques of electoralism and saying don't vote, we're talking about the Democrat and the Republican parties. Neither of those two parties are vehicles through which anything

good can come to the working class or leftist, socialists, anti-imperialist, et cetera. But the electoral realm is still a terrain of struggle. And if you can take on both parties and call them out, take the fight to them from outside the two-parties system, I think that is something that we should generally support, not because we think that Cornell West is going to win and then get in and implement socialism or anything, but because taking the fight to them is important, creating new narratives is important. Having a critique of both the parties and how they fail the American people is important in expanding consciousness and opening up those new doors. Like Wolf was talking about earlier,

there was Occupy Wall Street. That created the very possibility for Bernie's run in 2016, which in turn created the possibility for now a majority of millennials and Gen Zs identifying with that term socialism. It was brought in to mainstream, you know, sort of American politics in a way that it hadn't before. And that opens up the doorway to somebody like a Cornell West running. I mean, these things aren't ideal. Of course, we'd like to have a robust communist party that, you know, with organizing nodes within, you know, communities all across the country, of course. This is fucking America. We're working with a really shitty canvas, as it were. And I think taking that fight on the electoral terrain to the two-party system is important and I'm excited for it in a way

that I'm not excited about any other of these candidates like Marianne Williamson or fucking you know, Kennedy or any of these people. Um, so I think that's interesting. The people's party is is another sort of sticking point. People can't understand why did he pick this party associated with like that Jimmy Door guy and this Nick Branagh guy, whatever. Um, and I also share that. Like, it's kind of confusing. Somebody pointed out that Cornell West was among the founding figures of this party. Um, I thought there was other options to go. I mean, you know, many people have said this. The Green Party has national ballot access. They already have an infrastructure. They have name recognition in a way that the People's Party simply doesn't. You could have ran as an

independent and talk to multiple third parties in socialist organizations and unions and say, could all of you kind of get behind me to any degree at all and see if we could run independent because I do think there's lots of Americans out there who identify themselves as independent that would, you know, okay, an independent candidate is running, I'll at least, you know, hear him out sort of thing. But overall, if Cornell West was part of the founding of the People's Party, then I kind of understand why he would use that as his main vehicle. But I would think hopefully that the People's Party would just be handed over to West's leadership, right? Like, at this point, West is a much better face and figure for any sort of party like that than the figures

that have currently sort of been the face. I mean, I remember when the People's Party was trying to get Jimmy Dore to run for president under their, you know. So it's pretty stark to see that shift. And I'm like, damn, Cornell West gives so much legitimacy to the people's party. If I was one of the people in that party that really cared about it, I'd be like, oh, this is, this is amazing. This is perfect. Cornell West is now the face of our, of our parties. I don't know.

It's a little confusing, but I'd really love to hear. Overall, I'm very sympathetic to the Cornell West run. I think we should support it, get his narratives out there just to, again, take the fight to the two-party system. A little weird with the people's party thing, but, you know, beggars can't be choos. If you're on the left in the U.S., you're a beggar. Yeah, you certainly are. Yeah. So my, my thoughts are probably not going to be nearly as developed as yours are. I, of course, saw the announcement that he was running, and I, of course, am acutely aware of Cornell West and his long history, what he stands for many of his works, etc. So, you know, I'm not coming at this as like a completely unaware dispassionate person, but I just tend to not think about American electoral politics nearly as much these days since I don't live in the U.S. anymore. Like, it's kind of hard to avoid thinking about electoral politics, but I tend to think about it less now than I did when I was living in the U.S. if that makes sense. So I'm not quite as acutely attuned to it as I would have been three years

ago, for example. But, of course, I largely agree with what you're saying. I think that Cornel West running is a good thing. I think that he's much better than any of the other candidates that have like a serious candidacy, not serious in terms of he's going to win because he's not. But he has the name recognition. He has the seriousness, the credentials, the passion to actually pose. Yeah, the integrity. I mean, he has what it takes to pose an actual.

will challenge in terms of getting on a debate stage and, you know, really laying down what those positions are in a way that people can hear them and understand them in a way that we haven't already before. Because as you said, when you're running within the Democratic Party, even if you're not a mainstream Democrat, you do have to tow the line to some extent, even if you're running as an outsider within the party. You can't just say, let's burn this party to the ground or else all of a sudden you're not invited back on the stage anymore.

