Rev Left Radio - Big Announcement! - Plus: A Response to Joe Rogan Regarding Socialism

Episode Date: September 27, 2018

Support the show (at whatever tier you prefer) at: Patreon.com/RevLeftRadio Make a one time donation to our PayPal at: PayPal.me/RevLeft -------- Follow and Support Black Banner Magic here: https://www.patreon.com/blackbannermagic Contact Black Banner Magic at: [e-mail] Follow them on Twitter @BlackBannerPod -------- Follow and Support Hammer and Camera here: https://www.patreon.com/hammercamera/creators Email them at: [e-mail] Follow them on Twitter @HammerCamera

Hello everyone and welcome back to Revolutionary Left Radio. I'm your host and comrade Brett O'Shea. So here it finally is, the big announcement we've all been alluding to for a few weeks now. Instead of trying to freestyle all this information off the top of my head, I've written out the announcement so I don't miss any important details. First, I want to give you some background on what's been going on in my life, which will add some context regarding our ability to launch the significant expansion of our platform. For the past several years, I've worked an office job to pay the bills.

Although the pay was relatively good and there was always options for advancement, I felt, as most of you can relate to, robbed of eight hours of my life on a daily basis. There was nothing about that job or any job I've ever had that I found meaningful or fulfilling, and this fact would often lead to mental and emotional breakdowns as every ounce of my being writhed under the constraints that these jobs placed on my life. Since launching revolutionary left radio and then the guillotine, as well as partaking in the organizing which gave rise to both, I found a huge source of meaning in my life, as well as a community of some of the most intelligent, loving, and engaged human beings I've ever had

the pleasure of knowing, namely all of you. But trying to organize and create both podcasts while raising kids and working a full-time job really putting me up against the wall with regards to my time and my energy. After dealing with it for over a year and a half, I realized I had two choices. To either focus on my job and try to work my way up that sad corporate ladder, which would require me to let my shows and organizing sort of plateau where they currently are, or I could do something much more radical and risky. I could quit my job, take out a personal loan with plenty of interest in order to pay my bills for the next six months, and focus entirely on what I actually care about. Political organizing and education. The former option came with stability and benefits

in a career. The latter came with risk instability, thousands of dollars of debt, and the possibility of abject failure. But I only have one life and then it's lights out forever. So I recently decided to take the plunge, quit my job, take out the loan, and see if I could make something happen with this show. This past Sunday was my last day on the job. And now here I am, neck deep in brand new debt, but incredibly inspired and totally dedicated to making revolutionary left radio and the guillotine as good as I possibly can. I believe that if I continue to improve the quality of these shows, if I offer our financial supporters more enticing things in return for their support, and if I use my newfound freedom to help launch brand new spin-off shows and give other

comrades who I know and love their chance to have their own platforms, that maybe just may be, I can make this thing work. So that's what I'm doing. And whether we succeed or fail depends entirely on all of you. You are all the measurement by which I judge what I create. And if I am doing a good job, more of you come around and stay. If I fail to do a good job, you all rightfully turn and walk away. I want to make you all happy and excited to be part of this community. So it is in that spirit that I will now announce all of the new things that we are going to be doing here at Revolutionary Left Radio. First and foremost, as I mentioned above, I will be launching at least two new spin-off programs with even more possible shows in the works.

I'll spare you all the behind-the-scenes details, but the basic idea is to create a network of multimedia projects under the Rev Left umbrella that will offer new perspectives and approaches to radical politics in which will be creatively run and controlled by comrades who are personal friends of mind, actual organizers on the ground, and who have a lot to offer others by way of education and engagement. The first of these spin-off shows will be called Black Banner Magic, and it will be an interview show dedicated entirely to exploring the weird left. Dr. Bones and the comedian Jake Flores have already agreed to be some of the first guest on the new show, and although I can't reveal too much more information just yet, suffice it to say that this new show will be a fascinating exploration of a little understood

and under-researched aspect of the radical left. The tagline on their Patreon says An occult podcast for leftists And a leftist podcast for witches If that sounds interesting to you Or if you know someone who would make a good guest for such a show Go check them out, contact them and support them At patreon.com forward slash black banner magic

Or email them at black banner magic At riseup.net This is a brand new show which hasn't launched yet So this is an opportunity to get in on the ground floor and help build up this new, strange community of communist weirdos and anarchist witches. Our second spinoff show is actually a spinoff of our film Vanguard episodes. Taylor and Phil from the film vanguard will be launching their own project aimed at analyzing film and culture from a communist perspective. They're calling this project hammer and camera.

