The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it Resolved: Politics as Usual Isn't Working. It's Time for a Revolution

Episode Date: February 5, 2020

Is it time for a revolution? On this episode of the Munk Debates Podcast, New York Times columnist David Brooks and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges debate the motion Be it resolved, politics as usual isn't working. It's time for a revolution. SOURCES: CNN, The Guardian, Bernie SandersBecome a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I think it's time for this toxic binary zero-sum madness stop. We're not an imperial power. We're a revolutionary power. We are no longer in a world where you can plot out moves statesmen to statesmen like a chessboard. You don't know anything about my background to where I came from. It doesn't matter to you because fundamentally I'm a mean white man. We can't do this to the next generation because America will cease to exist. Welcome to the Monk Debates podcast. Our mission, every episode, is to provide you with a civil and substantive debate on the big issues of the day, free of spin, focused on the facts and animated by smart conversation. The goal of this podcast is to arm you, the listener, with enough information to make up your own mind about the issue up for debate.

Today's debate, be it resolved, politics as usual isn't working. It's time for a revolution. So if you're asking me, why is it that our campaign has created the kind of momentum that it has? I think we are touching a nerve with the American people who understand that establishment politics is just not good enough. We need bold changes. We need a political revolution. A political revolution. That's what presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has been calling for since at least 2016. The revolt, he says, should be against rising economic inequality, a political. political system hijacked by elites with deep pockets and an environment endangered by companies only concerned with profits. For more and more voters, these are all signs that politics as we know

it is broken. The answer is a grassroots political revolution that sweeps away the existing order to create a more democratic socialist future for all. Others say not so fast. The rush to abandon long-standing principles about how our politics works is alarming at best, if not outright, dangerous. Political and social change has always been slow, deliberate, incremental, full of checks and balances. Move too fast, and we risk breaking a system of self-government that has taken generations to create. On this installment of the Monk Debates podcast, we challenge the essence of these arguments by debating the motion, be it resolved, politics. as usual isn't working, it's time for a revolution. Joining us to debate this topic is none other

than the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist Chris Hedges arguing for the motion, his opponent today that celebrated New York Times columnist and best-selling author David Brooks. Chris, David, welcome to the Monk Debate podcast. Thank you. Great to be here. David, let's have your opening remarks. When you concentrate power in political elites, what you do is is you unleash rivers of blood. Every time this has been done, whether it's the French Revolution, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the Russian Revolution, you put thugs in power. And once the thugs get into power, you unleash these rivers of blood because human nature is just flawed in that way. When you get unchecked power, you're going to get a sort of catastrophe. And I've covered too many

of those catastrophes to want to centralize power. So I'm in favor of social change that is bottom up, that is incremental, but which is constant. I'm sort of a cultural determinist. I think the problems of our society are at the bottom of our society in the fabric of our fragmentation and our distrust. So if you ask people, do you trust your institutions only 20% do? Do you trust your neighbors? Only 30% do.

We've got rising suicide rates, rising isolation, rising distrust, doubling of mental health, teenage suicide is up 70%. So basically, at the elemental foundation. structure of our society is falling apart, in part because I think of a culture of individualism has swept America over the last 60 years and left us more divided, more alienated, more distrustful. And that has increased political polarization and made it as impossible for us to have a functioning political system that enables us to deal with the problems we're dealing with, like the problems of dictatorship abroad, the problems of the China shock to our workers, and so on.

And so our problems are cultural, social, before they're political. And you can't solve a societal problem with a political solution from the top down, especially one based on centralized planning. And so I think we're going to have to fix problems at the local level, at the society level, at the basic level of human relationship. And then once you get some restructuring of connection across lines of diversity, then you can have some level of trust that allow you to have political solutions. But the problem has to be addressed culturally, societally, before it can be addressed from the top down.