I mean, and it's not that I'm saying that anybody that had previously run under the Democratic Party actually has these thoughts. We should burn the party to the ground in their head. I don't think that that's the case. But even if you did have it, you wouldn't be able to. So it's definitely a plus that we have Cornell West running individually. It's a plus that he's running outside of the Democratic Party. I also have severe reservations to say the least about the People's Party specifically.

I am not enthusiastic about that decision. As you said, if he was one of the founders, I can understand it, but I'm still not loving that decision. Again, to say the least, I could say a lot more on it, but like, really, people, why are you listening to my opinions on it? Read, form your own opinions. I'm not some, you know, expert strategist that anybody who's claiming to be, you should examine them before you examine, you know, don't use you take on board what they say. But I do have my own views on this. But I'll leave my discussion of the People's Party there that I'm not enthusiastic about that aspect of it.

But maybe I understand it. I do want to say though, like some people on the left are hitching their wagon to Cornell West too holy. I mean, Cornell West is not a communist. Very famously, I pulled up Cornell West. This is a long time ago, you know, you can say people change. But this position of his, it wouldn't have changed in the last decade. He tweeted out Ronald Reagan was a freedom fighter in terms of supporting our Jewish bros and sis in the Soviet Union and opposing vicious forms of communism. The man is not a communist.

If you think that Cornell West is a communist, you need to examine yourself because in no way, shape, or form is he. So if you're looking for a communist running, you do have to look elsewhere. he's a democratic socialist right he is a democratic social himself of course and i mean that that statement is ridiculous on its face which is why i bring it up because it is a it's a crazy statement uh and again it's not like it was it who's the audience for that who needs to hear that right and it's not like he was 22 years old when he tweeted that the man is old let's face that you know he was a fully developed fully informed incredibly intelligent person at that point in time so it's not like you could say, well, he didn't really know the legacy of Ronald Reagan at that

point. He didn't really know that, you know, the media narratives of the Soviet Union were blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, the man knew. This is what he believes. And I don't think that that would have changed in any way in the last decade. So he also has the occasional weird take in terms of he had written an article recently that was complimentary to Ron DeSantis. Now, I should qualify this. This article was not complimentary to Ronda Santis as a human being or as a politician or saying that his politics are the right politics. It was specifically looking at Ronda Santis' take on the classics of literature. And while you could say, okay, maybe I agree with Ronda Santis on the classics of literature,

if you are a Democratic socialist or left from that point, do you need to go out and write an article talking, about how Ron DeSantis is correct on this and how people should adopt this policy, you know, not maybe not policy, but this viewpoint on the classics. Of course not. You don't have to go out and say anything positive about Ron DeSantis. It wasn't like, you know, he had a gun to his head and they said, do you agree with Ron DeSantis on the virtues of reading the classics? No, the man went out and wrote an article saying Ron DeSantis is right on this. You know, I'm sure that he got a lot of reads because he included DeSantis's name and the title. But again, The man is well known.

He doesn't need to be going out trying to find readership by putting Ronda Santis in the title and saying something complimentary about one specific aspect of Ronda Santis. Yeah. Which is not even specific to him, really. It's just like a broader argument for the Western classic canon. You could just make an argument saying, hey, from the left, we should care about the Western canon. You know, like don't even mention dumbass DeSantis. And there's many other people that aren't abhorrent human beings that hold similar. positions on that specific issue that you could say this person is right on this issue

or you could just hold up that issue by its own merits rather than like saying this specific person holds it because again as you mentioned this is not specific to ronda santis i know many people maybe it's just the circles i meant but i know many people who adore the classics and can go at length about why people need to read them so you know this is not something that is specific to ronda santis but the last thing I think that I'll probably want to say on this is that for listeners who are unaware, we do have an episode on the electoral theory and strategy of Marx and Lenin. It came out about two years ago at this point, and actually it might be one that we should

look at remastering. Listeners, you may have heard that we remastered one of Brett's Rev left episodes recently, and we have some plans for other episodes to do. I feel like that's another one that could use a remastering and reissuing of because the issue comes up all the time, because it's almost always electoral season somewhere. We do have to focus on the things that are very clear from what we learn from this conversation and that conversation with August Nemtson, as well as what Marx and Lenin were saying about electoralism. You do have to have a party outside of the established parties. the bourgeois parties absolutely you need another party that is very clear about its orientation

