STEVE GRUMBINE:
All right, folks, this is Steve with Macro N Cheese. You know what, Let me
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say something. I have been both on the walking the streets, homeless side, and I
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have sat in graduate school and taking classes to earn a doctorate that I never
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finished. Thank you, divorce. And I have had great jobs where I felt like I
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was king of the hill. And then I have been laid off for extended periods
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of time, wondering when they're going to take my house away. Crawling on the floor,
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looking out the windows to see who's knocking, to see if they're going to issue
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a, you know, "we're going to take your home from you kind of thing." I
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have been on both sides of this. I, you know, grew up where my father
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thought, "you know, son, maybe you should get into asbestos removal because I hear they
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make good money and they have benefits." He didn't mention the fact that they usually
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die young and they have cancer and things like that. But he didn't really have
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high hopes for me because I was a disaster. And a lot of us in
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this country, the United States, are disasters and have bought into the self-made man belief
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that we alone are masters of our universe and that we alone are the reasons
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for our failures. And it's all been beaten into our heads. From an early age,
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from elementary school to the TV shows we watch, to you name it, just about
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every way, shape or form, we have been taught that it's our... We are responsible
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for all of our success and we are responsible for all of our failures. And
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when I was homeless and when I was depressed and when I was thinking about
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taking my own life out of sheer desperation of how in the world can it
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ever get better, you know, I was reminded of the American dream, that anybody can
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make it here, that anybody can do this stuff. And for years, as I was
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getting my MBA, I thought, maybe there's some truth in this. Had kind of bought
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into what turns out to be a ginormous lie. Sure. There's a little bit of
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a lottery to this. Sure, every once in a while, someone breaks through and screws
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up the sauce for everyone else to say, "see, I made it so everyone else
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can." Sort of like the weird idea that when Barack Obama got elected that, well,
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"hey, look, anyone can become president. Look!" All these lies that we buy into have
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really informed our politics. They've informed our worldview, they've informed the way we treat one
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another. We see those with lots as gods, as the immortals of society, the demigods,
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the Hercules, the people that are the makers. You know, after all, the rest of
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us are just takers. The Ayn Randian belief system that has permeated society and it
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just became such a puss-ey cesspool of lies. Just a big ginormous cyst on life
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that just shed that nonsense. I realized that society is made up of a lot
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of different things, but one thing it is not made up of is the self-made
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man. The self-made man is a lie that we have taught people to keep them
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from complaining, to keep them from whining, to keep them from asking for better from
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their government, to keep them from asking for better from their employer, to keep them
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from asking for better in life. Just to "you can do it if you just
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put your mind to it." Hard work, you name it. And as I'm sitting here
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grousing about this in my social media life, in my activist life, in my life,
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trying to research these things for this podcast and for our nonprofit, lo and behold,
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my good friend Steve Hall. ProfHall1955 on X to be exact. But he's much more
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than that. He's an author, you name it. And let me just tell you a
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little bit about him in a moment, but I want to read a quote that
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he put out on Twitter, X whatever you want to call it. The other oligarch
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platform. He said, "You know, with the new oligarchs running things, we're swamped with irritating
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rags-to-riches American dream propaganda. Here's a WC Fields story I used to tell the students
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back in the day when most of them had heard of him. A young feature
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writer gets a scoop interview with Fields. 'When did you come to town?' She asks.
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'Many years ago, my dear,' he replies. 'What did you bring with you?' 'All I
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had was a pole in a bag tied on the end.' 'Incredible.' She gushes. 'And
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now you're a big movie star. You own your own movie company, six hotels, a
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department store, and this big house, Mr. Fields? You're the embodiment of the American dream.'
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And he says, 'that's right, my dear,' he replies. She asks some more questions, thanks
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him profusely gets up to leave. 'Just before I go,' she says, 'what did you
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have in the bag on the pole?' 'Three quarters of a million dollars,' he replies,
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and the rest is history." And that, my friends, is what brings my guest, Steve
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Hall to this podcast. And for those of you who don't know Steve Hall, Steve
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Hall is a professor emeritus of criminology, worked at the universities of Teesside and Northumbria
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and Durham. He's a polymath who has published in fields of criminology, sociology, anthropology, history,
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economic history, political theory, and philosophy. And I could go on and on and on.
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He was the author of The Death of the Left with his co-author Simon Winlow.
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And let me just say, beyond that, he has become a dear friend and somebody
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who I rely on very often to help me understand things that are just a
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little bit baffling to me. And so that's why I'm bringing him on today. Hopefully
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our conversation helps you all see the things for what they are. And this also,
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and I didn't fully understand this before I set this podcast interview up, but this
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apparently delves deeply into his research as well. So I can't wait to hear more
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from Steve. And so with that, going forward, I'm not going to call him Professor
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Stephen Hall. I'm going to call him Steve. And I'm Steve. So you're being bombarded
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by Steve's today, it's the Steve Show. Welcome to the show, Steve Hall.
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STEVE HALL:
Hi, Steven. Thanks for inviting me yet again.
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
Absolutely. But I so appreciate you. You're not one to sugarcoat things and I like
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the way you get to the point. We don't agree on everything, but we agree
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on damn near an awful lot. And I find your insights and wisdom to be
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absolutely refreshing. You heard the WC Fields story that I quoted from your tweet. Why
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don't you lay that out to start with and then we can go deeper.
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STEVE HALL:
Sure. Well, I can do my best. It's a hugely complex cultural process
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that a few people have written about in the past and quite insightful
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ways. We're talking about what CB McPherson called... this is an old guy
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from back in the day before postmodernism and post structuralism told us that
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the fragmented world is better than the old world coherent worlds we left
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behind when McPherson coined the term "possessive individualism." It's this notion that the
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individual is him or herself. No one else can influence this pristinely independent,
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rational individual in total possession of their own faculties, their own visions, their
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own dreams, and responsible for everything good that happens to them themselves. They've
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done it all. They've done everything themselves they did with the minimum of
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help, maybe a good parent and a couple of good teachers who influenced
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them and imparted a little bit of wisdom here and there, but basically
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everything is good that's happened, they've done themselves. It's the same. It's John
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Galt's character, the entrepreneur responsible for everything good in the world. It's this
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ambitious and possessive individual. So this is the myth that we've been brought
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up, particularly in Britain and America. Perhaps less so on the continent, certainly
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less so in the East. Many cultures in the East have a far
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more collectivist approach. And we read that collectivism, don't we, as authoritarian or
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totalitarian, because we don't like to see large numbers of people doing things
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in a coordinated, coherent way, helping each other too much. Because that belies
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our belief in this incredibly self sufficient and independent individual. And the history
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of this is fascinating and it's about a belief in ourselves. And I
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think the one way we talk about heterodox economic positions, which I know
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we agree are of such vital importance if we're going to transcend a
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neoliberal order that is starting to collapse and cause an awful lot of
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misery and damage. And we're talking about potential world war, we're talking about
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dereliction of specific areas in Britain and America. We've, you know, the deindustrialization
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process is left behind, areas of the completely derelict and poverty and all
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the rest of it. We know these things that are happening. We know
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that this is real. It's not some left wing ideology. This is reality
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for many people and these positions are incredibly hard. But we can't get
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people to believe in them. And the fact that neoliberalism itself is a
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belief system is something that I've heard said from many heterodox economists. They
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know it's a belief system, but what is that belief and where did
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it start? How deeply is it entrenched in each individual? And how do
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we start to prise it out of individuals who believe in themselves so
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fervently and so deeply?
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
So let me ask you something, Steve. Within this space, what do you
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suppose is making this push to the rugged individualist become like not just
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the backstory, but like the fore story? This is the front story now.
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This is the be all, end all. How did we get here?
