>> produced the possibility after taking independence. for 20 years or so of combined work together, even though they have different approaches towards politics. in the vast bulk of the global south, from the '70s onwards, the movements were shattered. in other words, they may be strong but they had no way of forming an agenda together. that's one important thing that people underestimate in latin

america. that there was this spirit of working together, secondly, i mean, history has an amazing way of asserting itself. so my last chapter, for good reasons, begins with -- and i'me in 89 when there is this upheaval in caracas, it's such a so-called imf riot, there had been imf right across africa, latin america, and even issue. cities lost to get control for days over the bread right. in egypt there was a bread riot in the '70s. there was again a bread riot in the '80s. read right, imf riots had been legions but this was special. not only was the main cities lost to the administration, but it shocked the military. i'll put it to you with a parallel. why was there a to in 52 in

egypt? the one reason was because when the egyptian army went to war against the israelis in 48, they were trounced. and it was a humiliation for the military. that humiliation was understood by the military in the following way. they said that this bloody king has used the defense budget to enrich his family and friends. we have third rate tanks. we were trounced i the israeli army in 48. that, the accumulation was important in a military coup of 52. similarly in venezuela, the great stories of shop as being sick and then going back -- chavez being sick, look, we don't want to shoot utter people anymore. chavez comes from rural poverty, understands that his allegiances

are generally with his troops, not with the generals. and secondly his brother was also in the left the guerrilla forces. these had an impact. they have a way of asserting itself. certain conjunctions occur. the conjunction occurs in venezuela. that's very important. if the conjunction occurred in uruguay, it would have not produced boulevard is him. they didn't have the ability to high oil prices. leverage them politically. what enable enable it to take a different and historical root. there are major fights in kenya, for instance. the battle over the election results, major fights. but the conjunction didn't provided to go forward.

so history gives us what it gives us. we have to then produce an attitude to make sense of it. but those historical breaks are not because it has, you know, if some definable legacy. some people's histories are cut because of mass killing of a population, a social force. some histories are produced because in venezuela the new movements had the creativity to understand that the slums will play a crucial role in political power. so just to put this back to the new economic development, see, when unions are destroyed through the debt crisis, i'm not going to go into the details. it was the end of unionism in many of these countries because the way to cut the unions them. when unions are destroyed, for many places of the left, the principal space of organizing is lost, the factory, the industrial concern, et cetera.

what has begun to happen after that period is that most working class struggles were no longer struggles at point of production. but became struggles at point of consumption. water collections, the gas price in bolivia, et cetera. so what they were creative about was to utilize points of consumption struggles, if that meant to utilize -- that meant to utilize slums. you can say that they were able to start a new. now, some people say that model should be taken all over the world. that's a nightmare. because again, everybody gets revolution, they're able to produce but if you tell egyptians ignore the textile industry and just go and organize the slums of cairo, but by the way, one of the leading forces of the left entities egypt fighting to resuscitate something from the convulsions of this revolution are the textile workers.

and these tax employees, municipal unions. the genius played very important role although you never read about them in "the new york times" anywhere. they play a very major role. you can't say the venezuela and should be everywhere either. i would say the venezuelans were very creative in using the conjunction moving forward. inspite all the contradictions of the venezuelan experience, they were able to produce a boulevard and arise which would not have been produced if it had been somewhere else but it would not have gone forward. >> let's bring it back to the present day. some of the stuff you in with. your skeptical as you just said of the idea of internationalism, kind of global solidarity movement. and not just of the world special forum as a form and so forth, but of the very idea.

folks are trying to organize the politics are kind of premature. i mean capital is internationalist, and the forces that were raised up against are increasingly multinational, so why do you think we shouldn't be organizing in ways that mirror that? >> there is no question that the problems are international. that doesn't mean the solutions have to be international. we have to be created in our thinking. let me put it to you this way. in feudal times peasants and exactly who to attack. you want to attack the money lender and the lord. you could take the pitchforks and run there. under capitalism there's no identifiable -- you can go and stand outside the goldman sachs building. you can try to levitate. you can do whatever the hell, but capitalism, then, is a structural domination. that doesn't allow for this kind

of easy politics to be written off how power is organized. one has to understand questions separately, which is how do we build power? not how is that are organized. how do you build people's power? so in that sense, organizations that have attempted to build people's power internationally, i look at many of them, talked to many of the activists. what i'm going to say may sound a little demeaning but i don't mean it to be demeaning at all. some of them play a very important role. so if you look at the shack workers movement, slum dweller movements, one of the interesting things they do is some slum organizers in bombay and taken to south africa. to introduce them to people in south africa. so that test is important in building for the organizers, both in bombay and in south africa, a new horizon.