even if you know you have absolutely zero percent chance of winning there's multiple reasons for it again there's a long quote that i could read from from uh marks at the uh one of the communist league meetings i believe it was the fifth communist league meeting i don't remember off the top of my head there's a long quote where it says basically for this reason this reason, this reason, we have to run candidates under the banner of the Communist Party. In its own right, we have to say this is what we stand for in order to bring the message to the people, to allow the people to have a voice to say, hey, I don't agree with the bourgeois narrative, with the bourgeois policies, with the bourgeois politicians more generally. I can vote for

this other party that does have the sort of values that we that I believe in. So it gives a message to the bourgeois parties, even if this, this candidate for, you know, ex-communist party doesn't win. They can see people are unhappy with us and it's starting to get bigger. It allows the people within the communist movement to see, hey, we are gathering strength at this moment in time. Now is a time where we need to push to advance our movement and advance our cause. I mean, there's many reasons. And again, I'm not going to run through them because it was like a two-hour conversation that we had with August Nymphs. And so listeners, you should go back and listen to that or, again, maybe we'll remaster it in time for election season. That'd be a good idea.

The point is, though, that Cornell West is not a communist. If you are listening to this show and you are a communist, he is not going to be representative of your views. I think that that's the first thing that must be said is that his views are not going to be representative of your views. They are much more in tune with your views than any other major politician that's running for office right now. I think that that is obvious. I know some people are, you know, saying like Robert Kennedy Jr., no, the man is a raving

Zionist, anti-immigration. I mean, we're not even getting into his thoughts on. some of the more controversial, conspiratorial things. But, you know, he's somebody that extols the virtues of the state of Israel, the settler colony apartheid state of Israel, which he would never refer to as such. And was just at the border this morning or last night saying about how many illegal immigrants we have coming across the board. This is your, you know, if you're a communist, this is the person you want to hitch your wagon to. I'm not sure that that's the right decision either.

He pulled on capitalist, too. I was listening to an interview. How he's at some of the economic issues? And he's like, I believe in free markets and all this shit. So, yeah, like how anybody even slightly on the left could support him in particular is just beyond me. No, no, you're absolutely right. You know, he says that we need to scale back military spending and that the United States shouldn't be involved in, you know, foreign conflicts, boots on the ground. And the CIA's influence, and again, from his family history, he would know.

you know, the CIA's influence is a malign influence and etc. So, like, yes, he's right on those things that does not make him a revolutionary communist or somebody that a revolutionary communist should support just because he's right on a couple of issues. You know, a dog is probably right on a couple of issues. That doesn't mean that we're going to put a tie and a suit on him and name him, you know, potus or whatever. Like, you know, I know, there was that they ran a pig for office, Piggasus, like, you know, Pigacus is probably what had some good ideas in his time, but I still

don't think that him, like, as a politician is probably the best thing. But anyway, that's neither here nor there. I'd vote for a dog over these imperialist running dog. Yes, yes, to borrow a phrase from Mao, and I agree with you entirely, but, you know, again, in an ideal world, you're not being run

by a dog. You know, so, but again, maybe we're just being too idealist here in our, in a Yes. But, you know, so, okay, just to condense what I'm trying to say, because I am get rambling now. It's, you know, I've been at work all day and it's late. You know, people have to realize, I got a daytime job. So by this point, I'm just happy to unload and, you know, okay, anyway, point is, Cornell West is not a communist. Cornell West is better than anybody else that's running. It's good that he's running outside of the Democratic Party. The party he's running for is not the party that I wish that he would have run. for. There is no viable option. I don't want to say that there's no candidate running for

the Communist Party because, of course, they always have somebody running in the United States. But, you know, who that's going to be? This time, who the heck knows? And, you know, are they going to get more than a thousand votes? Is it really going to tell the Communist Party how popular communism at this point? Like, is it going to achieve the goals that Marx talked about voting? for the Communist Party, just because of how things are constituted in the U.S., I'm pretty skeptical of that. So I think that voting for Cornell West is if you are going to vote, of course, you should vote for Cornell West.

