Marxist Monetary Theory (Ft. Bill Mitchell)

America's awareness stops at your border. It's a relatively insular country. You see the world, well you're Canadian, but Americans see the world in their own image and, uh, don't really understand the rest of the world very well at all. And I say to them, I want to tax the wealthy and the rich out of existence because I want them to have less money. I don't want the government to have more money because that's stupid. The government's got as much currency as it ever wants. I want the non government sector, the wealthy interests, the power interests

in the non government sector to have less ability to spend less money. And the reason I want that is not to give the government more money, but to, cause that's stupid, but to reduce the capacity of the wealthy and the rich corporate interests to be able to politically lobby and to be able to manipulate funds through. These, you know, big donors and what do they call them in America? The PACs or something? Super Packs. Super PACs. Yeah. You want, I want them to have less capacity to have super PACs and less capacity to manipulate the

media and less, you know, through advertising and campaign funding. That's why I want to tax the rich. The whole idea that we need the richest money to pay for these programs Frames the situation in such a way where it obfuscates who really creates value I mean it frames it like you know The rich people are creating all the value and we need their money to fund our things When in reality who creates the value is the people doing the work, right? And we've kind of lost sight of that You are listening to 1Dime Radio. Become

a patron at patreon. com slash one dime to support the show and get access to extra content. We think that ideology is something blurring, confusing our straight view. Ideology should be glasses which distort our view. And the critique of ideology should be the opposite. Like, you take off the glasses so that you can find the truth. When you talk about a revolution, most people think wildly, without realizing that the real content of any kind of revolutionary thrust lies in the, in the principles and the goals that you're striving for, not in the way you reach

them. Philosophers call someone a relativist, by which they mean it's a person that holds that any view is as good as any other view. My simple response to that is this. No one holds that view. No one believes that every view is as good as every other view. Welcome to 1Dime Radio today. I am here with professor Bill Mitchell. Bill Mitchell is one of the founders of modern monetary theory, otherwise known as MMT. He founded it with Warren Mosler. Bill Mitchell teaches at the university of Newcastle in Australia. And Bill Mitchell is a guest who

I've been wanting to have on for a long time because You are somebody who also identifies as a Marxist and is a proponent of modern monetary theory. And this division between. Modern monetary theory and Marxism is something that I notice is an important division to discuss within people who espouse MMT. Because of course as, at least as far as I'm aware, Warren Mosler does not consider does not really consider himself Marxist. And most MMTers I've met tend to usually be, Social Democrats of sorts. You adapt, adopt Marxism in your framework, which I think is very

illuminating, and I heard you talk about it a lot with Steve Grumbine. Unreal progressives. The obstacle I found in trying to popularize MMT. So some of the videos I've done on my main video essay channel, have been sort of intros to MMT that have aimed to get people interested in the subject and explore the literature on it. A lot of the, a lot of the reaction against it has come from Marxists. Actually, a lot of Marxists see it as some sort of alternative rival to it. Something that might threaten the head, the power of Marxism,

if you will. But I think. Your perspective will be very illuminating. And the first question I would ask, which can be a bridge into the more specific questions is being a person who adopts monomonetary theory and Marxism into your framework. What does it mean to be a person who espouses modern monetary theory and a Marxist, well, that's a good question. Thanks for inviting me and having me on your program. It's quite clear over the history of the literature on Marxism that there's now factions within that category if you like to call it a category, I

mean, there's, it, to start with it all, obviously it all, what I'm saying is here, it obviously depends upon what you mean by Marxism and what you mean by a Marxist framework. And you know, what we know from the literature and from history is that. That can mean many things, and there's been huge internecine disputes about where the limits of that concept begin and end. So, let me clarify what I mean by a Marxist framework. First, I think that Marx was really the only writer in, in economics and politics and philosophy that he was the

first really to capture the essence of what we mean by the capitalist mode of production. And we still live in a capitalist epoch. And what I mean by that is that the one class owns the material means of production and the other class has to negotiate with that ownership class. For access to that capital and to work and to earn these income from wages that allow them to survive. And I think that the capital class doesn't have to work to eat. And the working class has to negotiate a working contract and sell their labour power

to eat. I, you know, we're being crude here, but that's basically it. So that's the first point, that Marx was the first person really to understand the dynamics of that system, the evolution of the, change, the historical shift from feudalism and the important difference between those systems was. how the surplus value is produced and the basis on which that surplus value is expropriated. So under feudalism, the surplus value and the subsistence wage are created in different time and different spaces. So the serf would go and work for a feudal lord, on their portion of land

and produce all of the output that the feudal lord would expropriate and then the serf would go off in to their own little block that they'd been given and they would produce their own subsistence food. So the surplus and the subsistence were separated in time and space, a temporal and spatial separation. Whereas with capitalism, that didn't, that no longer occurred, that the subsistence wage and the surplus production were generated in the same time and space, the working day. And this was, you know, Marx talked about a wage form that, that it, the wage form in

capitalism made it look as though the workers had a choice, that they could work for different capitalists, so they were no longer bound to a particular minority or lord. And that gave the shimmerer, you know, the look of freedom. But in actual fact, the worker had no freedom. They had to work. They could choose which capitalist to work for, but they still had to work. And the surplus value was relatively hidden. Under feudalism, the surplus value was transparent. It was the production that was generated during the time and in the space that the, on the

lord's lands. Whereas in capitalism, that became hidden. You know, what portion of the day is subsistence value and what portion of the day is surplus value. And Marx really understood, stood those issues. And I think that those, that sort of conceptualization still applies today and sets up a whole set of dynamics. And so, you know, one of the problems was of the early shift to capitalist production was the, was that it was still really in what we called the cottage industry. technology. So the capitalist would go to the workers houses and give them some equipment,

spinning jenny or something, and later in the afternoon or then in a week or whatever the periodicity was, they would come and collect the production and give them some, give the worker some wages. Of course, that wasn't a very secure system for the capitalist because the worker would soon realize that, oh, well, I can just spin a bit. of cotton into cloth and get enough to survive and go and enjoy life. And so in other words, that they weren't generating the surplus value that the capitalists desired. And so the way in which the capitalist class

dealt with that system was to create the faculty system, and to move all of the workers into under the, so called under the one roof. And in doing that, they could then discipline the working day much more closely. And that set up a control function in capitalism, a supervisory function. So you had a class of workers that then were taken out of the productive class into the supervisory control class, you know, and Marx understood all of that. And that type of system pervades today. Amen. I don't know about the U. S., but during COVID workers

