really a story that connects all of us together and i think it it tends to inspire other people into action and i think to that to that extent it's very it's very useful to to bring in  personal stories into why we are doing what we're doing why we are engaged in a political struggle or why we should be engaged in a political struggle and so i'm i'm i'm an economics teacher seattle central community college which is a very odd profession for our marxist to be an economist in today's world and as you might guess i have to swim against the stream but the most interesting thing that is happening since two years ago is that the tide a starting to turn and i think and i hope that out of this discussion i mean i know you will have a lot of questions and we will not be able to resolve all questions today and i wanted to actually start by inviting you all in advance to come and continue the conversation with us but i hope that one of the things that really all go out with you know go tonight would be the that the tide is turning and in fact we have amazing people like richard lang who you know in the middle of the united states is inviting an immigrant woman to talk about socialism in seattle and i hope you all realize what an incredible thing this is and hopefully we will all feel empowered by that so just to give a little bit of background of how we came this far when i say we i mean socialist alternative i'm a member of socialist alternative it's a nationwide organization a socialist and activist and as you might guess we are we have been for since about ninet y five very active in fighting various battles for social and economic justice but we don't just fight on single issues our approach as socialist as marxists is that a lot of the problems that we see and a lot of the problems that progressives and young people and women you know feel a lot of anger justifiable anger and outrage about are not isolated issues and if you look at if you're angry about the attacks on the reproductive rights of women if you're angry about the you know almost skyrocketing of rape cases and just gruesomeness of sexual violence if you're angry about the attacks on l g b right if you're angry about how hard it's been to fight for the right if you're thinking about the homelessness and the poverty thinking about why the big banks got away free and the rest of us have to shoulder the burden of the crisis in the form of unemployment and budget cuts all these questions are so interrelated because they're stemming from a system that an endlessly and relentlessly creates conditions for all these problems and of course the system is capitalism and i often like to say that in some ways you know in some ways it's more radical to talk about to name the problem you name the problem as capitalism and even to talk about socialism socialism as the alternative of course a socialist we you know we are we are advocating for socialism as the alternative and i hope to you know make headway in convincing everybody about that however you know there's lots of people in the labor movement you know the president of my union several well meaning people who will say well you know socialism yes that's a great idea in theory and maybe someday in the distance in several hundred years and then it will be viable and a lot of people have that i did you towards socialism and that let me tell you my brother and sisters is a real barrier to actually building viable movements because if you don't believe that a change is possible and that there is an alternative then you're not going to fight for it and so that is why i feel like in some ways it is a far more radical to first recognize what the problem is and that the problem is capitalism name the problem because only when you're willing to name the problem will you say ok if i'm convinced that the root of all these problems is capitalism then obviously we need to look for an alternative so what is that alternative and fight which alongside people on single issues against the war against the coal trains and so on we're always bringing the message that if we really want to be effective in fighting against climate change and fighting against social and economic justice we have to recognize that as long as the system exists as long as capitalism exists these problems will not only recur they'll keep occurring but they're also going to be more and more magnified so i mean and i hardly need to convince you on that i mean look at what's happened to poverty in the united states this is the wealthiest country in the history of humanity and what we're seeing is an enormous increase in poverty i mean a five year old child will tell you that it should be going the other way wait a minute if wealth is going up into society shouldn't poverty be going down in society how is it that world is going up and poverty is also going up and you know that's that's one of the basic things we need to understand the concentration of enormous wealth in the hands of the few is not unrelated to the you know enormous increase in poverty it's actually there is a causal link it's precisely because all this while this going to the top of that there is less and less left at the bottom so it shouldn't be any surprise to us that the wealth in society is going up and the poverty is also rising and so we believe  socialist that it is extremely important to get that message out in movements and ultimately that if the working class the class of people the ninety nine percent however you want to refer to it the group of people all around the world you know the billions of people who are working so hard and getting so little to show for it if we are to make any changes mean any improvement in our standard of living we have to fall on our hands not only to fight against the specific attacks on our standards of living but also to fight for a better