Okay, thank you for that opening statement. Chris, over to you. Let's have your opening remarks. The whole ideology of neoliberalism that we should kneel before the dictates of the marketplace has in the last 40 years seen the destruction of both the democratic norms and procedures, as well as economic regulations that made reform possible. These kind of neoliberal imperialists in an effort to project American power and global dominance have carried out disastrous forms of social engineering in the Middle East,

especially with the invasion of Iraq. All of the goals of these projects, the idea that democracy would be enhanced, wealth would be increased, or in the case of these imperialist adventures, democracy would be implanted in places like Baghdad and emanate outward across the Middle East. We would be greeted as liberators. The oil revenues would pay for reconstruction are utopian. And I use the word the way Thomas Moore coined it. Utopian means no place.

It doesn't exist. Chris, David, let's pause for a moment. And just for the benefit of listeners kind of break down your opening arguments. Let's summarize them. Chris, you're putting forward the idea that the real revolution that's gone on in the last 25 30 years is a revolution of neoliberalism that's broken the bonds of society that's impoverished American workers and that has degraded our politics and that in response to this, we need a bottom-up revolution, a return of power to the people through the people.

David, you're skeptical about this. You think that revolutions historically have had a troubled history, a so-called river of blood that flows in the power vacuum. left behind when the old order falls and a new revolutionary order is created. You're much more optimistic that, in fact, you can rebuild within the capitalist democratic system, communities from the bottom up through hard work, through community effort. Okay, with that summation for our listeners, let's have you both now kind of rebutt each other and get this debate underway. Well, I would argue we centralized power in the hands of corporations. There is no way to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs.

That's the problem. And that power should be diffuse and shared. And the whole neoliberal project has created this global oligarchic class. Eight families hold as much wealth as 50% of the world's population. The world's 500 richest people in 2009 added $12 trillion to their assets. And this is when nearly half of all Americans have no savings and nearly 70% cannot come up with $1,000. in an emergency without going to debt. It's what the economist David Harvey calls accumulation by dispossession. So I'm in total agreement with David on that issue of centralized

power, but I would say that's the problem. We don't even control our own economies. So, David, come back on that because I think there's many people listening who would be sympathetic to your argument. The change has to happen from the bottom up. That change that's responsive to communities is better than change that comes from the top down. But further to Chris's point, how is that change really able to come about in a system where there is so much concentration of power, political, economic, and others at the top? How are you going to realize that bottom-up improvement of society? Well, I guess I do see the concentration of economic power. That's pretty much undeniable. Whether it effectively leads to the concentration

of political power is something I probably disagree with. I look at Donald Trump. He was not the selection of the richest clap pizza. People in America, the people who voted him were overwhelmingly less educated, less affluent, more rural. And so he is not the candidate of Wall Street. I look at Boris Johnson in London. Brexit was not the candidate of the city, of their version of Wall Street. You look around the world, you see populist movements rising everywhere. Let's make 2020 about the people of this country and not about its politicians.

Let's get out of the rut of the last three years and get on. with our work as conservatives of making this country the greatest place in the world to live. And they're not my cup of tea, but one thing they're certainly not is the creatures of Davos Man. And so I do think the rise of Bernie Sanders, the rise of Elizabeth Warren, the rise of Donald Trump, all of these are examples of democracy more or less functioning, producing candidates who are not in the grip of corporate power. I look at the mayors of this country, I look at the governors of this country, many of whom are remarkably popular, 80 and 90% approval ratings in some cases. And they are just not foisted upon them by Google. And so I do think democracy is still basically a functioning

unit. Chris, I think you have a different view. We live in a failed democracy. And this has been a bipartisan failure. Neoliberalism runs rampant within both parties. In fact, Clinton was one of the main architects of neoliberal policies with NAFTA deindustrialization destroying the welfare system. As we know it, 70% of the original recipients of welfare were children deregulating the FCC, which handed the media platforms to roughly a half dozen corporations that now control what 90% of Americans listen to or watch, the destruction of Glass-Steagall, which tore down the firewalls between investment and commercial banks. So the rise of these demagogues and far-right figures, whether in Hungary or Orban or Johnson or Trump,

