WEBVTT 1 00:00:15.519 --> 00:00:20.960 From Powerline blog dot com and produced by Ricochet dot Com. This is the 2 00:00:21.039 --> 00:00:37.359 Powerline Show with your host Steve Hayward. In a just world, Phil Magnus 3 00:00:37.359 --> 00:00:41.759 would have an endowed chair at Harvard or Yale or the University of Chicago or 4 00:00:41.799 --> 00:00:45.560 someplace like that. But we don't live in that just world for reasons that 5 00:00:45.679 --> 00:00:50.479 everyone knows. On the other hand, by not being in one of those 6 00:00:50.479 --> 00:00:54.439 traditional academic jobs, Phil doesn't have to spend a lot of his time in 7 00:00:54.560 --> 00:00:58.799 faculty meetings, on committees, creating papers, and teaching classes, and that 8 00:00:58.920 --> 00:01:03.439 may help explain his prodigious output from his outpost as the director of Research at 9 00:01:03.439 --> 00:01:10.000 the American Institute of Economic Research in Massachusetts ai ER. By the way, 10 00:01:10.040 --> 00:01:14.599 are the people who brought you the Great Barrington Declaration about COVID, which has 11 00:01:14.640 --> 00:01:18.760 been fully vindicated, despite the best attempts of Anthony Fauci and the rest to 12 00:01:18.959 --> 00:01:25.480 demonize it and suppress, actually in censor the authors of that document. Now. 13 00:01:25.519 --> 00:01:27.640 Phil is one of my favorite persons to follow on social media because he 14 00:01:27.719 --> 00:01:32.079 drives a lot of people on the left absolutely out of their mind, and 15 00:01:32.159 --> 00:01:36.920 in particular, he is I think more responsible than anyone for disturbing the reveries 16 00:01:36.959 --> 00:01:41.719 of Nicole Hannah Jones and the other champions of the sixteen nineteen project with his 17 00:01:41.840 --> 00:01:47.480 meticulous work showing their errors of fact and interpretation. I want to talk to 18 00:01:47.560 --> 00:01:51.680 him about his most recent article in the Journal of Political Economy, one of 19 00:01:51.719 --> 00:01:55.280 the premier journals of the field, along with his co author Michael mccaulvey, 20 00:01:56.000 --> 00:02:00.239 called the Mainstreaming of Marx. And what's interesting about this article is it is 21 00:02:00.280 --> 00:02:06.480 that Phil and his co author Michael discovered that Marx was a very marginal figure 22 00:02:07.079 --> 00:02:09.319 through much of his life and in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, 23 00:02:09.400 --> 00:02:15.680 and it was only the Russian Revolution that revived Marx and propelled him into the 24 00:02:15.879 --> 00:02:19.439 fame as an intellectual leader of the left that we all have known ever since. 25 00:02:20.080 --> 00:02:22.919 Now, for some reason, this was greeted with outrage by people on 26 00:02:22.960 --> 00:02:27.439 the left and even a few on the right, and therein lies a tale. 27 00:02:28.039 --> 00:02:30.800 In addition to walking through this subject, we talk a little bit about 28 00:02:31.000 --> 00:02:37.199 neoliberalism, which is another puzzling phenomenon that began chiefly on the left, but 29 00:02:37.280 --> 00:02:39.520 as also finding some followers today on the right. And that makes for a 30 00:02:39.599 --> 00:02:45.199 very head spinning experience right now. And then finally we check in briefly with 31 00:02:45.199 --> 00:02:50.159 what the latest is the sixteen nineteen project, which simply won't go away despite 32 00:02:50.159 --> 00:02:53.000 its obvious flaws and bad faith. And so that let's turn to Phil and 33 00:02:53.039 --> 00:02:59.120 have some fun, will Phil. It's great to catch up with you. 34 00:02:59.120 --> 00:03:02.360 You are my favorite person to follow on social media because I don't know how 35 00:03:02.400 --> 00:03:07.000 you do it. And it's my frequent joke that we need some clearly, 36 00:03:07.159 --> 00:03:10.960 some robust, rent control because you're occupying so much space for free in the 37 00:03:12.000 --> 00:03:14.960 hands of a lot of people on the left, but if you on the 38 00:03:15.080 --> 00:03:17.120 on the right too. But let's start with this recent article of yours that 39 00:03:17.159 --> 00:03:20.919 I know has been a long time in the making, just out in the 40 00:03:21.000 --> 00:03:27.080 Journal of Political Economy, and it's an interesting proposition which summarize it this way, 41 00:03:27.080 --> 00:03:30.800 and then you can correct me. It's that Karl Marx and Marxism was 42 00:03:30.919 --> 00:03:35.719 largely unknown by the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth century and only came 43 00:03:35.719 --> 00:03:38.639 to prominence because of the rough Russian Revolution, which means it was kind of 44 00:03:38.639 --> 00:03:45.439 a contingent thing that we that this guy emerged as the great thinker of the 45 00:03:45.560 --> 00:03:49.280 left, and that seems perfectly sensible to me, but it's really upset a 46 00:03:49.319 --> 00:03:51.680 lot of people. So anyway, why don't you go through what you found, 47 00:03:51.680 --> 00:03:53.360 how you did it, and you know what listeners should know about the 48 00:03:53.439 --> 00:03:58.520 article. Yeah. Absolutely, So when we see Karl Marx today, we 49 00:03:58.680 --> 00:04:00.800 think of him as one of these giant figures of the intellectual canon, and 50 00:04:00.800 --> 00:04:05.319 that's certainly how he's taught in universities. He's depending on what metric you use, 51 00:04:05.960 --> 00:04:11.439 usually in the top two to three most assigned authors in the philosophical canon. 52 00:04:12.120 --> 00:04:15.079 He's all over the English department, the sociology department, history, philosophy, 53 00:04:15.360 --> 00:04:21.000 all of these major disciplines teach Marx as a significant, important thinker, 54 00:04:21.240 --> 00:04:26.000 quite possibly one of the most important thinkers of the last two centuries, so 55 00:04:26.639 --> 00:04:30.800 very very high levels of academic prestige and acclaim and attention that's paid to him. 56 00:04:31.040 --> 00:04:34.000 Yet if you go back around a century ago, you go back a 57 00:04:34.040 --> 00:04:36.519 little more than a century ago, so the turn of the twentieth century, 58 00:04:38.600 --> 00:04:43.000 and Marx is a relatively obscure figure. Don't just take my word for that. 59 00:04:43.720 --> 00:04:48.120 You can see that attested to on the political left web. Da Boys 60 00:04:48.160 --> 00:04:53.759 writes that in his memoirs that Marx was almost never taught in the US universities 61 00:04:54.000 --> 00:04:59.319 when he went through college in the eighteen nineties. You have prominent Marxists themselves, 62 00:04:59.399 --> 00:05:03.319 like the Marxist historian Eric Eric Hobsbomb studies the number of copies of Marx's 63 00:05:03.360 --> 00:05:06.199 books that were put into print in the nineteenth century. He finds it's only 64 00:05:06.240 --> 00:05:13.480 a couple of thousand copies. He's not this huge intellectual giant of his age. 65 00:05:13.759 --> 00:05:16.079 And I'd always been kind of curious in this question and thought of a 66 00:05:16.160 --> 00:05:23.439 way to look into it, to see the pattern of dissemination of Marx's works 67 00:05:23.439 --> 00:05:28.279 by tracking his citations over time, and very recently we've got to the point 68 00:05:28.360 --> 00:05:31.160 where, you know, we call it big data. There are massive databases 69 00:05:31.199 --> 00:05:38.160 out there that now scan millions, if not tens of millions of pages of 70 00:05:38.199 --> 00:05:41.240 books. The most famous one, and almost were one's familiar with, is 71 00:05:41.279 --> 00:05:45.800 Google Books, and that's the corpus that we're building around. And what they've 72 00:05:45.839 --> 00:05:50.639 done is they've scanned like entire university libraries of books going back to the fifteen 73 00:05:50.720 --> 00:05:55.720 hundreds. Various estimates, depending on what set you use and what language, 74 00:05:56.079 --> 00:06:00.560 they now estimate that Google has somewhere between ten to twenty percent of all books 75 00:06:00.600 --> 00:06:03.680 ever written have been scanned in some form or another into their library, so 76 00:06:03.759 --> 00:06:09.279 