If you want to vote for somebody who's actually going to be on a debate stage, that's obvious. But in terms of, you know, if you're a revolutionary communist and you're drawing your your inspiration directly from Marx and Lenin, are you going to vote for Cornell West? You know, they would probably say no because he's not running under the banner of a communist party and he's not a communist himself and therefore from an electoral strategy standpoint,

it's not really what you would be looking to do electorally. But, you know, I'm not going to tell you what to do. Listeners, you need to listen. You need to read. You need to understand how these things work, how different theorists like Marx and Lenin or whoever is your person that you want to fly by the banner of, what did they say about these issues and how does Cornell West fit within that? So that's my short way of saying,

I think he's better than Democrats. I'm not totally, I'm not the most enthused by it, although I am happy that he has decided to run and run as a third party. But in terms of what you should do, you need to read and you need to make up the minds yourself. I'm not going to tell you, I did the reading for you. I hate when people do that. It infantilizes, you know, in this case, the listeners, because this is an audio medium. I think that if somebody tells you they did the listening, they did the reading for you and therefore you don't need to, it's a very infantilizing notion. We all need to be constantly learning to equip ourselves to understand how the world works and what we should do moving forward tactically, strategically, and ways that work within

our ideological framework. So I'm not going to tell you what to do. I'm going to tell you read, understand and make the decision for yourself. Yeah. And whatever you decide, if you decide to vote for Cornell West, there's a protest vote or lend him support. You know, if he comes out with bigger numbers than anybody expected, that would be better than nothing. I could understand the rationalization for that. I can understand the rationalization for I'm not paying attention to the electoral spectacle at all. I'm going to focus on on the ground organizing or political education or whatever else. Ultimately, voting doesn't matter, as we all know, in the large scheme of things. So whatever you personally choose to do, it shouldn't be something that occupies

all of your time, that you're on Twitter 24 hours a day, arguing with other people about, don't get sucked into that level of engagement with the electoral process. You can have your ideas. If you even decide, hey, I want to go out and canvas for Cornell West or whatever, that's totally fine. But understand the limitations of what even his run could do. Understand the ideological limitations of him as a candidate. Understand that voting, ultimately is really a raindrop in an ocean that is already geared in anti-democratic ways with the electoral college and all these other mechanisms anyway. And don't get too swept up in it because I feel like even with these third party candidates or these outside the mainstream

establishment candidates, it can, what it can sometimes do is take that revolutionary or left-wing energy. And even if you're not voting for a Democrat or Republican, siphon it back into the general electoral process where all your time and energy is is in the electoral process, thinking about it, arguing with others about it, then you're totally immersed in the spectacle. So I think come to your, come to your decision, do what you think is personally in line with your values, but really focus on the other areas of life that need to be focused on and don't get totally swept up in the electoral process and never ever pin your hopes and dreams of a socialist revolution or anything like that on an electoral

candidate because only way that real change is going to happen in this country, real fundamental change is from some sort of organized bottom-up revolt. That is really the only thing that's going to be able to topple the powers that be confront them and bring in real change. But when we have mechanisms that can weaken the two-party duopoly and weaken the bipartisan consensus on like an austerity and imperialism, that's something that we can at least throw a few pennies toward and say, yeah, I support that general fight without getting totally immersed in it and think that all politics is just the electoral spectacle every four years. Yeah, and I agree with that entirely. And I think that that just underscores. And again, this is going to be more relevant

to the communists listening to the podcast. I know that we have a lot of listeners who don't identify as communists. And so this is not to say that if you're not a communist and you're listening to this. I don't care about, you know, trying to help you develop your strategy for what you should do going forward. It's just, I am a communist. And therefore, when I'm bringing a perspective for what should be done, it's going to first and foremost be from my own ideological track. And of course, I'll try to bring in other things as well. But anyway, if you are a communist, I think that what Brett was just saying is that it really underscores the point that we do need to continue to try to build communist parties in whatever countries that are in most countries have a communist party that's

in existence, you know, unless you're in a country that is very like anti-democratic and bans the, bands the existence of communist parties, places like Ukraine, for example, where they ban all left-wing parties, not just ones that have the word communist in their title, but, you know, anything that is even remotely left-wing has. been banned in Ukraine. So anyway, unless you're in a place like that, you know, most places do have a Communist party. You have to, you know, engage, understand if that party is in a position that it can be built

or if it is stagnated so much that something must be started anew. And that's not to say, listeners, that, you know, you should be the one like leading the revitalization or, you know, the birth. of a new Communist Party with you as the figurehead. No, no, no. What I'm saying is that go out, do work in your community, survey the opportunity and the realities of the Communist Party in your area. And if it is stagnant, like if there is no strategy,

if there is no, you know, work that's going into the community on their part, then perhaps think about trying to find other pushes to establish something similar. And, you know, that's a little bit more vibrant. You know, that's for you to do. Again, it depends on your local context. I can't say what it's going to be like in your given country. We have listeners from all over the world. You know, if you're in a country like Kenya, the Communist Party of Kenya is very vibrant.