were allowed to work from home in Australia. And because of the restrictions imposed by governments on, you know, to reduce the spread of infection. And of course, now that everyone thinks COVID's gone the capitalists are now and in the period that workers were working from home, they started to realize that. This was better than going into an office or into a working place because for those workers that could enjoy that flexibility. And now we're seeing that the capitalists want the workers to come back under the one roof because that gives them a better an easier

system of control. So I think those insights into surplus production, into the control function into the Shimmer of the wage form. Marx was the first person to understand that and to understand the dynamics of that in terms of the power relations between a capitalist class and a working class. And it's, that's to me the essence of Marxism. That there is a class struggle, there is a conflict, the capitalist, wants to get as much out of the working day from the worker as they can and pay as little as they possibly can. And in other words,

they want to maximize surplus value and minimize the subsistence wage component of the daily production. And the workers conversely want to work as little as possible and get as much as possible. So they want to reduce the working day and reduce the intensity of the working and get as much as possible. out of the working production, the share, maximize the share for subsistence wage. And so, you know, you've got conflicting objectives and that conflict in my view, defines our system and the capitalist system that we live under still in this era and sets up all

of these tensions and dynamics about income distribution, about control of the working place. It's about organization and structure of the working place, and then you can extend it out into, you know, outsourcing to other countries and all of the sort of global issues that cap, that define capitalism. So in that's the sense in which I identify as being a Marxist. Do I buy all of the predictions that Marx made in Capital and theories of surplus value and other of his writings, such as, you know, a lot of people say, Oh, Marx is, Marx was wrong

because we haven't seen a falling rate of profit. Well, we haven't yet, but I believe eventually we will have we seen a, you know, another prediction, or we haven't seen a the rise of subjective class consciousness among the workers and the other far of the state? We've seen a sort of fracturing of the working class. And this is sort of the rise of the professional managerial class, for example. It's quite different from what we used to think of the blue collar, more homogenized working class. Well, we haven't. But we've also, but if you go back

to those dynamics I mentioned we've seen a massive campaign by the ruling elites who own capital to divide and conquer the working class. And part of the divide, divide and conquer strategy was to create sort of artificial divisions based upon identity. So, you know, we've seen the left fracture on the identity issues. And so, for example, we now have progressive commentators saying, oh, well, the, of a feminist persuasion for example, saying, oh, well, the boss who might be, boss in the working place who might be a female boss has more in common with the low

paid female workers in her organization than the low paid female workers have in the low paid male workers who they can't raise. Now, that's a, that, I don't agree with that, because that sort of suggests that the gender class is at a different or higher level than the economic class. So I think there's all these issues, but there, that's what the essence of Marxism is to me, and that's in the way in which I identify with it. Yeah, I was about to ask you about the relationship between MMT and why not more Marxists have adopted

it into their lens and why their resistance to it, but you brought up something very interesting there that was also my list of questions might as well actually tackle it before, since it's so related to your train of thought right just now, is is In your interview with Brianna Joy Gray, where you're talking about the same topic, actually, you mentioned that you believe the left essentially underwent a profound change in the 70s, where it kind of lost its touch with the working class. And I'm curious for you to elaborate on that, because I think it

is interesting. I do see something with, for example, George McGovern being a kind of moment in politics where you have a left That is divorced from any class politics, like a visible, you know, left in the, you know, whether you want to say it's left or not. I mean, he presented himself that way, right? And it was a kind of professional university activist left. But I'm curious as to what you mean by, you know, the left changing in the seventies. Well, I mean, you have to go back a little bit earlier, and So in the

60s, there was the rise of Continental Marxism, you know, Louis Althusser and these characters. And that was married with the rise in the humanities of postmodernist structures and thinking. And there are sort of rejection of modernity and the rise of postmodernist deconstruction and all of that literature and thinking that then started to. emphasize more micro elements of our existence in turn. And that became identity thinking in terms of our identities and how we deconstruct ourselves back down to our basic identities and the, you know, this was the rise of feminism and, uh, emphasis on race

to explain the human condition and your identity. So. You know, for traditional Marxism, your initial identifier, if you like, was your economic class. That I'm still, and I still believe, that I'm a member of the working class. Even though I'm a professional person who's well paid in a professional occupation as an academic, I'm still, in my view, a member of the working class because I have to go to work to earn an income. And I don't own capital and I don't own, that means that I don't own the means in which I can then employ

workers to, to generate surplus value that I can expropriate. So these are all traditional Marxist ways of thinking. I'm still a member of the working class, even though from a sociological point of view, and I'm a member of the professional managerial I don't. They're sort of different. Categorization framework, but the Postmodernists and the Continental Marxists sort of got, in my view, sidetracked into focusing on this sort of deconstruction identity type way of thinking about our, who we are, and how we understand the world. And in my view that was a unfortunate development. And, you know,

there's now evidence that, uh, the Continental Marxists, for example, were promoted throughout the world, and particularly in America, for this particular discussion, in the sort of late 60s and early 70s. And there's now evidence, you know, who paid for setting up these workshops, and who paid, who promoted them, and well, we now know who did it. It was the CIA, the American The CIA were running these Continental Marxist workshops, and the reason they did it, Cultural freedom. That's what you're referring to, right? yeah, and the reason they did it was because they realized that the

Marxist scholars were losing the plot and were undermining the sort of strength of the Marxist message. And so that, you know, I mean, it was a very good strategy of the CIA to, employ to undermine what they saw as their threat. But then of course we had allied to all of that was the developments in the economics academy and the rise of monetarism in the early seventies and really the broad attack on, on what had been the Keynesian sense consensus, the role of the state in the economy was to mediate business cycle fluctuations. to ensure

that there was high levels of employment. And you don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to understand that in the early seventies capital was contriving a strategy to undermine the distributional impacts of the social democratic era after the second world war. So what we understand and know is that. After the war, the Second World War, the governments around the world took on a role to nation build and to reduce inequality and to provide widespread public services in education, transport, health utilities and those things, and also to set about a solid redistributive agenda to reduce inequality.

