Rev Left Radio - [BEST OF] The Spectre Still Haunts: Breaking the Imperialist Chain w/ Hakim

Episode Date: May 16, 2025

ORIGINALLY RELEASED Sep 21, 2021 The one and only Hakim joins Breht to discuss the Iraq war from the perspective of Iraqis, the western left, Lenin, Reform AND Revolution, the importance of anti-imperialist struggle, contradictions and crises, the global south, etc. At the end, Hakim fields a bunch of common anti-socialist talking points and dismantles them one by one.  This is a wide ranging and genuinely fun conversation with a great comrade and political educator!  Subscribe to Hakim's YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPPZoYsfoSekIpLcz9plX1Q Follow Hakim on Twitter: https://twitter.com/yaboihakim ---------------------------------------------------- Support Rev Left and get access to bonus episodes: www.patreon.com/revleftradio Make a one-time donation to Rev Left at BuyMeACoffee.com/revleftradio Follow, Subscribe, & Learn more about Rev Left Radio HERE Outro Beat Prod. by flip da hood

Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. On today's episode, we have the one and only Hakeem. Many of you might know him from YouTube on the show to discuss a plethora of topics. We recorded this the day after September 11th, and Hakeem is obviously an Iraqi Marxist. And so we opened the discussion with a sort of prolonged discussion of 9-11, its impacts in America and Iraq, how it shaped his politics, impacted his life and his family, incredibly harrowing and fascinating to get that perspective, which in the American media, you almost never ever get that perspective from the victims of U.S. imperialism.

If there's ever even a critique of it, it's framed in terms of the blood and treasure that America lost, and I think that is chauvinist and racist and disgusting. So hearing voices from West Asia, the region impact. did most recently by brutal and belligerent American imperialism is crucial. But after that opening phase, we just open up the discussion. We talk about a bunch of different topics. And at the end, we do this really fun lightning round where I toss some common objections against socialism towards Hakeem, and he answers them with absolutely no prep, just freestyling off the top of his head. Really impressive. And just overall, a blast of an episode. So I really

hope that you enjoyed. If you haven't already, go on to YouTube, search Hakeem, like and subscribe, show them some Rev Left Love, and without further ado, here is my discussion with Hakeem on a plethora of topics. Enjoy. Hey there. I'm Hakein. I am an Iraqi Marxist and a physician by profession. Is there really more to add about myself? Well, yeah, you're also a wonderful left-wing YouTuber that makes amazing content, and I've been a fan of your stuff for a very long time, and this is sort of an overdue collaboration, So I'm really honored and pleased to have you on the show.

You're very kind. I'm actually a very big fan of yours myself, and that's why I'm even somewhat possibly more excited just to be having this conversation than anything else. But thank you. Thank you for the invitation. I'm very happy to be here. For sure.

Yeah, and you know, as we were talking about what we wanted to discuss, we sort of pushed aside the idea that we were just going to tackle one topic and instead just touch on many different things and just kind of keep it loosely structured and organic, which I think is the best way to approach a conversation like this. And, you know, we are recording this the day after September 11th, the 20th anniversary. I was 2001.

I was in middle school, but by the time of, you know, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars being in full swing, I was well into my teenage high school years. And obviously, you know, being here in a red state in the heartland of the United States, America sort of lost its mind for a while and it was an absolute gift to the right wing and the racists and the bigots. And, you know, I think we're still in so many ways living with that legacy. But specifically given your background, I'm really curious as to what your initial reactions were and sort of how it played out in your experiences, your life experiences after the incident. Yeah, for sure. I was slightly younger than you were when it took place.

And I remember the reporting on it at the time. The basically we were watching something else and whatever we were watching was cut off because it was a, you know, breaking news. And they showed, you know, the footage of the planes crashing into the buildings and whatnot. And I remember that the mood in the room became very somber. Not, I think, from the perspective of, of course, part of it was that's a real shame. Like, that's such a horrible thing to happen to mostly innocent people. But also it was fairly somber because I remember my father basically turned to my mother and said something to the effects of like, yeah, this is going to be,

this is going to affect us down the line, won't it? And the realization, I think, as an imperialized people who are under sanction, especially at the time, the most extensive sanctions, of any era, practically. I think the only ones that could compare are the ones placed on Cuba and the DPRK. The fundamental understanding that we are going to be affected

by something that our country and our people have not played a hand in that we are in no way connected to, something that happened across the earth will somehow come back and directly affect us through imperial violence. And that realization, I think,

yeah, it's left kind of a bitter taste for the rest of the day. for us. I was too young at the time to even realize what was happening. I just want to continue watching cartoons. So I saw it as a little more than inconvenience for my day-to-day life at the age. But yeah, I think if my parents being adults at the time and realizing what had happened, they saw the writing on the wall and how this would significantly affect our near future. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, obviously prophetic in having any understanding, especially as someone in the Middle East of American imperialism, you knew it wasn't going to be pretty.

When was there the recognition that that sort of prophecy, if you will, was coming true? Like, you know, when the Iraq War was sort of declared, how did that impact you and your family? It was difficult because, well, it was in two stages, really. At first, there was a surge of, I would guess you would call patriotism or nationalism, what have you. there was definitely a feeling in the air of, you know, we'll resist the invaders and whatnot, like that kind of idea. But the real declaration of war in the standard tradition of the US isn't to actually have a formal declaration that is, you know, given beforehand. It's just to start bombing indiscriminately and then enter into the land. And I remember I was awakened by the bombing of, I think, one of their first targets was the Ministry of Defense and a couple of other targets.

And I remember I was awakened in the early morning by it. And yeah, it's as impactful as you may expect. One day, you know, you're just chilling, not mind your own business, hoping to, I don't know, beat a level of crash bandicoot or something, I don't know. And the next thing you know, the electricity's out, and you hear bombing and air sirens and stuff. Yeah, so that was the first stage. So on the social level, you felt different people were anxious. They didn't know what was going to happen, but people basically armed themselves because they knew what was going to come next. And that was the second stage in which we understood that the government, as it stood, cannot resist.

the might of a coalition invasion of dozens of nations who will thoroughly destroy any sort of resistance through indiscriminate violence, which is what happened. And with a collapsed government in a volatile country that was already strained by significant sanctions, as you may expect, the prevailing idea was, I have to do what I need to to protect my family. and thankfully at the time in Iraq basically everybody was armed it's just kind of how it is and I remember that in my immediate family members at least the males we were all armed when it happened and I was too young to to even be involved in something like that but I had something in case yeah and the conversations with my parents and the usual stuff I think this something that I can

I think encapsulate it in one anecdote maybe sure and that is most

Americans I think will not understand that when the US or any country invades

but when we talk about invasions usually is the United States carrying them out

one thing that you always have laying around is cardboard and the reason is because you

want to always place cardboard you want to nail it to windows because the blasts

from nearby explosions will always shoot glass out into the rooms where you may be in and those can be incredibly damaging or otherwise they might outright kill you um so that's why for example in my house we always had uh flat uh cardboard sections from like old used your electronics and whatnot um i remember that that was a thing we'd do god damn what's the you know the the legacy today in

in the country from from the invasion after it's ostensibly sort of over with how is it how does that continue to impact and shape the politics but also just the society itself yeah um it the only way that i think could even be understood is it was the most devastating thing to ever occur to iraq in modern history um i think short of the mongol invasion of the 13th century um nothing even comes close to the level of destruction uh cultural scientific social um even infrastructure, everything, the level of destruction cannot be measured. It can't even be imagined. The current legacy is overwhelmingly, everybody considers it to be a negative thing. I think that shouldn't be a controversial thing to note. You may have people who may agree or

disagree on, oh, well, the old regime fell, so that was at least like a positive that came out of it. But the overwhelming belief is that Iraq has been worse. off in practically every regard. A similar parallel could be kind of drawn to the illegal dissolution of the USSR, in which immediately what happened, in the scattering of all social

services, what you ended up having is a lot of not only hoarding, but then the stealing and eating up of all state assets by what eventually amounted to all the Garks. All of them were sanctioned directly by the United States.

The development of militias, of course, at first, to be anti-American resistance, but then afterwards became just a menace on all of Iraqi society as well, the deepening sectarianism that the American administration directly egged on and stoked the fires of. The one way I can put it is the amount of progress that we could have made over the past, or the amount of progress we did make since the independence from the British, up until 2003, all of it practically was undone by the American invasion and now we have a weak country

with an incompetent central government that cannot administer all its provinces we have militias that are loyal to powers other than the Iraqi government and the Iraqi people that they carry themselves as basically mafia thugs you pay for protection

that sort of thing there is little to know economic activity that's productive the only sort of state-directed economic activity is in the oil and gas natural gas sector as you may expect with preferential treatment given to western companies to illegally and extensively exploit the resources of iraq on top of the the sectarian issues that they've caused that will never be able to be corrected. A simple example to give is the Iraqi Christian population which numbered in the hundreds of thousands, if not even hundreds of thousands, if not even millions, to my knowledge, now has dwindled to

little under 100,000 around there, because all of them are despora, all of them have been forced to leave. The dwindling numbers of Mendians, which is an Abrahamic faith that has been in Iraq for over a thousand years the persecution of Yazidis even what people like to

call us old the former Sunni regime even persecution of Sunni Muslims has been incredibly thorough so much so that Baghdad which was a multi-democratic if you can use that word city which had basically every representative every representation of Iraqi society

within it we had Christians we had Arabs we have Muslims of all the different sects. We had Kurds and Assyrians and Shebeks and all other sorts of all the people that represent Iraq. And now if you look at the demographics of

Baghdad, it is overwhelmingly a Shiite Arab city now. Not that there's anything wrong with being a Shiite Arab, but the very fact that the current government has not been able to maintain the multicultural and

multi-ethnic and multi-religious character of our symbol as a nation, or capital city, it goes very far, I think, to show the priorities of the current central government, either that or their incompetence. Yeah. Truly a world historical crime for which, you know, nobody has been held adequately responsible, and that is, I guess that's the benefit of being a world imperial hegemon, is you don't have to answer to anybody, except perhaps posterity and history itself.