system itself because unless we change the system these things will be going on and i actually mentioned attacks on reproductive rights specifically because it's a very good example you know i've met a lot of young young people you know both men and women who've said wait wait a minute didn't we already fight for this in the sixty's and seventy's how is it that you are fighting for it today the only way we'll be explainable to explain why we're go have to fight the battles again and again is is is if we recognize that these attacks are not just coming from a few right wing nuts who don't have their screw straight but it's it's because the system itself creates the conditions where you know you have these arguments made and you have and dire state government state legislators you know fighting to wipe out the rights that women had fought for forty years ago and  we we mean a socialist alternative we are also affiliated with an international organization that is called a committee for a workers international and it's very interesting that our topic today is relevance of socialism in seattle because it's actually quite hard to think about socialism existing in just one place but i think it would be interesting for us to draw out the conditions in seattle and why we should argue for ending capitalism and putting place a socialist economy in seattle but while we say that we should also be fully aware that if if you know  it doesn't matter how you look at it you know if you look at it as a moral economy if you look at a social and socially and economically just economy if you look at it as a fair econ whatever you want to call it what i mean by socialism the only way the only viable way for that to survive would be for not only for seattle to don't socialist spokane would need to turn socialist bellingham would need to be socialist and cairo would need to be socialist bombay would be need would need to be socialist in other words in reality what we are talking about is the need for an internationalist orientation a global orientation and that's what i would call globalization i mean i reject the capitalist agenda of globalization that they have put forward you know using the i m f and the world bank but there is truly something global about this and the fact is that capitalism itself is a global system and we have to have movements everywhere challenging the system and ultimately we have to we have the task of transforming the global economy into a socialist economy but we have to start somewhere so we have to sow the seed everywhere so everywhere where we're having these conversations it's absolutely critical it's absolutely important for us to see what is the connection of the problems that we're seeing in seattle to capitalism why are they the product of capitalism i mean you it might be tempting to think that the problems in seattle don't have much to do with the global problems because you know let's face it seattle is not as bad as bangladesh right it's not as bad as dakar you know we don't have that kind of massive poverty we're talking about minor things however it's not it's not that's not true in fact the problems that we're looking at in seattle and statewide are actually only growing in numbers they're growing in size it's exactly like reproductive rights you are going to have to fight bigger battles to actually challenge the corporate agenda in politics and so how do we do that is the question and because we believe that this movement has to be internationally in nature we are actually affiliated with this international organization and we have our fellow activists fighting the same battle you know and having these same conversations in over forty different countries in the world including countries like nigeria my home country india sweden and several other countries in europe and you know pakistan so i hope that you know that will also be very exciting for us because i think i think it's important in many ways to keep that in mind not only because if we you know if we are convinced that socialism can work just in seattle then it's important for us to encourage an international movement but also because it's very empowering i mean it's very empowering for us to realize that we're not fighting a narrow parochial citywide battle here and to realize that everything that we do here to make things better is actually going to be a beacon of hope for people everywhere else and so i think that that should be the basis of our of our conversation and in terms of you know why why why many of us why why have members of socialist alternative become socialist why have they become members of socialist alternative why are we done in this campaign why did we run this campaign last year i think it's very important to point out that unlike and this is something that you will see only with grassroots campaigns and most often with socialist unlike the democrats and republicans our election campaigns are not driven by the need of any one person to establish a stellar political career by their fattening their pockets we are a democratic organization and for us the candidate is in some you know that we i mean we ran a campaign electoral campaign last year rich mentioned frank job our opponent our esteemed opponent the speaker of the house the most powerful legislator of the state and it's i think it's very important to point out it's very relevant to our discussion today that even though we have a small fraction of the money he had even though he has such a long  olympia you know he has cronies everywhere even though we have a very relatively small volunteer base we were able to poster the entire forty  third district in such a way that even today when we walk on the streets you know we are and even today when we're on broadway we still have people stopping us and saying hey you your post that actually helped me to