is what happens when a system seizes up and doesn't function. And there's a rage directed at both of the elites. The idea that Trump is not serving corporate power, just is not borne out by the facts. In terms of the tax cuts, in terms of the destruction of regulations, he's an embarrassment to the empire because he's vulgar, crude. inept, habitual liar. But I can assure you that should Sanders or Warren be the nominee, Wall Street, and the rest of the oligarchic class will hold their nose and support him. And I think that we have seen neoliberal assaults now, rendering half of this country into poverty

or near poverty, with all of the attendant problems that that disenfranchisement causes, that people then retreat into self-destructive acts, that, that, that people then retreat into self-destructive acts, the opioid crisis, abdictions of gambling, alcoholism. David mentioned suicide, which is highest among white middle class men. And that, as sociologists, I think, have pointed out, is what happens when a society tears apart that social fabric and destroys those social bonds. So what David is referring to is the, are the consequences, are the symptoms, but not the symptoms, but not cause. You're listening to the Monk Debates podcast. Be it resolved, politics as usual isn't working. It's time for a revolution. If you like this podcast, make sure to check out our other episodes,

including debates on everything from impeachment to social media to Iran. All free to download or stream on our website monkdebates.com. We rejoined the debate with David Brooks arguing against the motion, be it resolved, politics as usual isn't working. It's time for a revolution. So I have something called weave the social fabric project, a project I spend eight hours a day on. And what we do is we go around the country meeting weavers, people who are reweaving the social fabric community after community fighting homelessness, fighting poverty, fighting suicide. And they are rebuilding the social fabric from the bottom up. And I think they are the real heroes. They are the real change makers. And when I look at successful social changes come,

and I'll cite Robert Putnam of Harvard. He looked at the progressive era, and the 1890s were a period sort of like our own. You had a big economic transition. You had high inequality. You had great migration. You had technological change in corrupt politics. And so the change, Putnam argues, came in three forms. First, there was a cultural revolution.

Social gospel movement replaced social Darwinism. A highly individualistic ethos was replaced by a highly communal ethos. Second, you had a civic revival. You had the creation of all sorts of organizations, the boys and girls scouts, the boys and girls clubs, the temperance movement, the settlement house movement, et cetera, et cetera, from the ground up. And then eventually those people got together and created a political movement, the progressive movement. So in cultural, civic, and then political. And that's the kind of model of reform that I'd like to see. And I'd just like to refocus the debate on what we're actually debating, which is on radical change.

And the radical change has to be led by someone. And what this resolution is doing is, is doing. is saying this is our first step. Our first step is to define the problem and define the scope of the solution. And so we're here to say that small, incremental policy solutions are not enough. They can be part of a solution,

but they are not the solution unto itself. Usually there's a cultural revolutionary vanguard. In the case of the Green New Deal, it's the creation of hundreds and millions, hundreds of thousands and millions of new federal workers, basically taking over large industries. And that is the phenomenal concentration of power in the political elite. I just don't have that much faith in the political elite,

A, to see the world and understand the world in all its complexity, and B, to not be corrupted by the power that they would have under something like the Green New Deal. This is interesting that you both, in a sense, agree with the profound problems affecting society in terms of the reality that people face in their day-to-day lives. But what I want to shift now is a bit more to your thoughts on the prescriptive response, Chris. Could you give us a sense of what is the policy prescription? David has talked about, you know, supporting these community weavers at the kind of micro level and trusting in their kind of civic energy and activism to renew eventually political life. How do you see effective change happening?

What is the revolutionary moment? Well, let's go back to the era that David referenced, the progressive area on the eve of World War I. When you had powerful socialist movements and unions, it is creating union activity, popular organizations, dissident socialist, socialist, political movements like the Progressive Party, like Debs, Socialist Party, that push back against the centers of power. A change comes by creating popular movements that put pressure on the centers of power, that make the centers of power fearful. I'm not advocating any kind of Marxist, socialist planning, which I am as wary of as David. I am actually calling for a re-empowerment of the citizenry through these organized movements to hold power in check. I didn't really hear a proposal for radical change. I mean, we're not going to go with the wobblies.