But, you know, it's not enough of a level of accountability that is deserved here. And, of course, there's this systematic rehabilitation of these criminals by even the liberal intelligentsia and the mainstream media here in the U.S., you know, figures like George Bush being lauded in the wake of Trump, as if he's, you know, some good Republican, as opposed to the bad Republican of Trumpism. but, you know, nothing that I experienced here would obviously ever come close to what was experienced by the Iraqi people, but it clearly was something that had a deep, profound impact on my politics and from the get-go, seeing the rabid nationalism take over the minds of, you know, all the Americans around me. It pushed me in the opposite direction of beginning to question American nationalism to say how can, you know, this, this so-called pride in being American be resulted in the slaughtering of innocent people abroad and the devastation of entire

societies. And I didn't, I wasn't in an organization. I was too young to even know that, you know, I'm in a deep red state, but like I would go out by myself to like the busiest intersection in Omaha and like protest against the war just trying to do anything at all, you know, sort of the heat of the confusion. So, I mean, it played that huge role in my politics of framing nationalism in the American context for what it is and introducing me to, you know, imperialism, even if I couldn't quite articulate it at the time. And I think it's fairly obvious how something like that could shape somebody like yours politics, but could you talk a little bit more about how that those experiences shaped your politics and why they pushed you towards

a Marxist analysis and not in any other direction? For sure, yeah. Generally, I think growing up in what is currently termed the Middle East, which is an orientalist term, I personally prefer West Asia and North Africa, but it doesn't matter just for posterity's sake, for people to understand the Middle East, yeah. Most of us, born in this area, tend to be ingrained in a primitive anti-imperialism, if that makes sense. We have experienced countless years of colonial hegemon prior, and now we are at the point of end. let's say, of pretty much all imperialist aggression. If not outright violent, then at least through the on top of the soapbox, through the media and other propaganda networks. We're demonized in practically every turn and blamed for things that we had no hand in.

Every aspect of our character, be it our religion or just how we are with racist concepts such as the Arab mind and how it is incapable of understanding, etc., etc. these entirely kind of morph us into, at first it's very basic, I don't like the US, but not in the, you know, I don't like American stuff, it's just I don't like the US government for what they stand for, the very basic, you know, Yankee go home kind of attitude. But it doesn't get deeper than that. The significant point where it switches is when you are at the direct end of imperialist aggression. And then when you see it firsthand in your country, in your family, et cetera, if you're to lose a loved one,

then at that point, you begin to understand that there has to be something deeper than this. There has to be a reason why this is happening. I can't believe that this country, the United States, can be so comically evil as to be doing this. And that kind of pushes into a direction where you want to learn, you want to read. And then you begin reading, and then you realize, hey, Iraq wasn't the first, and it definitely won't be the last. There was Chile, for example.

There was Greece prior. There was countless nations who have been affected. And these were countries who were either fledging socialist states or countries that had slightly more progressive politics. That's not even mentioning those who were explicitly Marxist-Leninist, Soviet Union and China and Cuba, et cetera. And when you see what happens, then you start to realize, what do all these countries have in common?

And what does the United States and its NATO allies, allies do once it starts their aggression against these much poorer countries. Why would they spend these trillions of billions of dollars to destroy a people and a population that in some parts of the world have little more than a few goats and a small brick house, right? In the example of Afghanistan, especially in the rural areas, but this also was valid for Iraq. And then you begin to understand that there is a deeper thing than just imperialism for imperialism's sake. It's not military conquests. It's their attempted economic control of markets.

It's their hope, or not their hope, but their definite attempt at capturing not only resources, but markets that they had prior not been able to access and to develop networks, value chains

that directly benefit the bottom line of US or otherwise other capitalist institutions and businessmen. When you slowly enter into this very basic understanding, then everything kind of starts to fall into place

and then just kind of pushes you to read more. And that's the direction it took me in. A lot of other people, it pushed them into a very strong anti-colonial, let's say, sort of attitude where the first thing they want to do is not pick up a book, but pick up a gun and fight. And those people are, be commended in every regard. Every member of the Iraqi resistance against the illegal U.S. invasion

are heroes, unlike every member of the illegal U.S. invasion of Iraq on the American side, which can be little more than an either direct criminal or one who was complacent and involved with criminal activity and did not stand to resist it. Whether they had the understanding of it or not, but that is the opinion of an imperialized person, whether you accept it or not. Yeah, absolutely. I completely accept and agree with everything you've said. And, you know, therein lies here in the U.S., the obscuring role of nationalism and how this idea of America that we were inculcated with since children, a pledge allegiance to the flag since the first day of school, is then weaponized to obscure the fact that this is about resources and markets and geopolitical domination. and instead it's framed as, you know, everybody knows that America is the best country in the world and we're all about freedom and democracy. So what we're doing in these countries is actually trying to bring to these people what we have, freedom and democracy. And it's an absolutely fucking infantile, you know, concept.

But because of the way Americans are indoctrinated, kept ignorant about the world around them, and in many cases, because their settlers are just sort of, in the mindset to hate the other, it works. It works enough to get enough consent from the American population to do these things. And until we internally confront and dismantle that through proletarian internationalism, through socialist struggle, it's going to continue to be used as the sort of fig leaf that covers the true intentions of what America does abroad. And I mean, in order for the world, I truly believe this,

in order for the world as a whole to move on to, you know, evolve to the next level of humanity, uh, America as it stands, what it is has to, has to die. And I think that is encapsulated in the phrase death to America. Um, America and its nationalism and its entire political project, um, it has to go if, if humanity is going to continue on in a more just equitable and evolved way. And I don't think there's any disputing that. Exactly right. Very beautifully put. All right. Well, Um, yeah, just absolutely heart-wrenching to imagine what, I mean, if I could, if I could share a tidbit, actually, I think something that you might find interesting is, um, imperialism can be summed up in the American attitude, in their military placements in Iraq, the, um, uh, museum of Baghdad, which houses, um, I don't, I can't recall the, the term in English, uh, invaluable, I believe is the proper term. In invaluable artefacts of human history

It is the common heritage of all of humanity That was being held within the Museum of Baghdad For those who are unaware Iraq is the center of one of the oldest If not the oldest civilization on earth The civilization that began with agriculture And developed the first cities Developed the first militaries, develop the first structural social organization

The very basis of civilization And that's why it's turned to the cradle of civilization, Mesopotamia, all the heritage of basically, of humanity that was kept within the walls of that magnificent museum, the United States placed a single solitary tank in front of the entrance to deter looting.

I'm unsure if it was even manned or not. Meanwhile, the Mejnoon oil field in Iraq, which is one of the largest oil fields in the country, It is so oil-rich and so easy to access that in some places, if you step wrong on the ground, you're going to have a little spurt of natural oil that comes out from the ground. That's how much there is in this place.

They stationed entire platoons there. Absolute, ridiculous amounts of infantry and troops and vehicles and everything they may imagine in the places where it's truly mattered. And I think that in 100, in a thousand years, or even further, if humanities even to survive climate change and all the other complications that we'll encounter the species, the temporary profits that were gotten from those oil fields would be forgotten. But the innumerable lost artifacts and destroyed, looted or otherwise basically lost pieces of simple things, even as clay or what have you, the things that. can talk about our history as a species, that will be will truly be forgotten and truly be missed. And the irony here is that it just shows the inhumanity of capitalism. The short-sighted

desire for profits can overlook even this most, I maybe it's happy to say, like, noble endeavor to maintain and preserve that which is intrinsically human, our history and how we've developed civilization, how we've evolved. Yeah. Amazingly said, and it's really a perfect metaphor for what the U.S. stands for, not only inhumanity, but anti-humanity. The fact that, you know, our entire species had this agricultural and civilizational revolution on the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates and in Mesopotamia. And then this short-sighted imperialist, capitalist-driven monster called the United States just comes and destroys it all and, you know, without even a second thought.

and it really is a horrific example of what the U.S. stands for, and in the future, it's just so obvious to me, especially with anybody that studies history, it's so obvious that the U.S. will be seen in hindsight after the empire has fully sort of been abolished that the U.S. was an evil regime, you know, on par, I think, with the Nazi regime and other similarly disgusting right-wing anti-human regimes. think we don't see that yet because of the hegemonic control that America has over global politics and even, you know, culture. But once that empire, which is already in this in late stages and is dying, once that empire is sweeped off the face of, of the earth, humanity as a whole will, I think, come to a consensus that it was a holy sort of evil empire.