know about your campaign and we voted for you and we got twenty thousand vote that's twenty nine over twenty nine percent of the vote and i think we should all be asking this question how did that happen how is it that such a tiny campaign with a small group of people who are activists you know we're not election year you know we don't professional election consultants how how how did we manage to do that and really the secret to doubt is the fact that the tide is turning since occupy since the gyptian revolution since the uprising of public sector workers in wisconsin despite all the failures of all these movements what they have done is opened the floodgates of genuine discussion genuine political discussions and let me tell once the working class loses its fear of actually talking about the truth talking about reality and challenging the system all is lost for the calculus class seriously the only thing that is holding back holding us back is our fe and our maybe our lack of understanding of how we can solve these problems and i want to do framed in with you know within some numbers sorry i'm an economist i can't help it but i promise you i actually don't have too many numbers today so you're safe but you know just to just to highlight the abject failure of this system let's start with the city of seattle seattle i'm sure you will agree with me is an incredibly wealthy city in an incredibly wealthy state an incredibly wealthy country are we agreed on that we have people like bill gates living here does anybody know how much the wealth of bill gates is how much he owns over fifty billion fifty six billion dollars seventy two billion that's nice for him you know that is equivalent to about the g d p you know the total income of about twenty three countries put together that should be i mean if we're on the right track here that should be staggering for us i mean there should be like oh my god that makes no sense at all but he yes he is the one of the wealthiest people in the world but then you have paul allen i don't know how much as well it does but it's probably in a similar ballpark and then you have several other multi billionaires and in fact seattle has you know it's a very it's a dubious distinction it has the tenth largest  gold you know real estate all the things that they're not using for their day to day expenses and that's very that's very striking because there in lies your answer if all the then what is going to be left over to make sure that the city's public transit is functional to make sure that the elderly and the disabled have all the necessary services to make sure that jobs are created for everybody and especially in this economic crisis to make sure that childcare services education health care basic health to make sure that all these services are funded there is no money for this and in fact it's very striking to see that it while we have such an unimaginable belt in this city at the same time the city is facing a fifty six million dollar budget shortfall you know our first step should be reject this scenario i mean how is it even possible that there is so much wealth in the city and we're struggling for change i mean million dollars is change when you have when you're talking about people who are multibillionaires why is it that really not able to fund our city even with this small change in order to make these basic things possible i want to give you another example you know just to put those numbers into context while we have multi billionaires while our city is facing a fifty six million dollars budget shortfall that is that shortfall is outside of the nine hundred thirty seven million dollars the city council pledged for building the tunnel m are familiar with the issues related to the tunnel and in fact the inevitable increases in the cost of the tunnel will you know easily add up to over a billion and you know and so you might ask what does this have to do with capitalism who is making the decisions who are who is deciding that while cialis struggling for most people in seattle are struggling for basic needs that almost a billion dollars or over a billion dollars would be given to a project that only the downtown business association wants everybody else in the city anybody who has any sort of environmental consciousness and you know this is a very environmentally conscious city is opposed to any project that actually does not develop public transit as a real alternative this question is not just economics and i and i and i would like us to you know to think about it in as not an economic question but as a political question because if you look at the amount of money that is needed for solving many of the problems that plague our city we have many times over we have the money many times over but we as in you and i we don't have control over that enormous wealth and that is why that leaves us completely incapable of solving those problems and what you see in the city  establishment in the form of the mayor the city council and you know everybody else who's you know involved in various different government offices anybody who has any sort of decision making power what are they going to do what have what have they been doing if you look at the whole history you know restrict of the last twenty thirty years of policy making in seattle you know it's not it's not an accident that most of the things that have been done by the city council have been in favor of big business in favor of the downtown business association i'll give you one example i mean i don't want to talk about mike and our campaign this year but the city council you know when when in my middle activists were insisting that there should be very serious and my mental impact assessments about the tunnel the city council said oh no we don't need that  know let's go just just go ahead you know that's not a