Think Roger and Ebert, but with hammers and sickles and a flare for the dramatic. And if you have listened to our film vanguard episodes, you can imagine the sort of humor that Phil and Taylor will bring to this new show. This will be an audio podcast as well as a multimedia video project. We are still working out the details, but the show is slated to launch in mid-October, and I will announce it on any and every platform possible when it does. We are also recording a film vanguard episode within the next week, so if you tune into that episode, you will get even more information on this new project. but so far they've just started a social media account on Twitter at Hammer Camera on Patreon at patreon.com forward slash hammer camera and you can email them at Hammer Camera at Protonmail.com

We have other possible shows in the works but at the very least these two new shows are definitely happening and happening soon. These are new personalities, new approaches, new perspectives, but they will certainly retain the same level of intellectual rigor and high-quality production that you've come to expect from Revolutionary Left Radio. Lastly, in addition to our spin-off shows, we will be

radically expanding Revolutionary Left Radio's Patreon page. We will be introducing a tiered support model on Patreon starting in October, and here is how these tiers will work. For $1 a month, supporters will get access to early episodes as well as random links, articles,

videos that I find interesting and worth posting. This includes links to a PDF version of our organization's monthly magazine, The Triumph. For $5 a month, supporters will get access to the $1 tier, as well as to our primer and Q&A monthly bonus episodes. In these episodes, we do a quick 101 rundown of a topic and then answer questions from our Patreon supporters. For example, last month we did a primer on the topic of what is Maoism, and then on the

second half, we fielded questions about organizing, theory, etc. I usually have a different guest on each episode. which keeps these fresh and interesting as a new person offers their perspective every month. In addition to all of that, you will also be added to a private Facebook group, which I will administrate and participate in. We will post links to every revolutionary left episode in that group, and we can all discuss it with one another in the comment section of each post. Obviously, Facebook is often a terrible place, so I will have strict standards on behavior

so as to avoid this sort of derailing, trolling, dog piling, and other. otherwise counterproductive forms of engagement that abound on social media. I want to create an engaging, welcoming community of supporters who can openly and comfortably discuss each episode and anything else that you all want to discuss, regardless of tendency or level of knowledge. For more seasoned comrades, this is a great opportunity for you to help develop and educate younger comrades. And for younger comrades, this gives you a friendly space where you can ask more questions

and develop politically without any fear of sectarian dogpiling. mockery or shit-talking. I have no patience for bullies and smug assholes, so trust me that this will be a well-moderated and chill space for learning and productive conversations. Moving on, for $10 a month, you will get access to all lower tiers as well as something that I am most excited about,

the brand new Revolutionary Left Radio Book Club. The idea here is that we will, as a community, vote on a theoretical text to tackle and then go through that leftist work and discuss it together. If we are reading a bigger book, we may do a few chapters at a time. If it's a slimmer work,

we may tackle it in one go. So, for example, if we read the Communist Manifesto, we would hammer that out, no pun intended, in one month, a.k.a. one single installment of the book club. If, on the other hand,

we read something like Das Capital, we will spend many months going through it in digestible chunks at a time. In reality, the works we vote on will likely land somewhere in between these two works with regards to length, but you get the picture. To round this book club out, I will release a monthly Patreon episode exclusively for those who support us at this $10 tier discussing what we agreed to read for that month. Moreover, I will invite on a new Patreon supporter every month who is particularly interested in and active

in our discussions about a given work to discuss that work with me. This is exciting for me because not only what will be reading and helping one another through important leftist works, but it also gives me a chance to have you on these monthly episodes to talk with me directly. In this way, I sincerely hope to create a vibrant, educational, and intimate community of supporting and kind radicals thirsty for more knowledge. This is the tier that you will have the most direct and plentiful access to me personally as well, and I have no doubt that new personal friendships will be created between those of us who stick around month to month. and if all goes well, we may be able to even take it on the road and do live meetups in the future.