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STEVE HALL:
It's a long and fascinating story. Part of my research, we explored neoliberal capitalism from
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the viewpoint of criminologists. That was a very revealing viewpoint because he could argue that
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an awful lot of the financial activity that goes on in elite circles behind closed
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doors, the media make excuses for them. But a lot of that is criminal or
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zemiological as we call it, harmful. And maybe some of it should be criminalized. You
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remember when the Icelanders put some of these bankers in jail short selling all this. We
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should criminalize. This is, you know, something that we've thought about for quite a long
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time. So we approached it from that. And what we found was an economists at
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Cambridge at the moment and psychologists are working together on this notion called the zero
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sum mindset. It's a sort of the worst side of the prisoners, the old prisoners
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dilemma metaphor where you basically think the worst of everyone, but everyone out there is
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going to do their worst, so you better do your worst as well. And then
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we end up in a zero sum game. And they're exploring this as the culmination
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of the cultural processes that have been operating over the last 40 to 50 years.
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I'm old enough to remember a different world, a world where individualism was still quite
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prevalent. It was still people like to believe they're individuals, are hard workers, but there
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was just more of a collective spirit as well. There was a balance in the
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old Keynesian era. And I'm not saying that Keynes's ideas will lead us to nirvana.
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They won't. We know that. We know we need something a lot firmer than Keynesianism.
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This is what both Keynesians and MMT people are talking about. But I remember a
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different spirit. There was a balance of collectivism and individualism and that's been lost. The
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idea that the collective is a support system, it's a system of influence, it's a
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system of democracy. And that the idea of a subsidiary democracy system. I know you've
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spoken about that in the program before, which is something I find quite appealing. I
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can't remember the guy's name. I think it was Michael. [He] wrote a book on
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subsidiary democracy which I found very, very useful. We can't reconcile these ideas with this
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spirit of individualism they have now. The problem is that this goes back a lot
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longer than Ayn Rand and a lot longer than anyone really thinks. But we've traced
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it back. It was a bit of a grim journey realizing how old this is
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and how deeply entrenched it is in our culture. Now I can take you through
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that process if you want. It'll take me a few minutes, but I can do
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that if you want.
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
I think we should go through it because we spoke a little bit about this
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offline and I know that there are some elements of this that maybe don't hold
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water, but the concept of cultural hegemony creating the concept of commonsense, this is all
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just common sense. This is just the way it is. And so forth, has permeated
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society through all means of, whether it be institutions, whether it be sitcoms, whether it
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be the churches, whether it be whatever. These things creep into our life in every
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way, like water finding cracks in the dam. And we all just assume these things
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are just true, they're just the way it is.
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STEVE HALL:
We do. We certainly do. And [Italian communist Antonio] Gramsci gave us some
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very, very illuminating insights into this process. But I think why you went
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slightly wrong was to suggest that this is imposed from the top. And
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it is. You see this in the mass media. You have this ownership
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and control debate we've had in social sciences for decades now, who owns
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the mass media which they are pushing this idea into people's heads all
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the time. But the problem is it's already there. It's already there in
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the nervous systems, in the neurological systems of individuals, in their souls. Thatcher
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said she would change the soul of Britain. Well, that was her ambition.
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And to some extent she succeeded because she turned Britain from a balance
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of collectivism and individualism into a really hard nosed individualist society from the
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1980s. That belief and that emotional attachment to individualism has been there for
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a very, very long time. A philosopher, Larry Seidentop, located in Christianity itself.
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Of the three revealed religions, Christianity is the most, or will lead us
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to the most individualistic worldview, which it also did during the Protestant Reformation.
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Max Weber, of course, the sociologist, famously called this methodological individualism. And that
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juncture in history, I'm simplifying this a lot, but what happened basically was
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that God was relocated from the heavens. His word passed down through the
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institutions of the Catholic Church, relocated from there into the individual. God was
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inside each individual. And that idea has been there since the beginning of
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Christianity. They thought the Protestants, they were returning to the roots of Christianity,
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primitive Christianity, et cetera, returning to its roots. But what happened, I think
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well before that, and I'm going back to the 11th century, I think
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this started in England and it caught on in America because America was
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largely English after the invasion of America by the Europeans. Yes, English culture
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was a very strong. When the Native Americans were illegally and immorally relieved
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of their land. And I think that was an awful period in history.
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But the English culture was the dominant form. And that's obvious because it
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adopted the English language, not German or Swedish or French. What happened in
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English culture, I think is quite fascinating. And I have a term for
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this, which I call the pseudo pacification process, and that England, and eventually
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Europe and America, because England was the first industrial revolution, spread through Scotland.
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Wales involved as well, of course, on the Northern Ireland, eventually, after the
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Ulster settlements. England was the root of this individualist culture. What happened in
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the 12th century was that the law of primogeniture, which had been restricted
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to the aristocracy, the upper classes in Europe, was spread throughout the social
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structure. Now, primogeniture means the firstborn son inherits the land and the estate
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of the parents, doesn't it? And it's prevalent in some of the parts
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of Africa as well. But look at the extended wars in England. What
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happened then was that the sons and daughters of the parents of the
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landowners, or sons and daughters even of the tenant farmers and of the
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peasants, had to strike a very, very subservient relationships with their parents in
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order to get their inheritance. But by guaranteeing that to the firstborn meant
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that it split up the family unit. The family unit had, throughout what
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we call, loosely, the Dark Ages, since the, you know, the decline of
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the Roman Empire, through that Carolingian period, all the way through into the
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12th and 13th centuries. That period, the family unit became the principal economic
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and defensive unit. Families are both of the upper class of the estates
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and also peasants in their own tenant farms. So primogeniture split that collective
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because siblings became rivals and they stopped trusting each other, and they tried
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to curry their parents favors. They would even sometimes arrange the death of
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older siblings so that they could inherit. But most of them decided that
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the family unit was no longer for them. And we got this huge
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urbanization process. So in England, we get these market towns springing up. We
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also have changes in agriculture. The domain system starts to fall apart. We
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have technological progress. All this stuff the Marxists talk about is correct. But
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underneath this, we have this splitting up of the family collective into rival
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individuals in a way that was exciting, but at the same time worrying
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and quite difficult. Moving out in what we call the urbanization process towards
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these. Into these market towns and trying to make it on their own.
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The American dream was born in the fields and market towns of Europe
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in the 11th and 12th centuries.
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
Wow, that's a bit of history there, isn't it? This is ingrained quite deeply.
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STEVE HALL:
Well, it's been a long, long time, Steve, and we should not underestimate
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how deeply this is ingrained. At the same time, we shouldn't turn to
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despondence. We shouldn't become despondent about this and start thinking that we can't
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change it because the culture was changed there and the culture will one
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day change again. I've spoken to a few Chinese academics, a few Russians,
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Iranians and from more collectivist cultures and they simply don't understand this degree
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of individualism. They don't understand it. Some of them, people like [Russian expatriate
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chessmaster Garry] Kasparov and people like this are beckonels, renegades against the Russian culture
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who become highly individualist. It's highly seductive because it promises freedom, it promises
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riches, it promises opportunities, it promises all of these things that collectivist culture
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can some extent repress. It's seen as a great leap for freedom, an
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exciting part of the journey. But it's almost like a sort of teenager,
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isn't it? Looking to leave the family branch out, experiencing things for the
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first time and getting really excited about it. But the problem is you're
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supposed to grow out of this initial excitement. You're not supposed to retain
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it for the rest of your life. And to see 50, 60, 70
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year-old Brits and Americans talk about this culture in the same excitable teenage
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turn. You see this with the likes of [oligarch Peter] Thiel, don't you?
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STEVE HALL:
And these tech oligarchs are excitable teenagers. And this is because of course
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that there's no external culture restraining or altering or modifying these teenage dreams.
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And that I find rather scary.