it's an incredible opportunity to travel to another country and see a different people are fighting. so in that sense it broadens horizons of activists and organizers. that's essential. but the struggles in bombay are not directly going to be related to struggles in south africa, and will rise somewhat is the. in other words, they can create a common agenda because the issues are totally different, the power structures are totally different. the power they have to build is based on a different foundation. so in south africa because you have say maybe the union is nearby, then you have an ally. in bombay, the trade unions have been eviscerated. so there are no real opportunities to a big massive trade union support. they used to be massive trade unions in the textile industry. windows were globalized out of bombay, you don't have that union. so that means the grounding with

which people have to fight is different. they are in the south african shack dwellers is accident helping them build power. what it's doing is helping to broaden their horizons. i have no problem with people going to different places, meeting each other, understand how our struggles are linked, et cetera. but how are struggles our link is a separate issue than how to build power where we are. that should not be taken as a politics of parochialism. if you're not building power where you are, you cannot fight against those invisible structural dominant forces that we all have to come back together. so yes, south americans, latin american come is very important because it's from that experience, that progressive experience that when the bricks the bank was being formed, you know, there was pressure. brazilians played the least creative role actually in the discussion on the bricks bank. but there was pressure from the south american countries to

rethink rating agencies. should there be a rigs rating agency? why should we all follow moody's and standard & poor's? that's a very interesting theory that there should be no bricks rating agency. not only worse than was intended to force. i would say why should they be rating agencies? why don't you have popular rating agencies, you know, where you have some kind of people's charter on how to rate countries, whatever. but yes, those struggles on the ground have international implications, but that's because they do power. that's because every time there's an election in venezuela they fight and win. so if you don't build regional power, local power, you can never confront structural domination. that's the danger of them calling for a global upsurge, and waiting all our lives.

we have to build power, even though we are building power against the global bigamist. >> i think we should take some questions from folks in the audience. there's a hand up back there. >> so we're going to take three or four questions and please wait for the microphone to get to you. i'll try to hand on to the masses and then we'll take a few questions and -- okay, so i have one in the back over there. one in the back over there. is there another one? all right. here we go. why don't we start with you, and let me -- to build power on the

ground just because of the structures of the occupation, which he thought of that and as far as international struggle. >> the next person in the midd middle. >> i wanted just to ask you to talk a little more about something you kind of briefly mentioned, which was the impact of all this on job stagnation

and wage stagnation in this country. i was really struck by your marketing that the g7 was created in 74 because that was right when gdp growth and wage growth separated in this country historically. >> as someone who went on the peace caravan last year, being of where the fact there's a big debate over marijuana legalization in uruguay, the president of guatemala and a couple other latin american presidents are calling for, you know, debate on drug soft laws. and sense of drug prohibition always equals black market profits and underground economy,

how is the effort towards softer drug laws, particularly in south america, going to affect the flow of capital, and i guess the friction that you describe between the global north and the global south? >> okay, great question. palestine, i mean, at the surface i would agree with you. it's an international struggle. but actually i think the palestinian struggle is also a struggle of different countries. i mean, in the united states, the struggle for solitary with the palestinians is actually a struggle to stop u.s. application. it's actually an american struggle. it's important for americans to go and break the embargo, et cetera, but, of course, the danger always becomes the americans become the story. how many people remember how many palestinians were killed, but will remember the names of americans? nothing wrong with it, because

their lives are precious and they sacrifice a measurably. that's important but that's not the only struggle. in other words, palestinians are very capable as we note of fighting their battles. there can be few examples of infighting against military might that they have demonstrated. but the problem for america is not the israelis. it's the american government. so what the campaign in america has to fight, in my opinion, is to transform american imagination, vis-à-vis the middle east. that's also a national struggle. it's the same, for instance, in india. india buys half of israeli arms export, and in my opinion, therefore, undermines the occupation of palestinians. in the indian movement it's very clear that the struggle is about india. it's not that we need to oust the palestinians. they're very capable of carrying