And you know, there was such a strong groundswell among the citizenry around the world for that agenda that for a time the state was quite powerful. And and even though the interests of capital didn't like that policy agenda, they really couldn't do much about it because there was so much groundswell in voting support for social democratic policies. Now by the, and by the end of the 60s, trade unions become quite powerful around the world and capital was really pissed off about that because they realized that forced them to share the income distribution in a more

equal way. And so by the end of the 60s capital was trying to work out ways in which they could regain distributional power. And in the US for example, in 1971, we saw the release of the Power Manifesto, and power Manifesto was written by Lewis Powell under contract to the us chamber of Commerce, I believe. And this outlined a broad strategy including the development of of of think tanks. Which would hold themselves out as independent research centers and research bodies, but were really funded by the big industrialists and the big interests of financial capital to

become highly sophisticated propaganda and marketing arms. And so they started to pump out all this stuff, anti state stuff and the the power manifesto also recommended the. development of a pro capital media. And so you started to see the development of, you know, what we now see as Fox News and in America and these really extreme right, propaganda type media organizations that parade as news organizations, which are really just propaganda arms. And also Powell also said that. Capital should start infiltrating the education systems and to manipulate curriculum. And if that's it now, and bestow endowments

on universities under conditions of influencing curriculum. So there was a huge fight back going on in the early seventies. And in the economic sphere that was reinforced by monetarism and all of that stuff. And What we saw in the around that time, the early seventies was also the crisis of the OPEC oil crisis where oil dependent nations suddenly had a doubling of oil prices, which caused an inflationary outbreak. And so put all that together and you have a dialogue emerging where the right are pumping out all this stuff saying, look, we've got a fiscal crisis

in the state. The government can no longer fund all of these welfare programs and fund full employment. We've got to allow the market to do that, to, to restore its role in resource allocation. And at the same time, we had an opening of the global economy with global finance. And the Bretton Woods system collapsed in August 71, when President Nixon abandoned the gold standard effectively. And exchange rates started to fluctuate, were floating mostly except for Europe. And so, you know, they're right. We're pumping out all this stuff. Well, look, you know, these deficits, these fiscal

deficits are unsustainable. The financial markets will kill currencies unless that, because they don't no longer trust governments with all of this public debt. And we have to change our paradigm and start reducing deficits and all of that. Now the left, now there was a book in 1973 by James O'Connor, The Fiscal Crisis of the State, which was just eating up all of this right wing propaganda. And the left started to believe it, that the and in, in the book I wrote with Thomas Fartsey in 2017, Reclaiming the State, we traced this. this demise of the

left into believing all of this right wing rubbish about the state will run out of money, that the financial markets, global financial markets will kill currencies, and the upshot of all of that. So the right knew all along that the governments couldn't run out of currency, couldn't run out of the currency that they introduced, but they sold that to the as a very powerful. Fear campaign and as a consequence that gave the right much more political sway and they said about reconfiguring the state. So, the state hadn't gone away. It wasn't powerless. The right knew

that. The left bought the fact that the state was now powerless against the powers of global finance and the right knew damn well that was just fiction. But used it in a very strategic way to reconfigure the state so that the state would introduce legislation and regulative structures that, that reinforce the agenda of the elites. And so we saw the privatizations occurring outsourcing user pay systems the sell off of the public enterprises around the world and all of what we now refer to as on the lib agenda came through. The reconfiguration of the state. And

meanwhile, back at the ranch, the left have given up the macroeconomic debate and ceded that to the right. So now there's homogeneity in that debate. There's no contest. And the left became completely diverted into identity studies. And that's, that was the demise of the left in my view. And that persists today. That's a very compelling way to put it all together in a succinct way. I mean, it's a complex story, of course. When it comes to the neoliberal turn, a lot of Marxists sometimes criticize Keynesians and often by extension, MMT, because they tend to assume

that MMT is just another arm of Keynesianism. They sometimes use Neo Keynesianism and MMT interchangeably. When talking about it but they say that the neoliberal turn to frame it as a political choice, right, to frame austerity as a political choice would miss the characteristics of the capitalist economy that would have led to something like that happening anyway with the falling rates of profit, which would compel capital to want to get rid of its obstacles, being labor. Right. Labor, of course ensured that the workers had a greater share of the economic pie and only naturally as

profit rates would go down. It's natural. The capitalists would want to, you know, pretty much like eat up a larger slice of the profits at the expense of the worker. So they would say that, you know, this is something that was going to happen in capitalism. Anyway, I'm curious how you would respond to that as someone who, you know, adopts Marxism in your Marxist analysis of class conflict in your framework. Yeah, look, MMT is not Keynesian thinking at all, or new Keynesian. So we'll come back to that later. But you know, I mean, if you,

I tried to summarize a whole range of complex things in a short period, that took 500 pages in our book, Reclaiming the State. But the, or 500 odd, I've forgotten the exact number. But you're absolutely correct that the, by the end of the 60s, the capitalists were well and truly fed up with social democracy. And as I said, they created a very sophisticated framework and strategy and institutional structure for the think tanks and for infiltrating the education system Thank you. Through taking control over key media institutions, they created a very powerful propaganda machine. And as

I said, this the CIA promoted continental Marxism because they knew that it was a total diversion away from the concept of class struggle and capital labor conflict into all this deconstruction and identity and, you know, postmodernists. Wandering around deconstructing reality. You know, I mean, that was perfect for the interests of capital because it completely diverted attention that historically had been focused on industrial relations and capital labor conflict issues in the workplace. So, you know, perfect diversion. And yeah, so I think that the challenge to capitalism of social democracy. And the governments around the world that

were reducing income inequality and providing much more public space and reducing the reliance of of the working class on having to work in onerous conditions. So all of the occupational and health and safety legislation that came in during that era. Um, there were equal pay movements that was, were sponsored by governments to reduce gender inequalities and therefore reduce the ability to divide and conquer on gender. All of these developments were the anathema of the interests of capital. And so they, they were very strategic the divide and, you can't underestimate the power of their divide and

conquer sort of strategy. That was reinforced with a nomenclature. So when the OPEC oil crisis occurred in the, in, well, began in October, 1973, but you know, the government's response to that was to start create, to the inflation was to create unemployment, to cut back spending. Well, you know, we had a whole propaganda machine that, Oh, the look at the unemployed, they're lazy. They don't deserve income support. Which was traditionally provided under social democratic rules. And, you know, we started to see divisions occurring there. Oh, look at those lazy, unemployed, those welfare cheats, you know.