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
You know, one of the things that's really been driving me insane. I'll just be
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just a regular working class bloke for a minute, talking about my interactions with regular
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people, not some hoi polloi, high end thought process. But I've got friends who got
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a tip on a stock, they managed to get out of the military just in
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time to get a million dollar handout. Here you go. Or their mother or father
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died and handed them a bunch of money, whatever. At the end of the day
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though, they believe this is their doing, they are good and that anybody can do
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this. So there's this idea of born on third [base], thinking they hit a triple
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and the unfortunate fact is that it doesn't hold up. When people try to live
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out that dream, etc, they come crashing down to reality that all they did was
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get a ton of student debt that they're going to have to pay the rest
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of their life. They bought more house thinking that the house was going to be
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their nest egg, only to find out that taxes and other, you know, slights of
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hand with fees from banks and fees from brokers and so on and so forth,
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have taken almost all the equity when they do sell, or you know, to be
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able to replace it. They bottom line is that there's this weird belief that anybody
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can do this because look at me. And the reality though is that they were
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gifted it, they were given it. They are an anomaly. They are not the standard
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bearer. And their politics and everything else stems from, "You're not taking from me. Don't
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you dare think you're taking from me my hard earned tax dollar or I worked
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hard on Friday night. You should have to work hard too. How dare you not pay
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
your... You know, it's this weird kind of I want you to suffer, but anybody
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can do this, but I want you to suffer because you're not going to take
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from me. It's all mine. But in reality, it was given to them. They were
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born into it. I'm curious, is that go back to the old English law there
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
of the firstborn son? I mean, where does this come from?
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STEVE HALL:
I think it does because we've used this notion that we call aristophilia. You know,
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F. Scott the general explored this beautifully, didn't he, in American culture and Thorsten Veblen
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and talked about the leisure class. We like to believe that we're one step away
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from aristocracy and that lifestyle is available to all of us. It's fallacy, of course,
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because of course we can't all live those lifestyles and that amount of land and
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it would require an infinite earth. It's a crazy dream. But that aristophilia is what
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drives people forward. But when you think about and what you're talking about is that
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most people fail. You look at the actual figures of Americans earning a good living
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STEVE HALL:
from investment. For us, our figures are quite small. You look at American pensioners who
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STEVE HALL:
are benefiting from a very good private pension that Larry [Fink] and his pals at
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STEVE HALL:
Blackrock look after and best all over. That's quite small. In fact, an awful lot
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of pensioners in America have one thing... Social Security. I don't have the figures to
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hand, but it's a greater amount of that sort of condition. So despite the failures
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STEVE HALL:
and despite watching everyone else fail around them and seeing lots of failures, they like
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STEVE HALL:
to focus on the winners. The winners could be winning today. The inheritance of people
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STEVE HALL:
who are carrying forward inheritance. Well, they just say, "well, we won in the past,
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at some point our ancestors won and we are benefiting from that. So do the
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STEVE HALL:
same for your family." When I talk to Americans, I say, "I'm doing this for
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STEVE HALL:
my family." So they're setting up a dynasty, you know, the setting of an inheritance
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STEVE HALL:
process moving forward. So you have to ask yourself this belief is so strong, it's
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STEVE HALL:
so emotionally internalized, emotionally entrenched. Well, what's the analogy here? What sort of person sees
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STEVE HALL:
failure, keeps on failing, see other people failing, and really only the occasion of person
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STEVE HALL:
winning, but yet keeps on believing and keeps on going. Who are we talking about
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STEVE HALL:
here? We're talking about the gambler [Yeah] and my team. I have a wonderful research
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STEVE HALL:
team. I'm retired now and they're taking over. They're much better than me, these younger
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STEVE HALL:
people like Tom Raymond, Emma Arms, Simon Winlow, of course. And these people are fabulous.
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STEVE HALL:
Social researchers, polymaths, philosophers, historians, everything. We encourage this multilateral, this interdisciplinary approach in our
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STEVE HALL:
team. And they've been looking at gambling and they see the zero-sum mentality, they see
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STEVE HALL:
history, they see the cultural mores that we're used to. All apparent and all in
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STEVE HALL:
glorious detail in the gambler. [economist John Maynard] Keynes talked about animal spirits, didn't he?
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STEVE HALL:
We were only talking about the speculation that fueled the Wall Street crash in 1929.
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STEVE HALL:
He coined this wonderful term. Keynes was probably, and I'll say this, it'll annoy a
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lot of people, but of the time, probably the only economist worth reading because he
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STEVE HALL:
understood not just the mathematics, the system dynamics, but he understood human beings. He read
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STEVE HALL:
as much Shakespeare and Goethe as he did assembling mathematical models. And this is what
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STEVE HALL:
we've got to get to. We've got to find ways of communicating with individuals to
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STEVE HALL:
move them out of the gambling, zero-sum mindset into an approach in which more people
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STEVE HALL:
win and eventually where we can all be winners. Go on.
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
It's funny you say that because we are in the US and I don't
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
know how similar or dissimilar this is from the UK and elsewhere, but we
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
have got lotto machines, so we've got all kinds of lotteries going on constantly
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
here. There's gambling on everything from sports gambling to anything. Anything that you can
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
put a wager or a parlay on, there's gambling going on. Because the way
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
that we've been told, hard work and so forth doesn't get you anywhere. It
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literally keeps you trapped at the bottom. The only way to break through is
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
hopefully win some million-to-one odd and somehow or another break through this fantasy land.
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
But you nailed it with the gambling. This is why cryptocurrencies and things like
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
that are so exciting to people. The idea that I can go ahead and
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
place a bet and my bet will pay off in spades and I will
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
suddenly be on the other side of the ledger living the good life.
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STEVE HALL:
But let's be honest, you know, gambling and hard work are by no means incommensurate.
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STEVE HALL:
If you look at the products and work ethic and you look at investment, which
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is a gamble, because you know most of these investors are so risk averse now,
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STEVE HALL:
they won't take risks and they rather buy up an asset strip rather than taking
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STEVE HALL:
risks in industry, et cetera. You look at the two things, they go together. When
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STEVE HALL:
the gambler runs out of chips in the casino, what does the casino owner go?
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STEVE HALL:
"Right, you run out of chips. Now go away and work and bring some more."
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STEVE HALL:
This link, this is the circular process. I must work hard, I must work hard,
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STEVE HALL:
then I must invest. This was enshrined in Protestantism, this idea of working, saving, investing,
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STEVE HALL:
taking risks. And it's the mentality of the, let's call it the worker/gambler hybrid. And
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STEVE HALL:
the two things go together. So, I mean, I've known, you know, actual gambling addicts
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STEVE HALL:
who were some of the most hard working tradesmen I've ever come across and very,
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STEVE HALL:
very capable. Unfortunately, I had one working on my house a few years ago. He
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STEVE HALL:
used to disappear and I used to say, "you think I don't know where you're
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STEVE HALL:
going, don't you?" He said, "oh, you got me worked out, have you?" I said,
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STEVE HALL:
"yeah, but I'm not going to tell you how much I have you worked out."
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STEVE HALL:
Got him coming back because I'm sure he was interested in hearing what I said
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STEVE HALL:
about what I'd worked out about him as he was in finishing off my house.
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STEVE HALL:
So that kept him coming back. Sometimes he would come back with a huge squad
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STEVE HALL:
of guys that he's paid from his winnings and do two months work in a
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STEVE HALL:
week, you know what I mean? And then he would disappear for a week and
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STEVE HALL:
then come back. It was an interesting psychological game of cat and mouse, which I
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STEVE HALL:
eventually won, I won't tell you how, and got some superb work done on the
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STEVE HALL:
house. Probably a little bit less than what I would have paid another firm, but
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STEVE HALL:
it was gambling. It was this huge idea that all of a sudden there will
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STEVE HALL:
be a windfall. I work hard, I'll accumulate money, then I'll gamble it on something
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STEVE HALL:
that will simply, like Elon Musk's rocket, send me off to another place where I'm
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STEVE HALL:
going to be a member of Veblen's Leisure class.