it's just a massive database. And when they did so, they use text 77 00:06:09.319 --> 00:06:13.439 recognition software to create this thing. They call it it's Google Ingram. So 78 00:06:13.519 --> 00:06:15.959 many of you have probably use the Google Ingram viewer. It's a fun little 79 00:06:15.959 --> 00:06:18.399 tool. You can see. You pull it up and say, when did 80 00:06:18.439 --> 00:06:23.040 Albert Einstein He's the one that they use this their standard time when did he 81 00:06:23.079 --> 00:06:28.600 start appearing in the scientific journals and become a famous figure? And Ingram measures 82 00:06:28.600 --> 00:06:31.759 the number of times a name or a word or a phrase is used as 83 00:06:31.800 --> 00:06:35.519 a relative percentage of all books that were in print that they've scanned for that 84 00:06:35.600 --> 00:06:39.879 year, so he can see the levels change over time. I thought this 85 00:06:39.920 --> 00:06:43.319 is a really neat tool. And what I knew about Coral Marx is in 86 00:06:43.439 --> 00:06:46.920 his own lifetime there are really only two groups of people that pay attention to 87 00:06:47.000 --> 00:06:51.639 them. One of them is fellow socialists on the radical fringe periphery of the 88 00:06:51.639 --> 00:06:58.680 political spectrum. I mean, we're talking very very small groups of a radical 89 00:06:58.720 --> 00:07:04.160 revolutionary active and in particular it's fellow Marxists. But it's you can fit them 90 00:07:04.160 --> 00:07:09.199 in a telephone booth in that era, and then the second group that starts 91 00:07:09.240 --> 00:07:12.120 to pay attention to him. This is a couple of years after readies. 92 00:07:12.639 --> 00:07:16.720 As professional economists, they start to notice his theories, but one of what 93 00:07:16.759 --> 00:07:20.560 they immediately do, and really the first major economists to take on Karl Marx 94 00:07:20.720 --> 00:07:26.600 as a guy named Philip Wicksteed. He publishes a pretty devastating critique of them, 95 00:07:26.600 --> 00:07:30.160 and over the course of about five pages. These were economists after the 96 00:07:30.240 --> 00:07:33.879 event that we referred to as the marginal Revolution, where they figured out a 97 00:07:33.920 --> 00:07:39.240 solution to the problem of value. Value is subjective based on decisions made in 98 00:07:39.279 --> 00:07:43.199 the margin on the moment of the choice or the exchange, not the labor 99 00:07:43.240 --> 00:07:46.040 theory of value, which is what Karl Marks built his entire system on. 100 00:07:46.519 --> 00:07:50.120 So from about the mid eighteen eighties onward, economists read Dos Capitol and all 101 00:07:50.160 --> 00:07:54.279 these other books that have been written by Marx. They track them down because 102 00:07:54.279 --> 00:07:59.319 they're pretty obscure in that era. They read them and they thoroughly reject them, 103 00:08:00.040 --> 00:08:03.040 saying this is an obsolete theory and I'm not just saying people on the 104 00:08:03.120 --> 00:08:07.040 right John Maynard Keynes in nineteen twenty two or thereabouts Rights and essay and says 105 00:08:07.199 --> 00:08:13.879 Carl Marx's Capital is an obsolete textbook of no interest to the modern world and 106 00:08:13.120 --> 00:08:18.680 rendered obsolete pains. I mean, the giant of the economic left is saying 107 00:08:18.680 --> 00:08:22.800 this about Marx's textbook. So that's really interesting. And you find multiple indicators 108 00:08:22.839 --> 00:08:28.199 from the late nineteenth e ory twentieth century that every time economists consider marks, 109 00:08:28.439 --> 00:08:30.800 they think, well, yeah, this is kind of crankery, this is 110 00:08:31.560 --> 00:08:35.600 this is already forty years out of date. The theory doesn't really work. 111 00:08:35.639 --> 00:08:39.240 They find internal contradictions, they find it cannot be mathematically acted upon. So 112 00:08:39.399 --> 00:08:45.200 central planning is basically disproved on a mathematical level as well. And then by 113 00:08:45.600 --> 00:08:48.960 you know, about the nineteen tens, every economist that considers it they view 114 00:08:48.000 --> 00:08:54.399 it as like a curiosom of history that there was this guy that wrote a 115 00:08:54.480 --> 00:09:00.679 really radical socialistic theory of labor economics, but nothing of it holds together. 116 00:09:00.960 --> 00:09:03.399 And that's where things stood in about nineteen sixteen. Yeah, you know, 117 00:09:03.440 --> 00:09:07.559 I think it was certain things come back to me now because I'm you know, 118 00:09:07.600 --> 00:09:09.720 I gave up on Marx thirty years ago when I thought Marxism was over 119 00:09:09.799 --> 00:09:13.320 after the Cold war ended, and now it's all come back in new and 120 00:09:13.320 --> 00:09:16.879 different forms. But I think it was the British, the left wing British 121 00:09:18.000 --> 00:09:20.759 figure R. H. Tawney who said once Marx was the last of the 122 00:09:20.799 --> 00:09:24.720 schoolman, meaning the scholastics of the Thomas aquinas Erah, And I guess the 123 00:09:24.759 --> 00:09:28.559 same reason, right. I mean, no modern economist I think thinks that 124 00:09:28.600 --> 00:09:33.480 the medieval theory of the just price is something that could be calculated, holds 125 00:09:33.519 --> 00:09:39.000 any sense, right exactly. And as Marx kind of reviving that in a 126 00:09:39.080 --> 00:09:43.159 new Galian basis that yes, you might say, so, all right, 127 00:09:43.200 --> 00:09:46.639 so what what what lenin comes along? Is it? That's almost that's simple. 128 00:09:46.720 --> 00:09:50.600 Got a really interesting pattern. I'm looking at the ingram data that comes 129 00:09:50.600 --> 00:09:52.639 out of the Google book scans, and you see Marx's name. It's just 130 00:09:52.679 --> 00:09:58.440 kind of piddling along there for a couple of decades after his death, not 131 00:09:58.559 --> 00:10:03.080 really growing in very substantial ways. It fluctuates year to year, and maybe 132 00:10:03.440 --> 00:10:07.519 that coincides when a new translation came out and things like that. But he's 133 00:10:07.519 --> 00:10:13.879 a pretty minor figure relatively speaking in that period, and then in nineteen seventeen 134 00:10:13.919 --> 00:10:20.039 it just skyrockets. References, citations, mentions of Marx and other books just 135 00:10:20.120 --> 00:10:22.440 take off. It's like overnight it triples, and then it goes off to 136 00:10:22.480 --> 00:10:26.120 the races from there. So we track it out for about a decade after 137 00:10:26.200 --> 00:10:30.360 nineteen seventeen, and you just see this clear upward trend. So I think 138 00:10:30.399 --> 00:10:35.799 that's really interesting that Marx is suddenly this figure that everyone's talking about, and 139 00:10:35.840 --> 00:10:41.519 he starts to surpass other prominent figures in his age. So when Marx is 140 00:10:41.519 --> 00:10:45.759 writing and then the decades after his death, a fairly obscure economist today, 141 00:10:46.000 --> 00:10:50.480 but who was much better known in that era as Henry George, right American 142 00:10:50.759 --> 00:10:54.960 thinker. We don't teach Georgia's economics except in very specialized programs today, but 143 00:10:56.080 --> 00:11:00.600 in the late nineteenth century he's a prominent figure and he cited a significantly higher 144 00:11:00.679 --> 00:11:05.480 rates than Karl Marx. Well, Marx passes George shortly after nineteen seventeen. 