Steel sharpens steel, and in my experience in philosophy programs, I find that reading and discussing a text with the community is more informative and engaging than reading a text alone. We all have questions and points of clarity and confusions when reading important works, and this is a way where we can discuss those things and have others help us understand those parts that we struggle with. the only thing I haven't figured out yet is what platform to use for our discussions but if you join at this tier I will create a poll with a few different options and let all of you vote on which platform works best for you if we have to do it on Patreon and Facebook to include the most people possible we'll do that so if you want to have a say in that make sure to join the first week of October at the latest I really look forward to this book club and I hope to see lots of you there with me

if you are interested in any of this go to our Patreon page, which is located at patreon.com forward slash rev left radio and join up at whatever tier you prefer. This new tiered Patreon structure will go into effect on October 1st, 2018. Finally, if Patreon isn't your thing and none of these tiers sound particularly interesting to you, we've created a PayPal account for a one-time donation and the opportunity to figure out a good trade. So, for example, a one-time donation of 30 bucks could get you a 30-minute Skype call with me personally to talk about whatever you want or for a one-time donation of a hundred bucks you get to pick a topic provide me with the possible guest submit three questions that i will ask your guests concerning

your topic and get a public shout out and plug in the intro to a public rev left radio episode that you paid for as a quick aside here the hundred dollar payment wouldn't be processed until your guest has agreed to come on and i obviously have the right to reject the payment if i feel the topic or guest is not a good fit for the show you will never get me to interview jason and ruhoo or Richard Spencer, no matter how much you pay me. The show and guests have to be in line with the rest of our program's values and approach. But again, those are just some initial ideas. If you have other ideas and offers for this PayPal thing, reach out to us and we will

see if we can make it work. The PayPal will kind of act as a catch-all for any ideas that you may have which fall outside of what we are offering on Patreon. So don't hesitate to be creative and reach out to us with an offer. We will do our best to accommodate you. You can reach us at the Revolutionary Left at gmail.com. Or if you just don't like Patreon and want to support us with a one-time donation, you can toss a few dollars to PayPal.me forward slash RevLeft.

We really appreciate it. In conclusion, we are not simply asking for your charity here. It is true that I now have a pretty sizable debt that I need to pay back. And so finding streams of revenue to make this work and pay back the debt that makes this expansion possible, and our capitalist hellhole world is a priority. But what I have outlined here is not an NPR call for donations in exchange for nothing, but rather an offer. If you support our show at any given level, we will provide you with something that you want.

It's a comradly transaction, and I want anyone who supports us with their hard-earned money to genuinely feel like they are getting their money's worth. Podcasts are an odd thing, because given their relative newness, people don't really know what their value is. We all have an idea of what a cup of coffee or a new shirt or a home costs, but media, especially in this new internet age, is still striving to find its place and convince people of its value. It's true that Dave and I spend enormous amounts of time and energy and labor

putting this show together, and with this platform expansion, that workload will easily triple. Surely paying for tickets to see your favorite indie band, or tipping your bartender, or paying your Uber driver makes complete sense. But what about your radio show host? Sure, I don't make great music or delightful cocktails, and I don't drive you home after a night out with friends, but I certainly hope that I make something here at Revolutionary Left Radio that you genuinely enjoy and value. And in the same way your favorite band creates music and you support them by paying for it,

I hope we humble and broke proletarian dads here at RevLeft Radio make something that you find valuable and we're supporting with your hard-earned money. So here we go. We are taking this risky plunge together. there is no turning back now. Thank you so much to everyone who supports the show, to everyone who listens, to everyone who has told their family, to everyone who has told your friends and family about us. We fucking love you all from the bottom of our little red hearts, and we are as nervous and excited as we are humble that we can take this journey together with all of you. Love and solidarity from Dave and I here in the Rev Left Bunker. Talk to all of you again soon. So in addition to the big announcement, I wanted to add just a little bit of politics in here.

Think of it as the sugar that helps the medicine go down. I do listen to some episodes of Joe Rogan's podcast. It's one of the biggest podcasts in the world, especially when he's talking about hunting or outdoorsmanship and land conservation. I particularly find that interesting. I'm also a big fan of stand-up comedy. comedy. So when he has on a comedian that I particularly like, I'll go and check out that episode. So I was listening to his interview with Theo Vaughn, and he had this really interesting part where they brought up Jordan Peterson, and they started to talk about it,