Insha'u'll know. Absolutely. All right. Well, let's go ahead and move on. And there's other things I would love to talk with you about. And one thing I really appreciate about your politics, and I think where you and I really sort of agree on many things, but I think one of the things we agree on is sort of the state of the modern left and what its failures are, particularly the Western left. But we can talk about the left globally as well. And you've obviously made videos critiquing, for example, social democracy and going into why that critique is rooted in reality.

and what's exactly wrong with it and the politics it leads to inexorably. So I don't know, it's a broad topic and there's not a specific question, but I'll just sort of open the floor up. What are your ideas on the state of the modern left and you can talk about it in global terms or in specific countries?

For sure. Yeah, it's a very, very beautifully put the topic from your side. Thank you for that. Very ambitious to talk about it, but I'll definitely give it a try. The state of the modern left both globally and in the West, there are two different lefts, I think, when you view it like that.

The priorities of the left in the imperial periphery are very different than the priorities of the imperial core. And I think there is even a second layer of difference, which is what the left in the imperial core should be doing versus what they are actually doing. And same goes for the left within the imperial periphery, what they are doing versus maybe what they could also be contributing to. It's less what they should be doing because I personally believe,

and from what I've seen, the work that is being done in the imperial periphery tends to be more aligned with the material realities as well as the aims of the worldwide socialist movement. But when it comes to the state of the modern Western left, I would personally say it is both disappointing as well as inspiring. disappointing because the amount of difficulties that they have to put up with not only from direct state repression but also general social perceptions of their politics for example considering yourself a socialist or a Marxist or what have you within the United States gets very unpleasant reactions let's say and that can directly influence a

person depending what stage they are in their life but it can either affect them their education or in their personal view of themselves or even with their employment, in very severe cases, even their lives. But that's one aspect of it. The other aspect of it is that a truly committed Marxist or socialist, within the West, has to fight against so many different trends of what could be considered either opportunism or just misguided beliefs, incorrect analysis. The push to kind of soften the politics of the socialists, to try to bring it into, quote, democratic socialist lines, which is fallacious because it implies that other socialisms weren't democratic, and that's kind of a whole issue that you'd have to unpack

on its own, and other fields, of course. So when it comes to their state, I would say, yeah, disappointing. But when the other side, which I think is fairly, I can say, promising or has me excited for the future, is that there is rapid development. I am seeing a lot more organizations prop up. I think you as an American, yourself, have seen this much more than I have. The ideas that maybe just 15 years ago would have been considered strange to say, like, for example, as silly as it is, general social perceptions of imperialism, even if they're very primitive. And even if they're only restricted to historical figures, like 15, 20 years ago, if you were to say something against Columbus, I would think that most Americans kind of look

at you weird. But nowadays, especially with the young, if you were to say, yeah, Columbus wasn't a nice guy, I think a lot of people would add on many adjectives, more colorful ways of describing important. So I think that's inspiring. Another aspect as well is that, um, you know, the revolutionary side of politics also, at least in theory, the knowledge of it is being more prevalent. It's becoming more pervasive. So much so that I believe even the American government has noted this and has tried to put directives. I think recently in the U.S. there was a directive that lumped, quote-unquote, far-right extremists and left-wing people into the same pool of people that will be

what's the English word, not supervised, spied on, you know what I'm trying to say. So, yeah, surveilled, exactly, yeah. So that's kind of, the two sides of it. But I don't want to really focus on the negatives. There are a lot of them. But I think it might be more beneficial to focus on the positive future, right?

At our heart, even if we're materialists, I think we're also cautious optimists because we do believe that we have a world to win and to believe that you have to be optimistic at least in some sense. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, it is true that part of the indoctrination of the average American

is rabid anti-communism and it always has been. So coming out and not just saying that you're a Marxist or an anarchist or whatever, but engaging in Marxist or anarchist work certainly makes you a target not only of the far right, but of the state itself. And I've been docked like three times

by fascists in my area. I'm in a deep red state as well, so that I think that also adds there's plenty of hardcore reactionaries around me. Although that's just as true in a big blue state like California, there are millions of hardcore reactionaries and fascists all over there. But also been visited by like the FBI and local detectives and stuff like that. And, you know, it's meant to intimidate you into silence and to stop whatever activities you're engaging in and to scare you with the threat of either violence from the fascist or, right or violence from the state or imprisonment by the state so that's certainly it's certainly there but there is this growing um you know left movement it's sort of i see it sort of as the left regaining its its feet after decades of neoliberalism and anti-communism the fall of the

soviet union i mean there's a long history in the u.s of course as everybody knows of marxist and anarchist agitation and organization and that was systematically attacked deconstructed through reds, infiltrated, co-opted, 100%. And so there's a whole generation, you know, like Gen X, for example, is really kind of a lost generation as far as left activism. There were certainly some carrying the flames through those dark times without a doubt. But as a whole, it was anathema to be on the far left. Even the Democratic Party was making hard moves to the right.

And so that sort of shows that. So we're regaining our feet. And with that regaining of our feet comes all the old confusion. all the old errors. And so, you know, I even see like a Bernie Sanders popularizing socialism. Okay, there's the popularization and then there's the interpretation of what it means. Well, if a bunch of people suddenly are coming back into understanding socialism, there's going to be a million different ways that that's interpreted from.

It's what the government does, like the police and the firefighters, all the way to like principled anti-capitalist analysis and everything in between. So I see that it comes with the territory. But I think I think the big thing. that's happening and is going to continue to happen and it is under it is undergirding all of these sort of political alternatives popping up on the left and the right is repeated capitalist crisis you know more than a million arguments that a left winger could make more than a million persuasive essays it is the abject and obvious failure of capitalism to meet the needs of the people

in the u.s and abroad that is undergirding this this attempt from people all along the political spectrum to honestly seek alternatives. And Marxism and socialism has gained so much traction that now liberals have to contend with it and the right has to melt down over it. So like, you know, when Trump during BLM's riots, constantly talking about the threat of Marxism and anarchism and the right today is talking about critical race theory and neo-Marxists and they're having to deal with it. The centrist liberals deal with it in a certain way and the far right deals with it in a certain way, but the fact that they have to contend with it and not just laugh it off, I think, shows that they're kind of taken aback by the rise of it and

they're not exactly sure how to handle it. Very true. It reminds me a Marxist quote of first this tragedy and then second as farce. Honestly. Yeah, absolutely. That quote is evergreen for a bunch of topics. But, you know, bouncing off of this idea of capitalist crisis, obviously the biggest crisis in some sense is the global crisis.

of climate change and the obviousness that the incentive structures built into capitalism itself are incapable of addressing the problem in a real way, but also addressing it in a just equitable way. It certainly takes that option off the table if we're going to maintain capitalism, and it's precisely the short-sightedness and the short-term profiteering built into capitalism and the anarchy of production that has given rise in some sense to climate change and makes it very hard to confront within that framework. So this is one of the crises.

This is pushing people on the right. Eco-fascism is on the rise. But I think more predominantly on the left, there are these critiques coming and people moving to the left in the face of it. I'm just wondering what you think about that generally, but also maybe how climate change is impacting West Asia specifically because, as always, like with this conversation, it's the people who contributed the absolute least to the problem.

who suffer first and most intensely from it. Yeah, very, very aptly put. I would say when it comes to the question of climate change, as Marx said that capitalism gives rise above all to his gravediggers, and I think when Marx personally thought of that, he considered it just to be the class of proletarians as a mass. But I think also there's the quotes being more profound in the fact that capitalism itself will strive to kill the planet and destroy the environment that we live in

for their short-term profits, to the point that even their possible existence on this planet can be threatened. And I think that's a point that maybe at the time Marx didn't consider, but it's definitely valid for us today. But with that being said, I think the greatest challenge, but also the greatest benefit for the global movement, the global socialist movement, is climate change. Because there are only two things, right? As Luxembourg said, it's either

socialism or barbarism. It's either we fail and capitalism continues, reign supreme, completely destroys the planet and then we'll have to deal with that possible mess if we can even maintain ourselves as a species, or we managed

to create a different system which respects the environment and respects human life. But the reason I think it is a positive at the end of the day for the global socialist movement is that the opportunities that will give rise for radicalization across the board will be incomparable. I think people seem to forget that even during the worst times of the mid to late 1800s where children were being sent to sweatshops to work, 12, 14-hour shifts, and people were treated as absolute garbage.