145 00:11:05.120 --> 00:11:07.840 Then he starts getting up into like Adam Smith, territory and some of the 146 00:11:07.879 --> 00:11:13.399 more famous names that we do recognize. So what happens is we've got this 147 00:11:13.440 --> 00:11:18.039 theory that Lennon through the Bolshevik Revolution, which is premised on disseminating marks and 148 00:11:18.200 --> 00:11:24.519 acting out Marxist theory really put someone to the mainstream intellectual map and has been 149 00:11:24.559 --> 00:11:28.039 off to the races ever since. So our big test, as we built 150 00:11:28.080 --> 00:11:31.240 this database out of data, we mind out of Google Ingram for a two 151 00:11:31.320 --> 00:11:35.679 hundred and twenty six other authors out of the intellectual canon, people that were 152 00:11:35.720 --> 00:11:39.519 either contemporaries of Marks or going all the way back to the ancient world, 153 00:11:39.600 --> 00:11:43.240 so Aristotle and Plato and stuff like that, And we calculated all of their 154 00:11:43.279 --> 00:11:48.879 citations year by year and we fit them into a model computerized algorithm that's a 155 00:11:50.080 --> 00:11:56.759 really sophisticated supercomputer type analysis. It's called a synthetic control model. And what 156 00:11:56.799 --> 00:12:03.360 it basically does is that algorithmically fits all of these other authors. It takes 157 00:12:03.399 --> 00:12:05.960 composites of their citations, is tries to find the other ones that track Karl 158 00:12:07.039 --> 00:12:11.960 Marks between his death in nineteen sixteen, and it gets a very precise fit 159 00:12:11.039 --> 00:12:16.480 line to that. It's a composite of several other figures that were his contemporaries, 160 00:12:18.039 --> 00:12:22.159 weighted don algorithmically by the computer. The computer assigns the weight, so 161 00:12:22.200 --> 00:12:24.039 it takes some of the biases out of that. And what you can do 162 00:12:24.320 --> 00:12:28.519 is if you can create a strong fit line prior to nineteen seventeen. You 163 00:12:28.559 --> 00:12:33.240 can project forward to what marks his citation pattern would have looked like had Lennon 164 00:12:35.399 --> 00:12:39.559 Night on his way to Saint Petersburg or had ever staged the revolution. And 165 00:12:39.679 --> 00:12:43.000 we find this, and you know, the two patterns are one is the 166 00:12:43.080 --> 00:12:46.759 real marks is shooting off to the sky, It's like a rocket ship. 167 00:12:48.159 --> 00:12:52.480 And then the regular, this counterfactual synthetic marks, it's just continues along at 168 00:12:52.519 --> 00:12:58.200 this slow, steady, low citation, relatively niche kind of obscure figure face, 169 00:13:00.080 --> 00:13:03.559 and you look at the composites of it and synthetic marks, the counterfactual 170 00:13:03.600 --> 00:13:09.799 marks. It's actually composed of his other nineteenth century socialist competitors. Yeah, 171 00:13:09.840 --> 00:13:15.039 it's contemporaries. It's Ferdinand Lassalle, Johann Carl Rodbertus. And you know I 172 00:13:15.080 --> 00:13:18.720 mentioned these names your views, unless they're really into the history of economic thought, 173 00:13:18.720 --> 00:13:20.399 they've probably never heard of these guys. Yeah, I mean right, 174 00:13:20.480 --> 00:13:28.000 he'd rank down there with foyerboxes exactly that type of thing. Yeah, they're 175 00:13:28.000 --> 00:13:31.200 there are specialists that study them today, but they're not the single most assigned 176 00:13:31.200 --> 00:13:35.639 textbook and right in university courses. Right well, now, the odd thing 177 00:13:35.679 --> 00:13:39.840 to me is, so this is a straightforward quantitative exercise. It's a lay 178 00:13:39.840 --> 00:13:43.879 person can I mean, what you just said about your algorithm may lose a 179 00:13:43.879 --> 00:13:46.679 few people, but the conclusion is pretty straightforward and easy to grasp. And 180 00:13:46.919 --> 00:13:52.000 what's amazing to me is that a lot of your I wouldn't even call them 181 00:13:52.039 --> 00:13:54.639 critics because they don't even engage the argument. But a lot of people on 182 00:13:54.639 --> 00:13:58.639 the left are losing their minds over your argument. And I don't. I 183 00:13:58.679 --> 00:14:01.320 have a theory ast why, which I'll share with you. But but what 184 00:14:01.320 --> 00:14:05.240 what's going I mean, why why would that be upset at this? Who 185 00:14:05.279 --> 00:14:07.879 cares? If leave the boost of marks? What's what's behind this outrage? 186 00:14:09.240 --> 00:14:11.000 Right? Right? Well? Like a friend joke to me is this would 187 00:14:11.039 --> 00:14:16.799 be again to a free market economist being upset that the inflationary crisis of the 188 00:14:16.840 --> 00:14:20.480 nineteen seventies boosted Milton Friedman's citation, Right, guy, I hear that as 189 00:14:20.679 --> 00:14:24.960 Yep, that kind of makes sense. Uh. It made Freedman very prominent 190 00:14:24.000 --> 00:14:26.840 because he's one of the critics of the inflation. Uh. But yeah, 191 00:14:28.159 --> 00:14:35.320 they the reaction was like this visceral gut um rage that burst out on you 192 00:14:35.320 --> 00:14:37.919 know, of all places. It's on the Twitter sphere. They see the 193 00:14:37.960 --> 00:14:41.480 paper, they kind of read the abstract, they object to the conclusion, 194 00:14:41.559 --> 00:14:45.960 don't bother to really investigate the paper, and then we just get this uh 195 00:14:46.240 --> 00:14:52.679 venomous often profane assault uh coming from these journalists Twitter types on the on the 196 00:14:52.720 --> 00:14:56.799 center left and then uh to the far left in many cases, and they're 197 00:14:56.799 --> 00:15:01.840 just raging and in fury at our results. It's like, well, how 198 00:15:01.960 --> 00:15:07.480 dare they suggest that the great Karl Marx was fairly obscure prior to nineteen seventeen? 199 00:15:07.799 --> 00:15:11.960 And you know, we never claim that nobody cited Marks prior to nineteen 200 00:15:11.039 --> 00:15:13.879 seventeen. In fact, in the paper, we trace all these economists that 201 00:15:13.919 --> 00:15:18.960 refute them. But he's a niche subject, and we also trace these competitors 202 00:15:18.960 --> 00:15:24.480 that engage with them. So Robertis who's a composite donor to the counterfactual. 203 00:15:24.960 --> 00:15:30.320 Not only was he like a contemporary, but his followers viciously feuded with the 204 00:15:30.320 --> 00:15:35.120 other Marxists for who got to be the dominant socialist. And Robertus's followers accused 205 00:15:35.120 --> 00:15:39.440 Marks of plagiarizing the theories or post value from them. So they hate each 206 00:15:39.440 --> 00:15:43.559 other, but they're at the you know, they're contemporaries at roughly the same 207 00:15:45.200 --> 00:15:48.440 segment of society that they're competing for the attention for. So we never claimed 208 00:15:48.480 --> 00:15:52.360 that Marx was completely unknown. We just say he's relatively obscure. And they're 209 00:15:52.399 --> 00:15:54.759 furious about this. And I think one of the reasons here is it gets 210 00:15:54.799 --> 00:15:58.799 into some of the psyche of the post nineteen ninety one Marxist revival that we've 211 00:15:58.799 --> 00:16:03.519 seen moving on the Academy through today. Yeah, okay, uh so, 212 00:16:03.720 --> 00:16:07.559 yeah, so what happened in nineteen ninety one that was really like the nail 213 00:16:07.600 --> 00:16:12.759 in the coffin that discredited Soviet state Marxism. It discredited the whole Leninist Stalin 214 00:16:14.360 --> 00:16:18.759 Bolshevik experiment. Of course, the hundreds of millions of bodies that stacked up 215 00:16:18.759 --> 00:16:23.559 in his wig didn't help that either, But it was a you know, 216 00:16:23.600 --> 00:16:27.799 like a final note in a really bad chapter of human history. But the 217 00:16:27.840 --> 00:16:32.879 Marxist today, if you ask them, they'll say, well, Lenin and 218 00:16:32.919 --> 00:16:40.000 Stalin, we're not true Marxists here. That one's whole pot was not a 219 00:16:40.000 --> 00:16:42.840 true Marxist. Castro was not a true Marxist. Now was not a true 220 00:16:42.840 --> 00:16:48.399 Marxist. So every time a Marxist seizes power and commits mass atrocities. They 221 00:16:48.399 --> 00:16:51.480 say, well, it's not true Marxism. And I think that you have 222 00:16:51.519 --> 00:16:56.240 among intellectual leftists today, and these are the people that were outraged at the 223 00:16:56.240 --> 00:17:00.519 paper. So it's a subset of Marxist today, but probably probably the ones 224 00:17:00.559 --> 00:17:04.880 that are most associated with the academy and journalism. They are furious because one 225 00:17:04.920 --> 00:17:08.480 of the implications of our paper is if Lennon is what puts marks on the 226 00:17:08.480 --> 00:17:12.559 map, Lennon is now necessarily a part of their own intellectual