and Rogan kind of in a quick sort of four-minute clip, defended Peterson and took jabs at socialism and Marxism, which he clearly doesn't understand. And I just thought this might be something we can just add on to the end of this big announcement. It's not a whole episode in and of itself, But again, Joe Rogan is one of the biggest podcast in the world, consistently ranks among the top podcasts with downloads, millions and millions and millions of people tune into every single episode. So when he says some shit about Marxism, about socialism, he is, in a lot of ways, shaping the way that millions of people who don't understand it themselves think about and approach the topic. So part of our job on the left is to meet these people, confront them, and deconstruct their misunderstandings of what socialism is or their outright lies about socialism. So we're just going to do a little 10, 20 minute thing here where I play the clip with his interview with Theo Vaughn where he's regurgitating Peterson's arguments and just kind of as we go through, point out what he's getting wrong, and hopefully just sort of address his ignorance when it comes to socialism and Marxism. I might say this again, but it's important to realize that I think Rogan is sort of like this,

you know, the enlightened centerist sort of person who thinks he's open-minded, who thinks he's willing to listen to both sides of the argument, but tends toward the right because the right is more in line with the center. I mean, in the U.S., the center is already so far to the right that the far right is way more normalized and understandable for those in the center than the far left is. So I think it's important to kind of tackle this stuff, and that's what we're we're going to do in this little clip so dave let's go ahead and start that clip great dude everybody hates the guy says i don't think everybody's i think a lot of people like the time we're right now because it's so it's just i feel like you know what

you're going to get you know yeah no it's it's a strange time for communication man it really is yeah strange time for every true yeah man it's uh it's different it's so different dude it's fucking it's kind of fascinating i had um the guy jordan peterson came on a podcast yeah he came on your podcast yeah which was wild because i know his publicist um and i reached out and the publicist um and then it was wild and so then he came through because i mean a lot of the people listen to my podcast are you know we talk a lot about like being sober and like people that masturbate too much kind of weird stuff you know troubled youths kind of i'll say it right um but anyway it was cool because Is he like, I don't know, you know him better than I do him.

He loves you. He said a lot of nice things about it. Oh, that's nice. He's a great guy. He's really misunderstood, man, misrepresented. People think he's like some fascist and some Nazi. I didn't think that at all. He's not by any stretch of the imagination.

He just says certain things that people are uncomfortable hearing and whether you agree with them or disagree with him. That's one thing, but the demonization is where it gets weird. Even if you think he's, his idea is foolish. Okay. So a few things your Rogan immediately goes in to defending him. his buddy, Jordan Peterson. One thing he says is that Peterson is misunderstood.

Well, I mean, of course, we're thinking personal ties here. So Rogan's going to defend him and take the most charitable version towards him, that Peterson is so deep, right? His intellect is so all-encompassing that people just don't understand him. And they call him a fascist or Nazi, etc. Now, do I think Jordan Peterson is explicitly and consciously a fascist or Nazi? No. But what Rogan doesn't understand, what Peterson doesn't understand, and what centrist broadly tend to not understand is that it's not so much about what political identity you identify with, but more so which interests your work serves.

And on this front, the work that Jordan Peterson does serves the interests of the ruling class and the reactionary elements of the working class. his hyper focus on individualism, but also his sort of mythological pseudo-union approach to understanding people in psychology, it feeds into a long tradition of fascistic mythology and nonsense that comes out of the fascist tradition. So it's true that Peterson himself is not seahailing and marching down the street at Charlottesville with other Nazis, but the stuff that he does and the ideas that he perpetuates are ideas that help the ruling class first and foremost, and then are reactionary in and on themselves against women, against LGBTQ people, against people of color, against literally anyone who wants

to stand up against historical injustice. His whole thing is clean your room, right? Take care of yourself before you even think about trying to address the world's problems. And if you're not fucking perfect, then I don't want to hear you critique anything about the world. I certainly don't want to see you out in the streets protesting or organizing and this is a fundamentally reactionary position and with such a huge platform it you know affects the minds of untold amount of people mostly young alienated angry men and instead of giving them an analysis which elucidates the machinations of class society and gives them an actual objective understanding of history It's this pseudo-scientific, historical, mythological nonsense packed in with this obsession with individualism and this hatred of critiquing the status quo at any level until you're perfect.