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STEVE HALL:
I remember talking to a guy. We used to do this horrible thing called art texting when
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STEVE HALL:
I was a young man and I was actually a musician, but I used to do odd
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STEVE HALL:
jobs during the day, make a little bit more money. And I said, you know, driving along
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STEVE HALL:
in his knackered old van towards the next job, this art text is where you put this
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STEVE HALL:
sort of plaster up on the ceiling and you stipple it with this brush. And it looked
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STEVE HALL:
absolutely horrible when that fashion died quickly. And I remember I said, "what's your ambition?" And I
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STEVE HALL:
said, "what do you want to do?" He said, "absolutely nothing." He said, "I want to put
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STEVE HALL:
myself in a position where I don't have to rely on work, I don't have to rely
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STEVE HALL:
on anyone else. I'm totally on my own. I have my own finances, I have my own
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STEVE HALL:
means, and I'll go where I want and I'll live a life of..." I've met some of
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STEVE HALL:
the people as I grew older who had made it. I met them in France and Spain,
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STEVE HALL:
and they were all drunks. They were living on their own or with their partners. They were
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STEVE HALL:
meeting some people occasionally, but they said they were living very isolated lives as expats in Gibraltar
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STEVE HALL:
and Spain and transit places, you know, warmer places than you. Warmer than you know. Well, it's
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STEVE HALL:
not difficult to find somewhere warmer than north of England, I'll be honest. And they thought they'd
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STEVE HALL:
made it by becoming more isolated. Well, you can trace this back to the 12th century, where
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STEVE HALL:
by becoming isolated was the route to success. Becoming an isolated individual willing to work hard and
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STEVE HALL:
willing to take risks and gamble was the way that you would create your own space outside
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STEVE HALL:
of this disintegrated space of the family and the community. The family and the community were systematically
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STEVE HALL:
disintegrated by the introduction of these new laws of primogeniture and to some extent to enable the
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STEVE HALL:
company in law as well. So this again, very old culture. You can see in the English,
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STEVE HALL:
in the way they dress and the way they live the urban... You can see this in
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STEVE HALL:
seaboard Americans as well, can't you? In New York, in Boston, places like this, they love this
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STEVE HALL:
urban environment. They think that they're so superior, they've made it into the urban way. They can
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STEVE HALL:
use their wits and their intellect and they can use their little connections that they meet in
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STEVE HALL:
the bar every night and might occasionally have sex and then, you know, go home and live
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STEVE HALL:
these sort of isolated lives, and then they find someone, they raise a family, but the family
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STEVE HALL:
lives in a fairly isolated life, and they see each other as competitors. And that is our
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STEVE HALL:
culture. Began in England, I think. I haven't explored other parts of Europe. I think that the
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STEVE HALL:
Swedes actually adopted Protestantism a few years before the English. That's something that people do tend to
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STEVE HALL:
forget, and I think it's quite common in Nordic culture as well. This sort of mentality. I
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STEVE HALL:
think if you look at the Nordic seafarers, the famous Vikings, going out and adventuring and making
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STEVE HALL:
your own way, life was part of that culture, too. I'd like to look at that more,
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STEVE HALL:
but I don't have time. Still, looking at the English and American cultures keeps me busy. But
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STEVE HALL:
the point I'm trying to make is this. I'm rambling on about history and everything and probably
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STEVE HALL:
boring people to death, but the point I'm making is this is so deeply entrenched that what
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STEVE HALL:
we must offer is a total narrative of difference, and we have to be positive about it.
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STEVE HALL:
We can create a much better world for everyone by adopting certain specific economic policies, and that's
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STEVE HALL:
the base of it. I still agree with the Marxists that the economy is the basis of
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STEVE HALL:
societies, and we can do this as collective units. We don't have to live in each other's
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STEVE HALL:
pockets and live in a commune or something. Particularly smelly places. I remember them from the 1970s.
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STEVE HALL:
We don't have to live in communes, but we have to have a collective spirit, a civic
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STEVE HALL:
spirit. And you see that in some parts of America. You see that mainly away from the
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STEVE HALL:
cities, in the more rural towns. You see, I think it's based on the wrong premises, the
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STEVE HALL:
wrong traditions, but that collective spirit can emerge, and I can have a beautiful existence for a
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STEVE HALL:
while before it simply fades away and could come together. The miners in Northeast England, particularly on
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STEVE HALL:
the Durham Cove field where I was brought up, had this incredible collective spirit of looking after
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STEVE HALL:
each other because they faced danger underground every day, and they relied on each other, and that
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STEVE HALL:
lasted best part of a century. It was a wonderful thing to behold. It's a wonderful thing
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STEVE HALL:
to grow up in. They didn't have any idea of superiority, even if the one guy might
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STEVE HALL:
be a, you know, shift manager or a foreman, the other guy might be an ordinary worker,
400
00:35:05,001 --> 00:35:10,000
STEVE HALL:
but they depended on each other. The ordinary worker could save the life of the shift manager
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00:35:10,001 --> 00:35:16,000
STEVE HALL:
underground, yeah?
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
Yeah. One of the things that you brought up a minute ago, which
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
is just bouncing around in my head like a ping pong ball is
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00:35:26,001 --> 00:35:31,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
the idea that we see each other as competitors, as opposed to collaborators
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00:35:31,001 --> 00:35:36,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
or friends or comrades, really genuine camaraderie. We see one another as competitors.
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
And in that space, if you see someone as a competitor, your goal
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
is to win, because winning is everything. And there's books written on this
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
everywhere. And I gotta tell you, I love sports. I watch football, hockey,
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
baseball, soccer, anything. If there's a way of competing, I enjoy watching it.
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
But there is an element there where that mindset, while it can certainly
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
bring out the best in us in sense that it makes us hone
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
our skills and focus our talents and so forth, it also alienates and
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
it also divides and it also creates a spirit of rugged individualism that
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
leaves some okay and tramples most. And I think to myself, you know
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
how you and I really came together and since we met, really surrounded
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
ourselves with heterodox economic minds. And for me it was largely the modern
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
monetary theory community. But within that space though, the concept of getting people
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
to, quote, unquote, "wake up," to smell the coffee, to understand the economics,
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
that their self defeating ideas here are wrong and they're rooted in a
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
false self, a false consciousness, a false, you know, fake news. And so
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
I've talked about this in various interviews and I would like to really
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
dig in heavily with you because of your research. But the idea that
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
we're gonna win people over with facts, the facts will win the day.
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
I am somebody driven to know the truth, but most people are driven
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
by feels and vibes and beliefs. And it's this... They don't have to
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00:37:16,001 --> 00:37:21,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
be real, they don't have to do anything. They could be completely bullshit,
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00:37:21,001 --> 00:37:26,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
but they have these beliefs. And those beliefs we're not fighting. I, I
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
have one friend who particularly fights with me constantly about the idea that,
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00:37:31,001 --> 00:37:36,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
you know, they believe we just have to educate. And I believe that
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00:37:36,001 --> 00:37:41,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
there's an awakening that has to occur. The awakening is the dissolution of
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
beliefs, or at least overcoming the beliefs to get to the other side
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00:37:46,001 --> 00:37:52,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
somehow.
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00:37:52,001 --> 00:37:54,000
STEVE HALL:
Absolutely.
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00:37:54,001 --> 00:37:57,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
And it's like the alarm clock. So what are your thoughts on that?
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STEVE HALL:
Well, we've researched this in another aspect in the dimension, if you like, of our
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00:38:02,001 --> 00:38:07,000
STEVE HALL:
research in neuropsychology and neuropsycho-analysis, which this thing exists in the sense that individuals adopt
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00:38:07,001 --> 00:38:12,000
STEVE HALL:
belief systems, internalize belief systems, but also become part of the belief system themselves. They
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00:38:12,001 --> 00:38:17,000
STEVE HALL:
become active reproducers of the belief systems when those beliefs answer a number of primary
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00:38:17,001 --> 00:38:23,000
STEVE HALL:
questions. Now this gets very, very deep. We've done an awful lot of research. You
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00:38:23,001 --> 00:38:28,000
STEVE HALL:
can read about it in our latest criminology book, Revitalizing Criminological Theory: Advances in Ultra-Realism.