Even then, there were periods where class consciousness would wane. Even under such heavy repression and blatant capitalist exploitation of the working class, there were periods when people were just content and didn't want to kind of shake the system up. And events would come around that would serve as the impetus for, radicalization, that being, for example, World War I and World War II, being very significant events. The Great Depression, of course, is an example. There's another apt example, I would personally believe, and there are many more. And I think the consequences of climate change will be similar in that there are lots of places right now where capitalist exploitation is practically unbearable,

but people don't want to shake the boat in fear that something worse will come. The thing thing is that, that thing which is possibly worse, will come. It is climate change. It will displace massive amounts of people. It will destroy entire communities. There are entire countries that will cease to exist, either in part or in whole as a result of climate change. And all these people who will have to leave those areas will be the next wave, massive wave of refugees, quote, climate refugees. And the social and political and economic tension of this mass migration of people and disruption of general chains of production

will result in such a significant impotence of radicalization that it kind of fits in with that you know the Chinese have a curse or it's believed to be a Chinese curse when you meet an enemy you'd like to tell them that you hope they live in interesting times and that's the sort of a deal with climate change the next couple of decades and definitely the next century

will definitely be interesting times. I think both in how horrific it might end up being, but also in a more positive note, the amount of untapped revolutionary potential that we'll see from the vast majority of the imperial periphery, and with their successes, I think also the impetus for revolutionary drive within the imperial core,

which can finally result in some measure that can either reduce the global, hegemony of capitalism if not hopefully outright eliminate it yeah it's a great point and i really think that's how it's going to play out is the you know the periphery is going to rise first and set an example and what the u.s has been able to do uh over its you know century or two of being a really since world two of being a global hegemon there was the soviet union but after that collapsed certainly the unipolar hegemon of the world is it was able to crush any socialist attempt. Any part of the globe, any corner of the globe, any society wants to

collectivize their resources, buck off, you know, American finance, monopoly capital, and do things their own way, it was drowned in blood. And with the decline of the empire, it simultaneously makes it more dangerous. This dying empire will lash out more brutally and more irrationally. But it will also be less and less able to squash those attempts, especially in the face of climate change is more and more societies decide to do it, to change the way they do things. And America has a decreased capacity to go around any corner of the globe and drowned it in blood. You know, once those examples start popping up, it's going to be very hard for the rest of the world to look away from those things as they are suffering their own losses.

And I think what you mention about even in terrible times, people not wanting, as you say, to shake the boat, I think it cuts deep to something in human psychology, which is sometimes called loss aversion. this idea that people would rather, even if they have very little, prevent the loss of that, then they would be willing to take risks in order to gain much more. And it makes sense. You know, I mean, there's a certain rationality to it, but what climate change is doing is forcing upon them the loss of even if they have very little, what little they have.

And so, therefore, that risk associated with trying something radically different, it's less and less scary because the maintaining of the status quo, is the real horror to escape from. And so that those different strands and those different pressures, I think, will continue to mount. And they, at the very least, will open up huge vistas of opportunities for the global revolutionary left. Yeah, I completely agree. I think, or I hope, to see this massive wave of optimism and revolutionary activity that will come out of the imperial core, and that will actually be beneficial to the development of socialism within those core capitalist countries.

I sometimes daydream if the revolution would be successful within the United States, how the general trajectory of all of humanity would change by that significant event. I can't even begin to fathom. And that's why it's always nice to be optimistic, I think. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I think this is where China comes into the conversation, because regardless of your thoughts on whether China is socialist, I mean, there's all these debates on the left, China is this rising counter-hegemon and real threat to the unipolar hegemony of the U.S. Empire. And that in and of itself is a good thing. But what you get out of it in the West and specifically in the U.S. is across the political spectrum, this anti-Chinese sentiment, this saber-rattling, this ramping up with.

of the new Cold War, some segments of the, I mean, I think even one of the reasons like the Biden administration wanted to get out of Afghanistan was to look towards Asia and to put its efforts and its military might in that direction, because they sort of see what's coming and they can't be tied up in a place like Afghanistan if they want to offer a more robust challenge to China. But I think it's obvious to me that if, as a civilization, if we want to meaningfully address the climate crisis the two biggest three biggest countries are the u.s india and china just as far as their populations their energy usage etc obviously the u.s historically has the vast majority plus with europe the vast majority of historical emissions and so there is a bigger

responsibility on the west to meaningfully shift money around and to help the global south develop in in green ways etc without a doubt but we also need to be co-operative operating with China on every level to try to, you know, have the technology sort of spread around the world, to work together to come to agreements about, you know, energy reduction and just really help one another out. And on the right center and the left, in various instantiations, this anti-Chinese sentiment is actually working in exactly the opposite direction. And it's, it's downright dangerous. Do you have any thoughts on that argument? Yeah, I think that whatever opinions people may have on China, one thing that cannot be questioned is their commitment to combating climate change across everything that I personally read.

They are one of the, if not the only country. I think the only country that surpass them is Cuba. When it comes to their goals of reducing emissions, when it goes to what social reorganization they're doing for alternative forms, of energy development for their shifts of usage, like between, for example, coal to geothermal energy, etc. Their commitment, I think, cannot be denied. It's definitely more blatant that they care about their environment or at least the global environment than, say, the United States, which, you know, does the usual song and dance. So one president pulls out of the Paris Accords, is another one that goes back in. This usual, I don't know what the English term for it is,

but where basically they kind of just go back and forth and then in the middle, nothing gets done. I think that's kind of the way that most American politics go. Totally. That's why there's a Democratic and Republican Party. They just kind of keep switching batons and nothing ever happens. It's a great way to maintain the status quo. Exactly right, yeah.

But I think the American aggression against China on this question, in the end, will be a net negative. And my hope is that in an ideal world, there would be, rather than an arms race, there would be a green energy race, at least for the next sort of political gain. Because out of that, we might at least get some sort of, the space race is more or less pointless. It was interesting for human curiosity about this point. it brings very little benefit to the average, I don't know, T-Farmer in Kenya, or even the average office worker in Atlanta, what have you. But if there were this sort of race towards development of green energy solutions between the two massive superpowers on Earth, then everybody across the board will see some form of benefit from that. Absolutely.

And I think two things are very clear when it comes to China that, as you were alluding to, China is much more rational, strategic, long-sided, and capable of pursuing medium-to-long-term goals than the U.S. is, which is to its huge advantage. And it's very clear that China doesn't fucking want to go to war with America. You know, it has many more things it wants to accomplish. It wants to bring its people out of poverty. It wants to lead the way on the green energy revolution. It does not want to be bogged down in some horrific World War III type situation with the U.S.

but there is this strain in the American psychology that wants that and you know I I sometimes think of it as this sort of like late empire death drive and I think it manifests more most obviously on the on the far right but it has its iterations across the board where it's like this like fuck it I would rather blow everything up than have to like find an equal in China or you know transform our society into something more equitable and just I think it's very real and I think you see it in the psychology of Trump and of Trump supporters. I think you see it in the, the machinations of the anti-mask and anti-vaccine right. It's like, I would rather fucking be gasping for air and die

than have to put on a mask because then I feel like I was emasculated by the liberal left or something. And that pathology is scary. Don't even get me started on like anti-vaccs and anti-masker people, Jesus Christ. Yeah, it is. I mean, it is bonkers over here.

And, of course, there's this long history of paranoid conspiratorialism on the American right generally. And it is ramping up in the face of late capitalism and a dying empire and all of the ideas and myths that, you know, patriots and nationalists and right-wingers have about what the U.S. is is falling apart. And so instead of facing up to reality, they retreat into conspiracy theory. If I may add on to that a bit. yeah um how you mentioned uh how china is more uh far like long-sighted in their approaches and more planned and whatnot uh and how they seem to be doing this better than the united states um you're very much right in the fact that they are doing it better than the united states but what's the true i think pity uh or i think yeah pity might be too light of a word to use but i understand what i mean

is that the united states has a far larger absolutely um immeasurably larger capacity to properly plan and develop and innovate and organize their society towards positive ends of, for example, like to compare with China, the anti-poverty campaigns that drives against climate change, against desertification, their impetus to increase food production for across-the-board food sufficiency for the country. Across the board, every aspect of scientific development towards having a modern, effective and self-sufficient society that can have basically a net positive effect on the environment surrounding it rather than a net negative effect. When you compare China and the U.S., the U.S. is the one that actually holds more power and capability

to drive in that direction. But just because of capitalism as a system that is so irrational, you end up with the exact inverse. You end up with a country that is the number one largest. social, cultural, economic, political, and military power that the world has ever seen being across the board decimated when it comes to positive indicators by a third world country that just 80 years ago was enduring one of the most brutal civil wars that humanity has seen and afterwards had to deal with incredibly trying times just to develop their basic levels of industry and whatnot. It's a very, very, it's a very, it's pain.

to see how stupid of a system capitalism is. And to link that to your other point where you're talking about the conspiratorial sort of beliefs that kind of are pervasive on the American right. And I think this kind of ties into

the fact that it's nice, I think it's interesting to note that whenever you see the difference between quote, right-wing answers and Marxist answers is that the conservative or right-wing or pro-capitalist answers always tend to be very simple, right?

It's always the one word, that's why it is, right? When you, but when you compare it to the Marxist answers, they're always incredibly nuanced, and as you may expect, it's, you know, the meme. One of you see, a socialist meme, and it's just a huge block of things. Exactly. And there's a reason for that, right?