heritage. And 227 00:17:12.599 --> 00:17:17.920 they don't know. Yeah, they don't like that baggage. There's another subset 228 00:17:17.920 --> 00:17:21.400 of the Marxist So it was a really curious reaction. We had like fifty 229 00:17:21.440 --> 00:17:26.279 percent of Marxists and leftists, that's our paper, We're furious and how dare 230 00:17:26.279 --> 00:17:30.960 you insinuate that Marx got his fame from Lenin This is an outrage. We 231 00:17:30.759 --> 00:17:33.880 actually adhere to the pre Leninist march, which is the truth, well mark. 232 00:17:36.079 --> 00:17:37.319 But then there's the other fifty percent, so which I guess with the 233 00:17:37.359 --> 00:17:41.079 kind of the old school Soviet Marxists, and they're like, why is this 234 00:17:41.119 --> 00:17:45.400 paper even published? This is uncontroversial we've known this for decades. Yeah, 235 00:17:45.400 --> 00:17:51.000 well, you know my theory is U have a twofold theory which you, 236 00:17:51.200 --> 00:17:52.920 as a more quantitatively orient and the person than me, may or may not 237 00:17:53.599 --> 00:18:00.319 think is right or full. It's for the left. The two parts of 238 00:18:00.359 --> 00:18:03.960 this, I think a lot of leftist academics are deeply intellectually insecure people. 239 00:18:04.000 --> 00:18:07.160 I can say more about that going forward. But that connects to the bigger 240 00:18:07.160 --> 00:18:11.240 problem point number two, which is what was that? Was it? One 241 00:18:11.279 --> 00:18:15.640 of those French thinkers forty years ago had the book whose title I think translated 242 00:18:15.759 --> 00:18:19.240 was from Mars to Jesus or Jesus to Marks. I mean, yeah, 243 00:18:19.279 --> 00:18:22.839 for the modern I don't ever read maybe i read it, I don't remember 244 00:18:22.880 --> 00:18:25.799 it now, but just the title vaguely in my head. You know, 245 00:18:25.960 --> 00:18:30.119 Marx was the gospel, I mean literally the gospel for you know, for 246 00:18:30.279 --> 00:18:32.880 lack of a better term, to the secular left. And to now say 247 00:18:32.920 --> 00:18:37.839 that his prominence is owing to complete historical accident and contingency with someone of the 248 00:18:37.920 --> 00:18:41.640 dubious legacy, as you just point out, I think it is shattering to 249 00:18:41.759 --> 00:18:45.400 them. Yes, so, I mean that's my theory. And but then 250 00:18:45.599 --> 00:18:47.559 I wanted to work the other side of the street, which is when you 251 00:18:47.599 --> 00:18:51.119 first started. As I recall rolling out drafts of the paper and talking about 252 00:18:51.119 --> 00:18:55.759 this, I think you attracted some fire from the right, from some libertarians, 253 00:18:55.759 --> 00:18:59.519 and I'm like, what, So walk through that a little bit. 254 00:18:59.559 --> 00:19:02.720 And as the theory there that some people on the right need a villain, 255 00:19:02.759 --> 00:19:06.359 and if you downgrade marks from the pedestal the left puts him on, it 256 00:19:06.400 --> 00:19:08.720 also deprives us of a villain. I mean, that seems stupid to me, 257 00:19:08.759 --> 00:19:12.119 but I'm trying to figure out why anyone on our team would object to 258 00:19:12.160 --> 00:19:15.839 what you're finding. Yeah. So I think there's two groups there. One 259 00:19:15.920 --> 00:19:18.519 is exactly that there are people that think, well, Marx was the great 260 00:19:18.559 --> 00:19:21.079 villain of the twentieth century, therefore he must have been a big deal. 261 00:19:21.559 --> 00:19:25.960 Yeah. So saying that this is an accident of history just really kind of 262 00:19:25.960 --> 00:19:29.799 takes the intellectual heft out of the adversary in ways that they kind of feel 263 00:19:29.799 --> 00:19:33.599 like, hey, we've been wasting our time spinning our wheels. There's also 264 00:19:33.640 --> 00:19:38.000 a subset of the libertarian movement. This goes back to some nineteenth century traditions. 265 00:19:38.160 --> 00:19:44.640 Although they don't align with Marx himself, they view Marx as partially right, 266 00:19:44.720 --> 00:19:51.440 as like having diagnosed the inequities of society and the injustices, and because 267 00:19:51.480 --> 00:19:56.519 they see him as like an offshoot of the tradition that went in the wrong 268 00:19:56.559 --> 00:20:02.240 direction, that also means to them that they're four bearers are had it wrong 269 00:20:02.319 --> 00:20:10.599 to diagnose the excesses of the nineteenth century industrialization processes as something that was liberating 270 00:20:10.680 --> 00:20:14.960 or libertarian oriented. So ye had elements of both of those. They saw 271 00:20:15.039 --> 00:20:18.759 the paper and they were upset as well. Yeah, I've just thought found 272 00:20:18.759 --> 00:20:22.519 that bizarre. Let's take a brief break right here to hear from our sponsors, 273 00:20:22.519 --> 00:20:26.400 and then we'll be back with topic number two. Don't go away. 274 00:20:30.319 --> 00:20:34.680 Let's move on to a related subject which also has the strange left right incoherence 275 00:20:34.759 --> 00:20:42.440 to it, and that is the great term thrown around ubiquitously today, neoliberalism. 276 00:20:44.559 --> 00:20:47.720 Yeah, so you know, neoliberal neoliberalism is I know, I think 277 00:20:47.759 --> 00:20:49.160 I think maybe I saw one of your end grams about this. I think 278 00:20:49.160 --> 00:20:52.279 some other people have done this too, showing that it's a term that exploded 279 00:20:52.319 --> 00:20:56.720 into you starting in the mid to late nineteen nineties. It first comes to 280 00:20:56.799 --> 00:21:00.079 site as an epithet by the left who don't like and what they mean by 281 00:21:00.119 --> 00:21:06.759 neoliberalism is Reagan and Thatcher, Milton Friedman, Friedrick Hyaku, von mesas you 282 00:21:06.799 --> 00:21:11.880 know, our political and intellectual heroes. I think, uh, and and 283 00:21:11.880 --> 00:21:15.240 and and this. You know, it's definitely to call someone a neoliberal is 284 00:21:15.440 --> 00:21:18.519 like for a conservative calling someone a Marxist or a socialist. Right. So 285 00:21:18.559 --> 00:21:21.680 anyway, it walks with a little bit of the history of this, because 286 00:21:21.680 --> 00:21:22.960 I know there's an earlier parts of all this, and then I also want 287 00:21:22.960 --> 00:21:26.799 to get to the way it's emerging and being embraced by the right lately, 288 00:21:26.920 --> 00:21:33.160 which is sad. The second question, give me your sort of quick summary 289 00:21:33.200 --> 00:21:37.319 history of you know where the termy murders? Where does come from? Something 290 00:21:37.400 --> 00:21:41.400 like that. Yeah, so I've got an article digging into the deep history 291 00:21:41.440 --> 00:21:44.519 the etymology of the term. We're at birst of the scene, as you 292 00:21:44.559 --> 00:21:47.720 noted. Uh, you can see this in google ingram again. So I 293 00:21:47.759 --> 00:21:49.799 love playing around the data. It's early, not into like the mid nineteen 294 00:21:49.920 --> 00:21:56.599 nineties that this term that almost nobody had ever used before suddenly becomes the thing. 295 00:21:56.680 --> 00:21:59.640 It's the standard insult for everyone on the left to refer to anyone in 296 00:21:59.640 --> 00:22:02.240 the free market tradition. And it turns out if you dig a little bit 297 00:22:02.240 --> 00:22:06.240 deeper into that, there's a very specific reason. And the reason is that's 298 00:22:06.319 --> 00:22:14.680 when the French philosopher Michelle Fuco his lectures which were recorded in the late nineteen 299 00:22:14.720 --> 00:22:19.359 seventies, some of his classroom college lectures, they were translated and started to 300 00:22:19.440 --> 00:22:23.400 peer in print, and in nineteen seventy nine he gave a series of lectures 301 00:22:23.400 --> 00:22:29.359 on what he called the subject of neoliberalism. And this is, you know, 302 00:22:29.359 --> 00:22:33.440 it's some interesting read, complex take on the subject, not quite the 303 00:22:33.519 --> 00:22:36.720 dumb down version that you see today, but this is what gets everyone interested 304 00:22:36.720 --> 00:22:40.799 in and it takes off in the nineteen nineties. Is clearly an aftermath of 305 00:22:40.839 --> 00:22:45.400 Fuco being translated and people liking Fuco for other reasons. They find this and 306 00:22:45.480 --> 00:22:49.519 aha, he's onto something. But the lectures themselves are about a much earlier 307 00:22:49.559 --> 00:22:53.960 event. It's a conference that occurs in Paris in the nineteen thirty eight. 