problem and when the people in the city were trying to build sort of an annex homeless shelter i don't remember exactly rare but the city council put up a wall immediately and said oh we need enormous numbers of environmental impact assessment for a homeless shelter i mean look at the look at how these priorities are skewed and a lot of people that we talk to agree with us they say that yes the priorities are skewed but the real question is why why is it that the priorities are skewed do the city council members don't not have high school degrees and college degrees do they not understand what we're talking about them a perfectly good understanding of the issues they understand what's happening they understand what we're what will be needed to combat climate change they understand that ultimately the only way you can combat homelessness and poverty in seattle is by actually putting money putting resources into solving those problems into creating jobs and so on i wanted to give you an anecdote just to illustrate what i mean by that i mean you know often people say that well you know i sympathize with what you're saying but you know it's not really a question of money you know it's  know we just have a we have a we have a budget shortfall what can you do it's not really something that you can throw money at it and so on this is a very interesting story nothing to do with yellow per se but there's a very  sort of a very determined activist for public education call jonathan kozol you know he's probably in his eighty's now so he's been he spent five decades fighting for public education but incidentally he you know he himself is sort of blue blooded he you know he he graduated from harvard so yes friends in high places and one time he was talking to a congress member you know in washington d c he was his friend and you know he was he was as usual advocating for our funding for public education and pointing out that the education's public education system is actually more segregated today than it was before the civil rights era which is you know which is something for us to think about and this congress member you know this millionaire big shot he asked jonathan well john do you really think that this is a problem that can be solved by throwing money at it and john says why not it work for your kids and i think that that really captures the essence of what we are bringing as a message which is that yes these problems are born out of the fact that enormous amounts of wealth are concentrated in the hands of the few who have no interest in fighting for our standard of living and the ultimately to fight that agenda and to actually make sure that decent standards of living are delivered to the people of seattle is for us to take democratic control over the resources of the economy and we you know we as as a way to begin that battle you know to equalize the economy we have put forward the point that  millionaires and the billionaires need to be taxed corporations need to be taxed does anybody know how much microsoft base to the legislator in taxes on its profit one of the most profitable multinational corporations in the world is based right here and they pay zero in taxes to the state treasury and how much are we paying if you look at the amount of taxes that effectively i mean we don't have a tax on high incomes are welt but we have a tax on consumption you know and if you see effectively the poorest people the people who are making less than you know forty thousand they're paying nearly eighteen percent of their income in taxes so one of the points we will be are bringing up obviously is the fact that the first thing we need to do in order to solve these problems is to tax the millionaire's tax the billionaire stacks corporations what is the first thing that people often say to us in response people say yes that's a great idea but isn't blowing going to leave if you tax it isn't microsoft going to leave your taxes and i want to point out that boeing is paying historically low taxes and they are moving those jobs anyway we are not going to be hold we're not going to be able to hold onto those jobs on the basis of the logic of capitalism if we accept their logic that we have to make this city and this state more and more unlivable and unaffordable for ordinary working people because we need to create a more and more favorable climate for these extremely profitable corporations so that they keep their jobs in this state then it's go it's a it's a it's a it's a failed start to begin with because what's going to happen every state and this is a very i think the battle in seattle connects to everything that everybody else does and every other state and why we need a movement towards socialism everywhere which is that every state is competing the state officials and the city officials of every sitting are competing with each other not to provide a better standard of living for their own people but to provide a more and more favorable tax climate for corporations so it doesn't matter how much we do it we will never be able to compete with poor states like south carolina the jobs are always going to move there and forget that gallon are  going to be able to compete with philippines where the jobs are now moving are bangladesh so really you can see how the issues in seattle are linked to you know nationwide issues and international issues and ultimately the answer to this problem that boeing takes its jobs elsewhere is socialism and what i mean by that is actually taking over the biggest corporations into democratic public ownership meaning the boeing executives don't own it we own it together boeing workers own it have a share of an equal share in it and the community has an equal share in it and we decide what to do with those jobs we decide what to produce we decide how much to produce and if we were we were i