They're coming back. The masses, there's a marvelous book by a guy named Tim Scott at Yale called Seeing Like a State. And it's why state planning tends to fail. It's because the state just can't see the richness of life and all its diversity. And frankly, both the progressives. And certainly the communists suffered from this. And, you know, I covered the Soviet Union. It truly was an evil empire because it was taken over by the mafioso.

And they ruled with cruelty and viciousness. And so I don't see an alternative. I support unions. I think there should be greater worker representation. But change happens through legislation. And you have to work through the institutions of political parties and then finally of the U.S. Congress. And when you work through those institutions, you find that a lot of people don't agree with you. And a lot of people don't agree with Bernie Sanders. A lot of people don't agree with Donald Trump. And if you want to get anything done, you have to think in terms of coalitions. And you have to think in terms of compromise. You have to think in terms of politics. There's not going to be a mass march on Washington that will

magically eliminate the other 42% of the country, and there's not going to be a mass march on Washington that's suddenly going to put away the need for dealmaking in the House and the Senate. And that's the way we've done social change. And to me, it's restoring that tradition of social change, that tradition of politics. That's what we need to do, not upsetting what I think is one of the best political systems in the world. I don't think the system functions. And I, you know, the lobbyists in K Street are the ones who write the legislation. legislation. We live in a system of legalized bribery. Hillary Clinton, you know, spent a $1 billion in order to run for president. When you look at the fraud and the criminal activity on the

part of the financial ruling elites, you know, the kind of bottomless greed. The fact is these people, there is no oversight, there is no control. When you have unfettered, unregulated capitalism, when everything becomes a commodity, human beings become a commodity. the natural world becomes a commodity, we haven't spoken about the climate emergency, then everything is exploited until exhaustion or collapse. You first in this system create a mafia economy, and then you create a mafia state, and that's what's happened. What is the radical change you want to see?

I'm not sure I've still heard an answer to that question. I mean, we've heard a litany of critique, and I accept some and don't accept others, but what's the actual revolution look like? rebuilding movements that carry out acts of sustained civil disobedience. Standing Rock would be an example. We occupy movement. The First Nations movements against the pipeline in Canada. The Quebec student movement, what we're seeing in Hong Kong. We're not just seen in Hong Kong, Lebanon, Chile, all around the world. we have seen the kind of death grip that these global financiers have and popular uprisings. Now, you know, you mentioned earlier about revolutions that end in blood, and you're exactly right,

that as soon as a revolutionary movement adopts violence, then the end result is, and history has borne this out, is, you know, often worse than what was there previously. And that's why these movements have to be nonviolent. But what happens as society breaks down is that, and the frustrations mount, is that those of us who remain wedded to nonviolence, you know, become the detested and despised moderates. Yeah, I would say that there are two kinds of resolution, revolutionary movements here. The first is the Occupy, which had no structural authority, no institution, no hierarchy, and no organization, and early petered out because it didn't actually have a revolutionary method. The other kind of movement we're seeing here is Hong Kong. And what's to me magical about Hong Kong is the same thing as that we both saw in central and Eastern Europe in the 90s, in the early 90s, is that it's very much in favor of liberal procedures.

The protesters in Hong Kong, I was there talking to them, they very much support the idea of rule of law, rule of democratic law. They're defending their own existing constitution. And so that's what you might call a conservative revolution. They're trying to keep the rights and privileges that they enjoy under a democratic regime. They're not trying to overthrow things, but preserve something. And I just don't see any alternative, but our democratic process, either a parliamentary system as in Europe, or the one we have here, which is presidential, but working through those systems.

I don't see another alternative system, despite the flaws you see in any of these regimes. You're listening to the Monk Debates podcast. Be it resolved, politics as usual isn't working. It's time for a revolution. Arguing for the motion is author and Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges. Arguing against is the celebrated New York Times columnist, David Brooks. Let's rejoin the debate in progress.

