to cut in nature, he shows me how the cover of a book on the band list was replaced with a cover of one that had been approved. for the streets of this neighborhood used to be lined with many more bookstores for the economic toll of the war combined with sections to force many to close their doors from the us to india to hungry authoritarian movements are rising in popularity across the globe. the lot of these movements gain traction in the 1st place, and do we need a fundamental restructuring of society this week on upfront? i'll ask those questions to nancy frasier, professor of philosophy and politics, evidence integration. thank you so much for joining us on upfront. thank you. so much, i'm really happy to be here. you talk about how the world is facing multiple crises, crises that can't be understood if we look at them as a separate or distinctive. in fact, you said it can't just be

a coincidence that the planet is burning up at the same time that police are murdering black men and women in the streets the same time that people are running from job to job. this is not a co incidence in this present moment. what are the threats that we face and how are they connected? yeah. so i think of this as a general crisis of the whole social order of the whole civilization if you like. in other words, as opposed to a sec torrell crisis like an economic crisis or a political crisis, those things are part of the current mix. but there are others as well. a crisis of social reproduction or of care in a family life. a crisis of a racial oppression and injustice and imperial oppression. a crisis of democracy, a crisis of ecology. these are all happening at the same time and that's what makes it a general crisis. and then the next question is, are they separate?

or are they all inter connected and traceable to one in the same social system? and i believe that that 2nd view is the correct view. there is one social system that is very deeply irrational and perverse in many ways. and that is generating non accidental way for systemic reasons. and ecological crisis at the same time is a financial crisis, a crisis of livelihood, a crisis of political role and g, o political gemini, this is a very dangerous moment. price is like, these are quite rare historically, they don't come along every day. we may have had 3 or 4 in the modern history of capitalism. by the way, that i just gave it away from capital. i was going to say this because i'm going to do the drum roll is going to say wouldn't be too simplistic to say that that single

source of all of these multiple crises is capital is i don't think so. i, i think that it is. however, everything depends on what we mean by capitalism. usually people think of that as an economic system. yeah. and then it, if you take that view, then it seems like, well, you know, then, then you're assuming the economy drives everything and you get an economic determinism. and that's problematic, i think that capitalism is the whole social order, and that part of what goes on here is that it separates, apparently, the economy from the political system, from nature, from family life and the social reproductive side of things. from geo politics. the problem is the economy is allowed to prey on all of those things. it's allowed to devour care work. it's allowed to devour political capacities. it's

about allowed to devour nature. in fact, more than allowed the system incentivizes large investors and mega corporations to help themselves, to all of those sources of, of wealth and energy and so on to help themselves. and it gives them no responsibility, 0 responsibility to repair what they damage and to replenish what they take. that's why it me, by perverse, it's very perverse system in that explains the title of your latest book, which is called cannibal capitalism. how our system is devouring democracy. care and the planet and what we can do about it. but the term cannibal, i thought was provocative term. i mean, it has a long history, a more recent history. european colonial powers use that term to degrade into the human eyes. populations that they subjugated. i'm thinking specifically about the

black african populations. you seem to be using the term differently though. uh, you're not using it to denigrate your using it, at least that the vulnerable you're using it to critique the capitalist class. why that term? it's exactly to turn the tables and say, you want to talk about cannibals. who are the real cannibals? it's built the large investors, the mega corporations, and, and all of the, their political flunkies who do their bidding. they are basically sucking dry the well health energies and capacities of working people all over the globe. so we, we, the working people are being cannibalized by the capitalist class if you like. so i'm giving you a quote as a marxist, st big set, but i'm expanding what i mean by capitalism, to take into account the relation between capital and nature,

capital and care work and family, life, capital and politics, both at the domestic national level. and that's a geo political level, so it's not just an economic system, it's, it's a system that puts all those other things at the mercy of powerful. i cannot say that, but let's drill down on the political part for a 2nd. there are viewers, we're going to say if you have a democracy, all the people have to do is vote against that vote against the e learning multiplication of the world. vote against the idea that corporations don't pay enough taxes, vote against the idea that you know that the wealthy won't have to pay capital gains. that all of the things that make it harder for every day people. if everybody has a vote, why can't they just make different choices? yeah, this is a great paradox because i think everyone expected, when universal suffrage was introduced,

that something like that would happen. and it to be fair. there have been periods, the social democratic, new deal era, and so on, where something a bit better happened because of the votes. but the problem is this of the, another aspect of the political system, the political crisis has to face as it has that governance problem. and then it has what we could call the head germany problem. the problem of a consciousness of common sense in, in the, you know, that the sort of world views that people bring through which they interpret what's happening. well, you know, and everybody watching this knows that we've had this amazing a defection from what used to be the ruling common sense in the world that then the neo liberal establishment parties, this huge rebel in which had some more emancipatory