their own crosses, as we know for several thousand years. they can do it. they don't need us. what they need us to do is to get this off better neck. it's not only the idea of soldiers, it's the idf soldiers, shshoes made by an american company in malaysia. or it's the indian government lying arms and, therefore, under underrated billy took more and more soldiers. in that sense it's not really only an international campaign. it's a campaign about countries around the world are complicit with this kind of our resume. and it's not just solidarity with palestinians. this is solitary with people of the world, whether it is complicity of one's government and the oppression of others but it is responsibly for us to fight. therefore for instance, the movement in solidarity with colombian workers was never about, let's go in when the revolution in colombia.

it was we will fight against coke because coca-cola is going there and colluding against the activist. in that sense i think these are also about us trying to build power where we are and trying to change the role of the places we live in. so in that sense i would say it is internationalism but not really. it's also this other thing. because they don't need to be favored. they need solidarity, and solidarity often is misunderstood. to mean i will put on my hat and go the. what solitary should mean is i'm going to picture it here with allies to be easy. that's how we should understand solidarity. and i think even in the global anti-world bank movement that was misunderstood. people thought fighting to help the workers in bangladesh, means we should all defend bangladesh. my god, rates of housing will go

up. bangladeshi workers want to go and live in -- commute to these neighborhoods are you don't need everybody to go there. you need to fight to build a new plantation. that's the way i would see that. the next question you asked about the wage gdp gap. i write something slightly crazy in the end of this book wher wei make the argument that american wages are an industrial wages are maybe too high. we make the argument isn't to say we reduce the wages. it's what the global north has done in its society is its privatize all the costs. so as you privatize everything, insurance, health care, you know, schooling, so many things get privatize, the burdens on families of workers or people is increased. so they cannot survive unless they demand higher wages. but if so much of the expense is

socialized, if for instance, you transport more haeckel the schools, et cetera, and if you then remove pensions, for instance, from the responsibility of firms and you nationalize them, if we are all in together, then you can actually bring down wages, individual wages and bid up the competitors. there are ways for a left wing person to articulate this without being a heartless person. i mean, what happens in the left is we don't want to engage in the fact that unless, because globalization has made wage arbitrage such a central feature of profit-taking where wages are less or wages are higher, very quickly they've taken advantage of that. there's no way you can create, for instance, all day of american workers with the chinese workers, just like emotional appeal. the anti-chinese sentiment is a normal and natural sentiment together to confront it politically.

but to confront it structurally will require a push for greater social wage in america. unless there's a greater demand to remove from, you know, commercial activities so much of social life, we will never have in this country the ability to re-create massive jobs that are meaningful to people. so that's how i answer it. sounds like a slightly crazy argument, i can defend this argument a lot. i mean, drugs are not all drugs. you know, marijuana, coke, they're all different things. one of the things that i think in bolivia, one of the claims, very important claim is that actually the intellectual property regimes should have made it easy for the bolivians to say, as morale is said can we make this grape toothpaste out of cocoa. we can make hair tonic out of cocoa. it's better than rogaine.

we can make all this stuff out of coca that is amazing. we can patent it. in fact, i heard him say it will be the earth, and, some of the stuff. but intellectual property rights is only okay if you're controlling the drugs. so somehow, you know, these drugs that the, xanax or whatever, anti-anxiety drugs, those can be patented in the north it but if you produce chewable coca leaves which will be better than xanax, that is illegal. so the issue of drugs is not all about recreation use. they have reduced some of these crops to a nightmare scenario of your children will become a drug addict. actually many of them are capable of producing medicines our everyday products, you know, that is not able to enter the market, not because some agenda

necessarily, but there is a global war. so that's one reason to understand the drug thing. second of courses in the united states, which is a different story where, you know, my argument is one she produce a potential masses of people are going to be employed meaningfully, then you get bill clinton. because bill clinton was the ideal manager of the transformation of the american compact. so you then say, no social welfare. you have to go out and find a job. we will give you som something n the training. at the same time as they very wonder that less and less jobs at the level recorded to be provided, and then you create the crime bill. so you militarized cities. you throw people in prison. so yourself which population is not a threat to the gated community. actually in a sense in america, the prison expansion is a total a logical extension of new liberalism. it's not a contradiction.