Chris, do you have any hope about the current political system and the challenge that David kind of outlined of having to meet the other 42% in a democratic system, in a legislature, in a Congress, and come to some kind of conciliation? In your view, can anything productive, meaningful come out of that process? or, again, is it a mafia that's running that, and therefore it's ineligible to our kind of worthiness and self-regard? I think these utopian engineers destroyed the Keynesian economic system, which was in place after World War II, that created regulations, checks and balances that gave a voice to unions, that protected workers' rights. some many of the, you know, environmental laws and labor safety laws were passed by a liberal wing of the Democratic Party, which doesn't exist anymore. And so the problem is the system itself has been destroyed. And that fills me with a kind of dread. It's what, of course, gave us a figure like Trump. It is what is enraged, you know, certainly his own base of support. and until we create a system whereby citizens are re-empowered economically and politically, we're only going to continue down this kind of death spiral.

Look at what Margaret Thatcher did in Britain. The consequences of dismantling the welfare state in Britain. The Postal Service doesn't work. The public transportation, which has been privatized, is a colossal mess. the housing estates where people were able to get housing subsidized or government provided housing was destroyed by Thatcher. I mean, when you look at the kinds of attacks on the social welfare state that were carried out by figures like Thatcher, it made, it created more misery. It did not in any way enhance the social welfare state, which is precisely how you end up with a figure like

Boris Johnson. I wonder if we could transition to the political moment that America is in right now, David, and talk a little bit about how you see this debate between kind of reform an incrementalist constituency within the Democratic Party versus something that's new to our politics, which is a more kind of revolutionary, politically ambitious clique within the Democratic Party that is pushing for much greater social change than its leaders have traditionally our team. take you a little. The media and many political pundits have labels. They place on Senator Bernie and myself. And sometimes we get the same titles.

And one that they like to use is radical. Well, here's the truth. If believing that 500,000 Americans should not be forced into medical bankruptcy every single year is radical, then we're proud to be radical. What do you think is driving that? And do you think it's going to lead to a positive political outcome? Yeah, well, you know, I was at a meeting of Obama and Clinton and some George H.W. Bush administration officials. And one of them said, you know, we used to define the debate left to right.

Now we're sort of irrelevant to the debate. And so if you're in the Obama administration or Clinton administration, you feel the Democratic Party's gone way further left than you. And in the Bush administration, Trump has certainly taken it. I don't know if it's further right, but it's further populist. And so we have seen just this widening of the aperture of American politics. And I think that's in part because we've become such a distrustful society, such a tribal society, that people do what their evolutionary roots tell them to do when the social fabric is decaying around them. They reach for tribe. And politics has become a form of hatred of the other side.

ideologically, Americans are no more polarized than they were 20 or 30 years ago, but emotionally we're much more polarized. It's a politics based on hatred of the other side. And that leads to symbolic politics, something like the Green New Deal. It's not really a platform. It's not really a set of plans. It's a way to say who you are. It's a sort of virtue signaling that I believe in radical change, even though there is no explicit radical change in there because there are no details. It's just a statement of this is who I am. And so I think you're seeing this fragmentation, the polarization, effective polarization, both on the Bernie left and on the Trump right, A, people do feel that they are being left behind in society. B, they blame a they. They tell oppressor, oppress stories, and everything is here in ethnic war or a class war.

And so all the complex problems of society get simplified into pretty simplistic stories, which then have symbolic answers that you can't actually pass because you're unwilling to really work within the political system. One final thing on the Sanders people that has me worried, frankly, is that if you ask voters from all the different Democratic candidates, will you support the Democratic nominee if your candidate loses? For Elizabeth Warren and for all the other candidates, save one, 90% of their supporters say, yeah, of course, I'm going to support the Democrat. For Bernie's people, only 50% say they will support the Democratic candidate. And that's not an idle threat. If you look at 2016 in Michigan and in Pennsylvania and in Wisconsin, Trump's majority in those states was powered by tens of thousands of Sanders supporters who switched from Sanders to Trump.

And so I think one of the things that alarms me about some of the Sanders supporters, not all them, is they don't believe in the institution of a political party, and they don't believe in the Democratic Party. And if you're not willing to work within the institutions, then you become, in my view, a destructive force. Well, because the Democratic Party portrayed them. So in the last book I wrote America, the Farewell Tour, I write a chapter out of Anderson, Indiana, which used to be the center of GM production.

