that's expanding and i'm really happy i've been so happy to talk to you because you're one of my heroines from a distance from way back about forty years ago and i thought it would be insane and welcome welcome very much to conversations great pleasure welcome the program francis fox pyrenean ph d and she's a sociologist extraordinarily think it might be fair to say and has been involved in matters of increasing the realm i would say of democracy real democracies throughout her career and france is welcome very much to cause or have the chance to have a conversation yet are all that very good i wonder if you might we're going to be we were just reminiscing for the cameras started forty years ago when things were hot up at columbia and there's go a reminiscence of that officially i guess in but before that could you share your background please for the audience born and raised morning calgary canada my parents were immigrants from eastern europe calgary it was the depression yeah you know not being too well informed they came to new york hoping it would be a bit better here and i grew up in new york in jackson heights and and to p s one forty eight and then i went to newtown high school for two years and then after one i'm going to i was something more in high school my brother came back home he was getting his degree at the university of chicago and he decided that i should go to chicago and and so i went i took the exams and i entered the university of chicago ok you're ok and it was sort of a strange world you know i remember they gave me all these tests and one of the questions on one of the tests was about it had had the word value and i didn't know what a value was in that sense time value was the value of the frying pan over the volume of the can you have scoured but a question about values i didn't understand s moved from one world to a very different world and you were going you can now make since i was in i took a liberal arts degree and then i went into general degree in social science ok ok said of a degree in planning and then i came to new york and i got a job doing is coming in yeah and originally this program was on the lower east side of new york it was originally created as a juvenile delinquency program but it was very much a lot of a number of different federal agencies like the national institute of mental health the president's committee and juvenile delinquency and youth crime it involved city agencies like the city manager's office the ford foundation was involved big for invasion yeah the columbia university school social work was involved and a lot of the settlement houses on the lower east side were involved so it's a kind of  that we're setting out to reduce youth crime or juvenile delinquency by opening up opportunities in education and employment by offering social services even  by encouraging community organisation in general sounds like a pretty good idea well it was a pretty good idea it was a little bit too science in order in the sense that they thought that they could prove that putting all the se you couldn't really do that kind of scientific demonstration but that's all right it was still do gooder part of it i like it was still there was do gooding and it was social work well like kind of there were a lot of workers involved they tend to be good people they tend to be good  right if you go through school and you want to be an accountant or a computer scientist that tells you something about your character tells you you want to get ahead in the market or an investment banker yeah they are from but if you want to be a social worker that's a kind of nice sign a good sign it is for my will value system as you use it or value that kind of thing it is in my value system too and you'd gone to university then i didn't quite get your education degree because they closed the program that i was all i see so they gave me all the tests and they made me do my performance of representatives of all the social sciences and then they gave me a degree in science ok well that's wider that's wider scope than one of the special yeah what do you think of the idea of there being such specialization in academia rather than more comprehensive taking the measure of things there were i think the  specialize if you want to do work in that field at the same time if that's all you do and if you can't locate the methods you use the theories to which you refer the  department of the university of everything because everything is interconnected in a way that's the reality and then we break it down into disciplines and specialization and you write your ph d on a very specialized subject or one part of a specialized discipline so and we don't have very much a comprehensive thinking or pattern recognizing between the disciplines that encompass them particularly where the problems see peace no talk about the art and the you know the science break there's a break there and so we're just those kind of things because you seem to have a comprehensive reading of the human condition and some philosophy of the guards but still allow your life and your academic work you know  an inspiration that general this sometimes realize comes from special session you know or put turning on its head you wouldn't want perspective to inform the general view because there isn't one general view there isn't one general scheme of knowledge you want it to be constantly challenge to threatened keynesians now yeah and you have to get formulated in the economic theory is the world and i would ask you maybe maybe i'm jumping ahead what are we all now what is the economic theory that informs the political and social organization of the societies that make up the spaceship roots of our well if there is one it's basically a kind of neo laissez faire we now live something there about scarcity and so we're that economics in some definitions of economics is the science of the science of the allocation of scarce resources and scarcity is assume in all of the political thinking that there is some possible exception some people it seems on the left or socialist minded people seem to be able to  i think scarcity can be transcended but it can also be constructed so that and that for that reason it's always a kind of contest you can food to feed six eight twelve twenty billion people how much can plan your produce or will there be inevitably scarcity because was wrong but we nevertheless can create a condition of scarcity can always be reconstructed by cultures that induce us to need and want more and more and more so that yes we can feed twelve fifteen billion people if they will simply and if they don't all have to drive a motor car if they all want to drive a motor car game where they figured out all the world trends and so forth and taking these things into account and he had constructed not ideologically larger