left dish currents. at one point, but we have to admit is now dominated by various forms of right wing rebellion and populace, which are anything but a mass of a tour. yeah. so these, these people are angry. they, they are reacting to, to the fact that government is not working for them, that their jobs don't pay enough, that they don't have stable work. that they, they, they don't have time to, to, to raise their children in the way they want to. and so on, they're reacting to all of that. but with a very incorrect diagnosis of it. what's the problem is the diagnosis, right? you know, people as you're pointing out or saying that the government's not working are problems are not being solved by the systems in place. by the politicians in place, etc. and then they make choices, whether it's in italy, whether it's in hungary, whether it's in india, whether it's right here in the united states,

they make choices toward right when authoritarian models, why do they make those choices? why are those compelling choices? you have people a well, i think a lot of it now i hear. i think i have to double down a little bit on the united states because i know so much more about there. i think that um, with the exception of it in 2016 of the the attempt to build up the bernie sanders wing of the democrats with the exception of that they have had no alternative. yeah, there is no counter narrative that is saying the kinds of things that we are saying here. what the that the narrative is that the problem is that the mexican rape is the muslims, the trans people, etc, etc. the undocumented immigrants. so the deep state work is, um, here's a whole elaborate account of what the problem is and people buy it. however,

in logical it is not everyone but us. a substantial segment of the electorate in the us has bought this story. and where is the counter story then? and, and the problem is that the dominant wing of the democratic party has now for 3 election cycles, done the exact same horrible thing, which is been to not offer as say, you guys are right, there is a serious problem. there's a serious crisis, but here's the real story about what causes it and what we have to do know, instead of that, it's oh, look what trump just said. look what trump just did. i think a big part of the problem is a lack of alternative. and then you would have to actually also figure in the sort of cat christmas of a figure like trump more moti or, you know, a lot of these people actually sort of, you know, they, they, they radiate

a kind of, um, not only authenticity, but um, or you know that or they're going to really do something. they're going to be fight for you. how does the left not just the liberals, but the actual left mount a substantive response. we're building a alternative to what we have right now. well basically i don't know that we even have anything we could actually called the left. what we have is a, um, an impressive but on coordinated array of right democratizing and a mass of pretoria or potentially emancipatory social movements and struggles including palestine solidarity including meat too, including movement for black lives. including certain strands of the radical ecology movement and so on. so forth,

ends and some interesting and important efforts to revive trade unionism organizing the on organizing. so these are from my, to my way of thinking, these are the potential building blocks of something that we could call a historic or hedge. a monic block, the kind of broad political force that could very present itself as a credible alternative to the liberal, the liberal slash, neo liberal weight of the democratic party. and the one hand and 2, my god and all of its counterparts around the world on the other. um, but for that to happen and this is what i was trying to get in my book, or that these different potential constituent elements of a, of this kind of a, of a force would have to begin to understand that it is again that one and the same

social system that is at the root. what i'm trying to do is connect the dots in this and say to people, if we could all understand the way in which we are connected, in this perverse way through this predatory social system. then we could, if we would have a different sense of who our real allies are and who are we, our enemies are because some of the social movements have been co opted by the liberal slash, neo liberal progressives. let's look at some examples of that. you can make some of those dots for us, quite masterfully, i think. but you give an example of how capitalism has historically exploited unpaid care work. house work, child rearing, elder care in, in the 1980s when women were encouraged to join the workforce. care work was outsourced often to migrant workers from poor countries. the result was what you

call a tear crunch. what does that mean? can you explain what a care crunch is? yeah, um, several things are going on at once and it's the convergence that is, that makes the crunch. on the one hand, the old, a family wage ideal that a male worker should be paid a salary large enough to support the whole family says it's wife, can be a full time house keeper and, and mother and, and, and care provider. that is dad. in the water, that's part of this neo liberal attack on the unions. the outsourcing of higher paid manufacturing jobs. the introduction of low wage, precarious service work, a whole different economy from the sort of a right forty's, fifties, and so on. so on. so people households have to work more hours in a paid work in order to maintain the same standard of living. second, cut back on public social services. that's also part of neo liberalization. okay?

so these 2 things are coming together. that means much of a real time crunch. people don't, it can't, they can't afford their, their, their wages are too low. they can't afford wild care to pay for himself. the public, a head start in kindergarten and all of this stuff is being cut and, and they don't have time to do it themselves. meanwhile, you have something else going on. you have the educated, more prosperous, professional managerial class of women becoming doctors, lawyers, corporate exec, very demanding, long hours, work and say, can afford to hire people to pick up the slack. mm hm. so where we used it mainly attract migrants, do agricultural labor and i still have a,

a and restaurant work and so on. now, lots of migrant labor is doing domestic work either in for profit institutions like the old age homes or rehab centers and, and so on. or in private homes, there's a way that this is being presented to the world, not as there's an expectation of labor from the global south. it's look at this new generation and class of women who can now have it all. who can now be corporate seals, who don't have to be bound to the, to the domestic spirit they're leaving in and, and this is called feminism in many ways. exactly. but there's a connection between that and what's happening and capitalism total. it's totally connected. you don't have the quote unquote liberation of the, of the global north professional managerial class women without this exploitation