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00:38:28,001 --> 00:38:33,000
STEVE HALL:
We call our position realism. The bottom of the psyche is what we call the
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00:38:33,001 --> 00:38:38,000
STEVE HALL:
molecular question. That every organism, even viruses, which are effectively dead, they're a little bit
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00:38:38,001 --> 00:38:43,000
STEVE HALL:
like some of the White House staff, are effectively dead. And yet the molecular question
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00:38:43,001 --> 00:38:49,000
STEVE HALL:
still exists. The molecular question is to stay or go. It's the old punk song,
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00:38:49,001 --> 00:38:54,000
STEVE HALL:
shall I stay in this environment or move to another one? That is at the
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00:38:54,001 --> 00:38:59,000
STEVE HALL:
deepest level. And we think. I wouldn't like to... I wouldn't like to assert this
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00:38:59,001 --> 00:39:04,000
STEVE HALL:
as a fact that we think we're exploring the idea that metaphysics itself and the
448
00:39:04,001 --> 00:39:09,000
STEVE HALL:
whole metaphysical universe of religion and secular philosophy and everything, the demand for metaphysics is,
449
00:39:09,001 --> 00:39:15,000
STEVE HALL:
that's how deep it is. That's where it comes from. The molecular. What we call
450
00:39:15,001 --> 00:39:20,000
STEVE HALL:
the molecular question. Should we stay with this system, stay in this place? Or should
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00:39:20,001 --> 00:39:25,000
STEVE HALL:
we go somewhere else? Or should we try something that might be better? And we
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00:39:25,001 --> 00:39:30,000
STEVE HALL:
also think that the notion of suffering is very... You mentioned suffering before, and the
453
00:39:30,001 --> 00:39:35,000
STEVE HALL:
notion of suffering is central to this question. How it's answered, how it's approached. How
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00:39:35,001 --> 00:39:41,000
STEVE HALL:
much will we suffer if we stay? Will we suffer if we move? Will we
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00:39:41,001 --> 00:39:46,000
STEVE HALL:
suffer more? And you know that the right wingers have this technique where they'll always
456
00:39:46,001 --> 00:39:51,000
STEVE HALL:
convince the majority that they'll suffer more if they move to another system, that this
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00:39:51,001 --> 00:39:56,000
STEVE HALL:
is the least worst. I remember Churchill when he said, "yeah, this system we have,
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00:39:56,001 --> 00:40:01,000
STEVE HALL:
democracy is a terrible system, apart from all the others, which are even worse." This
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00:40:01,001 --> 00:40:07,000
STEVE HALL:
least worse thinking is absolutely endemic in American culture. It was, you know, Fukuyama's notion
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00:40:07,001 --> 00:40:12,000
STEVE HALL:
of the end of history and the movie. This is as good as it gets,
461
00:40:12,001 --> 00:40:17,000
STEVE HALL:
remember? Yeah, this isn't great. This isn't great, but it's better than anything else. It's
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00:40:17,001 --> 00:40:22,000
STEVE HALL:
better than socialism, communism, authoritarianism, and all of the nasty things that, you know, the
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00:40:22,001 --> 00:40:27,000
STEVE HALL:
connotations that Americans are taught. Other systems are bad. This one's not great, but it's
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00:40:27,001 --> 00:40:33,000
STEVE HALL:
workable and we can improve on it, and we can keep improving it. So this
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00:40:33,001 --> 00:40:38,000
STEVE HALL:
idea of staying against that, it's always delayed by saying, "you'll suffer more if you
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00:40:38,001 --> 00:40:43,000
STEVE HALL:
move." And then you say, "well, how much will we suffer? How long will we
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00:40:43,001 --> 00:40:48,000
STEVE HALL:
suffer? What will it take?" You can see the original Pilgrim fathers and the original
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00:40:48,001 --> 00:40:54,000
STEVE HALL:
immigrants to America who didn't realize how much they were going to suffer. They were
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STEVE HALL:
dropping dead of illnesses and they were being attacked by natives. Quite rightly, of course,
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00:40:59,001 --> 00:41:04,000
STEVE HALL:
encountering wild animals and food shortages and all sorts. They didn't know how much they
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00:41:04,001 --> 00:41:09,000
STEVE HALL:
were going to suffer, so they just moved. And then they thought about the suffering
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00:41:09,001 --> 00:41:14,000
STEVE HALL:
later. But writing ideology works by constantly reminding us of how much we're going to
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00:41:14,001 --> 00:41:20,000
STEVE HALL:
suffer if we make any moves. And most times in the past where we actually
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00:41:20,001 --> 00:41:25,000
STEVE HALL:
alleviated suffering. Roosevelt, for instance, 1933, I probably reminded you about this before, but he
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00:41:25,001 --> 00:41:30,000
STEVE HALL:
cut the murder rate in half in four years, the homicide rate in the US
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00:41:30,001 --> 00:41:35,000
STEVE HALL:
simply by getting people back to work. Criminal gangs legalizing alcohol again. And it cut
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00:41:35,001 --> 00:41:40,000
STEVE HALL:
this gang membership down. People stopped murdering each other. People got back to work and
478
00:41:40,001 --> 00:41:46,000
STEVE HALL:
had better things to do. And the murder rate was cut down from around about
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00:41:46,001 --> 00:41:51,000
STEVE HALL:
ten and a half per 100,000 to four and a half per 100,000 those four
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00:41:51,001 --> 00:41:56,000
STEVE HALL:
years, 1933 to 1937. So he made things better, and we've got to convince people
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00:41:56,001 --> 00:42:01,000
STEVE HALL:
that these things can be a lot better for a larger number of people. As
482
00:42:01,001 --> 00:42:06,000
STEVE HALL:
a classic English democratic socialist of the Benite tradition, I think we can make things
483
00:42:06,001 --> 00:42:12,000
STEVE HALL:
better for everyone. We might not equalize society. And, you know, if you invent something
484
00:42:12,001 --> 00:42:17,000
STEVE HALL:
and sell it on the market and loads of people want to buy it, what
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00:42:17,001 --> 00:42:22,000
STEVE HALL:
are you going to get rich? Well, I don't really care about that. If it's
486
00:42:22,001 --> 00:42:27,000
STEVE HALL:
an item that really helps people and makes their lives better, I don't really care
487
00:42:27,001 --> 00:42:32,000
STEVE HALL:
about. I do object to gamblers, financiers getting rich simply by gambling their money and
488
00:42:32,001 --> 00:42:38,000
STEVE HALL:
other people's money, I do object to that. But productive work, I don't object to.
489
00:42:38,001 --> 00:42:43,000
STEVE HALL:
So I'm not a communist, I'm a democratic socialist. Believe in a mixed economy, the
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00:42:43,001 --> 00:42:48,000
STEVE HALL:
sort of economy that's being very, very successful in China at the moment. And, but
491
00:42:48,001 --> 00:42:53,000
STEVE HALL:
I think we could persuade people that that's possible only at the emotional level. It's
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00:42:53,001 --> 00:42:58,000
STEVE HALL:
no good throwing factoids at people. I don't think we should stop thinking about economic
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00:42:58,001 --> 00:43:04,000
STEVE HALL:
modeling and stop thinking about the dynamics and how that we might express them mathematically,
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00:43:04,001 --> 00:43:09,000
STEVE HALL:
for instance. And I think that's still important. But I don't think that should be
495
00:43:09,001 --> 00:43:14,000
STEVE HALL:
at the forefront of our narrative and the forefront of our discourse. We need an
496
00:43:14,001 --> 00:43:19,000
STEVE HALL:
emotional story. We need emotional narrative about how we could make things better and how
497
00:43:19,001 --> 00:43:24,000
STEVE HALL:
the state is not necessarily this inefficient monstrosity weighing down on people's individual ambitions. And,
498
00:43:24,001 --> 00:43:30,000
STEVE HALL:
you know, quoting Mariana Mazzucato, you know, the [Italian-] British economist who wrote extensively about
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00:43:30,001 --> 00:43:35,000
STEVE HALL:
the entrepreneurial state, the state that can be an entrepreneurial enabler in the sense of
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00:43:35,001 --> 00:43:40,000
STEVE HALL:
collective enterprise, in the sense of entrepreneurial activity that could benefit people and move us
501
00:43:40,001 --> 00:43:45,000
STEVE HALL:
forward. So I think that we need a narrative. We need a narrative that's optimistic,
502
00:43:45,001 --> 00:43:51,000
STEVE HALL:
upbeat, and convinces people that we can make their lives better.