308 00:22:55.359 --> 00:22:57.920 Yeah, the Walter Lippman Colloquium. And what Fuco had done, and he 309 00:22:57.960 --> 00:23:03.279 had been digging through some artis he finds the transcripts of this conference in mess 310 00:23:03.279 --> 00:23:07.119 and Hyak and all these other major figures of the interwar era free market scene 311 00:23:07.200 --> 00:23:11.240 were at this conference, and during the course of the conference, they bantered 312 00:23:11.240 --> 00:23:17.240 about what should we call ourselves as a movement. I think they sort of 313 00:23:17.359 --> 00:23:19.480 end up on what we referred to as classical liberals today. But someone raised 314 00:23:19.519 --> 00:23:23.680 the point said well, maybe we should call ourselves neoliberals, and they talk 315 00:23:23.720 --> 00:23:27.680 about it, they debate it, and the conference ultimately rejects it. So 316 00:23:27.799 --> 00:23:32.240 in nineteen thirty eight they talked to the term neoliberal, but they reject it. 317 00:23:32.680 --> 00:23:34.279 And I'm reading this and I started digging and said, well why did 318 00:23:34.319 --> 00:23:40.640 they reject this term? What turns out it has an earlier history. So 319 00:23:40.799 --> 00:23:44.440 the conference proceedings have been printed in English, and I think some of the 320 00:23:44.440 --> 00:23:48.279 original were in French. But they involved a lot of thinkers like Yak and 321 00:23:48.400 --> 00:23:53.400 Mess that are native German speakers and come out of the Inna Austria as their 322 00:23:53.400 --> 00:23:59.519 training. So I start looking in some of the older sources and ask the 323 00:23:59.599 --> 00:24:04.480 question did neoliberalism have a prehistory in German language? And it turns out it 324 00:24:04.519 --> 00:24:10.599 does. I go back to the nineteen twenties and start researching some of the 325 00:24:10.640 --> 00:24:17.880 debates over free market and marginalist thought and you find out some something really interesting. 326 00:24:18.720 --> 00:24:22.680 The first is that a group of Marxists in Austria started using the term 327 00:24:22.839 --> 00:24:29.599 neoliberal to specifically refer to Mess as this term of pejorative derision, and they 328 00:24:29.640 --> 00:24:33.200 said, he's a neoliberal, is distinct from a classical liberal. And the 329 00:24:33.759 --> 00:24:37.880 gist of their argument was that mess had tried to revive the old liberal economic 330 00:24:37.960 --> 00:24:42.559 doctrines from the successful assault that Marxism had made on it that was then ascendant 331 00:24:42.559 --> 00:24:48.720 because of Vladimir Lenin. So bring this kind of full circle. They're saying, 332 00:24:48.799 --> 00:24:53.880 classical liberalism predates Marks, Marks successfully proved it was wrong, and here's 333 00:24:53.920 --> 00:24:57.640 this Mesas guy that's trying to resuscitate and bring life back into it. So 334 00:24:57.680 --> 00:25:03.920 he's now the noilib rule figure. Neoliberalismus's is one of the permutations of the 335 00:25:04.000 --> 00:25:07.680 term. And there are even articles that appear in the Marxist newsletters that say, 336 00:25:07.839 --> 00:25:12.279 Ludwig von Mesas noia liberal. Yeah, using this as an insult. 337 00:25:12.599 --> 00:25:18.160 So this is in the early nineteen twenties, and almost simultaneously, Mess has 338 00:25:18.240 --> 00:25:22.319 this rival on the faculty at the University of Virginia of Vienna. University of 339 00:25:22.400 --> 00:25:25.519 Vienna where he teaches that comes from the far right. It's a followed by 340 00:25:25.519 --> 00:25:27.599 the name of our at marsh Spawn. I've never even heard of him. 341 00:25:27.599 --> 00:25:30.400 I've heard of most of these people, but not him at marsh Spawn, 342 00:25:30.519 --> 00:25:34.039 and they're they're like legendary rivals on the faculty, the guys that would would 343 00:25:34.160 --> 00:25:37.400 get up and shout at each other in faculty meetings because they hated each other. 344 00:25:40.079 --> 00:25:42.799 Mars Spawn's interesting because in several Mesas his later books he starts referring to 345 00:25:42.839 --> 00:25:49.359 him as the Nazi philosopher At march So Spawn wrote one of the most popular 346 00:25:49.480 --> 00:25:56.240 German language economics textbooks in that era. It was published in something like twenty 347 00:25:56.240 --> 00:26:00.160 different editions, and the addition that came out in nineteen twenty four, it's 348 00:26:00.240 --> 00:26:03.200 right as this insults being used, he adds a new chapter on the Noia 349 00:26:03.240 --> 00:26:08.640 liberal school, the neoliberal school, and it's talking about his rival in the 350 00:26:10.000 --> 00:26:15.160 department Mesas and talking about some other departments that were aligned with that, with 351 00:26:15.200 --> 00:26:19.880 the free market thought. So it's it's really critical assessment and he popularizes the 352 00:26:19.960 --> 00:26:22.720 term because this is one of the most commonly used textbooks. Of what it 353 00:26:22.720 --> 00:26:27.559 comes down to is the pejorative originated in the nineteen twenties as a mutual term 354 00:26:27.559 --> 00:26:34.759 of disparagement by the Marxist far left and the proto Nazi, proto fascist right 355 00:26:34.839 --> 00:26:37.440 market guys in the middle. Yeah, so no wonder, you know, 356 00:26:37.440 --> 00:26:41.599 Lippman and you know von Nieces and High wouldn't and others would not have wanted 357 00:26:41.640 --> 00:26:45.880 to embrace that term for themselves in late nineteen thirties. By the way, 358 00:26:45.920 --> 00:26:48.160 you probably know this. I don't remember which history of the mont Pellern Society 359 00:26:48.200 --> 00:26:52.240 I read this in, but there was a whole account of that nineteen thirty 360 00:26:52.279 --> 00:26:56.160 eight meeting. It was either Angus Bergen's book or the Steadman John's book. 361 00:26:56.160 --> 00:26:57.880 I read them both, and they talked about how that was going to be 362 00:26:59.079 --> 00:27:02.559 kind of that became ultimately the montpeller And Society. Yeah, after the war. 363 00:27:02.680 --> 00:27:04.519 People returned after the war and right, right, but you know, 364 00:27:04.839 --> 00:27:07.039 the war got in the way. But they were getting together in the late 365 00:27:07.079 --> 00:27:11.720 thirties because look all around them they saw either New Dealism, you know, 366 00:27:11.839 --> 00:27:15.880 mild socialism or hard socialism advancing everywhere. Right, Okay, um, you 367 00:27:15.880 --> 00:27:21.279 know interesting intellectual history there, all right, So the term has been was 368 00:27:21.319 --> 00:27:25.799 revived. Oh well, one quick side question here that since you've read it, 369 00:27:25.960 --> 00:27:29.400 I've heard about those food collectures. I've never looked them up myself. 370 00:27:30.160 --> 00:27:33.599 I have heard it said or claim now and then that he was expressing in 371 00:27:33.640 --> 00:27:37.079 his late years before what he died in eighty three eighty four, he was 372 00:27:37.119 --> 00:27:44.680 expressing some sympathy or interest in agreement that indeed correct libtarianism. Is that actually 373 00:27:44.680 --> 00:27:48.960 in there, it's like food co started as a Marxist, took straight out 374 00:27:48.960 --> 00:27:52.640 of the mid twentieth century Marxist tradition, and he starts to have some qualms 375 00:27:52.680 --> 00:27:55.799 with that. And there's uh, one of his observations that he makes. 