just a technological capability and he had a chart that he was a fortune magazine is number one nine hundred fifty two and he reckoned back through time thinking comprehensively the technology and the advancement of technology is making possible for more production all the time and he said that in his reckoning we'd reached the point where maybe ten percent of the world population might realistically be seen to have been have by the time we got to the first world war and the by the twenty by the taking all the trends into account like you're saying i mean by the second world war we had reached a point in his reckoning coming out of history where maybe something on the order of twenty percent that the thing was going up like this right and then in one nine hundred fifty two he p a twenty year in one nine hundred fifty two postulated twenty year period of imminent crisis to all human institutions as we approached to cross the fifty percent mark which he said would occur around one nine hundred seventy two and he in this is carefully nano you know doing more with less better design these kind of things that we crossed that line about nine hundred seventy and that we've been living against all of human history is ontologically almost in a post would be a huge paradigm shift and i wonder what you think of that and is that something because i hear a great deal of the people from the left who seem to be able to assume the idea that it might be we can take care of everybody if we just got our act together and everything and the people that are responsible for the historically nervous systems will say it's impossible because people are inherently greedy and all the kinds of things they have about human nature but the idea that we may be actually transcending in our capability not only food and housing and everything but just transcending the very idea of scarcity itself is that something that is if so factor would serve because that's certainly the default attitude toward that notion in the society in general well i think some people on the left think that we could transcend scarcity but only if we live a simpler life and i'd be some people yeah but  anon sort of inclined to think that the idea of scarcity as a perennial condition is so deeply implanted in us and the idea that you the big human conflicts are yeah you want to television set and then you want to television set in the bedroom and then you want an up to date computer and then you want a new computer and you want it to be wireless and you  your last year's close he wanted a new car you want to better car you want to save these bans i mean people are like that how about you want to better world it has more justice well we don't know really whether we're  the people americans westerners apparently a lot of asians as well china's becoming a consumer society we don't know whether we are like that of greed for stuff people do like a lot of stuff right ok and it's always been a few hasn't it rule i mean we had the emperors in rome they ruled and then you had the kings and feudal europe and they ruled and most of the service were wallowing around in the mud with a little bit of gruel and living in very scarce condition but a few rules now we have a few people who  speak about the elite you know the ruling elite and that's the way it's been throughout most all of history is a few people who run things then we have some democracy begins to come in and we haven't realised anything like the promise of democracy that would come if you had a really truly liberated humanity that wasn't at the behest or under the dictator templates being set by the few people who hold all the levers of power throughout history joyce's history is a nightmare from which i'm attempting to awaken i think there's something i wonder what you think that history is not just just and it's not necessarily progressive in the sense that things get better  and better and better some things make it better but some things have become quite some aspects of our lives have become quite menacing our capacity to destroy the environment our capacity each other literally so is increasing and that certainly isn't progressive development but i think it's a mistake to say well you know human beings levers of power and that's just and then they go they sort of eat the whole thing they take everything for themselves and that's the way it's always been and that's the way it'll always be i think it's often been that way but some societies have been much more just than other societies and i don't think it's the case that it's indigenous societies native societies that have been much more just and that it's you know civilization what we call civilization that has made us unjust that i don't think is true i think that indigenous societies have often been kind of answer an anthropologist had a theory that that was how they got their protein so so my point is that we're not condemned to live lives of the lives of sheep where we're always corralled by masters take our goods and take what's beautiful in human life and enjoy it only by themselves that has been happening in american society to a greater and greater sometimes the people handed over to them here because they've been co opted and what is the term they've been just manipulated they've been manipulated in their consciousness and they were handed over to people and think that deeper and much more pervasive if you look at norway and sweden and even denmark finland and to a considerable degree i mean these societies not only are much more equal these societies have been much more generous in offering to foreign and to poorer countries in the world they have been much more open with regard to immigration thing i think of norway for example which has always been an extraordinarily homogeneous society peninsula up there on the arctic until recently a nation of some farmers and lots of fisherfolk living in little villages all blond  be a socialist kind of thing through the taxing shipping and through tax your spending as well and through spending on social programs and that sort of thing because i know you've been very interested in your career with the with the least advantage began to work on voter registration reform in the effort to bring minorities and the poor who are very under represented in the american elect the electoral universe by making voter registration available at the agencies that serve them and and we w reform act and the emphasis upon the work at they can to get the mothers off welfare cheats and that kind of an attitude that people have toward people that are least advantaged and of our societal organization and buying into for buying into friedman or whatever it was but it was buying into the report it was trying to get rid of the republican attack machine which is harming away at the democrats for being associated