503
00:43:51,001 --> 00:43:56,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
You know, it's interesting, I was reading a book totally will feel unrelated to this.
504
00:43:56,001 --> 00:44:01,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
I assure you that it in of itself very literally may be unrelated, but I
505
00:44:01,001 --> 00:44:06,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
believe can be extrapolated to be quite related. And that is ironically, Che Guevara's book
506
00:44:06,001 --> 00:44:12,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
Guerrilla Warfare and understanding the way the guerrilla fighter had to be part of the
507
00:44:12,001 --> 00:44:17,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
people without the people, they were the water. The guerrilla could not survive without the
508
00:44:17,001 --> 00:44:22,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
people. And yet at the same time, it had to be very, very disciplined and
509
00:44:22,001 --> 00:44:27,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
tight and so forth. But that was from a guerrilla warfare perspective. When you think
510
00:44:27,001 --> 00:44:33,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
about regular people in general and communicating with them. The idea is that... And it's
511
00:44:33,001 --> 00:44:38,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
hard for me to remember this because there's a part of me that realizes that
512
00:44:38,001 --> 00:44:43,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
an alarm clock is never fun. Nobody enjoys an alarm clock. I don't care how
513
00:44:43,001 --> 00:44:48,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
beautiful the message may be on the other side of it, the alarm clock is
514
00:44:48,001 --> 00:44:54,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
always offensive. But in reality, though, the idea here is that he said, "hey, listen,
515
00:44:54,001 --> 00:44:59,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
we've got to be deeply courteous to the people. We have to endear ourselves to
516
00:44:59,001 --> 00:45:04,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
the people. We have to make sure that they realize that our struggle is their
517
00:45:04,001 --> 00:45:09,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
struggle and their struggle is our struggle." And, you know, make sure that they ultimately
518
00:45:09,001 --> 00:45:15,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
keep a positive, upbeat, not berate and beat down the peasants and the others in
519
00:45:15,001 --> 00:45:20,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
the community, but win them over to solidarity. And I found that very interesting because
520
00:45:20,001 --> 00:45:25,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
you think about the kind of tactics that it will take to win the day,
521
00:45:25,001 --> 00:45:30,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
given how deeply entrenched some of these more fascist, individualist ideas which are permeating all
522
00:45:30,001 --> 00:45:36,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
of society at a much more higher pitch these days.
523
00:45:36,001 --> 00:45:38,000
STEVE HALL:
Absolutely, yeah.
524
00:45:38,001 --> 00:45:42,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
I mean, obviously if you knew, you would have already done it.
525
00:45:42,001 --> 00:45:47,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
But I guess at some level just ideate how do we get
526
00:45:47,001 --> 00:45:51,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
a tough wakeup call message mixed with a very vibrant, positive, hopeful
527
00:45:51,001 --> 00:45:56,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
message, while living in a timeline that feels almost apocalyptic.
528
00:45:56,001 --> 00:46:01,000
STEVE HALL:
I think that the problem we have is that under [former Cuban President, Fulgencio] Bautista, of course,
529
00:46:01,001 --> 00:46:06,000
STEVE HALL:
Cubans were living in absolutely miserable existence, repressed and enslaved in some cases. So I think we
530
00:46:06,001 --> 00:46:11,000
STEVE HALL:
don't have that work with. We don't have that abject poverty, you know, so the promises we
531
00:46:11,001 --> 00:46:16,000
STEVE HALL:
have to make are making it better than it already is. And we do have a trimmed
532
00:46:16,001 --> 00:46:21,000
STEVE HALL:
down welfare state. People are kept just far enough off the bottom to get involved in any
533
00:46:21,001 --> 00:46:26,000
STEVE HALL:
sort of revolutionary or rebellious activity, they've done that very well. You know, some people argue that
534
00:46:26,001 --> 00:46:31,000
STEVE HALL:
was the fundamental purpose of the welfare state, but they get that balance. I mean, Simon Winlow,
535
00:46:31,001 --> 00:46:36,000
STEVE HALL:
I think, has written quite extensively about an enlightened catastrophism and that was a term coined by
536
00:46:36,001 --> 00:46:41,000
STEVE HALL:
the French philosopher Jean Pierre, I think Jean Pierre Dupuy or Jean Claude Dupuy, I can't remember,
537
00:46:41,001 --> 00:46:46,000
STEVE HALL:
but Dupuy (D-U-P-U-Y) and he talked about enlightened catastrophism [catastrophisme éclairé] in the sense that we have
538
00:46:46,001 --> 00:46:51,000
STEVE HALL:
to tell people that if they don't move, things here are going to get a lot worse.
539
00:46:51,001 --> 00:46:56,000
STEVE HALL:
At the same time, tell them that as we move there will be some suffering. And I
540
00:46:56,001 --> 00:47:01,000
STEVE HALL:
have this argument with some of the MMT guys that the bond markets, because we allow them
541
00:47:01,001 --> 00:47:06,000
STEVE HALL:
to the bond markets and the forex [foreign exchange] markets can attack the currency and create a
542
00:47:06,001 --> 00:47:11,000
STEVE HALL:
lot of problems if we allow them to. And I do agree with MMT guys that it's
543
00:47:11,001 --> 00:47:16,000
STEVE HALL:
only because our politicians allow them to do this. But they're the politicians we have, unfortunately. So
544
00:47:16,001 --> 00:47:22,000
STEVE HALL:
there might be some suffering, but that suffering will lead to something better than what it is
545
00:47:22,001 --> 00:47:27,000
STEVE HALL:
now. The problem is, you know, the people who are doing quite well out of this system
546
00:47:27,001 --> 00:47:32,000
STEVE HALL:
as it is, they're a big problem because they don't really relate to other people they think
547
00:47:32,001 --> 00:47:37,000
STEVE HALL:
talking about originally they think they've got there by the sweat of their own brow, they've pulled
548
00:47:37,001 --> 00:47:42,000
STEVE HALL:
themselves up by their own bootstraps and achieved that individually. So they don't really have an awful
549
00:47:42,001 --> 00:47:47,000
STEVE HALL:
lot of sympathy for those who are falling behind. That's they're problem. But what we have to
550
00:47:47,001 --> 00:47:52,000
STEVE HALL:
do is that we have to talk to people who are not doing so well, those people
551
00:47:52,001 --> 00:47:57,000
STEVE HALL:
with more empathy and see people around them not doing so well. And we have to convince
552
00:47:57,001 --> 00:48:02,000
STEVE HALL:
the right people it's no good talking to the wrong people all the time. I think this
553
00:48:02,001 --> 00:48:07,000
STEVE HALL:
is the mistake we make on social media a lot, just arguing with people. It's not worth
554
00:48:07,001 --> 00:48:12,000
STEVE HALL:
arguing with some people, you know, I just say, "well look, your belief is too strong. I'll
555
00:48:12,001 --> 00:48:17,000
STEVE HALL:
move on and I'll talk to people who will listen." That's the majority, I think, the majority,
556
00:48:17,001 --> 00:48:22,000
STEVE HALL:
the swing voters, the non voters, the people that go the way. There's the left as well,
557
00:48:22,001 --> 00:48:27,000
STEVE HALL:
of course, the traditional left, the postmodern left is a huge problem because I think they see
558
00:48:27,001 --> 00:48:32,000
STEVE HALL:
liberalism as something that can be improved along intersectional lines without any structural change. We know they're
559
00:48:32,001 --> 00:48:37,000
STEVE HALL:
a problem. We've written that in that book The Death of the Left. And other people have
560
00:48:37,001 --> 00:48:43,000
STEVE HALL:
written about it as well.