And in Australia we called them dole bludgers. I'm not sure what they were called in, the U. S. But, I've forgotten actually. But, you know, this divide and conquer language emerged. So that, you know, we saw in Australia, school kids that, you know, shouting at unemployed workers during the day, you lazy bastards, you know, go to work. And so it was definitely strategic. It was definitely well organized and it remains so today. So neoliberalism was an inevitable outcome of that shift back in power and recapture of power by the capitalists. And that's the nature of

capitalism. They want to defend their hegemony. That's reality. It's not all beer and skittles. It's a system, a power system that has a strong incentive to maintain the ability to accumulate capital. That's where I find your analysis very illuminating because the criticism people sometimes give to MMT is that it lacks that. Class analysis and and that Keynesians sometimes also don't pay attention to that conflict. And from what I've gathered from what you've advocated in in reclaiming the state, does you sort of advocate for a democratic socialism? Now, some Marxists will want to be hella Orthodox

and say, well, you know, you need a vanguard party and revolution. But you know, what I would say to this, those types for now is just regardless of how you get there, there's going to be a intermediary transition between, Capitalism and socialism that will involve a mixed economy, right? And the pitch I give to them is if you want a program that is best for the majority of people, best for the working class, how are you going to do that by telling them you're going to raise taxes? Right. And this is an obstacle I've found

that's huge and annoying because I've tried to, you know, even talk to officials in the new democratic party in Canada, cause I'm based in Canada, which is our NDP is our sort of labor party, if you will. And Oh my God, they think in the dinosaur age they all think that you need taxes to fund everything. And, you know, they all say, Oh, we're going to fund it by taxing the rich, but the numbers don't quite add up with that. And then workers end up suspecting them thinking, well, you're going to raise taxes on me,

aren't you? You're going to raise taxes on me. And, you know, maybe explain that. Cause I'm not going to ask you to explain all of MMT. Cause we've already done episodes on this show doing all of that. I won't, you don't need to do all that, but I mean, what is the MMT position on taxes and taxation? Because I think that is one of the most important things. Okay. Well, look, I, you know, the first thing to think about is that to really understand what MMT is, And and I'm not going to go in, as

you say, to all the principles of it but the broad understanding. So a lot of people on the right say, Oh we hate, we'd hate to have MMT. And a lot of people on the left say, Oh, we'd love to have MMT dominating policy. And of course, both are incorrect. They both concepts. that MMT is some sort of regime that you switch to or switch away from depending on your preferences. And you know, even a lot of the people who now, in the activist community, think of themselves as MMT proponents get this wrong. And the

important point is that MMT isn't a regime. It's not a set of policies. It's a lens, so I've got my glasses on here because I can see the screen better as I've got older and the lens allows me to see reality more clearly. And MMT as a lens allows us to see through the fictions into the monetary system and to understand more clearly the dynamics of that system. To understand that the capacities of the currency issuing governments within that system, to understand the consequences of using those capacities in one way or another. So it's a

framework for understanding. Now then you say, okay, well, is it left or right? Well, it's neither. It's a lens. It's relatively ag, agnostic about left and right. Now, a confusion out there is, because the number of MMT proponents are notionally on the left, although I dispute that sometimes, but certainly I'm on the left. As one of the founders, I'm on the left. What does that mean? Well, I have a left value system. Now, importantly then, well, when I say MMT as a lens is neither left nor right, How do you have any policies that are

informed by MMT? Well, to have an MMT informed policy set, you have to impose a set of an ideology or a set of values on your understanding. So there's a clear difference, in my view, between the system of understanding and how you translate that system of understanding into policy space, into action. And That requires us to impose a set of values, an ideology. Now, then you can talk left and right because my set of values are on what I identify as being on the left, which means that I believe in public space, in equality, in

reducing inequality, in the role of government in our lives to act as our agent, to provide things that we can't provide for ourselves. Provide them on a societal basis like public education, public transport, public health publicly run utilities all of this stuff environmental care. So department of environment and all of those things, whereas a person who has values on the right, who believes in individual rather than collective will, who believes in market determined outcomes. could still have, would still have exactly the same understanding of MMT as I have. Same lens, but has a different value

set, so applies that understanding in a different way. So they'll, for example, they will have private education as a principle rather than public education. And then there's understand, then there's con, they'll understand the consequences of it. That the poor. low income families may not be able to access that private education adequately, or that they'll be screwed if we have a predominantly private health care system. But they accept that because their values are that that inequality is okay, that's a, you know, for a right, right leaning person, inequality provides incentives, you know, trickle down, incentives for

the poor to work harder and all of that nonsense. But that's value statements. So that's the first important point that a lot of people get wrong about MMT. Now think about taxes. The other night I was I gave a talk in Newcastle, Australia which was hosting the largest climate activist event in Australian history. And this was, Newcastle's the largest coal export port in the world. So it's where I work in Newcastle. It's the largest coal export port in the world. There's massive amounts of coal shipments coming out from the upper Hunter Valley area in New

South Wales, Australia. and this, activist is now activist campaign has what they call the people's blockade. So the people's blockade is a flotilla of small boats and kayaks and surfboards that go out into the shipping channel. of the port and stop the coal attempt to stop the coal ships going in and out as a climate activist campaign. So it's really a fabulous event. But the problem is, you know, in The organizers, which are called rising tide, the rising tide of humanity against against fossil fuel Okay. and key policies is that they. Federal government in Australia

should tax the coal firms 70 percent along the lines of the Norwegian tax on fossil fuel producers. And the way they frame that is to say, if we tax all of those fossil fuel companies 70%, the government will have the money Let me to then introduce just transition schemes away from dependence on fossil fuels. is our Now, Stephen Yegley, you know, I, my talk was that they are mad that policy is actually undermining their strategy Okay. Okay. And a simple question. If the government doesn't introduce a 70 percent tax on fossil fuel corporations on their

profits a la Norway, we'll then logically that the government can't afford to pay? to provide just transition and climate mitigation strategies. Well, logically, according to Rising Tide and all of these progressive activists, yes, that's what it means. If they can't tax, they can't spend. And so I think in that, by adopting that mainstream neoliberal framing that the, Federal government is financially constrained and therefore has to seek revenue from the non government sector. And what better source of that revenue than to tax these evil fossil fuel companies? Well, then once you're framing it like that, you're

dead. That, uh, you can't achieve what's required because to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels, We're going to need much more spending than we can possibly get by taxing 70 percent of the coal companies. It's just not, it's just, the quantum's not there. But moreover, we obviously, what an MMT understanding teaches us, Is that we don't need that tax revenue at all. That the governments don't spend tax revenue because the government issues its own currency. And the taxes logically come from the government spending that currency to produce income in the economy that allows us then

to pay the taxes. So then the question is, oh, the progressives then turn on me and say, oh, so you don't want to tax the rich, obviously. And I say to them, no, I want to tax the wealthy and the rich out of existence because I want them to have less money. I don't want the government to have more money because that's stupid. The government's got as much currency as it ever wants. I want the non government sector, the wealthy interests, the power interests in the non government sector to have less ability to spend less

money. And the reason I want that is not to give the government more money, but to, cause that's stupid, but to reduce the capacity of the wealthy and the rich corporate interests to be able to politically lobby and to be able to manipulate funds through. These, you know, big donors and what do they call them in America? The PACs or something? Super Packs. Super PACs. Yeah. You want, I want them to have less capacity to have super PACs and less capacity to manipulate the media and less, you know, through advertising and campaign funding. That's why