All those GM factories, courtesy of the Democratic Party, Bill Clinton and NAFTA, are now in Monterey, Mexico, or workers make $3 an hour. They didn't just leave the plants idle. They ripped them down. And the city is filled with gigantic, empty, weed choked lots. The stores are boarded up. The churches are boarded up. The opioid crisis is an epidemic.

Suicide is an epidemic. So the old UAW workers who had lost their benefits, their union $25 an hour union jobs, their pension plans and everything else, did support Sanders. But they weren't going to vote for Hillary Clinton. because it was the Democratic Party and the lies the Democratic Party told them that created the economic misery that they now live in. And yes, Trump lies like he breathes. But let's not forget that Clinton and the Democratic Party, through this kind of deindustrialization and offshoring and deregulation and neoliberalism, lied in ways that were far more damaging

to American workers than anything Trump has said. David, do you have, I guess, a thought as to how the Democratic Party can bring these groups, these Sanders voters that you've identified as being somehow fundamentally alienated back into an inclination, a desire to work within the system, as opposed to opting for a revolution? Sure. I mean, I could draw up a list of legislature that I would support, and I think you'd get 60% of America to support. I'd start out with a big infrastructure plan. I'd start out with much more massive investment in human capital, starting from birth or pre-birth to universal daycare, universal child care, much bigger community college program with job training. I would have wage subsidies or movement so that you can get young men who are making $10 an hour. You bump up their earned income tax credit, so they're effectively making $25 an hour, $30 an hour. They suddenly have much more stability in their life.

It's much easier for them to form family lives. I'd give them movement subsidies. So if they wanted to leave a rural part of America, say that where nobody is, where there's just not a lot of investment, they could have a chance to go to Houston, where there's a lot of growth and a lot of investment. And you've got to give them, say, two, five thousand bucks so they can afford to do that. There are eight zillion policies out there that are perfectly within our system. And I will say, I think one of our differences is really how we view capitalism. Nobody can ever give capitalism three cheers because it does involve the sort of, of creative destruction that Chris talks about.

When the railroad industry used to employ millions and millions of people, and very quickly it lost all that. But people learn to adapt and when it's new industries. And the question is why aren't we being able to adapt? I think that's in part because of the movement to an information age economy. It's in part just to the fragmentation of the social worlds of people so they're just disempowered and they can't make the adjustments you would have to make. And so there are plenty ways within our system to do that.

You're listening to the Monk Debates podcast. Be it resolved, politics as usual isn't working. It's time for a revolution. If you like this podcast, make sure to check out our other episodes, including debates on everything from impeachment to social media to Iran. All free to download or stream on our website monkdebates.com. Let's rejoin the debate. in progress. Before we go to closing statements, I just want to touch on one final aspect of this debate,

because it's special to have you both here. You're a Presbyterian minister, Chris. David, you've had your own religious and spiritual journey. Maybe to you, David, first, what does religion say at all about this debate between incremental versus, you know, step change, revolutionary change? is there's something in the religious canon that you think that provides some wisdom about this question of how we should affect change in society? Yeah. Well, I do learn a lot from Catholic social teaching. One of the principles of Catholic social teaching is subsidiarity that change should happen at the lowest possible level. And I do think I go back to that, that it is the organizing of people on the lowest level that changes neighborhoods, then changes regions, then changes. of states and then changes countries and changes worlds. And it's not purely an economic story.

It's a spiritual story. And I do think people feel spiritually unled, spiritually in crisis. And it's a story of giving people a sense of purpose and meaning. Hannah Arendt said that all forms of fanaticism grow from existential anxiety. And I do think you need some sense of purpose and meaning outside of politics and outside of capitalism to give you that meaning. And to me, churches, synagogues, and mosques have always been a necessary ballast to the meritocracy and to capitalism, because capitalism and the state are both based on the model of the selfish individual, either vying for power or vying for money. But we have an altruistic