561
00:48:43,001 --> 00:48:44,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
Yeah.
562
00:48:44,001 --> 00:48:49,000
STEVE HALL:
So we know they're a problem. But out there there is a majority. I'm convinced there is
563
00:48:49,001 --> 00:48:54,000
STEVE HALL:
a 50% plus majority of people who are thinking, this is not great, this isn't very good.
564
00:48:54,001 --> 00:48:59,000
STEVE HALL:
I'm seeing people suffer. I'm under stress myself. I have to do four jobs to earn a
565
00:48:59,001 --> 00:49:04,000
STEVE HALL:
living. My mortgage is too expensive, my rent's too expensive, I don't have any disposal [-able income].
566
00:49:04,001 --> 00:49:09,000
STEVE HALL:
I'm working, slaving away for next to nothing. This is just a waste of time. There are
567
00:49:09,001 --> 00:49:14,000
STEVE HALL:
a lot of people out there who are in those sort of conditions and we have to
568
00:49:14,001 --> 00:49:19,000
STEVE HALL:
get across to them two things. One, that it will be catastrophic if we stay in this
569
00:49:19,001 --> 00:49:24,000
STEVE HALL:
situation, and two, we can move. This is the molecular question, and that's the one that takes
570
00:49:24,001 --> 00:49:29,000
STEVE HALL:
a lot of moving, because this is entrenched right down to the depths of the psyche, the
571
00:49:29,001 --> 00:49:34,000
STEVE HALL:
neurological system, not the mind, the brain, not the conscious cognitive aspect, right down in their feelings
572
00:49:34,001 --> 00:49:39,000
STEVE HALL:
and their emotions and their body, that they're worried that we will suffer more if we move
573
00:49:39,001 --> 00:49:44,000
STEVE HALL:
somewhere. It will end up like, you know, East Germany or North Korea or whatever. They're always
574
00:49:44,001 --> 00:49:49,000
STEVE HALL:
using these analogies and we've got to convince them that there will be some suffering on the
575
00:49:49,001 --> 00:49:54,000
STEVE HALL:
way, but that suffering will be time limited. Because for what we have gathered from neuroscience is
576
00:49:54,001 --> 00:49:59,000
STEVE HALL:
that we are tuned to put up with some level of suffering over a certain time period.
577
00:49:59,001 --> 00:50:04,000
STEVE HALL:
This idea of deferred gratification, which has been very successful for the right, is based on that
578
00:50:04,001 --> 00:50:09,000
STEVE HALL:
principle that you'll suffer initially, that you go through hard training. It's like sports. You go through
579
00:50:09,001 --> 00:50:14,000
STEVE HALL:
hard training, you'll have a load of defeats, you'll make a fool of yourself, but you'll get
580
00:50:14,001 --> 00:50:19,000
STEVE HALL:
there eventually as you improve your game. And we've got to use that as well by saying,
581
00:50:19,001 --> 00:50:24,000
STEVE HALL:
"this will be catastrophic where we are. There'll be some suffering moving, but we'll get to a
582
00:50:24,001 --> 00:50:29,000
STEVE HALL:
better place. And we will guarantee that we can move to a better place if we move
583
00:50:29,001 --> 00:50:34,000
STEVE HALL:
from what we have now: Neoliberalism." I think that's the way to approach it. If we get
584
00:50:34,001 --> 00:50:40,000
STEVE HALL:
that balance, we could start to attract more and more people into that sort of thinking.
585
00:50:40,001 --> 00:50:45,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
I want to say one final thing to kind of lead up to us going out
586
00:50:45,001 --> 00:50:50,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
here, because we only have a few minutes left. But one of the things that really
587
00:50:50,001 --> 00:50:55,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
caught me off guard was in [V.I.] Lenin's State and Revolution, I'm digging deep into all
588
00:50:55,001 --> 00:51:00,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
these different thoughts, I'm not trying to recreate them, but I am learning from them because
589
00:51:00,001 --> 00:51:05,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
at some point in time, they had a better understanding of getting the people together than
590
00:51:05,001 --> 00:51:10,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
we do today. And one of the things that I found fascinating was the idea that
591
00:51:10,001 --> 00:51:16,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
a lot of the discourse these days, especially with what I would consider the [live action
592
00:51:16,001 --> 00:51:21,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
role playing] LARPing left, where the role playing, you know, the 18th century, 19th century debates
593
00:51:21,001 --> 00:51:26,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
and 20th century debates and things that are long past, not necessarily consequential to today, that
594
00:51:26,001 --> 00:51:31,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
don't really have a vision for today, they just think that they're going to snap their
595
00:51:31,001 --> 00:51:36,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
fingers and voila, we have a revolution, and voila, we have communism. But that's not what
596
00:51:36,001 --> 00:51:41,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
Lenin said. And Lenin was quite, you know, pointed that you can't expect to go from
597
00:51:41,001 --> 00:51:46,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
this to that overnight. All this stuff is something that takes a very long time. It's,
598
00:51:46,001 --> 00:51:52,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
it's a game of patience.
599
00:51:52,001 --> 00:51:53,000
STEVE HALL:
Yes.
600
00:51:53,001 --> 00:51:58,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
And really, ultimately, you don't know how long it's going to take. And it's not going to
601
00:51:58,001 --> 00:52:03,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
start off, quote, unquote. I'm not saying you like this or not. I'm just saying it's not
602
00:52:03,001 --> 00:52:08,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
going to start off, you know, fully automated "communism." It's going to start out. People are going
603
00:52:08,001 --> 00:52:13,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
to be very, very still, you know, unequal. And, you know, there's still going to be money.
604
00:52:13,001 --> 00:52:18,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
The way that, you know, you know it today, it's still going to be there tomorrow. There's
605
00:52:18,001 --> 00:52:23,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
still going to be a lot of the things you think aren't going to be there today
606
00:52:23,001 --> 00:52:28,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
that are going to be there tomorrow. But eventually, as discipline kicks in, as we learn more,
607
00:52:28,001 --> 00:52:33,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
as we work and collaborate and we work for the dictatorship of the proletariat, in his words,
608
00:52:33,001 --> 00:52:38,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
we're going to watch the state wither away. So these things, even in leftist spaces, if they
609
00:52:38,001 --> 00:52:43,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
read their theory, if they pay attention to their theory, they know that these things are transitional.
610
00:52:43,001 --> 00:52:49,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
They're not something that you just jump to.
611
00:52:49,001 --> 00:52:53,000
STEVE HALL:
They certainly are. But I also think Lenin read, you know, it was intelligent
612
00:52:53,001 --> 00:52:58,000
STEVE HALL:
enough to realize how lucky he was, how lucky they'd been in a sense
613
00:52:58,001 --> 00:53:03,000
STEVE HALL:
of it wasn't a great look in terms of to the people's benefit. But
614
00:53:03,001 --> 00:53:08,000
STEVE HALL:
don't forget that they'd had a terrible time. The Russians under the Tsar and
615
00:53:08,001 --> 00:53:13,000
STEVE HALL:
under the kulaks hoarding grain. And there was starvation. There was an awful lot
616
00:53:13,001 --> 00:53:18,000
STEVE HALL:
of unrest. And the army was away fighting in the east. The army wasn't
617
00:53:18,001 --> 00:53:23,000
STEVE HALL:
there. That revolution was looking. And then they had four years of a civil
618
00:53:23,001 --> 00:53:28,000
STEVE HALL:
war, which they eventually beat the White army, beat it back. So they'd done
619
00:53:28,001 --> 00:53:32,000
STEVE HALL:
their suffering. They'd done that suffering. And then Lenin said, "We can now make
620
00:53:32,001 --> 00:53:37,000
STEVE HALL:
this better." And you're right, he said the change from now on would be
621
00:53:37,001 --> 00:53:42,000
STEVE HALL:
incremental. Remember those arguments about the new economic policy up till Stalin's time? Should
622
00:53:42,001 --> 00:53:47,000
STEVE HALL:
we stick with small local markets for a while and see if we can
623
00:53:47,001 --> 00:53:52,000
STEVE HALL:
change things incrementally? So all of these arguments were being had about the incremental
624
00:53:52,001 --> 00:53:57,000
STEVE HALL:
change, but they have been initially looking. We don't have that luck, which would
625
00:53:57,001 --> 00:54:02,000
STEVE HALL:
be bad luck for the working class. And it might just shift them over
626
00:54:02,001 --> 00:54:07,000
STEVE HALL:
to the far right. There's a nationalist that right there. That's the problem.