376 00:27:56.240 --> 00:28:00.839 It's like, why does every society that claims to be built on Marxist principles 377 00:28:00.880 --> 00:28:06.559 and in genocide? Yeah, he says, we need to be asking that 378 00:28:06.640 --> 00:28:10.960 question. Is there something about Marxist ideas that always veer down the same path 379 00:28:11.119 --> 00:28:15.319 of mass atrocity? Interesting? You know, to put a pin on this 380 00:28:15.440 --> 00:28:18.039 for now, and we want to talk about this again someday down the road. 381 00:28:18.119 --> 00:28:22.039 But there are a few people like my political philosopher friend Glenn Elmer's, 382 00:28:22.039 --> 00:28:25.039 who were starting to say, you know, we shouldn't be so hasty and 383 00:28:25.079 --> 00:28:29.039 rejecting FUCO in total, partly for this particular aspect, but partly for a 384 00:28:29.039 --> 00:28:32.319 couple of others, and we'll leave that aside for now. I'm just curious, 385 00:28:32.400 --> 00:28:36.480 since you've actually read through this, all right, let's so we know 386 00:28:36.480 --> 00:28:40.880 how the left is using it. It's ridiculous. But in the last two 387 00:28:41.000 --> 00:28:44.480 three years, I've noticed that a number of people on the right, series 388 00:28:44.519 --> 00:28:48.720 people some friends of mine, are starting to use the term neoliberal in almost 389 00:28:48.720 --> 00:28:52.480 exactly the same sense as the leftist do, which is now, it's one 390 00:28:52.519 --> 00:28:56.319 thing if you don't like, you know, Swedish style corporatism or what might 391 00:28:56.359 --> 00:29:00.839 be called state capitalism, and you know, the rent seeking, it's a 392 00:29:00.880 --> 00:29:06.720 lot of what they are calling neoliberal economics is the kind of things the public 393 00:29:06.759 --> 00:29:10.240 choice theory has been after for a long time. Okay, but I don't 394 00:29:10.240 --> 00:29:15.319 know. This also bothers me a bit. It seems to me that I'm 395 00:29:15.359 --> 00:29:18.480 not quite sure I even go to a question on this, but what do 396 00:29:18.519 --> 00:29:22.119 you make of the fact that so many people, you know, on our 397 00:29:22.240 --> 00:29:25.960 side of the spectrum were suddenly using the term the same way the left is 398 00:29:26.079 --> 00:29:30.000 used it. This worries me. Yeah, it's a new trend on the 399 00:29:30.039 --> 00:29:33.839 political right. Uh. You know, the mid twentieth century to the present 400 00:29:33.599 --> 00:29:37.519 or very recent political coal is should have always been kind of the free market 401 00:29:37.559 --> 00:29:45.079 libertarian economics had united with the anti communist strain of American conservatism. You know, 402 00:29:45.200 --> 00:29:49.400 the famous version of was Frank Meyer's fusionism. William F. Buckley built 403 00:29:49.400 --> 00:29:56.039 the philosophy around it. It's free markets and a free society of American values 404 00:29:56.799 --> 00:30:00.279 that used to be the coalition of the broader political right. And what we've 405 00:30:00.319 --> 00:30:06.240 seen in the last couple of the years is portions of the political right are 406 00:30:06.279 --> 00:30:11.640 starting to jettison the free market component, the economic component, the libertarian component, 407 00:30:11.640 --> 00:30:15.279 and they even some subset of them. They make the argument that economic 408 00:30:15.440 --> 00:30:21.119 classical liberalism led the right astray, and we need to replace it with a 409 00:30:21.160 --> 00:30:27.839 more robust industrial policy, tariff's trade protectionism, all of these packages of economic 410 00:30:27.920 --> 00:30:33.599 intervention that are supposed to bolster up American towns and the rest belt and in 411 00:30:33.680 --> 00:30:38.640 society. And their claim is that it's the free market economists that cause the 412 00:30:38.680 --> 00:30:45.480 political right to be weaker at the polls and to lose elections, and that 413 00:30:45.519 --> 00:30:48.519 they want to jettison. That's kind of a move to outflank the economic interventionist 414 00:30:48.640 --> 00:30:52.200 left, and they'll say, well, we need an alternative industrial policy that 415 00:30:52.599 --> 00:30:57.079 stops Bernie sanders By will capture the issue. So a lot of that's burst 416 00:30:57.119 --> 00:31:00.680 out of the scene. And in the wake of that, they've also started 417 00:31:00.759 --> 00:31:07.519 to attack a free market economists by using the same terminology that the Marxist left 418 00:31:07.599 --> 00:31:10.359 does. So what you've seen, and this has been really pronounced. I 419 00:31:10.400 --> 00:31:12.400 see even just the last few months. You can google it and you can 420 00:31:12.440 --> 00:31:19.240 see in conservative leading publications they start ranting and raving about the neoliberals. Now 421 00:31:19.319 --> 00:31:23.240 we need to jettison the neoliberals from the movement. And you start reading this 422 00:31:23.359 --> 00:31:27.480 and it is almost word for word like a Marxist conspiracy tract. Yeah. 423 00:31:27.480 --> 00:31:30.839 I mean, you even see that phrase used in some articles in National Review, 424 00:31:30.920 --> 00:31:33.480 which I think would make William F. Buckley roll over in his grave. 425 00:31:33.559 --> 00:31:37.119 I mean, I'm so old. I like to joke I'm now so 426 00:31:37.279 --> 00:31:38.960 old. I get to begin a lot of sentences as I'm so old. 427 00:31:38.960 --> 00:31:44.759 I remember and in nineteen eighty four, Walter Mondale ran for president on a 428 00:31:44.839 --> 00:31:48.680 platform of industrial policy, and there was unanimous on the right that this was 429 00:31:48.759 --> 00:31:52.200 just socialism, This is just a euphism for socialism. And so now I'm 430 00:31:52.240 --> 00:31:55.559 asking some of my friends saying, so, you know, Mondale just died 431 00:31:55.599 --> 00:31:59.039 a year or two ago, sweet man, personally, can he be the 432 00:31:59.119 --> 00:32:00.960 Republican nominee for president now? Because I don't see a lot of details on 433 00:32:01.039 --> 00:32:05.119 this. It's one thing to say it's wanting to deserve that. Yeah, 434 00:32:05.160 --> 00:32:09.000 we've followed out the rust belt and become uncompetitive. I think it free trade 435 00:32:09.079 --> 00:32:13.960 is an insufficient It's an aspect of the story, but it's not the whole 436 00:32:13.960 --> 00:32:16.359 story, and therefore the remedies are very vague. It's just we need industrial 437 00:32:16.400 --> 00:32:19.880 policy, all right, tell me in detail, what's that going to mean? 438 00:32:20.000 --> 00:32:25.599 Subsidies, tax breaks, trade barriers and you know, okay, it's 439 00:32:25.720 --> 00:32:30.200 very frustrating because it worries me when we give, even if indirectly and unintentional, 440 00:32:30.279 --> 00:32:36.119 if we give a sucker and aid to the radical left. So I 441 00:32:36.119 --> 00:32:37.720 don't know if you have any thing to add to that or not exactly. 442 00:32:37.759 --> 00:32:40.799 I mean, it's I like it into the old Lord of the Rings problem 443 00:32:40.880 --> 00:32:45.839 with the ring of power, or famously boromere gun Doors says, well, 444 00:32:45.839 --> 00:32:49.599 why don't we use the ring to our own advantage? And I see some 445 00:32:49.720 --> 00:32:51.599 elements of the right and say, well, the socialists one of all these 446 00:32:51.640 --> 00:32:53.279 things, Well, why don't we co opt it and use the same thing, 447 00:32:53.680 --> 00:32:57.559 and we'll win elections and then we can defeat them. And they don't 448 00:32:57.599 --> 00:33:02.480 realize that they're basically putting us on the same path to economic intervention and destruction. 