People aren't unemployed because they're lazy. It's because there is no, employment either in a region or dignified employment or employment that can be based according to whatever expectations the local population may have the environment isn't you know oh it's a massive conspiracy by god knows who right um the there's a giant cabal of uh climate scientists are trying to push people towards what also who cares even if there was a conspiracy at the end of it what would we get cleaner air cleaner water uh improved our agricultural techniques so that even less people need to work with in agriculture for higher yields and more nutritious food?

What is the possible downside? There's an old joke in the climate science circles of like, you know, there's this climate science conference and, you know, everybody was speaking and pointing out how terrible things are and what needs to be done to address it. And at the end of the conference, somebody stands up and they say, okay, I hear what you're saying, but, you know, what if it's all not true? and we end up creating a great world based on a hoax, right? And that it kind of gets at your point of like, what's the worst outcome?

We have less air pollution. We have more efficient and cheaper energy. We have a cleaner, healthy environment. And even if climate change was a complete hoax, it would still be worth doing all of those things to advance humanity. And I think that little joke, if you want to call it that, gets at that point in what you're saying precisely. and I think

if I may one extra tangent yeah please do something that from what I personally I think you could probably comment on this better from what I've seen though

is I believe when it comes to the US the majority of those who reject climate change are of course on the right and a significant portion of those people happen to be on what is quote unquote the religious right

people consider themselves to be Christians and I personally think that of course as the people listening would be aware we're currently living through a mass extinction event on account of human-driven climate change. The amount

of death, even if it's not human life, but the amount of suffering and death that we've caused to all sorts of, not only flora and fauna, but I mean, living, feeling beings, that entire aspect

cannot be reconciled with people who claim to have a faith entirely based on love and compassion and mercy. That's not a criticism of Christianity. Christianity is a beautiful religion like most religions are, but the fact that those people who are in political positions who consider themselves to be Christians, knowing the fact, because they're not stupid, right?

They know deep inside that this is happening, but they still decide to go along with this denial only because it brings them short-term gains. That's not even mentioning the effect that it has on people, let alone animals. trying to fully encompass the amount of suffering that can be caused by the irrationality of capitalism and how it can affect the psyche of those that even though they consider themselves to be religious-believing people, they still go along with only for the short-term sightedness.

It really reminds me of the quote that's attributed to Jesus in which he said that it is more likely that an elephant would fit into a pin of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter into heaven. And that context, that also meant believing men and women. Absolutely. I think it's a crucial point. I love, you know, Jesus. I think Christianity has amazing, beautiful trends within it. But the American, especially the evangelical,

but also just the generally Protestant and Catholic versions of Christianity in the U.S. has always been married to capitalism and colonialism and been shaped by it. It has helped shape it, but it's also been shaped by it, right? like Calvinist Protestant work ethic has certainly contributed to capitalism, and then capitalism has turned around and informed Christianity, so you get something like the prosperity gospel and these huge megachurches run for profit, and then this anti-intellectualism that is part and parcel with the entire thing. And then, of course, you know, the U.S., it was founded. I mean, the very first colonists that came over from Britain were religious fanatics, you know, who were really

on the fringe of British society, and so there's this long-standing strain in American settler colonialism of this sort of religious fanaticism, and it manifests differently in different epochs in different social conditions, but it's certainly playing a huge role in general reaction, a huge role in Trump, and it's littered with contradiction, but it doesn't really matter because they don't, and cognitive dissidents is part of the package, you know, it's part of what makes up their entire worldview. So there is no internal urge to resolve contradictions in their thinking. The more contradictions that flourish, it just is sort of like a doubling down. You know, and yeah, so it's a very scary strand of American life. And it's certainly going to be,

it already is, and it will continue to be one of the biggest obstacles to addressing any of the myriad problems that our country and our world are facing. And there's no easy answers for how to overcome it. Exactly. That's why I like to mention it, at least that final aspect and how it's inherently incompatible to link a religious epistemology or at least understanding of the world with capitalist, the superstructure and its effects on culture and identity and, of course, material realities like the environment.

And the entire reason I even mentioned this is in hopes that if organizers or people who would be politically active are listening to this, it's that those people inherently at their core of their worldview, it can be appealed to, and this could be one of the tools towards radicalizing people

who otherwise would not be open to radicalization. It's just to mention that radicalization is a very human process. It's a case-by-case thing. And when it comes to people of that particular persuasion or belief or what have you, you need to tailor it

in ways that they could understand and how they link it to themselves. That's the entire reason I even want to mention in the first place. Thank you for allowing me all my tangents. No, for sure. I find them fascinating, and I really appreciate your insights. And I think there is this, with the rising of the left broadly, there is this rising of this attempt from the Christian left. And I have friends from the Faith in Capitalism podcast or the Magnificast who do this work explicitly.

They come from a Marxist perspective. and they use their deep knowledge of the Christian tradition to reach out to their fellow Christians and, you know, using the already existing material in the religion itself to convince them to turn away from racism, turn away from capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, et cetera. So I would love to see that strand continue to develop. And it is worth mentioning because I like to mention this, that yes, we are going through the six mass extinction event. it's absolutely tragic and devastating and I fucking grieve. Like I go through grieving processes when I see the biosphere devastated like it is.

But, you know, climate change is just one of the things that's contributing to this. General pollution, the way that we hyperconsume and throw everything away. Everything is single use, plastic wrap that we just throw into a recycling bin that just gets mixed in with the other trash and ends up in the Pacific Ocean or releasing methane into the atmosphere. I mean, the entire system of capitalism, it has to go to address the problem in climate change is perhaps the most important element of it, but it is not the only element of it. DLDR capitalism sucks. Absolutely right. And last point on this, and I know I think you'll agree there's this, you know, sort of tension on the American left about, you know, calls for land back or settler colonialism and decolonization, and there's some skepticism from certain elements of the left.

But for me, there's a million reasons why I should and can defend decolonization. But one of them is that it's, you know, indigenous self-determination the world over is inexorably tied to meaningfully addressing climate change. I think, you know, there's only 5% of the global population are indigenous peoples, but they oversee 80% of the biodiversity on the planet. And so decolonization, indigenous self-determination really has to be seen as, you know, in single. separable from the fight against climate change itself. And I really like to push that perspective on the left as much as I can. Exactly right. All right. Well, let's go ahead and you mentioned earlier that you had some points to make around reform versus revolution. And generally we could tie this in with like electoral methods because I think they're even on the socialist like the democratic socialist left, there is this inability to to think fully outside the confines of the electoral apparatus and its machinations. So opening up the discussion in that direction, what are your thoughts on this dichotomy of reform versus revolution, and what are your thoughts on the efficacy of electoral methods to solve the many problems we've already laid on the table? It's a very wide topic, I think, and if, just to preface it, for those who are interested, because I can't explain all of it in this episode, but Luxembourg has written a great book on this.

Rosa Luxembourg, go check her out. But much in a more condensed form, I like to frame the question less as reform versus revolution and more as reform and revolution. And I'll kind of qualify that point because at the end of the day, I am a Marxist. I'm a committed Marxist. I do not personally believe in the efficacy of electoral methods,

not because to use the word believe is not even appropriate, because history has shown that they are not effective. But the reason that people kind of get tied up in a bunch about this is we don't define our terms. What is success to you might not be success to me. And to me, success is only ending the capitalist system. To others, it may be getting more recognition for LGBT people or ethnic minorities or, let's say, increased educational opportunities for people from those backgrounds, you know, things like that. Maybe more affordable health care. None of these things are intrinsically bad. But at the end of the day,

we have to remember what we want, what do we want at the end, right? Why does capitalism even exist? Capitalism exists because capital wants to reproduce itself, right? It's almost a parasitical sort of existence in which it will, as funny as it is, this is just kind of rephrasing of that Marx quote, but it lives off of, it continues to feed off of living labor to survive and it will try to maintain its existence in whichever way it can. Capitalists, as independent people that exist are not the overseers of this capitalist system, but instead they are themselves taken into this whirlwind that they can't control. They have to play a part in this game. Otherwise, they'll be mercilessly crushed by the other guy and the other guy and the other guy.

So what ends up happening is even in point of incredible revolutionary momentum, demands of the people come forth and they're very clear. We want control of our work. places. We want access free and developed access to health care and education and whatnot. We want to be able to oversee directly our lives in their social, cultural, political, and economic organization. We do not believe in the existence of profits over everything else, et cetera, et cetera. And this scares the ruling classes. And what do they do when this happens? They try to introduce reform in order to placate a very angry population. Why are these reforms even present, it's basically a concession. By the very term concession, it's meant to not exist forever.