627
00:54:07,001 --> 00:54:08,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
Oh, my God.
628
00:54:08,001 --> 00:54:13,000
STEVE HALL:
And let's not wish that upon ourselves that we don't want the situation to deteriorate to the
629
00:54:13,001 --> 00:54:18,000
STEVE HALL:
extent that we might have a fascist reaction rather than the move towards socialism. We have to
630
00:54:18,001 --> 00:54:23,000
STEVE HALL:
work with where we are. We're not in Lenin's time. We're in the middle. We're in a
631
00:54:23,001 --> 00:54:28,000
STEVE HALL:
welfare state. People aren't suffering, the majority aren't suffering as much as they did in the past.
632
00:54:28,001 --> 00:54:33,000
STEVE HALL:
We have to convince people that things might deteriorate slightly for a while until they get better.
633
00:54:33,001 --> 00:54:38,000
STEVE HALL:
And then you hear that from sports coaches all the time, don't you? Things might get a
634
00:54:38,001 --> 00:54:43,000
STEVE HALL:
bit worse first, and then we start improving the team, we start getting better. So we have
635
00:54:43,001 --> 00:54:48,000
STEVE HALL:
to get this balance right, and we have to talk to people as they are today, in
636
00:54:48,001 --> 00:54:53,000
STEVE HALL:
the situation that they are today. I think it was Alain Badiou, wasn't it the French theorist,
637
00:54:53,001 --> 00:54:58,000
STEVE HALL:
who said, "there's no such thing as ethics. There are only situations." There are situational ethics within
638
00:54:58,001 --> 00:55:03,000
STEVE HALL:
the parameters set. You know, heinous crimes like murder, et cetera. But in that central ground, there
639
00:55:03,001 --> 00:55:09,000
STEVE HALL:
are situations and we are in a specific situation. It requires a specific type of politics, a
640
00:55:09,001 --> 00:55:14,000
STEVE HALL:
specific narrative, and we have to get that right. The problem, of course, and I mean, you've
641
00:55:14,001 --> 00:55:19,000
STEVE HALL:
probably heard of the terrible problems. Your party, the New British Party, is experiencing birth pangs which
642
00:55:19,001 --> 00:55:24,000
STEVE HALL:
might explode before it ever becomes a thing. It might fall apart. I hope it doesn't, because,
643
00:55:24,001 --> 00:55:29,000
STEVE HALL:
you know, a lot of people invested a lot of time in it. But all of these
644
00:55:29,001 --> 00:55:34,000
STEVE HALL:
factional arguments, these dogmas that we hear on the Left, we've got to just get rid of
645
00:55:34,001 --> 00:55:39,000
STEVE HALL:
these, and we've got to adopt what we call in our world, teleological pragmatism. In other words,
646
00:55:39,001 --> 00:55:44,000
STEVE HALL:
we have to have a purpose, an end, and we have to be pragmatic towards that end
647
00:55:44,001 --> 00:55:49,000
STEVE HALL:
in the sense of working towards it incrementally and convincing people that any suffering on the way
648
00:55:49,001 --> 00:55:54,000
STEVE HALL:
will be temporary and we can make things better. And we have evidence of that in the
649
00:55:54,001 --> 00:55:59,000
STEVE HALL:
present and in the past, that we can actually make the lives of the majority a lot
650
00:55:59,001 --> 00:56:05,000
STEVE HALL:
better than they have been.
651
00:56:05,001 --> 00:56:09,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
Very good. All right, Steve, tell everybody where they can find more of your work.
652
00:56:09,001 --> 00:56:14,000
STEVE HALL:
Well, all over the place. It was Chris Williamson I was speaking to the other day. I
653
00:56:14,001 --> 00:56:19,000
STEVE HALL:
didn't realize how prolific we'd been. And our team's not all down to me. I do write
654
00:56:19,001 --> 00:56:24,000
STEVE HALL:
with other members of our wonderful research team. And I'm very proud to be a member of,
655
00:56:24,001 --> 00:56:29,000
STEVE HALL:
sort of regarded as the grandfather, but I don't think so. I think the momentum has been created
656
00:56:29,001 --> 00:56:35,000
STEVE HALL:
by other members of the team, too. Just look at Ultra-Realism, our website, Ultra-Realists. We have published
657
00:56:35,001 --> 00:56:40,000
STEVE HALL:
in a number of areas. We've actually got a Wikipedia page. I had to put the Wikipedia.
658
00:56:40,001 --> 00:56:45,000
STEVE HALL:
Well, I had to put the Wikipedia page up. It wasn't me. It was another member of
659
00:56:45,001 --> 00:56:50,000
STEVE HALL:
the team. We had to put this Wikipedia page up because artificial intelligence was misrepresenting our position
660
00:56:50,001 --> 00:56:56,000
STEVE HALL:
so much that we thought we'd have to put something on the net.
661
00:56:56,001 --> 00:56:57,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
That's right.
662
00:56:57,001 --> 00:57:01,000
STEVE HALL:
So we put it up there. And now artificial intelligence has
663
00:57:01,001 --> 00:57:05,000
STEVE HALL:
improved, but only because we've told it how to improve.
664
00:57:05,001 --> 00:57:10,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
All right, listen, I want to thank you. The only thing that I would have liked to have
665
00:57:10,001 --> 00:57:15,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
brought up. We don't have time for this, but I do want to throw it out there for
666
00:57:15,001 --> 00:57:21,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
future consideration, was that Gramsci also investigated thoroughly, why was it different in Russia than it was in
667
00:57:21,001 --> 00:57:26,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
Italy? Because just because they had a revolution there. And a revolution there didn't net the same thing,
668
00:57:26,001 --> 00:57:32,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
did it? You had... it's kind of speaking to your point that we could have fascism.
669
00:57:32,001 --> 00:57:33,000
STEVE HALL:
We certainly could.
670
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We could have something entirely different that we don't like. So it's very
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important to understand these things and really do the study and... [Absolutely] Steve,
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I really appreciate you taking the time to do this with me today.
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So I'm going to go ahead and take us out here. Folks, my
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name is Steve Grumbine. I am the host of this podcast, Macro N
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Cheese. I'm also the founder of the Real Progressives nonprofit that sponsors this
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podcast. I'm thankful to have guests like my guest Steve Hall here who
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spend their time graciously with us. But in order for us to do
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these things, we have a lot of platforms and a lot of other
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expenses that keep us going. And we live and die on your contributions.
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So it's a nonprofit, folks. That means at this time of the year,
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as we're heading into the fourth quarter, it is tax deductible, and we
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live and die on your donations. So please consider becoming a monthly donor@patreon.com/real
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
progressives. You can go to our website, realprogressives.org in the dropdown menu and
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click donate. You can also go to our Substack, which is substack.com/real progressives.
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Please, please, please don't think that somebody else is doing it. They're probably
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not. We need your support. So if you think what we're doing is
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valuable, we think what we're doing is valuable. But it only matters if
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you think what we're doing is valuable. Because without you, there is no
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us. So without further ado, I bid you adieu on behalf of my
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guest, Steve Hall, myself Steve Grumbine, and the podcast Macro N Cheese, we
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are out of here.