with black people and for being associated with poor people and for being defenders of welfare and welfare  yeah fair state is a term that is really is still being used i guess it is everywhere but in the united states sickening europe and europe is really merican stink that that's a bad thing everywhere else in the world it's a good would they think it's a good thing in china when they refer to their either in their language use that they want to use that language but do you know what i mean values i mean would they do that because they seem big i saw mr who says first name and he gave a talk and he said we represent socialism for the people and so forth he was talking to the assembled the communist party or something like that and yet from what i understand you know they've had some like eighty thousand demonstrations of human rights abuse in looks awfully like when you get trillions of dollars of u s capital invested it looks awfully like capitalism to me but they're still saying they threw the marxist dialectic and they're marxist thinking think that they're representing something th representing the piece the people the miles's of every ruling regime has its own propaganda some of which it believes i think that the policy in china of the last twenty years at least has been to try to create a market society but a market society with a very strong governmental leadership very strong governmental in which in which the government is also an investor the government is also capitalistic but to do that they had to roll back some of the protections that the chinese government under mao had offered to its workers and to its peasants and this has been a very bitter experience for many chinese many chinese are doing fine they're making money from the new market oriented or doctrine psyche or on a world scale there are people doing fine maybe twenty percent are doing pretty for china but when people say oh they're doing better or are they doing worse often the dispute arises because one side of the argument is using aggregate wealth and the other side of the argument is focusing on how that wealth is distributed say that george w bush tells the american people regularly that the americans are americans and we're well off according to the rest of the world yes but most americans a majority of in their accounts have for several decades now been working harder as you know women are going into the share labor market or they're doing double work because they're working at k mart and some lucky ones are professors like me but most of them are not so they're working at wal mart or  elements in subsistence have become much more expensive including housing in real terms fuel health care so most americans are not doing so well but as if you look at their aggregate wealth because a lot over looks looks pretty good because some people are making so much money yeah so much paul krugman had a piece in the times of months ago or something he talked about the growth between two two thousand and three and two thousand and five  states i mean it's really pretty staggering outcompeted but that's money you know they say and so that's the aggregate but that's not the reality you know on their on the world scale we're in a lot of a lot of trouble in terms of the models by which we're operating things in a systems large generalized way or do you see a big change i mean you know i think we're now in trouble not only i mean a lot of americans are in trouble because they're not earning enough to pay for health insurance or to pay the mortgage payment make the mortgage payments on their homes but i think that the overall economy is in trouble as well and i'm  society in a sense is in trouble because as a basic functions that government must play in a market economy i have been cheated on and  we are not spending on infrastructure so that we have catastrophes like bridges fall down minute certain minnesota or cities get flooded because the levees aren't properly maintained  all and our regulatory agencies which aren't welfare state agencies they're necessary for a market economy somebody has got to regulate finance or else finance goes crazy we say we're saying that it has certain speculation the hedge funds and so forth or workplace regulation in the old days a lot of miners died because miners mines were not not inspected we developed an apparatus to inspect the mines casualties in mining went down they didn't go down as low as they went in europe because our inspections were not as good with maybe don't have as good a system as they do in europe right now but now the mining the agency that does the mine inspections is being stripped of fun because the bush administration has slashed was it by walter heller advised him it went to the folks and there was a big sixty's moment where there was some breathing space and there was a movement everything like it makes a big difference to the tax break is going to do you think yes it does especially if you claim as they have claimed that the tax break will have a stimulus effect yes right it's going now the stimulus effect the people once on the for arguments that are going on in the presidential primary season everything that he says means we have a capability of doing things in terms of our technology or capability but the people don't have enough income  purchase the demand capability to clear the market of what we're probably capable of producing and that's a hell of a state because they just don't have enough in order to as a result of corporate greed if you press wages down and you keep on producing and investing in order to make more profits you're eventually going to come to a point where your goods grandchildren beyond outsourcing which i heard you mention you know sending race to the bottom of slave labor and parts of the third world and so forth but he said in a letter to his grandchildren which eroded one hundred thirty that's about now he said you're going to be confronted with something you can hardly understand and that is technologically induced massive unemployment and that technology is going to become so overwhelmingly productive apart from the labor import to production is the way things are structured in that capitalist and in china looks awfully like capitalist to me even though they call themselves on a russia seems to be in income in order to buy what's able to be produced they're going to be undercut in their labor input and the labor theory and value informs all the economics which informs all politics and so forth and that would be a dilemma beyond just racing to the bottom in the normal way in which histories unfold in this last century and so forth what do you think of that well i mean there are two things going on both things are going on there there's been so far successfully an effort to create a race to the bottom with regard to