eleven thirty am in moscow these iraqi headlines the anti-corporate protests across the u.s. have passed the one month mark and show no sign of abating despite mass arrests over the weekend the occupy wall street movement wants an end to the big banks dominance and has inspired similar rallies around the globe. the syrian president's promise of a constitution gets a mixed response at home aspiring politicians in the plan reforms you'll wait and ongoing bloodshed key opposition figures still insist assad rigging is the only

option. serbia braces for a new tension at kosovo's northern border as nato threatens to remove certain barricades on monday if they don't do it themselves previous attempts to clear the way to the checkpoints seized by kosovo last month led to clashes that saw several injuries. returning to our top story with anti-bank anger now palpable in cities around the world peter lavelle guess the russia whether the fat cats are willing to act or even listen to protesters demands cross stop coming up.

hello and welcome to cross talk on peter lavelle the era of great just content all across the globe people are protesting against the political economic and financial status quo is this because of globalization and the relative ease of social networking or is there something else in play like the arrival of a new paradigm shift in every sense. crosstalk this global fever i'm joined by richard sennett in new york he's a professor of sociology at the london school of economics in washington we have on bass or terry miller he is the director of the center for international trade and economics the heritage foundation and somehow we go to have you escobar he is a journalist and author all right gentlemen this is cross talk that means you can jump in anytime you want i very much encourage it but first tell us about this global rumble let's go back to the beginning for a few moments there it began with a lone man scribes despair over social injustice mohamed bouazizi self in the

waited in front of a government building in tunisia on the seventeenth of december two thousand and ten where then days hundreds and thousands of the nation's caught fire of protest against the ruling regime then along came egypt and libya syria bahrain yemen and soon practically the entire arab world wasn't go through the political confrontation we have witnessed an extraordinary change taking place in the middle east and north africa swear by square town by town. country by country but by that time the winter of discontent has long since reached europe where for their own reasons people are challenging the status quo general strikes and demonstrations sparked by austerity measures in response to his debt crisis began to sweep through greece in two thousand and ten the same will soon happening in portugal by two thousand and eleven it will speak and pretty soon pockets of sewer resistance were percolating all throughout europe that would be in

the nodal part we want people to wake up otherwise we'll just become slaves to the system finally in september as new york city mayor michael bloomberg was wording of riots almost more jobs were created in america the occupy wall street movement was already in the making it only two days before it was acknowledged as a powerful resistance movement with a purported goal over store in democracy in the u.s. you can follow me and other. brothers and sisters all over the world arab spring in greece and spain and we can see that it did send a powerful message i must message a call for radical change and the governing system in place has traveled across the ocean traversing economic and political boundaries and wearing together a global narrative of dissent where will there be more countries partaking in this narrative for hasn't reached its peak just to begin tapering off what do you think it are going to be on some of these questions of our guest russia thank you very much that could be if i go to you first we have

a lot of discontent in the arab world are we having wall street we have it in europe we had london riots and in china there's some rumblings here what connects them all together or is it just serendipity and they're all separate. that's brought what connects them all what connects them all together if i may be as broad as your question is the earth failure of neal liberalism this david harvey has been speaking about this at least for the past fifteen years in manuel wallerstein as well from the point of view of this stablish meant more or less the real rubini has being seen in direct plea if you see what's going on in the us now it is the cries of the economic crisis in the us the atlanticist economic crisis which involves europe as well and the fact that capitalism is basically being saved by china at the moment it's the failure of a model capitalism capitalism this implies the famous one percent against ninety nine percent and that's why occupy wall street is such an important movement

because the child they want the absolutely nailed it in terms of what's the key conceptual question it's the fact that we have a las vegas style system work one percent basically controls the destiny of the other ninety nine and this implies what. this step belies in the concept of liquid more baronetcy buy is ignorant about one i'm not very big fan of boma myself but last week in italy i was discussing this with with some of my italian colleagues and we came to the conclusion that liquid more than eighty applies to maybe one percent of two percent of global population you see you are an investment banker if you are a journalist travel around the world if you are a high valued professional in the formation of technology industry but it does not apply to most of the world's population and the elites are still solid they are not exactly liquid the deal in all of the categories of cause and effect that we need

heritage from the lightman and they still control the actual wealth that circulates around the world and so we have the real knowledgeable rangers and you see this huge my god that's a lot richard what do you think about them so i can sum up what have you just said it's the failure of the system that we've inherited at least since the second world war and most probably since the end of the cold war failure of the system and it's affecting everyone in the world simultaneously now. it depends what you mean by the system i'd like to say about the wall street vents where i've been pretty regularly and where i've spoken. that it would do them a disservice and i think the young people there are doing themselves a disservice to compare this to the conditions in along the north african rim the one thing that stands out to me about the kids who are on wall street and some of the middle aged people as well is. that they were brought up