And since you'll never be perfect, he doesn't ever want you to critique the status quo. Rogan also said that people are uncomfortable hearing him. Uncomfortable hearing him, this is the arrogance of the intellectual dark web generally. nobody's uncomfortable hearing this dude nobody's uncomfortable hearing played out century long centrist arguments that defend the status quo there's nothing new or unique in what peterson is saying it's just the way he says it is so purposefully obscure that to the uninitiated or to those who haven't been taught critical thinking it sounds deep and in the same way that depok chopra to like new age hippies sounds deep but the moment you start analyzing it with the scientific or

philosophic mindset it falls to pieces as just utter absurdity so you can sound deep by just saying things and being incredibly obscure and referencing texts that nobody knows and to some segment of the population that will come off as deep but nobody's uncomfortable hearing him nobody is scared of the ideas that jordan peterson is unleashing on the world same with sam harris same with joe rogan these dudes aren't saying anything new or scary or novel or breathtaking. They're regurgitating the same old bullshit. We've all heard a million times growing up in this society.

Nothing new about it. The last thing he says in that clip is he's demonized. These people, right, these intellectual dark web people, these enlightened radical centrist people, they are so willing and so ready to play the victim without actually being victimized. They're the same people who will tell Black Lives Matter that they're. going about it the wrong way. You know, the same people that have no problem telling actually demonized segments of our population to how to behave and win and win not to protest and how to

protest. And Colin Kaepernick taking a knee means I'm done watching the NFL and I'm burning my fucking Nikes, right? But they also want to simultaneously be that themselves. They want to be the victims. Imagine if the Sam Harris's and the Joe Rogans and the Jordan Peterson's of the world rich elite white men with every privilege in the fucking planet imagine if they had to have the historical demonization and current demonization of black folks of indigenous folks of queer people imagine if they had to be a communist in america in the mccarthy era for god's sakes i mean this idea that they are demonized and that they're somehow oppressed is such a transparent absurd parody of itself that it's almost not even worth responding to but it is worth pointing out

that if these people had to face actual racism, actual oppression, actual systematic demonization, they would fucking crumble. Because just people offering their criticisms of them, even if it's barbed, even if it's personalized, that is enough to make them just pull their hair out. It's too much to take. How dare we people get demonized? We're just pushing free speech and these new intellectual dark web ideas. We're oppressed. We're oppressed. I mean, it's absurd. Dave, go on He's what his idea is foolish Don't misrepresent who he is as a person

Because they try to pretend that he's this Racist homophobic Fucking alt-right character He's not by any stretch of the imagination He's just a guy that especially when his principles Are being debated or when his ideas are being tested Like he'll stand his ground And he's very firm about what he thinks is wrong

About things like equality of outcome, like making sure that everybody makes the same amount of money, make sure that everybody achieves the same amount of success. Like, that is a ridiculous idea that leads to communism and Marxism. And he gets into it, and it made me rethink how I thought about it before then. I thought about it before then, like,

an unattainable goal that socialists lean towards because it's like the ideal. The ideal is that money's not a concern for anybody and everybody just sort of does whatever they want to do because they enjoy doing it, not because they're doing it for money, and that all the money's kind of piled in together, and we take care of everybody. It sounds great on paper. Right.

But then he starts talking about, no, you have to enforce equality of outcome. Right. He goes, when you're talking about equity, there's going to be people that work harder. Right, right. There's going to be people that try harder. There's going to be different varying levels of effort because we're human beings. You have to take that into consideration. As soon as these people don't take that into consideration, then you're either trying to stop the people that are doing too well, or you're trying to take from them to give to yourself and how are you enforcing this?

And he just takes you down this rabbit hole of thought. and really kind of explains the problems with Marxism and socialism. And I'm sure there's really intelligent people that dispute his ideas. I'm not saying that his ideas are infallible or that he's the only voice that I would listen to in the subject. Let's pause it there. Okay, so he goes into this whole equality of outcome argument, right? Which is if you've been a socialist for more than three months, you've certainly heard this idea of equality of opportunity versus equality of outcome. Well, let it be known that neither exist under capitalism and the sort of hidden premise of Rogan and Peterson's argument here about equality of outcome.