449 00:33:02.880 --> 00:33:05.680 Yeah, I'm not sure it's a vote winner either. I mean, 450 00:33:05.720 --> 00:33:12.359 it wasn't for Mondale. Okay, let's take another quick break here to hear 451 00:33:12.440 --> 00:33:15.359 from a sponsor, and then we'll be back to talk about the sixteen nineteen 452 00:33:15.440 --> 00:33:25.119 project. A third item here, Um, you have been an absolute demon 453 00:33:25.200 --> 00:33:29.640 on the sixteen nineteen project from the first moment the ink drives at the New 454 00:33:29.720 --> 00:33:32.160 York Times. And this is one of those jobs and I'm glad you're doing 455 00:33:32.200 --> 00:33:36.440 it so I don't have to. But you know, Nicole Hannah Jones, 456 00:33:36.519 --> 00:33:38.599 you drive her nuts on Twitter, which is fun. Even though she's blocked 457 00:33:38.640 --> 00:33:44.359 you, I think, right, but she'll still she every a couple of 458 00:33:44.400 --> 00:33:51.039 months or so rant about how horrible I am, because right, yeah again, 459 00:33:51.200 --> 00:33:53.759 living rent free and congratulations and all that. But you have been watching 460 00:33:53.920 --> 00:33:58.400 what she's got a documentary going on one of the streaming services, I think, 461 00:33:58.480 --> 00:34:00.000 and I think one of the networks is who and then they aired it 462 00:34:00.079 --> 00:34:05.240 earlier this week on ABC. Is that it? Yeah? So, I 463 00:34:05.319 --> 00:34:07.000 mean, I don't know. We could go on a long time about all 464 00:34:07.039 --> 00:34:08.440 this, and we don't we don't want to go on a long time about 465 00:34:08.480 --> 00:34:13.320 it. But what are two or three you know, new things or things 466 00:34:13.360 --> 00:34:16.679 are looking at are especially egregious aspects of the story assets in play at the 467 00:34:16.760 --> 00:34:20.480 moment, well the major when if you remember, all the way way back 468 00:34:20.519 --> 00:34:23.199 in twenty nineteen, when the original version of the project came out, Nikolehanah 469 00:34:23.280 --> 00:34:30.159 Jones got pilloried in the press for this claim that the American Revolution was premised, 470 00:34:30.199 --> 00:34:36.079 at least in a large part as a defensive action of slavery against the 471 00:34:36.199 --> 00:34:37.920 British, that We're supposedly going to come in and free all the slaves or 472 00:34:38.000 --> 00:34:42.960 something, right, and that this was as a weird claim, it was 473 00:34:43.559 --> 00:34:46.480 not very well sourced, if anything, was based on a bad reading of 474 00:34:46.559 --> 00:34:50.920 some very French history. And then a couple of months after the original came 475 00:34:50.960 --> 00:34:52.639 out the New York Times, his own fact checker, who was a historian, 476 00:34:53.440 --> 00:34:57.079 kind of broke her silence and says, I warned them not to make 477 00:34:57.199 --> 00:35:00.679 this claim, and they didn't listen to me. Yeah, so it was 478 00:35:00.920 --> 00:35:02.119 a bit of a scandal. It was all in the middle of the Pulitzer 479 00:35:02.199 --> 00:35:06.400 Prize season, and the New York Times had to real quietly kind of walk 480 00:35:06.519 --> 00:35:09.840 back the claim. They made some modifiers and said, well, only some 481 00:35:10.000 --> 00:35:15.760 of the revolutionaries cared about slavery, and really watered it down. But Nicolehanah 482 00:35:15.800 --> 00:35:20.960 Jones has never given that claim up, and what she's done ever since then 483 00:35:21.000 --> 00:35:27.000 has tried to backfill and restore the original assertion by cherry picking bits and pieces 484 00:35:27.039 --> 00:35:30.400 of the historical literature. And once you get in this new Hulu series, 485 00:35:30.480 --> 00:35:36.360 the one that's showing on ABC this week broadcast a national audience, is the 486 00:35:36.519 --> 00:35:40.199 very first episode digs in at the beginning and tries to resuscitate this claim. 487 00:35:40.800 --> 00:35:45.280 And they go to colonial Williamsburg in Virginia as their location where they're filming. 488 00:35:45.960 --> 00:35:50.280 So they're standing there and among all these historic buildings, and they have the 489 00:35:50.360 --> 00:35:54.239 reconstructed Governor's Palace, the colonial British Governor's Palace. If anyone's been there on 490 00:35:54.280 --> 00:35:59.079 a tour side, it's like the centerpiece of the whole park and they're sitting 491 00:35:59.119 --> 00:36:01.800 there on the lawn of the Alice filming and one of the claims that she 492 00:36:01.960 --> 00:36:07.000 has used to bolster this notion. The governor of Virginia, the last Royalist 493 00:36:07.039 --> 00:36:12.519 governor of Virginia, is Lord Dunmore, and he's very famous for getting chased 494 00:36:12.519 --> 00:36:15.480 out of Williams Byward. Basically, he tries to declare martial law in the 495 00:36:15.559 --> 00:36:22.079 colony. There's there's just a very heavy set of conflicts. And what happened 496 00:36:22.199 --> 00:36:30.119 is in November seventeen seventy five, he issues this proclamation that says, I'm 497 00:36:30.199 --> 00:36:36.159 raising a militia to put down the revolt in the colony, and any black 498 00:36:36.280 --> 00:36:40.760 person from a rebellious plantation owner who makes this way to my lines and joins 499 00:36:40.800 --> 00:36:46.960 my militia, I'll give you your freedom. He tries to raise the militia 500 00:36:47.119 --> 00:36:51.440 of freed slaves, offering them their freedom. So it's a military tactic. 501 00:36:52.239 --> 00:36:55.039 And Nikolehannah Jones sees this and says, Aha, see, Lord Dunmore was 502 00:36:55.079 --> 00:36:59.400 going to free the slaves, and this is what drove Virginia to revolt. 503 00:37:00.639 --> 00:37:05.840 Of course, this is anachronistic. It turns out that the rebellion had already 504 00:37:05.880 --> 00:37:08.480 been under way for the better part of the year. The Lexington Concourt is 505 00:37:08.559 --> 00:37:14.239 April seventeen seventy five. This isn't until November. And what's even she doesn't 506 00:37:14.239 --> 00:37:16.639 even have the chronology stretch, She don't even have the chronology. And I 507 00:37:16.679 --> 00:37:21.320 guess even more. She's sitting at the on the grounds of the Governor's Palace 508 00:37:21.360 --> 00:37:24.039 and Williamsburg and talking to this historian and they point at the building and say, 509 00:37:24.920 --> 00:37:30.159 this is proof from that building there that this edict of emancipation was about 510 00:37:30.199 --> 00:37:34.239 to be issued. But she doesn't tell you Lord Dunmore had been chased out 511 00:37:34.280 --> 00:37:38.880 of the colony five months earlier by the revolutionary militius and was living on board 512 00:37:38.920 --> 00:37:44.440 a ship out in the Atlantic Ocean. He had lost control of his colony, 513 00:37:44.679 --> 00:37:47.320 and this is like his last ditch effort to try to retake Virginia. 514 00:37:49.199 --> 00:37:52.920 Not only that, she doesn't tell you that Lord Dunmore himself is a slave 515 00:37:52.000 --> 00:37:57.920 owner. So the first thing he does when he gets chased out of Williamsburg. 516 00:37:57.960 --> 00:38:01.599 This happens in June seventeen seventy five. The militias are converging on the 517 00:38:01.679 --> 00:38:05.960 city and they're furious at him, not because of slavery. They're furious at 518 00:38:06.039 --> 00:38:09.800 him because he sees the colonies gunpowder stores. Yea, this is kind of 519 00:38:09.840 --> 00:38:15.760 in the it's almost simultaneous to Lexington and Concord. He seizes the gunpowder stores 520 00:38:15.800 --> 00:38:17.679 to prevent them from revolting, tries to ship them off in the middle of 521 00:38:17.719 --> 00:38:21.440 the night, put them on a British warship, and gets caught. The 522 00:38:21.559 --> 00:38:24.360 colonists catch them red handed, and they're furious and they start descending on the 523 00:38:24.480 --> 00:38:29.239 city to hold him accountable, saying like, why are you stealing our gunpowder? 524 00:38:30.280 --> 00:38:31.760 Well done? More flees in the middle of the night. In June 525 00:38:31.840 --> 00:38:37.960 seventeen seventy five, he takes all of his money and all the valuables out 526 00:38:37.000 --> 00:38:40.840 of the governor's palace and he takes all of the slaves from the governor's palace 527 00:38:40.880 --> 00:38:45.760 that he owns and moves them to the plantation up the river. And over 528 00:38:45.840 --> 00:38:49.039 the next several months he's sitting there on the ship out in the river, 529 00:38:49.760 --> 00:38:53.480 British warship, and he keeps having his rowboat take him into his plantation house 530 00:38:53.679 --> 00:38:58.679 so his slaves can serve him this fancy dinner with all the British officers. 