you can't make a moral cleansing prints -- prisons october, they should in. they are necessity for an advanced society which is not capable of employing its citizens. so it's story is different from the latin american drug story, which is not about keeping the population incarcerated. but it's about producing products out of your comparative advantage in which is something you can grow coca. so i'd say that's i understand the drug issue. there are multiple entries ways in which the drugstore has to be understood. people like morality are not necessarily saying legalize coca in order to decriminalize drug use in america. they are thing is a completely different narrative. >> so let's do one more mouth. we will take for questions. i have christie over here, to

overhear. any folks from the site? in the back. number for over there. sorry. maybe will try to squeeze you in, number five. >> [inaudible] >> hi. so you talked a bit about, over you were very resistant to this narrative of neoliberalism a something that begins exclusively in the north. and following from the questions that have been about militarization and the drug trade, militarization in palestine and globally, what does militarization has been this big part of the picture of neoliberalism as it merges into no. i was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the forms of militarism that are compatible with this neoliberalism with the characteristic but i know i've written about in this relationship with israel.

i was one if you could give a few more examples? >> my question is about the use of history and i guess maybe you would understand, i would ask this question, but your role as a historian and your decision to write these stories and what that means politically. right? because as you told them, in these two books they are not sort of easy narratives of triumph from below that we take as sort of easy lesson from and can move on politically left, right? you describe the contradictions inherent in them, the sort of subject position of these actors, elite within the global south, that sort of thing. so i'm wondering as you approach this project started in the beginning a decade ago and maybe coming to the end of this book, how you've understood your role in presenting this history from a political perspective? and what it's meant to tell this kind of complicated story and

the story that has a lot of failures are some links or contradictions in it, and how that's brought you to this sort of political conclusions that you have come to. >> that's a good ending. >> i actually wanted to bring it back to the question, solidarity movements. i guess i wanted to ask a question in terms of who do you think, what organizations are what kind of projects do you think in terms of international work, or solidarity work, that are good projects that people should continue. you know, the reason i ask is because i completely agree with all the things you said about kind of basing work locally, but at the same time things like the movement is taking kind of leadership from the people on the ground there.

and as much as talk about antiwar work, we want to basic -- base it locally and how we can talk about the money that's spent on military and things like that, but at the same time how do we understand that drones are not just about money, but drones are also about the lives, how to bring the conversation in? you know, i'm part of the resistance group against tear gas that has a group of people affected by teargas use, and that includes people from québec, includes people are in prison systems here that are affected by pepper spray, for example. i believe that's an important kind of movement to pursue and take forward. what do you think about that? what you think about other examples like that that we should continue? because web-based year and we need to think about that as well. what do we do?

>> okay, look, i'll take that last, the , look, i'll take that last, the history one. >> the other question was over here. >> one question was, the soviet union. with the implosion of the soviet bloc, didn't that represent for the third world as it's been called, the loss of an alternative to a western domination? and the second is, what is your -- you wrote a very fine book, "arab spring, libyan winter," and the doctrine of responsibility to protest arthur peace. they came out of the u.n. the devastated, in my opinion, the whole libyan society.

doesn't have represent the renewed version of the white man's version? >> great question. >> thank you so much for the talk and a brilliant book. i wanted to follow up on one of the things, all your work, but in "the darker nations" about the assassination of the social wage. in some ways it's been assassinated, but in other ways talk about its unfinished business i wonder if you could describe the relationship between struggle for a social wage, building power of the regional scale, and the fight against neoliberalism speaks great questions, wow. amazing questions. none of them are easy. i'll settle these first and then, okay, you know,

militarization in a way just be a little crude is the kind of criminalization of people in america. in a way. there's a similarity in the logic, that if you read -- he suggests there are certain cycles that empires have, and it's a very interesting book, adam smith in beijing, but before that long 20th century what he suggests that he looks at length of time which an empire has been dominance, and the size of the container and its influence. he shows that as time goes for the container has increased but the length of dominance has decreased. and he said essentially, there's a sign of autumn in america are visible, and then suggestion and patterns in beijing, china is coming up. in essence, although he argues

that china, i don't fully support his argument, has a whole different kind of capitalism. he says it's actual adam smithian. anyway, leave that as i'd -- aside, there's a developed argument about the decline of america and the emergence of new centers of power. to my mind in this book i argue that there will be no china. next. that what we're looking at incoming to militarization is related. what we are looking at is the emergence to some extent, and this is were i'm hopeful, of a polycentric world, that new regional centers are developing. and the chinese are interesting because even though they're making vast investment in africa, vast investment in the rest of asia, et cetera, they openly say, in fact they are model suggests that they're not interested in global hegemony.