or expropriation of margaret women of color from the global sound movie. and you get an example of companies that now offer a freezing to their child bearing employees. now, many see this again is something that's liberating that someone can now choose to have children or in later in life if they want to. but usually the fact that it's become commonly offered by big corporate firms is a strategy is a way of saying wouldn't have your kids in your forty's, your 50, that even maybe your success, the vote, all of your a high energy, productive years, right? to us, right? but that's a very different way of thinking about yeah, that look, that's a, that's, that is a, um, a symptom of this care crunch that, that, that women feel that they can't afford to have kids in the wave of the ages that people use to. and they have to go to these technological extremes. the other example i gave is mechanical pumping of breast milk so that you

can work. and you know, still so called breast feed your child. of course, if that's really press reading, i don't know. but in any case, this, the we're, we're always, this is the us, we're always going for technological fixes to problems that really require a root and branch transformation of the underpinnings of the whole social system. you also talk about how capitalism usually relies on the pillaging of the earth, which has led to environmental degradation in that way. just recently they've had wildfires that have killed at least 29 people. not to mention 2024 was the warmest year on record. and over the past few years, the world of seeing catastrophic floods in spain, extreme heat waves in india, a tie fluids across, across east asia. but in light of this, you have stated that in order to save the planet, we need an eco politics. that is anti capitalist. you call it

a believe equal social is a how we get there. well, how we get there. that's a very complicated issue, but i just want to say that i do believe that it is this predatory relation to nature that is built into capitalism. that is so intrinsic to capitalism. of that nature is just there for extraction extraction. exactly. again, as i said, for no responsibility to replenish or repair the difficulty in a socialist context, i mean, you still need to extract oil and gas and minerals for just the power devices we have in society. i mean, yeah, it is in a different mode of production. right. so, i mean, this is again, a really interesting but complicated question. the thing is that in capitalism, the incentive to trash nature is hard wired. in

socialism, it is not hard wired, although really existing socialist countries followed the sort of possible path of trying to play catch up. and that's why they did plenty of damage. i'm not saying they don't do damage, but that system doesn't require it in the same way that capitalism does. so. um, i mean, look, the answer is, is, is to the fossilized we have to transition and rather quickly to renewables, especially solar and wind and water. and we, we can't keep with the, the oil, the natural gas, the fracking, and, and all of that one has to build this bronze kind of political coalition that i was talking about before. if we can connect the dots and make that movement anti

capitalist, if it will at the same time, be green, anti racist pro union and pro worker a pro people as opposed to prophets. and in green, i look what, what the power we are up against is, is that it is enormous. you take all the mosques and, and the, and all the, the extractive energy industries and, and the automobile management. you take all of that. this is a, the banks on silicon valley. this is a huge mass of power. you cannot, you cannot win with them without a huge counter power. we need a very big coalition, but we need the right kind of coalition. it has to correctly identify what needs to be changed. and my argument is that none of these very

urgent but different problems that people are reacting to can be solved unless we disable this dynamic of limitless accumulation of wealth for capital explanation. how optimistic are you that will see a post capitalist society emerge as i go through cycles. i mean, a few years ago i was more optimistic than i am now. i have watched around 2016, the emergence, well, even with occupied going back to 2011 and the air of spring. and so i have watched movements that i thought had tremendous emancipatory potential. so, you know, sort of peter out or, you know, not achieve their, their goals and be hijacked and so on. and even in countries,

but like spain and, and greece that tried to turn the, the occupier type movements into political parties like streets and per day, unless they've petered out or, or been bought off or, or, or whatever. so this, this moment is, you know, we're sitting here after the, the 2nd electoral victory of trump. with no decent alternative. i know that which is infuriates me really and furious me. but i don't think we should be completely swayed by the sort of mood of the moment and things got to have their ups and downs. we have to believe that there will be, uh, you know, a powerful movement for something better. i have to say that in this country i was very heartened with the, the, the depth and,

and commitment of the palestine solidarity movements that develop. and it has been one of the worst experiences of my life to watch that crack down, that, that, that vicious crushing of that movement. and so that's, that's, gives me from mendez, sorrow and, and, and anger both. but let's go back to my when i went to many often quoted lines from antonio graham, she's a great italian communist marxist. the thinker, right? pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will. yeah, this is important pessimism of the intellect that well because right now there's a lot to be pessimistic math if you think, but we we have to somehow find that courage to yeah. and think, frazier,

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that's the reports, are we brave bullets and bombs? and we always include the views from all sides. the, the, you're watching the news, our live for my headquarters and del heim, daddy and obligate all coming up in the next 60 minutes. friends to host an emergency summit. if you are a p and leaders on the war and ukraine as a us for parents to begin direct negotiations with rochelle, the desperate need for shelter in gauze families are waiting for mobile homes and advice will aid still blocked by israel. rolanda backed am 23 rebels, entered eastern congo, 2nd largest city blue cross blue sparking sears and confusion of robert.