It exists only to placate, and then once the anger of the population dies down, maybe some time passes, then they are revoked. And the perfect example is the 20th century. The entire social democratic project, if you even want to call it that, arose not, by the time I mean in the modern definition of social democracy. I don't mean the form of social democracy that the RS LDP spoke about and the Soviets prior to 1905 spoke about. In the modern sense, social democracy arose as a movement to resist what was at the time Soviet socialism because if you are a, let's say, German or French or English person and you know that right next door there is a massive superpower that has the ability to provide

free education, free high quality education, free high quality health care to the entire population, developmental opportunities for everybody between the kindergarten grade all the way to the postdoc level, guaranteed employment, guaranteed housing, guarantee cultural events. For example, if people are unaware, the Soviet population consumed the most literature of the world at the time, and also were the population that went to the most plays and and theatrical productions and whatnot compared to the rest of the world at the time to develop a cultural existence

when you have this massive force that can do all of this on top of directed economic development and whatnot and you're existing in a country that doesn't give you employment that you have to pay an exorbitant amount of sums to get subpar health care that education is barred to you

and is only allowed to those of middle class upper middle class origins etc., etc., then that's going to make you angry and then you're going to get ideas what do those people have? What have they done? What have they read that has influenced their society in such a way? And what can we do to do that here? So social democracy, the ruling class saw this and brought about the current existence of social democracy, which is the ruling classes give up a bigger portion of the pie to the working class in hopes of placating them. Here you go, have some health care, have some education. You know what? We'll subsidize some housing. We'll make sure that there will be developed, for example, rail network or what have you, and the second that the Soviet Union was illegally dissolved, what happened? All those concessions that existed for many decades, for people, entire generations lived underneath them, all of a sudden start disappearing one by one,

right? Healthcare slowly started being privatized. The usual route they go is they try to privatize dental care first, and then they slowly encroach on medical care proper. The railroads and bus lines and tramways and whatnot slowly become start to be privatized. Education in different parts slowly starts to become privatized. The benefits that people could enjoy, be they maternal benefits, for example, after a woman gives birth, or what's it called, vacationing time, or unemployment benefits slowly start to be stripped down to the point that you even end up with austerity policies. And that's exactly what we saw in Europe.

And that all of this is not even mentioning the fact that this European social democracy that a lot of those in the Western Left try to push is entirely built on the exploitation of the imperial periphery. So my general point being is that we always need to define our terms. What I personally consider success to be is the elimination of capitalism, not just to have a kinder, gentler capitalism, which means I get a bit of health care and a education and get to, you know, have more subsidized housing and a decent bus route that takes me to work and home.

Right. Yeah. Such a crucial point to understand. And I think that really is one of the primary fault lines between different sections of the left. And we just did an episode with Professor Peter Cole on the labor history in the United States. And we made this point explicitly that, you know, FDR and the New Deal here in the U.S.

was not just in pure response to the Great Depression as it was, but also. to the Soviet challenge and the rising tide of socialist and communist sympathies within the U.S. itself. And it was seen as a way to sort of dissipate some of that revolutionary energy. And in some sense, it did work. And I think with LB.J. in the great society, you could also make an argument that in the face of widespread decolonization and the rise of black nationalism, that the sort of expansion of the welfare state was forced in that direction by those movements more broadly. And so when those pressures are taken off the stage historically, there is this reversion and it, and it, of course, is no coincidence that the rise of neoliberalism with Thatcher and Reagan in the U.S. and in the U.K. was aligned temporally with the dissolution of that antagonists in the East, you know, the Soviet Union. And with the right-wing shift of the ostensibly left-wing parties in the United States of the Democratic Party, it had much.

more ability to move hard right in the face of no longer having that alternative way of doing things to contend with. And so you really cannot separate those things. And importantly, and I always say this, and I think it speaks to the irrationality of capitalism, specifically here in the U.S., is that if you wanted to maintain capitalism in these last several years, honestly, the most rational choice would be to get fully behind a Bernie Sanders tile social democracy, you know, alleviate some of that pressure, alleviate some of the worst cases of emissoration of the working classes, give them health care, give them maybe subsidized housing, you know, give them child care and free college, and you could extend the life of your system

and dissipate the revolutionary energy, I think quite effectively, at least for some time. But even that was unacceptable to the donor classes in both the Republican and the Democratic Party such that it wasn't even the right wing that dismantled and was really working against the Bernie Sanders campaign. It was the Democratic Party itself. And Obama getting on the phone and trying to coordinate the

drop out of these other centrists to get behind Biden, but Elizabeth Warren, you've got to stay in so you can sort of split that left-wing vote and ramp up accusations of misogyny, etc. Like, it was very clear that it was it wasn't even acceptable from the Democratic side, much less the Republican

and right-wing side. And I think that speaks volumes it shows uh just how short-sighted uh the the ruling class in this country at least really truly is and and how non-strategic and and muddled they are which is to our advantage but they also have plenty of advantages themselves but i always just thought that was that was a funny or amusing irony no for sure and i i think that that point on uh how even such what can be considered to be relatively light social democratic reforms are so aggressively resisted even by the quote-unquote resident leftist party or left-wing side of the American politics by the Democrats, I think how important, what's most important is how

transparent it all was, just like you mentioned, how obvious to anyone who actually pays attention that that was what was being done. And I think all of this can be really encapsulated in a single sentence is that reform to get concessions that can help the working people are good, but only revolution can solidify those gains. Without revolution, you cannot ever maintain those that you fought for and what those before you fought for. At the end of the day, then it will be blood, sweat and tears spilled for nothing if you don't ever possibly manage to maintain those games. Then we entered the question of, oh, revolution in the U.S. and how that would happen. And I guess, I don't know, is that apt for it to enter into today? That's up to you.

I would love to hear your thoughts on that for sure. I think we agree, by the way, before we move on, that, you know, reform and revolution is the way, but we see reform as a means to a more revolutionary end, not as an end in and of itself, which I think is a big dividing point. But yes, I would love to hear your thoughts on the potential building up of revolutionary organizations here in the U.S. For sure. The way I think about it is that we aren't, at the end of the day, as Marxists, we're not dogmatic. We need to realize that at some points, for example, electoral participation can be useful. At other points, it's completely pointless.

We also need to understand that, in a pragmatic sense, revolution as desirable as it is, is not possible in a kind of. that does not have the material conditions that can lead to it. The United States, as it currently stands, is not a country that has the material conditions necessary for revolution to take place. With that being said, though, that doesn't mean that those conditions cannot be developed. Not only that they cannot be developed, but that even if currently those conditions don't exist, that doesn't mean that left-wing organizations within the United States and other imperial core countries shouldn't be laying the groundwork, of course. The last thing that you want is to just kind of sit around and think oh there's no revolutionary point or like focus

that can occur and then the second it happens you're not prepared there's all this revolutionary momentum and an action that's taking part and you do not have the necessary infrastructure not you like personally are as a single individual but i mean uh the the western left as a whole as atomized individuals if we want to speak about it like that do not have the necessary organizational infrastructure laid down so that these movements or this massive revolutionary potential can be directed in a positive way so that it doesn't just dissipate into nothing. A bunch of protests and a couple of, you know, some signs, maybe some light concessions, all that kind of stuff, police repression, and then it kind of all dwindles away and

goes into nothing. An inspiring point I would like to add to this always because the number one thing, whenever you mention revolution and imperial core countries, and I'll give my personal opinion on it in a second, but I just want to mention this. Something that's always mentioned is when you talk about revolution and first world countries like the United States, empirical countries, people always

kind of they'll retort with a sort of pessimism like, it's not going to happen here, you know? To note, Lenin in 1915 had said that he does not believe that he will live to see the revolution. And two years later, he's at the helm of the party that is leading the revolution.

That's the point of having the organizational infrastructure there, even if currently it is not a revolutionary moment. My personal opinion is this. Revolution, as it currently stands within the United States, is unlikely. Not impossible, it is unlikely. It is more likely, as history has shown, that capitalism breaks at its weakest links. It's a chain and it breaks at its weakest links. The weakest links happen to be those countries of the imperial peripheral periphery. where states are less centralized, repressive apparatus are not as fully developed.

There is more leeway to develop proper organizational, or just organizations in general, and the populations that exist, they will more readily receive a radicalizing message as well as long as it's appropriately presented to them than, for example, an average guy in Chicago who works in a marketing department or something. to give a silly example. And with the victory of revolutionary movements in imperial periphery countries and the weakest lengths and breaking, I think that will then increase the rate of exploitation at home

because profits will be lost abroad and now force the ruling classes within the imperial core countries to turn inwards, to start exploiting their populations further to derive those same levels of profits. They would introduce more austerity measures, et cetera. et cetera, and then that will be the impetus for increased revolutionary momentum. I'm reminded by, it wasn't Lenin who said this, but I can't recall exactly who, but the general gist of the statement is, bad conditions are not what lead to revolutions.

It's more drastic drops in conditions, living conditions, that will lead to revolution. If everybody's living kind of a somewhat crappy life, then that's, quote-unquote, just how life is. but if a year ago or two years ago or a month ago you're fine you had a home you had your savings etc and then all of a sudden next month you lose everything not by anything you did you did everything right you saved you got on education got a college degree you know you didn't spend superfluously you don't have credit card debt etc etc etc but then all of a sudden you just lose everything then that kind of psychologically as impetus is way more powerful that's my personal opinion but i'd like to hear yours as well honestly i think that is deeply insightful

And I genuinely agree with that, with that general trajectory and, and those, those insights. I mean, I really think you're on to something with how it will play out. And I completely agree. And, I mean, just to your point about the organizational capacity to, to lead and focus revolutionary energy, I think we've seen it here in the U.S. a lot over the last several years, last summer, historical, truly historic uprisings for U.S. history surrounding the Black Lives Matter movement, literally burning down police stations to the fucking ground, chasing cops out of their own headquarters, you know, tailing out of there, screaming out of the parking lot as protesters throwing bottles at them and shit. Like, wow.