mean i'm not suggesting that we are in a position to do that right now i think this is a message we have to carry out to more and more people but if we if we did do that then you know when a c e o say well you know we have to move to south carolina we can tell the c e o s well you can move if you want but the jobs stay here the machinery is here the people who have built boeing planes are here the people who build boeing planes are not the o s that's another source of confusion often it's not the c e o s who are coming up with cures for cancer the c e o the pharmaceutical companies are not the people who are coming up with cures for cancer it is the scientists who are working at the national institutes of health who are maybe making you know seventy thousand or hundred thousand dollars salary but they're not the capitalist they're not multi billionaires and they're doing it because they love their job they love research that's why they're doing it and if you look at every such technological innovation you know whether it's not exceed our medicine it's actually done by the working class by ordinary people so why should we when we are fully capable of running things when we are fully we are already producing all the wealth in society why should the c e o s own it on paper why should they take ninety nine percent of what is you know the wealth that is produced we should be owning it and we should we should be able to run it and you know think about this if we you know when we talk about socialism what do we mean you know i just want to clarify we are talking about our idea of socialism is what we call democratic socialism meaning that the you know all these major resources that are necessary for production the production units the factories and so on are democratically owned by you know people in society not by a few people this this also means several different things i mean it opens up a whole world of conducting society in a in a radically different manner think about if knowing was to be democratic democratically owned by ordinary people what would boeing end up producing see right now boeing can focus a lot of its resources in building war planes you know building destructive machinery but if ordinary people are going to own it they don't want they don't want the our children to die in wars they don't want the people that they know to die in wars and i have not met a single like ordinary person like a working class person who says oh i'm glad the drones fell on pakistanis every person i met is just anguished by that every person i've met here regardless of their skin color is absolutely anguished by what what the government is doing in iraq has done in iraq and afghanistan but the reason it's happening is because the people who call for wars are not the ones fighting the wars we are the ones fighting our wars our children are the ones fighting the wars the children of the poor are the ones who are sent to the battlefield because they have no other way of making some semblance of a future for themselves and so if we had the choice if we had the decision making power in our hands there is no way i mean i defy anyone to convince me that people will vote for war when when they are own children are going to be fighting the wars nobody is going to fight for wars for you know nobody wants to go and fight for wars fight wars they are doing it because they don't have a choice and that's the with capitalism we're talking about an alternate economy a socialist economy where we actually have a choice and the reason we are a lot of this discussion is focused on economics and economic ownership of resources is because today we do have a right on paper we have we have the right to vote we have certain rights on paper but the rights are not backed up by actual power to actually bring about change you know when was the last time the democratic party in say i want you to come and give me your opinion about whether we should have socialized medicine the vast majority of people we know are for some pharma socialized medicine and yet it never gets done this is the twenty first century in the world and yet we have fifty thousand americans dying every year simply because of lack of health care this is a completely ludicrous situation but why is it happening is it because they don't understand the importance of health care should rescind down with you know frank job and obama and all these guys and you know try to convince them intellectually that we need medicine no they know what's happening but they have no interest in billing with that problem and that's symptomatic of the system itself and we have to ultimately say that it doesn't matter which issue we are talking about if we really want to bring about this change then we have to move in a direction that is completely separate from the current system and if you look at how you know canada got its health care you know very interesting hopefully somebody and say say more about it but the reality is that together is you know to whatever extent it's working the public health care system didn't come about because some guys at the top decided that would be a nice thing you know let's be generous today i'm feeling generous today let's give socialized medicine to people you know it happened because there was a groundswell of movement headed by the labor movement by socialist by ordinary people who said no we need this and they put in place not only health care but whole host of services which are now all under attack because that's the way the capital system works every time there's a recession they will tell you oh there's no money for public funding we're going to take it back how many times are we going to fight for the same thing how many years are we going to fight for one single improvement in our economy and i have and i have to end and i haven't even talked about the