531 00:39:00.000 --> 00:39:05.000 This guy's actually like a really horrible uh person to make the banner here here 532 00:39:05.079 --> 00:39:09.199 for emancipation. Uh. His whole goal was he wanted to re establish control 533 00:39:09.280 --> 00:39:14.360 over the quality of Virginia so he could return to his massive slave plantation and 534 00:39:14.480 --> 00:39:17.559 continue slavery. You know, facts are such inconvenient things, Phil, it's 535 00:39:17.599 --> 00:39:21.960 the problem here. And but there's a there's a broader point of this. 536 00:39:22.039 --> 00:39:25.719 And also like the like neoliberalism, and like your work on Mars, there's 537 00:39:25.760 --> 00:39:30.719 a curious undercurrent I'll put this way from our team. And so you know, 538 00:39:31.360 --> 00:39:36.760 you've gone on to broaden your critique in the critical race theory, and 539 00:39:37.000 --> 00:39:38.920 yet there are I mean I've seen you made reference to this, and I 540 00:39:38.960 --> 00:39:43.320 think I've seen little bits of this. There are certain people on them I 541 00:39:43.360 --> 00:39:46.280 guess left libertarians we call them, who were unhappy with you for Yeah, 542 00:39:46.480 --> 00:39:51.159 you know, being such a full throatic critique, a critic of the sixteen 543 00:39:51.239 --> 00:39:54.400 nineteen project and the critical race theory. It's bound to right. What's happening 544 00:39:54.480 --> 00:39:57.679 here? What's tell us about that? A little bit? Well, the 545 00:39:57.719 --> 00:40:00.360 gist of it is, yeah, you have a segment of the libertarian left 546 00:40:00.880 --> 00:40:05.079 and then other people that viewed as impolitic to raise these issues. And there's 547 00:40:05.079 --> 00:40:07.280 a couple of things going on here. Part of it's because Donald Trump came 548 00:40:07.320 --> 00:40:14.119 out against the sixteen nineteen project. Therefore, the never Trump component they can't 549 00:40:14.159 --> 00:40:16.960 even be associated with anything that he has ever said, so they rejected even 550 00:40:17.000 --> 00:40:21.639 though you know, I've never been like a big Trump person, kind of 551 00:40:21.719 --> 00:40:27.400 view him as most presidents, is very claud and problematic politician. But at 552 00:40:27.440 --> 00:40:31.280 the same time you have this segment and the argument always kind of devolves into 553 00:40:31.360 --> 00:40:37.480 this weird you know, the old Stephen Colbert term truthiness. Yes, yeah, 554 00:40:37.960 --> 00:40:40.639 it is real. Similar to that. They've decided that even though the 555 00:40:40.679 --> 00:40:45.880 sixteen nineteen project is not factually sound, the cause that it's being argued for, 556 00:40:46.119 --> 00:40:51.840 which is racial reconciliation, any equality, that they want the thing, 557 00:40:51.920 --> 00:40:57.639 they say that's a just cause. Therefore we tolerate the errors in service to 558 00:40:57.800 --> 00:41:01.159 the cause, because the sixteen nineteen project is supposedly on the right side of 559 00:41:02.400 --> 00:41:07.320 the social currents of the moment in seeking justice. So it can we can 560 00:41:07.360 --> 00:41:10.599 afford to let it slip up on the facts. You know, I could 561 00:41:10.639 --> 00:41:15.440 I could credit that argument maybe if I thought that there was some chance it 562 00:41:15.480 --> 00:41:19.119 would really lead to some reconciliation and racial progress, when in fact, the 563 00:41:19.199 --> 00:41:21.840 effect, and I think the intent of a lot of it, it's exactly 564 00:41:21.880 --> 00:41:25.000 the opposite. It's actually to stoke division. And you know, we'll see 565 00:41:25.039 --> 00:41:29.840 how I'll be interesting to see what our left libertarian friends say if this reparations 566 00:41:29.920 --> 00:41:34.320 idea gets some traction and they're actually real proposals put on the table um, 567 00:41:35.159 --> 00:41:37.840 because that's what it's all Awards sixteen nineteen project is going for. Because the 568 00:41:37.880 --> 00:41:42.679 other episode that ered earlier this week was the one calling for reparations, a 569 00:41:42.800 --> 00:41:46.679 thirteen trillion dollar reparations package, right right, yeah, yeah. My prediction, 570 00:41:46.719 --> 00:41:49.480 by the way, is that there's going to be a fight at the 571 00:41:50.079 --> 00:41:53.440 Democratic National Committee or convention next summer in their platform if they have a bad 572 00:41:53.800 --> 00:41:58.719 reparation I'll bet the movie. Yeah, they may not have a platform, 573 00:41:58.760 --> 00:42:00.280 and the party's sort of drawing away from because no one really reads them in 574 00:42:00.360 --> 00:42:04.039 to just trouble. But well, all right, I mean we uh, 575 00:42:04.440 --> 00:42:07.119 this is plenty for one day. We could talk a long time deservedly about 576 00:42:07.719 --> 00:42:14.920 income inequality. Absolutely, you've got the goods on pickany and z other episode 577 00:42:14.960 --> 00:42:16.880 on that alone, and you know, Nanson McLean won't go away. That's 578 00:42:16.920 --> 00:42:21.360 important. But let's get out with what do you? What do you? 579 00:42:21.480 --> 00:42:23.239 What's your next big project or what are you working on right now that we 580 00:42:23.400 --> 00:42:28.119 should keep our eye on. Yeah, So I'm continuing to study the citation 581 00:42:28.199 --> 00:42:30.800 patterns and Carl Marks because he doesn't just go away after nineteen seventeen, Lennon's 582 00:42:30.800 --> 00:42:34.480 put him on the map. Ask the question, well, what happens next? 583 00:42:35.239 --> 00:42:37.360 And part of that you start to see his ideas get picked up to 584 00:42:37.519 --> 00:42:40.440 what we now refer to as the Frankfurt School, the Western mark Sister. 585 00:42:40.800 --> 00:42:45.840 All right, yeah, and that's what leads to things like critical race theory 586 00:42:45.920 --> 00:42:51.880 today our outgrowth. So that tradition and you can see similar patterns and their 587 00:42:51.920 --> 00:42:55.960 citations picking up U in the aftermath of Lennon putting Marks on the map and 588 00:42:57.079 --> 00:43:00.800 then uh set some of the political and said the early in mid twentieth century. 589 00:43:01.159 --> 00:43:06.400 So I've got a major project where I'm digging deep into that to see 590 00:43:06.440 --> 00:43:10.599 what the data shows about the way that these figures developed and how do they 591 00:43:10.920 --> 00:43:15.119 continue to influence the university today. Oh yeah, that that'll be a fascinating 592 00:43:15.519 --> 00:43:20.360 inquiry because there's so many different nodes to this that I mean, you know 593 00:43:20.519 --> 00:43:23.519 years ago, you know, I studied how Stalin starting the thirties cause these 594 00:43:23.559 --> 00:43:28.159 great splits on the left and that lead all kinds of difference and interesting and 595 00:43:28.280 --> 00:43:32.079 problematic directions. So I expect you will come up with something new and interesting 596 00:43:32.159 --> 00:43:35.599 that we haven't thought of before. Hey, thanks Phil, this has been 597 00:43:35.639 --> 00:43:45.960 fun. Absolutely, thanks for having me. Well, I could go on 598 00:43:45.039 --> 00:43:49.400 for a long time with Phil, and we'll happen back again sooner than the 599 00:43:49.519 --> 00:43:53.280 last interval between appearances, because he's done some terrific work refuting a lot of 600 00:43:53.360 --> 00:43:59.760 the premises of income inequality that the left is obsessed with today. He also 601 00:43:59.800 --> 00:44:02.920 thanks by the way that cats are more likely than dogs to be communists, 602 00:44:04.239 --> 00:44:07.119 which is a prejudice I strongly agree with. But I hope if you do 603 00:44:07.320 --> 00:44:13.800 follow social media, I have linked to Phil's Twitter address, and also I 604 00:44:13.840 --> 00:44:16.119 put in a link to his new article on Mars that we talked about at 605 00:44:16.119 --> 00:44:20.679 the beginning. It is behind a paywall, but some of you who may 606 00:44:20.719 --> 00:44:23.400 have access to and through academic portals and things of that kind. We'll be 607 00:44:23.519 --> 00:44:27.800 back on Saturday with another edition of the Three Whiskey Happy Hour, but for 608 00:44:27.920 --> 00:45:07.280 now, don't forget the milkle soft power dividend by everybody. Ricochet joined the conversation