I want to tax the rich. I don't want to tax them to give the government more money because that's really it. Reflection of your ignorance on the capacities of your national governments. So, I think that's the MMT position. Now, I should qualify that. That's not the MMT position. The MMT position is the government does not need taxes in order to spend. The left position, reflecting my values, is we want to tax the rich and the wealthy out of existence to stop them being able to manipulate and use political power to manipulate the system to get

more for themselves and less for workers. To your point. Is the whole idea that we need the richest money to pay for these programs Frames the situation in such a way where it obfuscates who really creates value I mean it frames it like you know The rich people are creating all the value and we need their money to fund our things When in reality it's like who creates the value is the people doing the work, right? And we've kind of lost sight of that and how that Marxist insight is very much, you know, it very

much coincides with a project that is aware of how the You know, of how modern money works. Another thing too, is like when it comes to inequality, I mean, a lot of governments historically have dealt with inequality, not just through taxation of the rich, but like through land reform or redistribution of resources or setting a cap on how much property one is allowed to own. There's all kinds of ways. It's not just the nominal level, right? There's multiple layers, but I think the reason why people are so tied on the Taxation as a means to

one deal with inequality, but also to mainly like fun things. That's why they think in this way I think because of The Nordic model is often what the left wants to model itself off of, you know, like Norway, Denmark, Sweden. And I'm curious this is a question I've been wanting to ask like an MMT economist for a while is to what, like, I'm curious if MMT has spread into the Nordic countries at all, because I am, I do wonder why they have such high tax rates if they don't need to, because from what I'm aware

of, you know, despite being in the European Union. All of the Nordic countries have their own currencies. So I wonder why their tax rates are super high, you know, not just on the rich, but even on like working people, why their tax rates are so high. If they don't need to be to fund their social programs. Okay. back one step on the last little story. Okay. this sort of tax the rich mentality because they're really by, if you know the book Atlas Shrugged by Anne Rand, amazing. right wing screed. Well, that's all about how the

working class are subservient to the industrial and upper class. The upper class create all the value through their dynamics and insights and their foresight to invest their capital and to, and, you know, the, in that book, the whole concept is all the industrial class are very generous in allowing this lazy indolent sort of workers who do nothing but drink and eat and have sex to share in the bounty that the industrial class create. And you know, the tax the rich narrative is just that. It's just a really crazy perversion of left thinking in my view.

Now to your next question, and it really helps us understand what the role of taxation is in MMT. So when I say to audiences look, the government doesn't need Taxes in order to spend they obviously then say well, why the hell do they tax us then you're crazy They're taxing us and I say well then you have to understand what taxes do now And this is relating to the Nordic companies. Not all the Nordic currencies have Countries have their own currencies Finland doesn't for example Finland uses the euro. Sweden and Norway had their own currencies.

Denmark has its own currencies, but pegs it to the euro, so it reduces its sovereignty in its own currency. Effectively, they've got to take the dynamics of the euro system. All right, so take a scenario where. All the productive resources are being used in the economy. So they're being bought by various users. And then the currency issuing government wants to introduce a major decarbonisation of the economy, which will require it to mobilise, because the market won't do it, private market, the government has to mobilise a whole stack of resources in the public sphere. to promote

transition away from fossil fuel use. Now, what are the implications of that? Well, the government has no financial constraint, so it can go into the private market and buy up those resources if it wants to now to shift into a green economy, if you like. Now what are the implications of that? Well, if all the resources are currently being used. The only way the government can succeed in doing that is to outbid the current users. It can, it, it can buy them. No problem. It can never run out of its currency, but it has to

go into a bidding process in the market system and outbid the current users. Now, what are the implications of that? Obviously that would be inflationary because they would have to, you know, there'd be a bidding warfare for those resources which would put up the Prices of those resources and the costs of production, et cetera, et cetera. So how can I do that without creating an inflationary situation? Well, come in tax, because what taxes do is deprive the non government sector of purchasing power. And it doesn't, the government doesn't need the tax revenue to spend, but

what it needs is for the non government sector to be able to spend less. Why? Because that then means that you would have shift to a situation where all the resources were being used to a situation where some resources weren't being used because the taxation reduces the capacity of the non government sector to spend which frees up resources creates idle resources. If you want to be simple, creates unemployment. Now, that unemployment would persist, that idle set of resources would exist unless the government increased its spending. And so what the taxes do is create the fiscal

space in which the government can spend and bring resources into productive use without creating a bidding warfare that is inflationary pressure. So the taxation is essential to reduce the capacity of the non government sector to use productive resources. Simple as that. Now then you ask yourself the question, Well, the sort of Scandi model, the Scandinavian model historic, so, so there's different philosophies of the role of government in the world and the role, and there's different concepts of the welfare state. So the Anglo sort of English speaking welfare state is a much meaner form of welfare

state than the Scandinavian. Okay. Australian government. The Australian government spends more as a proportion than the U. S. government, for example, because the U. S. government's more, has a meaner concept of it, a much larger concept. narrower concept of the role of government in provision of welfare spending and public education and all those things. Whereas in the Scandinavian countries, Much more inclined to accept a larger role for the state in public education, public health, public transport, public infrastructure provision, utility provision. You know, power and gas and water and those sort of things. So then you

say to yourself, well, if the government's going to have a larger footprint of the economy, they have to, in other words, given there's finite resources at any point, they have to deprive the non government sector of more of a large, of a larger footprint than if the government had a smaller footprint. In other words, they have to have higher levels of tax. Not to fund the higher spending, but to reduce the non government sector claims on the resources so they don't have inflation. That's the explanation that an MMT economist would give. It would also be

to generate a value for the currency, you know, Because that's the way I've understood MMT's theory of the purpose of taxation is also to generate value for that currency. You know, so people demand it. And I assume that, you know, not many people use the Scandinavian currencies, the, of the Scandinavian countries. And they probably import a lot of things. They can't produce everything. So they probably want to keep some level of a decently valued currency. So they keep high taxes, but do they need to be as high as they are? Cause I know Warren Mosler

advocates that, you know, a large amount of income tax could be removed. And that sales tax could also be removed, for example. And yeah, I'm curious about that, if they could reduce it much more, because that's a quagmire that I've noticed when advocating social democratic or socialist policies is people say, well, yeah, but then our taxes are all going to go up, right? This is the objection you get in Canada and America. Well, I mean, this all comes back down to values. Warren and I differ somewhat and in our latest book I haven't got a

copy of it here. In our latest book, Modern Monetary Theory, Bill and Warren's Excellent Adventure. We discuss how we came to get together and how we effectively founded modern monetary theory. And in that book, we take a sort of a dialectical approach in, in, in narrative, in the sense that we illuminate the reader on our, on the differences that we have individually to things. So various points in the book, we say, Bill says this. Warren says this Bill doesn't agree with this. Warren doesn't agree with this sort of thing. And these are those things. There's