They stress outcome because they implicitly believe that the society as it stands does allow for an equality of opportunity. I mean, Democrats, centrists, liberals, conservatives, they all believe this, right? If you're a patriot, you believe that the American system, one way or another, is fundamentally about giving equality. of opportunity. You can make of it what you will. If you fail, that's on you. If you succeed, good for you. You have bootstraps tug on them. But what this conceals is that in capitalist society, there has never fucking been equality of opportunity ever. And of course, they don't mention that because they don't want to have to defend that. So they'll take it to the more extreme position, which is a quality of outcome. But imagine the difference between being Donald Trump or

Donald Trump's kid and a kid born as a black kid in a ghetto. in Baltimore or Chicago. Do they have equality of opportunity? Women, LGBTQ people, anybody other than white men historically have certainly not had equality of opportunity. They've been systematically barred from even entering the medium levels of success and people knowing who you are and being able to have economic and political power, etc.

Only recently, due to radical movements, have those sorts of people been franchised to some extent, even though it's not nearly the length that we want to actually go to. So this whole argument, whenever you hear this argument about equality of outcome and opportunity by anyone defending the status quo, immediately bring up the fact that there is no equality of opportunity. There never has been. And literally under capitalism, there never can be. Because at the moment that you have wealth inequality, you have some kids born to rich parents and some kids born to working class or poor parents. And right there, at that very moment of birth, you have an

inequality of opportunity. There's no way around that. There's no way to avoid that. And people like Rogan and Peterson who are invested in the status quo don't want to talk about that because the moment they do, they have to face one of their cliches, which is that liberal capitalism democracies allow for everybody to make something out of themselves. It's an abject lie and they'd rather not face it. So they take it to the more extreme case outcome and argue it on those grounds. Then he says you have to force equality, right? Well, probably at first, given the fact that we've lived in centuries of inequality, the transition over. over to a socialist society, whether you're an anarchist, the Marxist, whatever you may be, is not going to happen overnight.

It's not going to eradicate the ideology, inculcated in us for centuries. But what they don't mention here, again, it's not so much what they say, but it's what they don't say. And what they don't say here is that you also have to use force to maintain inequality. What is imperialism? What is racism and sexism and bigotry at home? What is the police state? What is the fact that the U.S. has more criminals locked in cages than any other country on planet Earth if not a way that the system uses brute violence to enforce the inequality in the domestic sense, i.e., they attack the poor and working and marginalized people inside this own country, and in the global sense, i.e. the global inequality between, you know, European and America and the rest of the world, that level of inequality is maintained by such brutal daily stomach.

churning violence, a violence that Peterson and Rogan are fucking blind to and who couldn't even grasp it if they look directly at it. So don't tell me about having to use force to maintain equality when you're sitting atop a mountain of corpses as a rich white man in the United States of America. Also, I want to touch on this idea of a socialist transition. You know, he's talking about communism being the ideal and how to work towards that. Almost nobody that, almost nobody that I know or that I take seriously as a leftist from any tendency. And people know I have friends and comrades on all parts of the radical left, principled, hardworking organizers from anarchists to Leninist to Maoist to democratic, socialist, et cetera. Nobody believes that a socialist transition

will happen overnight. Nobody believes that you can go from capitalism to communism over one night or one week or one month. It's a transition. Now, we do disagree, depending on your tendency, about what that transition will look like, what's necessary for it, what's not necessary for it, etc. But we all agree that some sort of transition away from this capitalist ideology and economic system towards a new world is going to have to take place, both in the base and the superstructure. So what he's doing here is collapsing that nuance into the idea that leftists just want to go straight into this utopian, perfected world right out of the hellhole of capitalism when that is a absurd, fallacious rendering of our position.

Day one, after any socialist revolution or however you, I don't even want to get into the nuances of what a socialist revolution means, et cetera, it escapes the purview of this conversation. But day one, you're still going to have classes. People are still going to have to have jobs. There's still things that need to be done. Money will still exist. So it's all about how do we take the wealth and resources once we have control over them

and how do we distribute them? It's not going to be, okay, everybody gets $1,000 a month, day one, let's go. there's a transition that follows. Now, in a capitalist world, who gets a disproportionate share of the money and the power? Well, it's the ultra-rich, right? It's the CEOs. It's the politicians. It's the bankers. And it's even the celebrities. People that work very little, but profit off of other people's work and get absurd levels of wealth while other people scrape to find a roof over their head and get healthy food into their bellies. But under socialism, what would that look like? Well, there will still be a transitionary period. will still get paid based on what labor that they contribute to the whole, but all of the wealth and resources that go into defending imperial militarism or giving huge tax breaks to the ultra-rich or just the money that already is siphoned into the pockets of the ruling elite, that money will be distributed into social programs to help every single human being. So while it's true that a cutting-edge scientist or a doctor may earn more money than other people in other positions