wages internationally to the extent that we outsource production to countries first mexico then we find a dream the idea that people should have a sick and has been a dream for in the depression the great depression for example a movement arose among old people who were suffering horribly  a political movement it was called the townson movement and they had a formula for how and the formula said that all old people everybody over sixty should be guaranteed a pension of two hundred dollars a month and it was called so security that again later oh on condition  tremendous stimulus yeah that solve the political problem that the towns and movement had created but it wasn't a garret social security was not a guaranteed income guaranteed income is it's a good idea  you've got the right wing and the left wing and where does the left wing go that that thing when you're looking at that issue if it's marks is that still relevant to the grounding of the left wing financing where you you have an overall system that builds capital k relation and distribution simultaneously european social democracy does a european yeah  i mean marx was not in favor of european social democracy he was in favor of a communist society in which although he did not spell it  out closest thing that i have ever seen that my communist would be work he didn't he didn't believe either in proletarian state and he didn't believe in a state that would regulate markets which is what social democracy is social democracy tries to maintain economic stability by regulating demand and by taxing capital and influencing the allocation of capital is generally operative in the european market and in your european union right well more that they are economically very very successful these days for a long time conservatives in the united states were pointing to rising unemployment in these societies as evidence that they were functioning very badly although there never was the kind of poverty that we have in the united states or the kind of inequality that we have in the united states but in terms of ninety the basic grounding policies for the communications industry or something but when it comes down to economic policy we have an economic policy grounding statement for the united states of america which is the fall of the employment act hundred forty six and implicit in that is a belief in the labor theory of value that value is created through human labor and that would it wouldn't make any difference whether you're marx or your but that's accepted by the general by the general across the boards notion that the labor theory of value and that it's human activity and labor and we will distribute all income through employment we will create employment and we will distribute it that way the other side if you go to marx you could say we could distribute according to need will determine need i was need to be determined but not a marketplace thing what do you think about that and what what if the technology is in the larger critique or is paradigm shifting thing of keynes saying we're going to have that technological displacement so you can't just distribute all income through labor because it's the technological reason in the instruments are all owned by a few free to choose he began the series with the depiction of a bizarre in some village you know little market and you know where people come in they feel the goods and they there's a sort of comparable metaphor almost to the labor theory of value it would be the trade theory of value so nothing of that sort but i don't know  worry about that from time to time i think they're guaranteed income people worry about that but i think at this moment in american life in the american american economic life that we have real needs for work that has to be done in american society i talked a little while ago about infrastructure involvement we can also talk about the services that americans don't get for example think about the way we shortchange our seniors of service and the homes in which we sort of lock them up or our hospitals are understaff and we we don't have child care for working mothers they have to juggle everything in order to be able to do their part in maintaining the family standard of living we should have child care available everywhere i mean the every school should be turned into a childcare center and it should be open twenty four hours a day there are all sorts of things we can do to make life easier for people and more pleasurable for people and it will take people have to be employed to do it all caring so then yeah they would have to be employed they couldn't do it cooperatively if they had a source of income to give the leisure cooperate for instance if there was an alternate way for people why is it ok for some people to get great amounts of money because they own a capital assets and nobody nobody nobody in the general population cottons onto the idea that they could get income if they own some of the corporate assets why do we allow them all to be in the hands of so few and allow so little of it and the only distributed to others through their labor participation like wage slaves or service on a futile estate why do we accept that generally because  not all societies believe in private property or at least they don't have our conception of private property i mean if i own this it's my right to use it to destroy it to burn it that's the way it is in the law this see that we're not all private property under advanced capitalism other societies have very different ideas and the property we this is your  property so many people on the left are against the idea that there be private property ownership of any thing and that that that's what they would do away with in some so leftwing societies they do with private property i'm a lefty but i don't mind if you keep that suit that can be yours no no no but i mean and generally i know but i don't want you to own a corporation i'm with a lot of people depend on which the community anybody it's a small group  yeah i don't want no i don't want a war to be wrong if everybody own them and has that as a source of income if we're getting technological displacement of labor so that you want to make free to do what they want to do the way the people that have an income flow by being an owner of that which is producing what you do with through the form of the cooperative well i would be it could work things can work that way but one thing that can work is we run out of time and i really thank you for coming in and i want to let the people see this because we're you know she doesn't think we should everything but a mixed economy so this be a place for part private property ownership if that's the institution that there seems to be an animus against by the socially minded left and i wonder if there maybe had the wool pulled over their