no fundamental agreement on the principles of MMT on the lens, but there are some disagreements on the basis of value values. So Warren prefers more private enterprise than lit and than I do. So, you know, Warren sees. a lower tax environment and a lower government spending environment is preferable. That to, to me, on who's, you know, solid traditional leftist, who believes in much larger government footprints in providing, I don't believe in private education. I don't believe in private universities. I don't believe in private healthcare. I don't believe in private transport. I believe those, they're all

sort of. essential elements of our human rights that should be provided by the state on behalf of all of us and maximize our well being rather than those things should not be provided for private profit. So that there are differences in value. And so when Warren says, Oh, the Scandinavian countries can reduce spending and taxes. Well, of course they can, but then they've got to ultimately reduce the government footprint to allow less fiscal space to maintain price stability than than I would have. That's the explanation for that. And speaking of government ownership. The question I've

been really wanting to ask an MMT economist is whether MMT economists have, you have their own unique understanding of the Soviet Union and the systems kind of like that in the Soviet States in which the state controlled everything. And that's not what I'm advocating. What I find very interesting about these countries is that they funded all sorts of different social programs, very expensive ones. I mean, even housing and everything. And there was never this question of where the money is going to come from. You know, where are you going to come from? We're going to

tax the population. So I found it actually a very good case to kind of prove MMT correct. You know, even though like they weren't, you know, aware of MMT that didn't exist and back then, but they weren't, Asking those questions as to where you're going to get the money from, I mean, it just seemed like, oh, we're going to go to space. We're just going to go build the rockets. We're going to go hire the the employees who needed to go do that. But I wonder, like, you know, maybe were they able to do that

because they could control inflation because they could control prices. And sometimes I hear Warren Mosler say, How do you combat inflation? He says the state can set prices. And I know MT economists like yourself also say that. You know, I wonder to what extent this entails that setting, preventing inflation requires a more planned economy, if not a total, not necessarily a total planned economy, but a more planned economy. Well, look that's a really complex set of issues. It embraces history and other things. I mean, the Soviet type planning model, effectively failed to live, deliver wellbeing

to its people. And problem was theoretically the planning model was fine, but the information shortfalls that would occur proved to be difficult. So how do you match consumer preferences with factory production on a, an immediate sort of basis? So that you don't have gluts of widget A that people don't want to eat or consume, and shortages of widget B that everybody wants. And, you know, the planning system at that, in that era did have discrepancies in matching production with consumer wants, for example. Now, that's not to say that the capitalist system does it well either,

because, you know, we've got the role of advertising that manipulates what we want and we end up with a lot of junk being produced that we manipulated into buying that don't add, doesn't help well being at all. But the point is that the, you know, 1940s planning systems could be totally possible now because of the technological developments with computer networks, for example. So computer networks, you know, online shopping sends instantaneous information and messages to capitalists as to what consumer preferences are. So we could have a a more planned economy with sophisticated modern computer systems. immediately

telling the factories what, what people wanted to buy and what they didn't want to buy, which would then immediately inform production processes on what should be produced on a daily basis. So, the old problems of the Soviet system could, it could be now overcome in my view. Now, does that mean we want to go to a totally planned economy? No, I don't think so because I also think there's value in sort of small scale shops and things, you know, craft production and musicians and things like this sort of small enterprises. That's the first point I

made. The second point is that how do you control inflation in the system? Well, what MMT tells us is that ultimately there's two broad ways of controlling inflation. You can either do it through unemployment or you can do it through an employment structure. Now what do I mean by that? Well the way in which the neoliberal system controls inflation, attempts to control inflation, is effectively to create unemployment. And what unemployment does is, creates fear of income loss and job loss among workers who might be bargaining for higher salaries and higher incomes. And it also creates

a problem for firms who are selling into product markets, because they start to they're unable to sell their produce. And so the bargaining dynamics change so that the firms with markup power have less incentive to use that. And the employers, employees with industrial power have less incentive to. strike and go on demand higher wages. Just excuse me. We've been talking a lot. And I can cut that out. yeah, so all that. If there's anything you want me to cut, I can do it. there's no problem. So, so unemployment is a way of disciplining the distributional

struggle that leads to higher margin push and inflation. So the MMT position is that you're much better. That unemployment is terribly damaging. to families and individuals. A better way of dealing with inflationary pressures emerging from distributional struggle is to have an employment policy where the government says it'll employ everybody at a fixed wage, a socially inclusive minimum wage. And I've called that the job guarantee in AMT and why that disappeared, why creates an inflation anchor. is because it's the government setting the price of one important commodity, the price that it's willing to provide pay for

any worker who doesn't have a job. And that'll eventually work its way through the cost structure. Now, how does that work? Well, if there's an a demand, excessive demand in the economy, excessive spending, and the government has to tighten fiscal policy, for example. is normally in our current system that would create unemployment and that'll eventually stifle the inflationary pressures in the way as I mentioned but in an employment job guarantee economy the unemployment the workers still lose jobs in the inflating sectors, but are able to move into the job guarantee sector, which creates shifts workers

into a fixed price sector. Now, eventually that will stop the inflationary pressures. So even though that's not, you're still forcing people to lose work and move into a minimum wage sector, that's preferable than shifting them into unemployment. forcing them into unemployment. Now, then you get, then you say to yourself, well, you know, is that a desirable system? Well, well, it's a reflect reflection of the realities of the capitalist system where distributional conflict will create inflation. And what, if you don't like the job guarantee, really, all you're saying is you don't like capitalism because a job

guarantee is a preferred system within the boundaries of a capitalist dynamic. It's better than unemployment, but clearly we would want a system, ideally, that doesn't have those distributional struggles. But then you're talking about a non capitalist system. And so then the question is, okay, how do you get to that? Now, a lot of people have criticized me for advocating a job guarantee, for example, because they say, oh, you're just wanting to put a bandaid on capitalism. And you're reducing the shock of unemployment and therefore you're reducing the dynamic of subjective class consciousness. And therefore you're

reducing you're reducing the revolutionary capacity of the working class and postponing the revolution. Well what I say to them is this. One of my favorite bands is called Brooklyn Funk Essentials. They're a New York based socialist cooperative of brilliant musicians. And one of their songs from their first album is The Revolution Was Postponed Due to Rain. And it's, what it's about is that these left wing activists get together to overthrow the capitalist system. And all sorts of things get in the way of it. It's a good thing. someone slept in and didn't go to the

protest or ultimately because it rains down they don't want to go out and march and have a revolution but it's a really insightful song because it's about the state of the left intellectual left and what i say to people who criticize me for being wanting to postpone the overthrow is that okay, it's all very well for you characters who are drinking your lattes and you're having your almond croissants in the cafe on a Saturday morning plotting the revolution. But meanwhile, back at the ranch, baby, the capitalist system is creating dreadful poverty and unemployment. And if