Like I remember last summer, too, that when Black Lives Matter protesters went to Washington, D.C., and they were at the fucking gates. And Trump was so scared. They turned all the lights off in the White House, and he had to go to his bunker with his personal security apparatus. And they were shaking the gates. And I was like sitting there watching it on live TV and I'm like, holy shit. Like if those gates fall, what's going to happen? Like that's the closest in my life that I've ever been in the U.S. to being like, shit could genuinely pop off.

And it was an extended period of time, you know, months of this. And I was like really thinking like, what is going to happen next? And unfortunately, because of our lack on the left in the U.S. of real organizational capacity to funnel that energy. to a list of demands or to marry it to an organized labor movement that could go on strategic strikes to put pressure on capital to meet those demands. It really was not only dissipated over time, but thoroughly co-opted. The Democratic Party, you know, they thoroughly co-opted the entire thing. And in the moment Kamala and Biden get into office, they increase funding for the

Capitol Police and for police more broadly. And so that really shows you. how this shit plays out without that, without that ability to organize. And of course, we saw it to a lesser extent with Occupy. I was involved in Occupy. It was very decentralized in something. I mean, there was Occupy movements in every major city. We participated in these large strikes. There was a weird coalition of different political ideologies, but because of, I think, it's fetishizing of horizontalism and its deep suspicion that arises out of some forms of anarchism, a deep suspicion of organization proper. You see how that eventually failed as a movement now. It did introduce some ideas back into the American population around class struggle, around socialism.

You could even plausibly argue that the rise of Bernie Sanders was, you know, preluded by the Occupy movement, etc. But that's really all it could achieve. And so I do agree with you. And I think you're 100% right more broadly in your argument that the periphery will turn first. And I think we touched on it a little bit earlier about, you know, the American Empire being less and less capable of putting out fires around the world, as it were, and those sort of igniting and encouraging other countries to radically transform and climate change lowering living conditions, et cetera. And then, yes, I think the point that I never really thought about in like hyper articulation that you just, you know, articulated for me is like when the periphery is no longer fully exploitable, it has to, the capital. machine has to ratchet up exploitation at home, which increases deprivation and opens up opportunities for revolutionary energy. So I really think that that's plausible. And our job, as, you know, speaking as somebody in the Imperial Corps, the belly of the beast in the United States, is to build up that

political organizational capacity to take advantage of these inevitable crises that are already here and only going to intensify. Exactly. If I may add also on top of that, beautifully said, I think something very nice about the BLM protest is that it showed how fragile the American security apparatus and this image of the unshakable American state really is just like most states and I would like to just point to the fact that yes, a couple of months of people on the streets

caused this much disruption. Now imagine if instead of it was just people on the streets it was a coordinated nationwide general strike. Imagine the effects of that and the direct impact that it would have and the amount of power it would give to a working class movement. Not only to mention this,

but I think even with the fact that all this revolutionary potential evaporated with the BNLM protests because there was no proper revolutionary infrastructure, organizational infrastructure to make good use of it, again, to quote Lenin, as you've noticed, I'd love to quote Lenin. Of course, who doesn't?

I think that BLM, just like the 1905 revolution was, I think it will be the great dress rehearsal for a proper revolutionary movement within the United States. And that equivalent of it was, of course, 1917, the glorious October Revolution. Furthermore, I think in the last point, kind of like to put the bowtie on all of this, is that, again, not to be like too nerdy on this,

but it's very dialectical in the sense that we do have this quantitative build-up that then results in a qualitative change. Think of it like a thermostat, and each degree is moved up and up. It started with just general stirrings around, for example, 1972, 73 oil shortages, and then it turned up one digit or one kind of turn of the thermostat with the dot-com bubble, and then one more with the 2008, and then one more with the Occupy protest, and then a couple of more, I would say, with the BLM protests and God knows what's going to come after that, but eventually this boiling water will turn into steam, and I look forward to seeing that event, and I generally do hope and pray, and as well as try to directly contribute through knowledge

and other means, that there will be a proper, developed, educated, both centralized and decentralized, depending on the material conditions, organizational movements and basically infrastructure, that will be able to take this kind of beast by the horns and lead it to the goal that is the elimination of capitalism. Amen, absolutely. And, you know, the left can get naval-gazy and can be defeatist and fatalist at times,

especially in the Imperial Corps. But I think it is worth mentioning that the left is bolder than the right. Like, you know, when the left, the Black Lives Matter protests, We're burning down police stations. We had thousands and thousands and thousands of people in every major city in one of the biggest countries in the world, the most populous countries in the world. When the right tries to do something like that, it doesn't have the boldness. It doesn't have the numbers. So what it has to do is concentrate its numbers on one area.

So with January 6th, for example, you saw right-wing people from all over the country coming together and could really still only muster a couple thousand people. We don't see right-wing protests that are, you know, 10,000 people in the top 10 most populous cities all at once, like we see with the left. So the left has these advantages. We're bolder. We have way more fucking people. The left really dominates the cities, and as more people look for alternatives in those cities, they will tend to move more left than they will move right. And the dialectical play between centralized organizations and decentralized organizations, I think is something that we, should embrace because for something like anti-fascism here in the U.S., its decentralization

is its advantage. It is, there are no leaders, there are no, like, commands or dictates. It's just whenever fascists come to your city, grassroots, working class people, come out, dress in black and punch them in the fucking face. And it, it tears the right apart. They lose their fucking mind because they want to label Antifa terrorism or they have to turn to some conspiracy theory, like, who are these people? what are they doing? And the conclusion they cannot come to or at least come to publicly is that

most people fucking hate the far right. And there is a grassroots, decentralized, organic willingness on behalf of countless people around this country to come out and confront you in the streets. No conspiracy, not even an organizational, like national organization needed. And that they can't accept that so they have to fucking go into conspiracy land or George Soros or whatever the fuck. And the last point I want to make about strike. and the utter essential nature of them. Capital, as we've learned, has got to keep flowing to maintain the system. After 9-11, Bush came out and said, go shopping, please.

That was Capital, through the voice box of George Bush, begging the people to get out and to start consuming again because Capital needs it. With the lockdowns and the COVID crisis, I think initially I would argue that the lockdown protests were somewhat astroturfed in the sense that it represented, a minority, largely capitalist opinion that capital needs to keep flowing and, you know, the anti-mask and anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown movement sort of took its own life and

expanded beyond that. But it ultimately reflected the utter need for even in the face of a historic crisis, capital cannot stop flowing even for a very, very tiny amount of time. So if we could organize the working class movement to not even necessarily do a general strike, which obviously would be ideal, but to do just strategic strike, in key industries, you could bring this fucking system to its knees in a matter of days and get demands met. And that is part of the reason why there has been this century-long attempt to first dismantle through red scares and legislation dismantle the militant radical aspect of unions and then with the rise of neoliberalism to dismantle what was left of unionism more broadly.

And that is not a coincidence. That is a long concerted effort because capitalism and the ruling class on some level knows the power of organized working movements and it cannot countenance it. Not only do they know, they are very intimately aware of it, and that's why they've spent the past two centuries of American existence resisting it in every possible way, be it through the propaganda networks or through outright executions or illegal assassinations of figures such as Fred Hampton and Malcolm X and Martin Luther King and. countless others, if not chasing them out of the country and all that.

I'd like to also add on to the point that the right-wing movements and those who try to muster up this right-wing nonsense, they show up with a bunch of guns and whatnot, they fail even with the fact that they have direct state support. They have cops high-fiving them and kind of working along with them, protecting them, and they still fail. And that, I think, goes to show the fact that at the end of the day, right-wing movements, be as they may, are at their core. exclusive movements.

If you're not a white male of a particular background, you're not welcome in the movement. If you're a woman, if you're a person of color, if you identify sexually, ethnically, religiously, in a way that they don't agree with, compared to the left, which is an inherently inclusive movement. Because what binds us all together

is the fact is our relations to the means of production. It's our class. And there's way more of us, to quote Richard Wolf, than there is of them. That's, I think, also a nice little point to add. But you said it way more beautifully than I could have. No, no, no.

I disagree, but I really appreciate everything that you say and your ability to articulate these deep insights. And, yeah, just a pleasure to talk with you. Do you want to go into a bonus round of common myths? Maybe do rapid fire. Let's see how quickly we can handle these objections. Sure thing, yeah, I'd love to. There's a lot of fun.

Yeah, a fun little challenge for sure. So there's a couple things, maybe three, maybe four of common myths or anti-socialist objections that we can go through. And maybe I can articulate the critique as if I was somebody saying it and then you could handle it. Maybe I'll add a few things in and then we can go to the next one, all right? Yeah, let's do it. All right. So here's the first one. Communism and socialism suffocate innovation.