side of our nature, a relational side of our nature, and a social side of our nature, which has to stand as balance against those things. And faith communities are the plight of our nature. And faith communities are the places where the relational side of our natures get best expressed and get best cultivated. Thank you. There's a very thoughtful interjection, David. Chris, what's your feeling on this? And the extent to which you look to religion and scripture? I think the power of religion, certainly the Judeo-Christian religion, is that it always takes the side of the oppressed against the oppressor. And when you stand fully with the oppressed, you eventually will be treated like the oppressed. And that means embracing social movements that defy the ruling elites, defy the capitalist

oligarchy on behalf of the oppressed. There is a public and a private expression of faith. And to retreat into that private, you know, how is it with me kind of spirituality, which is really narcissism and sever yourself from the public demands of faith is to bastardize faith. is to bastardize faith for me. Well, let's move to closing statements now. I'm going to put two minutes on the clock for each of you. David, I'm going to have you go first if you want to respond to what Chris just said or sum up some of the key points that you think need to be made as we close out this debate. I think our two differences here are first on capitalism and neoliberalism, I'm happy to call it.

And second, on the alternatives to it. We live in a democratic capitalist age. it always has its problems and I spent a lot of my life writing about them. But I will point out that over the last 50 years, democratic capitalism has produced the greatest reduction in human poverty in human history. It has lifted hundreds of millions and billions of people out of poverty. And that was a pure product of capitalism. It has created problems, especially in the American working class, because they now find themselves competing against the middle classes in China and Mexico and elsewhere. And we underreacted to the China shock.

and emptied out more of Middle America than we needed to. And so that was a genuine problem. But it comes at a time when wealth is being created, innovation is being created, the unemployment rate is historically low, wages at the bottom of our society are rising faster than wages at the top of our society. And you have inequality, but it's inequality not within firms,

it's between firms. It's inequality between Google and AOL. It's inequality between, extremely productive firms that are running away and unproductive capitalist firms. That's not capitalist oligarchy. That's competition. And the second and the point I'll end on is just what's the alternative? I just ask that again and again. Democratic capitalism has its flaws and we'd all like to change it. But if we're talking about revolutionary change, which is really the subject to your radical change, then we're really

talking about replacing democratic capitalism with something else. And I just don't see and have not heard of anything and every other alternative that I've seen, whether it's socialism or fascism or anything else strikes me as a complete disaster. Thank you, David, for that closing statement. Chris Hedges, we're going to give you the last word, two minutes on the clock. In essence, it was this neoliberal project that destroyed the society. All the Keynesians were removed in the 80s from the World Bank and everywhere else to promote this, I would call it, revolutionary form of capitalism,

unfettered capitalism that has created the worst social and income in inequality in American history. This is what unfettered capitalism does. And in that process, the mechanisms by which we could ameliorate, affect, change, and reform our society were broken and destroyed. So I embrace this or call for this revolutionary upsurge against central authority with a very heavy and despairing heart. But I think it's these social utopians. these utopian engineers who essentially created the mess, and now we're left to pick up the pieces. Well, Chris, David, you certainly give us a lot to think about. These are difficult and challenging issues.

You've given us a lesson in history, a lesson in religion. And I think most important, of all, a lesson in civility in the ability to have these debates in a reasoned and informed fashion. So I want to thank you both personally for helping us here at the moment. The Monk Debates tried to restore the art of public debate. You both did an exemplary job today. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It's been a real pleasure.

That wraps up today's debate. I want to thank our participants. You certainly gave us a lot to think about on a controversial and important issue. The Monk Debates podcast is a place for civil and substantive debate on the big issues of the day. To listen to more debates on everything from climate change to religion, to geopolitics, to the future. of human progress, visit our website, monkdebates.com. You can also find show notes on today's debate along with a full transcript. Thank you for helping us bring back the art of public debate, one conversation at a time. I'm your moderator, Rudyard Griffiths.

The Monk Debates are produced by Antica Productions and supported by the Monk Foundation. Redyard Griffiths and Ricky Gurwitz are the producers. The president of Antica Productions is Stuart Cox. Be sure to download and subscribe wherever you get your podcast. And if you like us, feel free to give us a five-star rating. Thanks again for listening.