I can, and we're so far away from a revolutionary dynamic, That if I can create some well being for the downtrodden and the working class by giving them a dignified job with a socially inclusive income through a job guarantee, while you plot the revolution, I'm going to be much happier doing that. And when we get to the stage where we've got a revolutionary vanguard that's going to man the, or person the barricades. and overthrow the capitalist system, I'll be there leading the charge. But until that stage, I'm quite happy to have Band Aids that dignify

humanity and help downtrodden workers enjoy a bit of their life. within capitalism. That's my position. And at least we know social democracy does work, you know, it's something you can do in the meantime, but instead of immediately trying to do something that, you know, we may not know works and screw things up. I think it's the very least you have a intermediary mixed economy that Can guarantee, you know, massive improvements for people's lives. And I just want to clarify it. So would MMT favor price controls on certain things as ways to prevent inflation, Look, I'm

not a fav, a supporter of price controls. I think that they pervert the system the capitalists get around them, the black markets emerge. I think that it's much better to have a a sophisticated government planning bureau during the 1960s, for example you know, most advanced countries had very sophisticated, what they call manpower planning systems. So they were typically run through departments of employment or departments of labor. In the U. S. they were run through the Labor Department. And these systems were very sophisticated, given the state of technology and information in those days. But what they

sought to do was to work out where the government would be planning spending on public infrastructure or something. Working, trying to estimate where the private market was heading. And then forecasting what would be the labor requirements to, so there wouldn't be any short, you know, widespread shortages of skill. And they were doing, and then setting, then informing training and apprenticeship systems to feed into the labor planning systems. Now what they were trying to do was obviously, reduce the reduce the prospect of the private market getting into a situation where there'd be dramatic shortages of skilled

labor, which would lead to inflationary pressures coming from beating up existing skilled labor that was in shortage. So, you know, I favor those sort of planning systems. And now with modern computing systems and AI and all the rest of it, we've got much better capacity. To generate intelligence about where the economy is going. And also I think that with the climate emergency, we're going to have much more planning anyway, run through the state as we try to shift away from carbon based economies. I prefer that sort of planning infrastructure than price controls. the very last

question I wanted to ask is something less pertaining to MMT and more pertaining to your very particular geographic context, that is Australia. Because something I've been learning about recently, reading the historian Louis Hartz, in his book, The Founding of New Societies, is the part on Australia. I, I realized I did not know very much about Australian political history, and I don't think very many people do either. And you're from Australia, and I'd be curious to, you know, elucidate the Well, because I was really about the Australian labor movement and how powerful it was due to

its unique founding as a penal colony and having a very different class composition than that of the United States and even Canada and having very different politics. And he has this quote where Lewis Hartsbury says America was very much in every sense of the word, a classic. Capitalist dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, you know, they had much more political power in Australia. They had a dictatorship of labor over capital. At least that's what he says. You didn't say it's socialism, but he said dictatorship of labor over capital, strong labor movements. And I'm curious to just learn

from you as to what, like your pers your perspective on the current state of Australian politics and, you know, why. Or if because I just remind what I get is that they're that labor movement kind of died in Australia and why that happened. And if there's a prospect of that coming back, because it seemed Australia had it was a unique compared to the other settler colonial countries in having a very strong labor movement. Look, Australia a lot of people think, oh, Australia must be a bit like America, and because America has such a pervasive export

of its culture, its capitalist culture, its mass consumption culture, sort of individuality culture, all of that sort of rah stuff. But the reality is that despite the sort of American imperialism, cultural imperialism, we are quite a very different country to America. Very different culture, I mean we share the same language sort of, even though our accents are quite different but, and our spelling and grammar is a little bit different but, you know, we have we both come from Britain. Uh, so, you know, why wouldn't we be similar? Well, the answer is we're not similar at

all. Quite different country, Australia to the U. S. And I've traveled and been in the U. S. extensively. So I think I say that with some certainty. American society is incredibly insular society. So I remember during the breakdown of the Yugoslavia, the socialist state of Yugoslavia and all of the troubles in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In Australia, there was daily news coverage of the tragedies that were going on in, you know, the genocide that was going on in that part of the world. And I flew to San Francisco at the height of that. And on the

front page of the major San Francisco newspaper, there, there was a story about a, an animal that had been stuck up a tree in Oak, Oakland. And the fire rescue service had to be called out. And I said, God, you know, because the whole news story in Australia was Bosnia and all that stuff. On front page of our news coverage. And that I searched for it in the newspaper in San Francisco and it was a tiny little one inch column in the American newspaper, major city newspaper. And what that taught me, and it illustrates how

America is, that America's awareness stops at your border. It's a relatively insular country. And that's led to all of this stuff about American exceptionalism. We could, the West, out, the outsiders talk about American exceptionalism. That, you know, you see the world, well you're Canadian, but Americans see the world in their own image and, uh, don't really understand the rest of the world very well at all. Now, how did that come about? Well, the American settlements were free settlements. Whereas Australia was a prison colony. We were founded on the basis that the white class, I mean,

the indigenous class in Australia has been there, is one of the oldest civilizations in the world. You know, 30 years have occupied the land that I'm on. And that's a separate debate altogether. But the white settlement, the colonial settlement was essentially, you know, Britain, When they invoked the poor laws in Britain, they started imprisoning people, you know, and the enclosure set, the enclosure movement that forced every the low income the poor, the workers into the cities, and they had no work. So what did they do? They stole bread, and eventually the prison ships in the

