Where Form 8815 Reform 2024-2025

I'm here today with Dr. Fred Block, research professor of Sociology at the University of California-Davis, to talk about his new book, "Capitalism: The Future of an Illusion." Thanks for joining us, Fred. My pleasure. So, why did you write this book? Well, I wrote this book because I had this realization that a lot of people on the left and on the center, you know, when they saw something they didn't like about the way in which our economic system would work, would say, "Well, what do you expect? That's capitalism." And you know, many of them would kind of go on and make various arguments as to why this was inherent in the nature of a capitalist system. At a certain point, I realized that rather than opening up the possibility for reforms, changes, things, you know, a contemporary version of the New Deal, that it was that saying that was in fact reinforcing the right's concept of capitalism, which is that it is an unchanging and unchangeable system. That every time you try to reform it, even in the kind of most minimal kind of way, say by raising taxes on the rich or on corporations, you are having a tremendous cost in terms of lost efficiency, lost productivity, and so forth. So, I then kind of processed that through my own personal experience. And that, I talk in the book, that in 1965, SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) had its first march on Washington against the Vietnam War, and the president of SDS at that time, Paul Potter, gave a famous speech where he said, "We must name the system that caused the US to fight in Vietnam. We must name the system that produces racism and segregation and the exclusion of African American people."...