at any given time in a socialist transition, the fact is that the vast majority of society's wealth will not be funneled into profit and competition at all costs amongst a small ruling elite, but would rather be invested into health care, into education, into infrastructure, into housing, into all of these things that bring everybody up. Even the very people who hate the idea of socialism

would be benefited by a socialist society, a socialist transition of whatever tendency. So again, what they're trying to do here is omit certain nuances. Now, of course, Rogan doesn't know this. And I would be surprised if Peterson could give a good definition of Marxism because he seems utterly confused on the topic. So does this ignorance come out of a cynical, plotting, conscious ploy to trick people? Or does it come out of arrogant men talking about things they don't understand but feel entitled to talk about anyway?

With these two folks, I tend to think it's the latter, although with Peterson, an argument could be made. that is actually more towards the former, but certainly with some people in the ruling elite, it is a purposeful, cynical, muddying of the water, ideological warfare, etc. Dave? I'm not saying that his ideas are infallible

or that he's the only voice that I would listen to in these subjects, but he's a brilliant guy, and he's a very nice guy too, and he's really misrepresented and willfully so a lot. I think it's sad because I think what's missing

between right and the left is how much we would probably agree on if we can just talk about things rationally instead of contentiously instead of getting into these right versus left debates which are just way too common where everybody's on one side is trying to diminish the person on the other side and get angry and they're doing a lot of these in front of big crowds which I think is also weird because then you're playing to the crowd and I've seen some things that Jordan did with this Michael Eric Dyson guy with the guy literally wasn't looking at him was looking at the crowd calling him a mean mad white man

And it's like, these kind of things that people are doing, it's just, everyone's just digging their heels in deeper on each side. And instead of like looking at life, like just having an open conversation about things that are troubling, things where we could do better, things where society needs work, or things maybe where our perceptions are off. And maybe we could look at the other side or look at each other or look at the whole thing better and figure out a better way around things. Instead of doing that, everybody's just right versus left and deeper in the trenches and hard. We got to stop Trump, and I hope we have a recession to stop Trump. Okay. They go on and talk about totally different stuff after that. But a lot of things he said there, he manages to pack in lots of confusion into small periods of time.

One of the things he said is like this left and right thing as if it's new. You know, the left and right, the very concepts stem back to the French Revolution itself. But even beyond that, there's always been conflict in society. And one thing from a leftist or a Marxist perspective is this notion of conflict theory. that there are oppressors and there are oppressed there are dominators and dominated there are exploiters and those who are exploited and as long as you have those dynamics

that dialectic in play there will always be conflict and there will always be those who want to preserve that domination and who want to take it further and those who want to either alleviate that domination or eradicate it those are the people on the left the former are those on the right

and what Brogan is really promoting here again out of his own ignorance is a sort of idealism a sort of liberal obsession with dialogue you know the left and the right we actually have a lot more in common if we just sit down and we talk out and everybody stops digging their heels in people are being shot in the street people are losing their homes they don't have health care climate change is acidifying the ocean changing the very ecological structure that we were evolved in fascists are marching down our streets bombs are dropping on children in yemen and

all over the world by u.s you know either arms manufacturers or the U.S. military itself? What are we going to talk about, Rogan? You sitting in your comfortable house with a $25 million net worth, sure, dialogue probably seems eminently reasonable for somebody like you. You have nothing but time on your hands to sit down and talk, which is why you have 17 podcasts a week that are 17 hours each. But for the rest of the world, it's a fight to fucking survive. And any sort of analysis that tries to take those wrinkles and that nuance and that complexity and that very real conflict out of the world and tries to act as if all we need is for people to put down their guard and have a conversation is a complete abandonment of

politics, of intellectual rigor and of seriousness. And it feeds in, and it's a reflection of liberal idealism, which Rogan is utterly committed to. He doesn't even know what it is. He can't even see where his ideas come from, right? Existialist comics had a great point the other day is like this idea about free thinkers, they think that getting their ideas they do from culture, that they've somehow spontaneously given birth to them in their own minds based on their own genius, when in reality they've just been inculcated and handed down ideas of somebody else's. They've internalized them as their own, and they go to war over them. A true free thinker, as existential comics said, is somebody who knows where their ideas,