Thames, And the prison system got overflooded because of the sort of pernicious social legislation that the British government introduced through the Paul laws and the enclosures. So what did they do? They had to find prison colonies. And so they found it, they discovered Australia and they said, okay, we'll ship all of our surplus prisoners to Australia. And so we were set up as a, mostly as a penal colony. And that, even though that system broke down when when the transportation ended the culture of our society was extremely anti authority. Was you know, we grew up

hating authority. because that's our roots, our sit our starting point. And moreover, the isolation of Australia from the rest of the world. I mean, when I was at university, we studied a book called the Tyranny of the Distance by a famous historian. And that was how the distance from the rest of the world, I mean, it takes 24 hours to go to Europe by plane. That's a tyranny. And in the old days it used to be three months by boat to get back to the old world, to get back to where our families had come

from Europe and the, and Britain. And so that tyranny of distance creates a sort of a resilience, a resilient type of culture where we're, it's pretty tough life out here, you know, for the early settlers, because this is a very arid country and it's a very dry, lots of droughts, only parts of it are livable because most of the land mass is desert and very arid and inhospitable to human settlement. Let me clarify that the indigenous people have worked it out very well because they had far better technologies than the white settlers had. We were

very unable to live in hospitable areas. But the point I'm making is that put these sort of elements together and you've got a society growing that's totally different to the us. And the, that anti-authoritarian resilient type culture led to the trade union movement being really important. And led to a sort of deep suspicion of capital and a deep suspicion of capitalists and a much more what we call an egalitarian culture, because we are all in it together. You know, the original settlers had such a hard time making ends meet in a hos in a inhospitable

climate well away from everywhere else. We would, they were just stuck here and, so that led to a sort of solidarity an egalitarian solidarity. It's called mateship, and, you know, you look out for your mates. And, you know, then the involvement, the colonial involvement of our troops in the First and Second World War. I mean, more Australians died in the First World War per capita than any other country, you know. And we were doing the service of the colonial masters, the British. You know, and in the Second World War we went into, against the Japanese,

for example, and The bosses, the generals were the British and the workers that died, the soldiers that died were the Aussies and the New Zealanders. And so these colonial vestiges led to an incredible solidarity and egalitarianism and mateship and that was prime values to spawn a very powerful trade union movement and a really vehement. working class solidarity. And so then you get the post war period and the rise of the mass consumption the creation of a middle class in a income sense mass consumption, home ownership, full employment era during that social democratic era. And the

rise of the service economy and in the early seventies and the, and women in the workforce due to equal opportunity and the sort of social changes that occurred with married women coming into the workforce. And you started to get a difficulties for the trade unions because historically the trade unions had been able to, to create memberships through. You know, large scale manufacturing plants and things like that. Whereas when with the service sector with small scale service, you know, providers, it's much harder to organize a trade union membership. And let's be frank, the old trade union

culture was rather misogynist because it was dominated by men in the workforce. And the role of the woman was in the family, bringing up the kids. And with as women came into the workforce, that, that sort of cultural misogyny was very tense and again, militated against, you know, women didn't want to be in trade unions with bully boy men, for example, you know, that cultural divide. But then you get neoliberalism in the seventies, emerging and eighties, and governments being taken over by ceasing to be mediators in the class, conflict and cease and becoming agents of

capital, which is effectively what they became under neoliberalism. And that shift as governments shifting towards becoming agents for capital. led in Australia to very pernicious industrial legislation that undermined the capacity of the trade union movement to do their jobs. And so you went from like the coverage ratio in the 1970s was around 55%. So 55 percent of workers were in trade unions. Now it's about 15%. And that's because of all of those elements that I mentioned. But having said that, the solidarity vestiges remain so the government, neoliberal governments have tried to become more like America,

and a classic example is public health and private health. So in the US you have very little public health. You don't have a broad public health system, whereas we do. And we have state provide a state Medicare system, which everybody, no matter who you are, can get first class health care, no matter who you are, what income, whatever. You don't have to take out private insurance to get first class health care. Whereas in America, if you're low income, good luck, is my understanding. If you get sick so that's, you know, and the government, neoliberal governments

in Australia have tried to undermine the public health system and get rid of the public Medicare system, but they know they can't because the solidarity culture is still very strong here. And a government that tried to eliminate public health provision would, a political party that tried to do that would never succeed. Whereas in America, It's the opposite. Trying to get less private health care and more public health care is like a, you know, it's very politically fraught as I understand it. So, that's our brief Australian history for you. We're quite unlike America. Their public sector

is much bigger here. And has much, even though there has been privatization and outsourcing, we still demand the public sector do things that don't, aren't getting done by a public sector in the U. S. because of the different cultures and the different levels of understanding of solidarity and the role of governments. It's a much, in my view, it's a much nicer country, Australia, to live in than it would be in America, especially if you're middle class or lower middle class. The middle class in America is being hollowed out quite quickly, whereas in Australia, there's still

a middle class, and the middle class still largely cares for the work, the element of the middle, of the work that's non middle class, to use a Marxist type framework. We still have some collective understanding, whereas in America, I think it's individualism gung ho. It's very interesting. In Canada I would also say we have more of a socialistic culture than America, but it's quite more of a paternalistic socialism compared to Australia from the way I understand it. Because in Canada we have two sort of socialist traditions, one, Coming from the CCF that turned into the

NDP, that was kind of an agrarian socialist movement. But also, we have the red toryist tradition, where the old conservative party had a, you know, a certain kind of socialism, but a very paternalistic one, right? Compared to the more, like, labor union militant socialist tradition. But yeah, I don't want to eat any more of your time. I know you have to go soon. This has been a very wonderful explanation that you gave. And thank you for your time. I think my listeners will get a lot of value out of this. Is there any particular works

that you would recommend most for listeners to check out of yours? Well, for this particular audience, I'd recommend Reclaiming the State, and I'd recommend the current book, Modern Monetary Theory, Bill and Warren's Excellent Adventure, because there you really, for those that are interested, for those that are interested in The demise of the left and the right, the way in which the left becomes sort of neoliberalized and the, and reduced as a political force, reclaiming the states, the book. If you're interested in the way the neoliberalism has taken over Europe and the sort of old continental

left then a book I wrote in 2015 called Eurozone Dystopia is that book. And if you're interested in, if you're an MMT sort of interest and you're interested in the way in which they came about, but also the divisions between a sort of left value system from an MMT perspective and a less left one in our modern, our current book, Modern Monetary Theory, Bill and Warren's Excellent Adventure is the one to read, I think. Because that really teases out these value differences a bit and also gives you a, I think, chapter and verse from the

founders of MMT what it is, whereas if you go out into the blogosphere or Twitter or whatever it's called these days, I just left Twitter. I've finally abandoned Twitter because I can't stand Musk and all of that stuff, but if there's a lot of misinformation about MSD out there on social, in social media, on social media, in social media, whatever. And I think that book that we've just published. Bill and Warren's Excellent Adventure really is, clarifies what it is and what it isn't and disabuses people of all of these weird MMT blogs that appear that

get it wrong in my view and undermine the power of the thought process. So thanks very much and take care. My only hope is that when enough people become pessimists, then, out of despair, somebody maybe does something. But you know why I also like to be a pessimist? Because it's the only way to have a nice life. If you are an optimist, then always bad things happen, and you are always uh, disappointed. When you are a pessimist, then you look around, okay, there are bad, but from time to time something nice happens, and you are

As a pessimist, you are a little bit glad all the time, no? You are listening to 1Dime Radio. Become a patron at patreon. com slash one dime to support the show and get access to extra content.