Capitalism is the mechanism by which innovation is completely freed from. the bounds of any sort of bureaucratic restrictions and any red tape. And every socialist and communist attempt to redo the economy has ended with the emissoration of the ability for that society to make meaningful innovations. What say you? I would say that in 1917, the landmass that would then be known as the Soviet Union was a backward peasant country with no industry whatsoever where people still use wooden plows, and just three decades later, we're conquering the cosmos, having the eternal

glory of basically being the civilization that brought humanity into space. If that doesn't debunk the silly clays, I don't know what else, but I think, just to kind of build up on that, capitalism is inherently, I think, neither anti-nor pro-innovation. It always depends on the underlying material conditions. During wartime, sometimes, depending on whatever, it depends, regardless of excuse me, of whatever system you're under, there tends to be a lot of innovation because necessity, right? Otherwise, though, when it's peacetime, what you end up with is a system that favors profit over all else. So they innovate in things that will be profitable. What does this mean? This means that despite us definitely having the technology to make, for example, LED lamps,

I mean light bulbs, that can last very, very long, I mean, in two decades. They are still limited artificially because of planned obsolescence. This is not innovation in a positive sense. You can call it innovation, but it damages the environment. It damages productive networks that exist to develop these things. That's a simple example. Medical research is another one. Why would you, this reminds me of that Bloomberg title, which said, is curing disease a sustainable business practice? With the implication being it would be way more profitable to maintain the disease in a symptom-free sense, but not to outright eliminate it

because then you can have recurrent prescriptions and as a result, a steady revenue stream. That's, for example, why there is more money in research for foot fungus cream than there is for malaria because the people most affected by malaria are people who couldn't afford to buy any sort of expensive treatment.

Meanwhile, the generally middle-class class or otherwise more wealthy populations of the imperial core are more interested in foot fungus cream or acne cream or what have you and then my final point is um the parallel development of exact same technology between differing firms is anything but efficient or innovative uh any logical system would more this point is so like stupid right that i even laugh thinking about it but people seem to forget how irrational our system is because very normally you'll have two companies and they're working on the exact same technology

at the exact same time but both of them are just kind of competing who will get it to market first instead of in a more rational sort of organization where you can combine efforts so that you can end up with a product that is more tuned, more finely developed, possibly cheaper to develop

because it takes less time to develop you don't have two independent R&D budgets, et cetera, et cetera. capitalism is the irrational system regardless of any way you look at it boom very nice and I would only add socialist development also did not need colonialism slavery and genocide to increase the quality of life for its people and race the superpower to the moon etc and that's important and also the innovative aspect freeing people from the the majority of people from the drudgery of wage slavery and boxing in their precarity and riddling them with debt but freeing them up to be able to

pursue what they actually love and to free them from the bondage of low-wage work would open up more minds to be able to contribute to innovation. So in that sense, zoomed out, I think it's important too. But all right, I'm putting back on my dumb-ass hat. Okay, okay, Hakeem, good argument. But everywhere that socialism has been tried, the only equality that it ever seems to achieve is the equality of misery. Everybody is brought down to the level of the lowest in that society, and that is not something that anybody should want. What say you? The way you presented was very fine.

Okay. So every bit of research I've seen on this has revealed the exact same thing. When it comes to educational opportunities, when it comes to health care, when it comes to employment and housing, across the board. Socialist countries at equal levels of economic development to capitalist ones can provide a higher quality of life. What this means directly is that, for example, across the board, Socialist countries have produced, for example, enough food to feed their populations above the recommended daily intake than most capitalist countries. When it comes to education, the entire reason the United States began funding education both for women, mind you, as well as for ethnic minorities, is because the Soviet Union was doing this. And the United States started realizing, wait, the Soviet Union has a lot of female scientists.

They have double the brainpower that our country has. we should start kind of doing something about it. And that's why the entire drive for increased push of women within universities that happen in the 50s and 60s within the United States, that can be also thanks to socialism entirely. When it comes to the meme of, oh, there's equal misery, you have to remember that capitalist countries, given every benefit possible that they could have, still manage to fail. While socialist countries are never allowed to develop on their own terms, they're always either directly invaded

or they are sabotaged economically or otherwise, they are diplomatically vilified, they're sanctioned economically, they're limited in trade, they aren't allowed to even exist in basic international structures, most of them being barred from any sort of international cooperation,

at least on the early stages of a fledging socialist state, and all these points I mentioned usually end up happening at all at the exact same time, too, against these countries. Cuba's an example. the OSSR as an example, DPRK as an example, et cetera, et cetera. If socialism always fails

regardless of, you know, what you do, then why is it that the capitalist hegemonic powers try their absolute hardest to prevent them, limit them, and force their failure? If socialism fails on its own law rules, then maybe they should just let it be and let it fail on its own.

The very fact that they don't let it be and try their absolute damnedest to destroy socialist countries and limited their growth, kind of speaks for itself in that regard. I disagree with what you say, but I'll fight to the death to protect your right to say it, as long as it doesn't inconvenience me too much, of course. Okay, points. Sorry, sorry.

Sorry, sorry, one point I would like to add on to that, too, is final point to one sentence. The United States is the richest country on Earth, yet it has entire armies of homeless people or under-employed people or people who are lacking access to education or healthcare, et cetera, et cetera. if capitalism at its absolute peak at its absolute best where it has the most wealth can't do it meanwhile countries as poor as burkina faso in two years could manage to provide those things and maybe just maybe there's something wrong with capitalism absolutely absolutely all right last one last one okay but capitalists are job providers we create the context in which the rest of you can come and be gainfully employed so not only

is capitalism is the best system but you personally should be fucking grateful that we exist what say you all right this one can be broken down a bit um when you have an individual capitalist and they quote unquote provide jobs what does that mean they start a company right that's usually what it means um this company uh required capital to start right required money required resources required connections, etc. Where did this particular capitalist get that money and connection and all those other resources? Did they just bring it out of thin air? No. They usually, most, over vast majority of them, have either inherited it or done something very illegal to get a hold of it. And those who have inherited it inherited it from somebody else who did something incredibly illegal and ethically

unsanctionable to get that sort of wealth and connection and whatnot. And these people will use that capital to start the company and then employ people through it. Now, why do we require the person. If the capital exists, if the money already exists, and the necessary connections being in place, why would you need a particular person to kind of set this up when they don't actually do any of the work? They don't do any, be it organizational, managerial, or direct on the ground work. The myth of a CEO that sleeps on the ground and works 17-hour days and all that kind of stuff, it's a myth. They don't do any of this. They hire workers, to do the managerial work for them.

They hire workers to plan economically, yes, economically plan their enterprises. They hire workers to directly manage their financial assets, and they hire workers to do the actual work of either service industry stuff or manufacturing or what have you. So if workers are at the core of every single thing within the production of an enterprise from point A to point Z, where does the capitalist actually provide the jobs?

just kind of exists in an unfair system which has allowed him to illegally and unethically gain a massive amount of both economic and social capital that can then result in him to develop a socially parasitical relationship with those that actually create all the wealth within society. So all you end up with is one guy that skims a lot off the top while giving crumbs to the people who do the actual work. In a rational society, you'd have a system in which the people who would be doing the work, would directly organize, we choose the way they want to organize, we choose what to produce, how to produce, where to produce it, where to send it to, and their direct relations to that work without any parasitical relationship of individuals

that have, that do no work and have in no way contributed to the development of such enterprises. I think that's a long-winded way of saying that capitalists are superfluous. At the end of the day, the money already exists, the resources already exists, and the demand for whatever already exists. They do nothing aside from use their illegally gained capital to mobilize these resources if there was a proletarian state or a working class state. This can be done in a much more rational way in which the net surplus that would be derived would actually go back into society to fund healthcare and education and parental leave

and housing and roads and whatnot rather than the yachts and megay yachts and private jets of a bunch of individuals that do not. deserve it and have not worked for it. Amen. Beautifully done. And I just have to tell the audience that there was no prep to that. Hakeem just really freestyled those answers at the very beginning before we started recording. We just tossed out some common myths and with no time to really think through an answer. So that was done really off the top of the head and it's incredibly impressive. So very well done. Honestly, this has been a blast of an episode. I've really enjoyed talking to you. I would love to do it again. A huge fan of your work on YouTube.

to do that. Before I let you go, can you just please let our listeners know where they can find you and your work online? For sure, yeah. Firstly, very kind for all those words. I'm undeserving of all that praise. But you can find me on YouTube. My channel name is Hakeem. There's also, by the way, weirdly, I should have checked that out when I came up with the name, but there's a, I think a Tunisian music, like an artist, who also goes by Hakeem. I'm not that guy. I'm the I'm the guy with the London portrait, so unsurprisingly. So, Hakeem on YouTube, and on Twitter, I am at Y-A-B-O-I-H-E-B-O-I-H-K-I-M. Beautiful.

Follow and subscribe, for sure. I'll link to all of that in the show notes as well so people can find you as easy as possible. You do great work, really helpful little pieces on your YouTube channel for people that want to learn more about specific issues or help educate others around them on specific issues. And again, I really love talking to you, and I would love to do this again sometimes. for sure it was my pleasure thank you for the invitation thank you for listening rev left radio is 100% listener funded if you like what we do here you can support us at patreon com forward slash rev left radio or make a one-time donation at buy me a coffee dot com forward slash rev left radio links will be in the show notes

Thank you.