and the one way in which the evidence is likely is that they got involved in the brick block. that they're interested, they have a more soulful understanding of managing global problem. if we can manage the multilaterally that's better. and so they put a lot of their power, economic power into the bric experiment. okay, now the reaction from the global north in the same treated, from the early '70s onwards, as the signs of a sudden kind of autumn have become clear, had been militarization on a global scale. so not just criminalization of certain populations in america, but the attempt to use military power to settle the contradictions that looked to go against you. so for instance, at the same time as the world -- the pivot in asia is happening, they've

decided it's time to pivot to asia and, therefore, a certain kind of, i'm not going to say dramatically, reselling of china is occurring. you can see there are lots of blogs where you can see maps of renewed u.s. military. american bases remain. i don't know if you follow this, liberal government came to power same opera novel would be closed. that government had to fall. you know, they are engineered to fall so the conservatives came back and the base was secure but this is all happening at the same time as oppression is coming on china just like america put pressure on japan. the argument is that united states is suffering not because of this neoliberalism of the country but because china's exchange rate are a problem. demand follow the exchange rates debate. china, you know, they are

innocent. i have too many jokers in the back. they put jokers up their sleeves, okay? they need to come clean. meanwhile, we have this military presence around it. the chinese are not fully able to match the military presence. so for instance, in libya when u.n. resolution 1973 was part, and the chinese and russians decided not to veto it, the assumption was they would be a no-fly zone. now technically, no-fly zone have been the following. aircraft flies over and if there is any libyan aircraft that takes often looks threatening, it will be shot down. but in 2011, the nato alliance decided to reinterpret no-fly zones as we will destroy your airport, we will ponder telecommunications, we will destroy your power company, destroy all your infrastructure.

when they started doing that, two things happen. you may not have remembered the head of the arab league said we did not support this. then he has to be brought with ban ki-moon. he held his hand and brought them in cairo outside arab league office and he said i didn't mean to say what they said. i support this fully. okay? which is i think one of the reason why nobody took him seriously when he ran in the election. delete egypt. secondly, the chinese and russians quite straightforwardly said we will never allow anything like a no-fly zone under, what is it, article v of the u.n. charter. never allow it again. because this militaristic approach to resolving contradictions on the half of the north has gone too far. it's okay to then say look, if the chinese on russians are responsible for the killings in syria. i want to -- i want you to think

of it from his point of view. they are looking at it from terms of are we going to allow military dominant station to be utilized to settle the question of the signs of autumn? they're not prepared to do that. i don't believe that if the chinese and russians veto that have prevented the west from an armed operation in syria, because they did an armed operation in yugoslavia with no commissions. so that is not what's stopping the i've argued for over a year that united states is hiding behind the russians and chinese. because the israelis don't want the regime to fall. they prefer to believe the syrians for another 100,000 will die rather than allow, you know, others to take power in damascus. it's a cynical strategy to commit launched the powers and congress where the great author of problems from now, utilize -- i take a very interesting way to dance around the question of

syria, martin dempsey went before congress and said were not going to intervene. the costs are too high. but it's useful to hide behind the chinese and russians. but i'm just suggesting it militarization is occurring, and not just from the north. the north is using aggressively military power against the wor world. but there is no comparison. nobody else, the u.n. general assembly, security council says all member states, this is exactly language of -- all member states can act, all member states cannot act. the african union simply does not have the ability to enforce a no-fly zone. the indian government does not have the facility to enforce a no-fly zone. only nato can. therefore, they should have said nato should act, et cetera, et cetera. militarization is occurring inside societies, yes, because as inequalities arise in brazil,

et cetera, easy heightened militarization in truly, just as in that united states. but there's a global militarization which is in a different register. that's how i would see that. the question of transnational politics. give me a list of the 15, i'm not the validator, okay, that's not the thing. the example you gave of teargas is actually related in some ways to me to the palestinian issue. and its related to an earlier campaign, 20 years ago that i remember being involved in against olympic minds. it's a mine that doesn't explode upwards. therefore, killing you. olympic minds explode horizontally. therefore, decapitating legs of hundreds of people. now have 100 people without legs but they are a life. were as a mine which is killed 10 people. the most terrible my, that mine was made in louisiana, exported