You know, if you're a communist, you don't have to, you know, engage with them. Engage with them. You don't have to necessarily jump in feet first and say, I agree with everything that they do. But engage. If you're a communist, you probably will agree with most of what they're doing and what they're saying. And if you're not a communist, you know, like basically what I'm saying could be universalized to some extent. If you have a party that alliance with you, do work in the community to advance that party. Just because I'm a, I'm a communist, does it mean that I don't

want to see other left-wing parties not expand and not have more impact within the community and make a positive influence in people's lives just because, you know, they don't give themselves demonic or communist, if that's your ideology and you find a party that works with you, get involved, get involved in community work, get involved in building other, you know, outside of party organizations that can do community work, try to advance the causes that you believe in, and that I'm sure if you're listening at this point in the conversation that we all believe in. So yeah, I just want to say that I think that that under, what you said, Brett, underscores that point is that West is not the idea.

vehicle, and the People's Party is certainly not the ideal vehicle for him either. But you have to look at the realities of where we are right now, but looking forward, what should we do? And I think that increasing our work that we do in our communities, not just sitting on Twitter. If you see somebody who's tweeting 50,000 times within two years, that person is not doing much community work. You're not doing well either.

Yes, they're also not doing well. So, you know, just keep that in mind. If you look and you see somebody has like 100,000 tweets, understand, okay, that person either doesn't have a full-time job that they're doing and, you know, are disengaged from what the work environment is like in their given country. Or they don't do any real world, you know, activism, protesting, community engagement, work. They don't do any of those things if they're just sitting on Twitter. So I know I use Twitter too much, but I only use it, you know, like when I'm done with my day job and when I'm done with my other things that I do offline, which I can't always talk about. But, you know, if somebody's sitting on Twitter all the time, just think to yourself, this person is probably not that serious about actually getting a job done. and they're just serious about seeing how many hearts they get on their tweet of the day.

Yeah, they've been captured by the algorithm. All right, Brett, your closing thoughts, and then we'll get out of here. Okay, yeah, no, no really, no more thoughts. I agree with what you said there. It's going to be interesting to watch how this whole thing plays out. And like I say, we should, no matter what you personally decide to do, it's going to be an educational experience. We're going to see how the Democratic Party reacts, right? they're going to call Cornell West a black man with decades of support and activism and intellectual

consistency of Russian plant or a de facto Trump supporter or whatever. We're going to learn some stuff. And as I said earlier about even failed projects like the Bernie campaign or even in some ways, the Occupy Wall Street campaign, they open up downstream opportunities that people further to the left can take advantage of. And so we should always be on the lookout for when those doors open. And I think Cornel West jumping in is at least has the possibility of creating some opportunities downstream that we should be focusing in on and seeing what we can make of it. But those are those are my closing thoughts. Yeah. Well, I think that that's something that everybody always has to consider is that you have to make the most of opportunity when it arises. You don't

always get to make the conditions that you operate in. But when the conditions arise for you to have some sort of influence or impact, that's when you have to seize that moment. And the Russian Revolution is a great example of that. Like, I know everybody knows the word Bolshevik at this point, which means majority in Russian. They were not the majority at any point in the Russian Revolution. And only after, like, only after the monarchy had been overthrown and everybody turned on the Mensheviks and, you know, the SRs were in disarray. and basically everything just kind of fell to crap. They took an opportunity at that moment.

They were not the only ones driving the revolution. They were not the majority at any point in the revolution until victory in the revolution was achieved. And then they ended up on top. They did not create those conditions by themselves. It was a broader movement from society and from other socialist groups within that society that made those conditions possible.

for the Bolsheviks to end up on top. They didn't manufacture that themselves. They were experts at seeing the opportunity and seizing the opportunity. And we have to understand that in most countries, almost every country, people that have our ideological inclinations, pretty much anybody that's listening to this episode at this point, you know, I'm including you all in this umbrella, our ideological inclinations are not what is running a given country at that given time in most every country, not every country, but most every country. And so we don't have the majority. We are not going to necessarily be able to manufacture every opportunity for ourselves to take

advantage of. What we have to do is we have to be organized and ready to exploit those opportunities that arise for our benefit and for the betterment of all the society. So, yeah. Amen to that. All right. On that note, then, Brett, how can the listeners find you and your other fine podcasts? You can find everything I do at Revolutionary LeftRadio.com.