ideas come from. So with liberals and liberal idealists especially, they don't understand where their ideas come from. Therefore, they can never have that meta perspective on what their positions are and that meta perspective that helps so much with critical thinking. If you don't know where your ideas come from, then you're just an automaton. You're just regurgitating things that other people have given you. But the moment you know where your ideas come from, you can exercise some will over what ideas you pick up, which ones you discard, and you have this meta perspective by which you can say, that's a good idea, that's a bad idea. There's no such thing as a totally free thinker that is outside his historical context. There's no such thing as a free thinker who is outside her

influences of culture and history. There's only people that are aware of their cultural and historical heritage and those who aren't. And one thing about the left, one thing about radicals, one thing about Marxists, is that it's baked into our very approach to the world that we think about where ideas come from. And that gives us a crucial advantage. Now, to end this, there are some things that Rogan said right. Debates are shit. Debates, whether in front of a live audience or debates on Twitter between two warring factions, it's a performance. Because you're not having a conversation with another person. You're having a performance for everybody else. You'd be arguing with this person over here, but in reality,

you're crafting your words and your arguments so as to show off to the people that are watching, either those that agree or those that don't agree. So it's not really a mechanism by which truth is hashed out. It's not really a mechanism by which people's minds are changed. People hunker down in their defensive postures and pick a side and then root for that side. One of the big things about the new atheist movement in the early 2000s was this fetishization of debate, which is if we just get on a stage with these religious people and we dunk on them for three hours straight and we get a bunch of applause lines, that's how we change minds.

No, it's not. Nobody walks away from those debates with their minds changed. And same with politics, whether it's a Leninist and an anarchist arguing on Twitter, or it's Peterson and Dyson arguing on a stage, or it's an atheist versus a Christian or a Democrat versus a Republican. Nobody's minds get changed. Debate is not a mechanism by which truth is hashed out. And I think Rogan is getting at something there, which I think people should take into consideration. But generally, Rogan has no clue what he's talking about. He doesn't know what. Marxism is, and what's perhaps worse is he doesn't really seem to care to learn. Somebody on the right or the center that loves to make a lot of hay at about free speech and a free exchange of ideas and the marketplace of ideas, these people are almost always the same sort of people who will endlessly have on people like Stephen Crowder and Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson, but you have to wait three years for them to have one person that's slightly to the left of liberalism. In the case of Rogan, I think the most left he's gone is Abby Mark. Martin, who has been a previous guest on Rev Left Radio and who we support. We love the empire

files, etc. But they don't really get in talks about Marxism or socialism broadly. They talk about anti-imperialism. And in Rogan's sort of centrist libertarian position, an anti-war person coming on talking about how imperialism is fucked up fits nicely into their sort of ideological compartments. But it never really expands beyond that. So people like Rogan and Harris are so worried about open debate and having all ideas just come on to the marketplace of ideas and hash them out, then why in the fuck don't they have on a principled Marxist or a principled anarchist to come on elucidate our ideas and defend them in back and forth debate? Why has that never fucking happened? So if they're going to talk about how much they love ideas, then actually

platform those ideas and have a discussion, Rogan. If you think there are intelligent people who disagree with Peterson, there's a lot of us out. here that are more than willing to come on your show and talk about it. Now certainly our tiny little program is not going to get the attention of Rogan. I'll never be on there. But there are plenty of leftists who are way more capable than me, who have way bigger platforms, who even have academic credentials to back them up that Rogan could easily invite on, but he doesn't. And that speaks volumes. They're not really interested in having their ideas challenged. They just want to regurgitate them. Here on Rev Left Radio, we are on the left, so we're not

having these debates with centrists and fascists. We would never do that. They have their fucking platforms. The entire society is a right-wing white supremacist society. If you want to hear about those ideas, just turn on fucking cable news and you'll find them presented to you right away. We have robust discussions

on the left. Even with the liberal, we had that two and a half hour episode where I had a liberal on the episode and we talked about our differing views on revolution, on what makes up a society, on where society is and rights come from, on history. now that was productive in my opinion because we weren't debating we weren't hunkering down in defensive postures and going at it but we were actually having a back and forth respectful dialogue

that's a progressive liberal and that's probably the farthest to the right that i'll ever have on in this show precisely for the reasons i just mentioned before but i thought it was a worthwhile thing and it's the very thing that these people pretend to want but never actually do so with all of that said there's the big announcement there's a little dunking on joe rogan for you support the show