around the world, used in afghanistan, all over the place. different countries. in a sense, these struggles will always return to where you are if you're interested in them. what is the point of saying somebody in mongolia joining anti-teargas movement, and less to guess is extensively used in mongolia. they will use, join the movement to end to guess use. it was a let's have a u.n. resolution to ban teargas. that is a legitimate international policy, the policy that you're thinking of is that teargas is made in the u.s., in brazil. what is a? five, six places. i've read that report. it's basically a handful of places. those are the places where the campaign has to assert itself. but that doesn't mean that tomorrow the indians will not start manufacturing teargas. the americans have banded. the brazilians have banded. at the same time the has to be a

push in the global forum to have an international convention against teargas. but here's the thing. there are international conventions against most of these things already. one has to fight, i'm going to say this, sounds idiotic, but some of you i know will forgive me. we have to fight for the right of international law, and the importance of international institution. that in america is a cultural fight. because the right in america has won the battle in saying that we are, you know, don't tread on me. states' rights on the racism front and don't tread on me, national rights on the international front. you can take some african human rights violators of the criminal court, but not in america. so the right of international law, that is a big struggle in america and that has to be joined, i mean, we need your liberals. little less apologetic for the

president and a little more forthright in the defense of international law. it is a scandal that despite the fact that bin laden was whoever he was, that there was so little thought in america about assassination and increasing -- didn't launch a major protest, expelled ambassador, whatever. doesn't mean that americans should sit back and say, well, sometimes that means defying, i mean them means is okay if the industry. in fact, the question, was the and good? is assassination ever good? there's too much latitude by liberals in america. that has to be confronted. people don't confront liberals in america. that's related to drones which is the other issue you talk about. that's not a story about yemen and afghanistan. that's an american story back in

america, people have said it's a cleaner way to conduct a war. our soldiers will not die. that means that american liberalism is dead. it no longer exists. there is no american liberalism. it is to the democratic party policy. it's not liberalism. so there needs to be a nation of liberal imagination. again, it's a national struggle. the yemenis would be happy if there was a change of you in america, but why bring the yemenis to america to try to convince americans that drones are bad? we need to be building those struggles here. that's how i would see. it's important to give a face to the victim. that's why it's important when the bangladeshi workers came through, it's very important but that is as much by the way for the bangladeshi workers, come here and see and to talk to people and get a sense of the rest of the world. so it's not like they're here on display. they are also here to learn and grow. and i think sometimes it in

international solidarity, that's forgotten. let's bring the yemenis here so we can parade them around. they lost their children is terrible. they are a human being, activist, talk to them. let them understand your struggles. why are you always bring them to places and to talk about yemen? why not break into places and tell them about detroit, tell them about trayvon martin. told them about america. so that i think is how solidarity's are produced. but it's in the future. it's not now. i mean obviously the ussr was a major -- by the way, for this book i read a very interesting, when americans took saddam's private archive, saddam, like -- there's a terrific conversation in the saddam archives where his top leadership is sitting around in 1991, in january, and they are saying the americans are just not going to bomb us.

one of his smarts advisors said, it's the soviets. where are the soviets? why are they going along with this? that's a very interesting insight, because actually forget 91. by the 80s, the soviet union had actually become less for popular struggles around the world because of the union had gone into deep crisis. it was, in fact, the other set of documents i've read for this book, i don't know enough of them come is a discussion around afghanistan which are available at the national security archives in washington, d.c. those are fascinating it is there you have the senior leadership. at one point saying, at one point say we cannot go to afghanistan because their friends will be angry. they recognize that block exists. but then you say we just can't confront americans. this is now 1979.

this very important for us to understand. it produced -- it should have begun to be severely dented. and i think that needs to be appreciated. one of the ways in which this neoliberal and tosses it to succeed is not on the banks are cleaner, imf is going to, but the soviets from this failed to produce and articulate any kind of alternative on the world stage. that's a big issue that needs to be confronted. i think that should not be put down to, welcome you, it's a condemnation of the own projects that they have been greatly weakened. this would not have been the situation in the '50s, '60s and into the '70s when it would have confronted. khrushchev has provide the most colorful speech. when khrushchev to visit should all -- took his shoe off and with beating the lecture. it's on youtube.