And I am also launching a new project probably this week. It's going to be not politics. It's not related to the Reve Left family at all. It's going to be much more humor-based, much more focusing on stuff like addiction, mental health, recovery, existentialism, philosophy, stuff like that. So if you're interested at all in that, just keep, stay tuned to the Rev Left public feed

because I will make an announcement. I've already made an announcement on the Rev Left Patreon. But yeah, when the show comes out and actually has an RSS feed and everything, I will make a public announcement and introduce that new project, which I'm excited for. Awesome. This episode will come out in two days. Are you ready to announce the name of your new project yet, or do you want to hold off a little bit?

The name is, and we're trying to create barriers to entry, it's kind of anti-marketing at this point. There's no Patreon. There's no easy way to weigh in. The show is called Shoeless in South Dakota. It's an obscure title based on in-show lore, and we're kind of going to take that idea of being very niche and not being super accessible.

It's not a very good marketing strategy, of course. But I think we were going for a small, but really genuinely committed audience as opposed to trying to cast the widest net possible. So, yeah, the show is called Shoeless in South Dakota. We have one public facing platform. It's on Instagram. Shulis in South Dakota.

If you're at all interested, you can check that out. And then we'll do all the episode updates on that Instagram. So, yeah. Awesome. I'm looking forward to that. I, you know, I'm always bogged under with too many things to do and too many things that I have to read or listen to. But I'll definitely be listening because even though it's not politics

related, which is kind of my bread and butter. Of course, mental health, addiction, things like that are things that they touch all of us, whether we have our own struggles with these things or not, you know, whether you're somebody who has faced an addiction or faces mental health issues, if you don't directly yourself, someone around you, a loved one, does have those struggles that they have faced or are facing. And you may not even be aware of that. And so, Yeah, it's definitely an important topic and I'll be listening in for sure. Although I think that it's probably going to be a bit more humorous than what we do on this show. Absolutely. I mean, you're a very funny guy, but yeah, my co-host on this new show is a ex stand-up comedian and we're just going to try to really balance out the heavy human condition stuff with the levity joking around. He's also my childhood friends. So we have a lot of that organic banter that people might find amusing, you know. yeah you know what you said i'm a funny guy the only other person who has ever told me that is my wife and she's legally obligated to tell me that so i'm not sure i believe you brett but i do appreciate

it uh as for our co-hosted non who is unfortunately not able to make it today you should check out his other podcast which is called the mudgeless m-j-l-is it's uh both the middle east islamic world and muslim diaspora great stuff don't pick the radio free central asia one pick the one hosted by the MSG-M-S-G-P-Q-U for a Muslim Society global perspectives at Queens University, if I remember that correctly, and Adnan will tell me if I didn't. You should check that out. Great stuff and follow Adnan on Twitter at Adnan A. Hussein, H-U-S-A-I-N. You can follow me on Twitter at Huck-1995, H-U-C-K-1-9-5.

Stay tuned. Like I said, the Stalin book will be out on July 1st. Pre-orders will be opening very soon. So if you follow me on Twitter, I'm sure that you'll see that, or you can follow Peaceland and Bread or Iskra Books on Twitter, which are who's going to be publishing and distributing the book. And just to remind you, the PDF is going to be free because we care a lot about getting that information out to as many people as we can.

And the print copies are going to be sold at cost and they're going to look awesome. So be excited for that. And as for guerrilla history, as I said at the top of the show, you can follow us at Gorilla underscore Pod G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A-U-L-A-U-S-W-Pod and you can help support the show so that we can,

Brett and I keep rambling on into the future and, you know, when a non-comes in, we get a little bit more structure, but we do appreciate that, of course. But if you want to keep going on

long into the future, you can join us at patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. that is what allows us to continue to do the show. It is a big time investment. So all of your support is greatly appreciated. And of course, sharing episodes with people if you can't monetarily contribute is another great way to help the show.

So on that note then, listeners, and until next time, solidarity. Thank you. Thank you.