other big problems in our in our city look at how homelessness is skyrocketing every time you walk on the street you see new when you were young people you know when you look at homeless people you can tell if they've been on streets for a while or they're just newly homeless i increasingly see younger and younger people who it's clear that they just became homeless and when you talk to them you tell you that yeah i just got kicked out i got i got evicted my landlord evicted me because i don't have a job and i can't pay my rent and here i'm out in the streets and i've been on the streets for a few days this is in human this should be completely unacceptable for us and the only way we can fight against this is to take things into our our own agenda and hopefully some of you will also talk about the other problem that is looming on how is that actually going to stop these enormous corporations that are that are absolutely determined because they they are driven purely by profit that is the agenda of capitalism profit profit maximisation for the  build a mass movement that says no we're going to stand between seattle and cold there is no way there is going to be calling the city but how do we do that we have to really that movement if it is to succeed has to and will i hope develop a radical edge where people are through the battle of fighting against the cold rains will start to read ilyse that you know if i need to work so hard to make this one change happen there must be something fundamentally wrong about the system and that is how social movements i work in history every time people especially young people and i really appeal to you all to join the movement when they become part of the movement they realize what a barrier the system is and  of fighting for a change itself is an educator where people say ok i think i have to go ahead keep going and fight against the system itself and i should i see rich coming here and i know  along i hope i didn't bore you but i know that rich likes to do this really interesting thing where people break out into groups and discuss and i wanted to throw out two questions that hopefully will guide the discussion but you know feel free to discuss whatever intrigues you most but one of the questions is can all the problems that we see in seattle can those problems be fixed under capitalism  that's yeah that's an excellent question thank you rich for asking that and i think primarily what we're talking about is a shift in consciousness that is ultimately the only way we can transform society because we you know think about this right there are there are you know there are a few marxist socialist in this room where we know what we're talking about but we're not able to transform society unless millions of people join us so our job really is astute political analysis in many ways and he did he was very effective in many of the things he did however he you know riyad a lot of differences with the temper and also his approach in the sense that i mean one of one of the things is that we we don't we don't necessarily think that sort of proselytizing to people would really bring that change what we believe is that it's in the interests of the working class to fight for these things so we don't have to we don't think that we have to really convince people in that sense but we have to make them aware of what they already feel you know there's a there's a late  and anger there's a latent outrage there's also a latent understanding of how the system works but that has to be brought out to the fore and so consciousness is really at the center of consciousness and the evolution of consciousness is really at the center of everything we do because it's a complex process w can't we can't really say that you know look at how bad the economy is why don't people understand why and they are in the street it doesn't work that way you know history has shown that there's a whole it's a it's a it's a in intriguing way in which people actually bring themselves into action into struggle but what we do know and this is what really defines marxist is that we do know that the working class not only has the capability to understand what it needs to do you know what kind of economy need to put in place for its own good but also that it will be able to develop over time understand to struggle it will be able to understand what needs to be done in order to actually get there i mean it's there are two parts of this problem one is what should we get to instead of this but how should we get there so we really have faith in the working class that it can actually do this but we don't have faith in them because we want to be have we don't create the conditions for the working class to get into struggle the system does that itself what we bring is perhaps a more evolved understanding of how we can get what are the most effective tactics and strategies you know it it comes down to day to day things like if you want to carry out an anti war protest on broadway one of the best slogans that will bring people towards you as opposed to eliminating them from you what are the best ways you can  talk to people about why there is a need to protest against war why there is a need to protest against homelessness how can we actually carry out this election campaign so we have this approach where we retain that although power all the tools of fighting this fight are already existing in the working class but they have to be drawn out in many ways and in terms of the question of violence which i think is a is a very very key question that has come up  ultimately are our best weapon is going to be you know politically mobilizing millions and millions and millions of people if you think about the amount of physical weaponry that the ruling class owns the military the police apparatus you know look at what the s p d is able