and then chavez come this is there's a smell of sulfur in this audience. then he showed chomsky's book, which was great. so that's how i would understand the soviet question. i mean, i've already talked a little bit about responsibility protect. there's literature on responsibly to protect which doesn't often get read, and that is the literature of dissent coming from many countries, including by the way i'm proud to say, i have is a very good and but india but i'm proud to say that even this last indian ambassador to the u.n., many points in that city council saying we need to reassess because responsibility to protect issues at the discretion of these permanent members of the security council. they pick and choose. you cannot have responsibility protect and then cherry pick which countries you're going to protect in which you were not. therefore, you can have --

meanwhile, president obama was visiting with ecuadorian dini leaders who arguably, they were exchanging both greetings and things. you cannot have an international principle which becomes the sort of defending population and then you pick which populations are worth defending. so that's the whole argument but, unfortunately, there's not much debate on this, public debate. i hope in the trendy people will question does. especially now that power mac g. very hypocritical. that's easy to write books saying he got to always be americans and protect people, and then i don't know if you watched the debate when he was asked about some statements he had made where he kept interrupting the senator and

saying, i love the trendy, it's the greatest country the world. he asked the question again, and that is the greatest country in the world. he kept saying that. want to get into the seat of power, you basically lose your min.[laughter] >> finally, the use of history. so what is the social wage? is a great concept of a live concert. it's not a radical marxist leninist. it's a little concept. it's disappeared. it's was talking about earlier. let me put it in two ways. everybody works in a society everybody. whether you earn a wage or not you were. you volunteer in the library. you are raising children. everybody's working. people who have a job where they earn a salary, some part of their salary is collected before wages. meaning they don't claim it. it goes into a fund. we call that taxation. it's a form of deferred wages.

i claim those wages in giveaways how people should think of it. those who don't want to drives the car division to society, they volunteer or they sing songs on the streets are they raise children or whatever they do, they are not monitor rising. they are yet providing money to the social wage. in a positive way, but there is no dollar going in there. they are also differing wages. they're different 100% of their wages. they are saying i will do these beautiful thing for society. i will dress up like a clown and i will run down broadway and it will make thousands of people smile at me, and then it'll go back home or to go to work until be happy for you. i've contributed to the gross domestic product, but nobody has saved me anything. i haven't i given 100% of their wages. summary says i raise children, i never monitor rights by make it 100% of my wages in a different fashion to society. so if you understand the social wage in that way, then that

wages not at the discretion of government to decide how to use. in other words, collecting taxes, now have to write down the debt or we have to buy guns or we had to give tax write off, move the highway to goldman sachs those limos can turn right. these are not decisions of the government to make our return. if you understand as a social wage then there's an obligation to enhance peoples actualize. because they have deferred wages in order to receive something else back. goldman, you know, money to remove. we have deferred wages. it has to be understood in a broadway that only 5% of my money is different but someone has 100% effort. so it's not like i pay tax on need something back. everybody contributes and that contribution moscow to what is enhancing our lives. that's the social way. it's a big fight to bring that idea back, but my god, if that idea doesn't come back, then

it's luxembourg. by the way, barbarism, 100-point i'll already. so only just to make it less scary to people it should be in a social wage of the barbarism. that's the communism of the 21st century. it's as you oliver idea but it's forgotten. people have claimed that i paid into it, i should get back and, therefore, george bush could say well, don't pay into it. simply gives each person a fun and they can invest on the pension. you monetize your deferred compensation. that's a terrible idea. it further damages the ability of people to have a social think. by the way, the link to have a social wage is that it dramatically is important for society because then people start to see objectively the interstate united. one of the great tricks of american history is rather than

to countercyclical spending through social expenditure, countercyclical spending in america has always been done through military spending. you spend militarily to bring the economy back to life. that was the whole postwar golden age of center. so in that sense one has to confront this idea, because it was easy to do countercyclical spending with the military because it's already a hierarchy of society, but society as a hierarchical. the more you begin to feel objectively that your ties with the people are there, he might be able to create a political movement where people subjectively than relate to a common agenda. i think because without any objective basis for commonalities, why should you expect people subjectively to have linkages? again, a moral claim we should all be united in the community. why? have no objective community, why should we have a subjective one?