to do every time you have a protest they have this you know this whole you know room full of oceans and you know tear gas shells and everything that they're able to unleash on us we won't be able to compete with it and nor should we try to because our our power lies not in trying to match weapons or weapon but you know using our mobilizing a real weapon which is people you know we have there's a few hundred on top there's billions of us at the bottom the only thing that is stopping us from changing this is sort of a common understanding that this can actually be done feeling of empowerment that this can actually be done for most of the time people don't get into struggle because they don't think that it can be done not because they don't want it and i think it's our job to unleash that power that already exists and when we talk about you know use the word revolution it really is a political revolution that we're talking about imagine if millions of people in you know in this state or you know if all the seven hundred thousand people who live in seattle w people presence and say we're going to run it our way or you take over boeing workers of boeing take over boeing so we're going to run it our way the question of violence does not emerge in that sense however the question of violence does emerge in general why because that is the one of the weapons the ruling class can use against us and they as we have seen they don't actually hesitate to use it they will unleash the weapons on us if date if they feel tired enough or sometimes if they make a miscalculation and the reason i'm saying miscalculation is because it's not always in the interest of the japanese class to unleash violence on us because what happened with occupy every time they did that then they should be people and brought more people out on the street and that is inevitable ultimately the question is how many people are they going to attack and there's billions of us they can't that that's not a weapon that they can actually use in any effective manner and i'll give you another example a very interesting example of you know the recent egyptian revolution you know two years ago  there was there was some balance unleashed by by them military dictatorship there but if you look at the scale of it you know it was pretty minimal compared to what they could have done that and that what they wanted to do you know there was over well over a million young people on their you square that that is absolutely not what barnes government the government liked and they had but they had no choice but to lump it and the reason was that the rank and file of the military was clearly completely against unleashing any kind of violence on the people because it was their own brothers and sisters and that's something we have to remember every successful revolution movement has you know has had this element component to it where we are if the working class that's out on the street is able to win over the rank and file of the military apparatus because they recognize that they have they are on you know when they donned a uniform they're carrying out the agenda of the ruling class but ultimately what they are is people many people and there will be a point where they will refuse to carry out that agenda so our real power in tackling that kind of violence is to actually politically inspire and mobilize people so i can i can talk more but let's see if are questions there there are some countries which have a women's off what we would espouse you know so in fact even the soviet union itself let's start there because that's the most well known example for al deep malays that existed in that economy in that society the reality is that because it was it because it began from the basis of you know public ownership and using public resources to solve public problems with all the its faults with all its deep corruption and oppression in many ways because the vast majority of the public resources were of resources were poor you know where used collectively it was able to the economy was able to deliver contrary to many of the myths you all heard it was able to deliver housing  employment women's rights to some due to a great degree food and clothing to the vast majority of people after five hundred years to date capitalism has not been able to do for the majority of the people in the world in fact the majority of the people in the world are severely lacking most of these resources if not all and so i would say that in terms of you know what economies existed or exist that are similar to what you're talking about the public ownership of resources an absolute essential i mean it's not something that we think is nice or moral yes it does it's true but it's a necessary thing without publicly you know bringing together resources collectively and using them to solve the normas problems of starvation and lack of health care and so on this is not going to be possible we cannot do this in a vacuum we cannot we cannot solve the problem starvation when bill gates owns fifty fifty six billion dollars because how will these all the problem where will the food come from where will the resources come from so you know in that sense that's absolutely critical what was missing in the soviet union was a democratic decision making in a democratic want to ship so we were we were absolutely opposed any kind of bureaucratic control over how these resources are distributed that not only makes it completely unfair and makes the system rotten from inside but also makes it grossly inefficient so that was one of the problems with you know the later years of the soviet union it became a very very you know from an economic standpoint it became an inefficient system if you look at cuba it has certain elements of what we would talk about again cuba has been able to do something that you know cuba is is this tiny and very resource poor country right next to this giant this economic giant which is rich in all kinds of resources and awash in wealth and yet cuba is able to deliver food and health care and education turret's people something that the u s is not able to do and it is directly related to how resources are you know put in put into use but at the same time wouldn't advocate for a cuban for you know for various reasons cuba has turned out the way it has turned out we when we say we are fighting for democratic socialism we're not only talking about a publicly organized economy but we're also talking about political and social freedoms  and and in reality some of the problems that you might hear about cuba are also the outcome of the fact that a small country cannot really survive on it by itself because if you want to deliver a really good standard of living today i mean today look at the level of technology we are so far ahead compared to when one thousand seven hundred happen we have so much wealth so much technology just unimaginable innovations the human race human society today is completely capable of delivering a very very high standard of living to everybody we don't have my enough money for everybody to have a high standard of living and for some people to be billionaires you know that can be possible everybody can have a high standard of living if we are able to take those resources into you know democratic ownership but the point is that if we want to actually do that we cannot do that in a small island cuba cannot alone cannot satisfy the needs of all its people without actually being able to have economic relationships with other countries and for that to actually work again it comes back to an international question you know for that to actually work in a manner that works for people it has to be a socialist economy globally very resources are being exchanged on the basis of what is good for society not how  this trading relationship give me another several billion dollars you know that has to be the basis of it if you look at several countries in western europe again as i said you know they had several programs in place which would we would advocate as part of the socialist economy so full funding for public education full funding for health care guaranteed you know nutritious and organic food all those things would be part of a socialist economy but we wouldn't say sweden is exactly like what we would call it because ultimately first of all the the wealth that it again here comes the global perspective the wealth that allows the government of sweden to deliver these this high standard of living to whatever extent it's able to is on the backs of other people in africa and so on so you know globally if you want to really talk about  so you know sweden a socialist you can't really do that because how is that possible somebody is being exploited you have to if you want if you want to talk about socialism you're to talk about the end of exploitation we cannot be a socialist economy and have some people being exploited that's an oxymoron that that's not that's not a possibility and so in that sense you know they are very incomplete and also for all the other reasons i've already stated that those programs are under attack because those countries are still capitalist one last example i'll give you  a lot of people will talk about finland it's an excellent example to understand some of the lessons not because it's socialist it's not socialist but it has you know if you look at you know school outcomes like educational outcomes they are just like you know just absolutely another another scale on another scale compared to countries like the united states and and the underlying reason why they do so well in so many things is because they have an unusually low level of economic inequality they have very strong teacher unions and teachers are paid really well and i think those are indications of what we need in a future socialist economy we do need you know the need for labor unions will not go away in fact it will they were going to be much more empowered in making sure that workers rights are you know are delivered consistently are advocating for a socialist economy that is exactly the root of the problem the deep inequality that capitalism and genders is the problem is the reason why we're seeing all this all this enormous rottenness in our society and so from that standpoint it does give us the way forward that we do have to go towards an equal economy and you know in closing i would say that when people if people ask you about you know what are whereas as this  worked don't lose heart if you if there is an exam there is an example today look if there was an example today we would be saying let's do that let's do that and rallying the working class to do that and the capitalist class would be shaking in their boots there but whenever people say say that and make you feel disheartened there is an example of the you should say that everything that happened had to happen for the first time when the abolitionists were advocating to end slavery there were any number of well meaning people who said oh it can't be done you know slavery is here to stay let's just fight for a kinder gentler slavery and i can't think of a more bizarre thing than a kinder slavery if if people had accepted that that change would never happen women would never have had the right to vote when women were fighting for the right to vote that's what people are saying no this such a thing can't happen it's nowhere and by the way i can't i can leave without telling you that the first country where women got the right to vote was the then there is no question that we will put a humane society in place because it's in our interest it's as simple as that there's nothing there's nothing more there's no other miracle behind it