finally, uses of history. so obviously history has its own logic. one doesn't write history in order to convey a certain politics alone. there are multiple ways in which you go into projects. my interest in the first part was recovery. was recovery i forgotten history. the combined agenda was forgotten. and that i thought was a self-important. a history of discovery of a legitimate practice in historical profession. go back and say there was a great ride or strike and in that sense that's a completely normal thing. this book is full of possible history, subtitle, which many people were not sure what would be the make of the strange subtitle. why not, you, people said she has another story we won't get

into, but possible history isn't my different approach to history. in other words, i feel like if you're writing a history of the contemporary era, it hasn't flown. all these dynamics are still alive. they are alive and well. the story of recovery. i think you have to be able to have content redevelopment in order to provide i think i've such into the movement we have. what do i mean by that? if you understand the movements you are in in a historical decontextualized way, then you might not ever reflect on the strategy that you're promoting. in left movements for about 100 years, every three or four years, party generalizations held a conference or a congress. at the congress, the leadership used to present and a history -- the history of the last four years. not the party program by the

political and organizational report. and then the party people would debate. that history is not correct. this should be added 10. that should be added in. they didn't debate but as historians. they debated that to give them a better handle of the dynamics in which they were embroiled. and i feel often that many people in the activist community don't have the energy and time to contextualize in a broadway the work that they're doing. and because they don't in many parts of the world have political organization that do this kind of work, which is actually crucial work that parties did and do still in many parts of the world, because we don't have that at a mass level, you know, where organizers of all different tendencies are arguing over contemporary history. we don't have the ability to sharpen the analysis of the present. so the way i went into this was this is my submission.

as the draft political and organizational report of the last 30 years, for my friends were involved in different movements, and i'm hoping very much that they will read it, trash it, say that this is wrong, but at least reflect on our contemporary history in order to thank through that. because there's no point in having a strategy which is not working and then to pursue that strategy. that is light, that would be basically -- one needs to have a constant rethinking of strategy, not based on what you were doing but on the dynamics in which you were involved. so part of the story is to read what we're doing and dynamics. some very much looking forward to people trashing this book, because only then will a note that it is helpful in some ways. thanks a lot. >> fifteen years ago booktv made its debut on c-span2.

>> love, death and money. these are the three main cuban concerns. we are all keen students of love. we are fascinated by every aspect of the matter in three and in practice. maybe not quite as much a ken starr is, but fascinated. >> and since then we have brought you the top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. more than 9000 authors have appeared on booktv including presidents. >> i wanted to give the reader a chance to understand the process by which i made decisions. the environment in which i made decisions the people i listen to as i made decisions. and this is not an attempt to rewrite history. it's not an attempt to fashion a legacy. it is an attempt to be a part of the historical narrative. >> also, supreme court justices. >> every single justice on the court has a passion and love for

the constitution, and our country, that's equal to mine. then you know that if you accept that as an operating truth, which is, you understand that you can disagree. >> and novell prizewinners. >> that's what interesting is negotiation for moral positions. do no harm. love somebody and respect yourself. all of that is reduced, simplified notion, the philosophers have spent their lifetimes trying to imagine what it is like to live a moral life, what morality is, what existence is, what responsibility is. >> we visited book fairs and festivals around the country. >> and booktv is live at the annual "l.a. times" vessel of books on the campus of ucla in

west los angeles. >> our signature programming, in depth each month spent if you say to a child almost anywhere in this country, i've been to schools all over the country, more than 600, once upon a time, the child will stop and cause. now you better cash the check. you better have more to say after that. but that phrase is still magical. >> and every week, "after words." >> my father, already in the diplomatic service, his job had been to the press attaché in belgrade. my mother wanted me to be born in prague, where her mother was. and so i was born in prague and then we went back to belgrade. and then my father was recalled in 1938, and he was in czechoslovakia when the nazis marched in on march 15, 1939. ..

>> at its annual meeting in san francisco last month. then a discussion on the future of egypt and how the nation can engage the international community to help it achieve economic and political stability. and be later, live remarks by former treasury secretary hank paulson and former congressman barney frank on some of the lessons learned from the 2008 financial crisis. >> the senate returns today at 2 p.m. eastern for general speeches. later, members resume work