with the expectation that they would have work and they don't have it. i think you know that these are rather too late protests in the u.s. because a lot of these young people that i've talked to had a real faith that obama would deliver a change in the system and that that would concretely mean they would be able to do with expected to do which was go to work have good jobs and so . they've waited for three years i think without knowing they were. well i mean something they didn't richard didn't get very. very interesting decision felt like this is a lisa system failed them. yes but it's a different system the system that failed people in libya. carry what you think and system the system. failed people in. in

greece so you know i think it's. a make a cartoon of saying this kind of global uprising against capitalism it is there are there are a lot of rumblings against capitalism and the should be ok but they're not the same ok terrifying go to you i mean and i think we should keep in mind the same i love equalise the end it's a terrifying go to you i mean although it's not really needed in the old liberal model fail is it failing at least in the west and we can talk about democracy in capitalism as it applies to north africa. no i have a little different perspective on this peter i think what we're seeing in north africa and elsewhere in the world is the continuation of a revolution against excessive government that we saw it twenty years ago in the collapse of the soviet union we're seeing it now in north africa we've seen it throughout africa itself as the quest for individual liberty and

freedom an opportunity for individuals continues i think the united states is an important example or of this we perhaps even started it with our own revolution in two hundred thirty years ago and what we're saying is that people want to be free i don't think you have a failure of the system here you definitely have a failure of governments around the world governments that have collected too much power that have monopolized power and have worked with cronies that any leads in society to monopolize power our goal would be to split that power apart to diffuse the power throughout society to give birth quite literally power to the people which was the great rallying cry of the revolutions in the sixty's ok pepe leaf think about that as you said a system isn't working for the people it's the system itself is fine it's just it's

application of it is this is what we've just heard now it's there's a series of great the all views lee you cannot compare a square with need so many terror. in libya but you can compare it to riyadh square with zuccotti park in new york it's a more a less the same thing and they're fighting for the same freedoms as well this people got to be free which reminds me of those old sixty's songs you know of the young rascals that people has got to be three it's so much an article implicated in that because this blaming the government for all ills on the planet this is so soul soul old i'll give you two examples resume. because of what lula did in the past eight years is starting to become more or less over the last inequal country because of government policies as well and no wonder that lula got eighty seven percent of approval by brazilians because they knew that these policies as

imperfect as they were at least listed thirty million if not more brazilians out of extreme poverty in their no lower middle class and in china the compact to be doing the leadership in beijing and one point three billion chinese is very clear as the ok i'm not defending them see what they call back is all about if you don't involve yourselves in political participation or political dissent you're free to get reach to kingdom come this was then show it being said in one thousand nine hundred seventy six it's being applied by the chinese leadership it works of course we're going to have a lot of these stores but basically the genie is lifting out of poverty four hundred to five hundred million people by applying their male capitalism male liberalism policies as well so there are gradations about that in that in the revolutions in the so-called evolutions in north africa and the aborted arab spring

by the house of sold. in the persian gulf people want to get rid of the leaderships is a completely different scenario what's happening for instance in the arab spring that i was just sort of really crucial central right before is really great and you really want to jump in there go ahead terry in one go ahead. well i think there's a lot of similarity and what we're saying i mean no the problem is that you can be lucky if you live in a good country a well governed country you can be lucky in your leadership and have extraordinary leadership we enjoyed that in the person of george washington there in our own revolution but more often history shows that we're not lucky in our leadership and the leaders around the world to whom we give extraordinary power quite frequently abuse that power sharing and enjoy and here i would say we sure appreciate it when we turn the radio when we go to rituals to do our break we'll continue our discussion on global protests state or to. take

a. stand.

please. please. just say. slum. mum. sluggish slowest such. luck welcome back to cross talk i'm futile to remind you we're discussing if the world is slipping into a global revolution the muck the the slowest

so. ok and i'd like to go to richard in new york and we want to talk well been talking about the system and maybe i agree with you it's a bit more fair saying that word but how is capitalism changing and how is to mop. i see changing and i think we can look at these global trends because a lot of americans feel that democracy is not serve their their interests and certainly in north africa people want some of the freedoms that americans claim that they should have so i mean how should the mix of capitalism and and democracy change to accommodate people because we see concentrations of wealth was the only ism and i think there's those are commonalities all over the world right now. i agree i mean i think focusing on government is the wrong. is wrong. problem in western capitalism is a concentration of power the financial system. we had

a very weak government dealing with the crisis of two thousand and eight and the reason for that is that the real power lies outside of government. so when you talk about the mocker see what you want to talk about is economic democracy not just government and there i would say there is a huge democratic deficit. in. the western capitalist system and how do we fix that more government less government i think that again is the wrong way to look we need to change for instance the way we structure organizations work so that people have more say in what they do and more security that's economic change that's that's not getting lost in the issue about whether government is. oppressing people what's oppressing them the real power

that's oppressing them is economic it's corporations it's the financial system ok terry what do you terry what do you think about this because i'm going to washington you think about that yeah you know i'm always puzzled by people who complain about the concentration of power and then for their solution they propose to increase the power of the most powerful entity in society which in fact is government i certainly agree that there is too much power concentrated in the financial system right now but the reason that power is concentrated is because we have had very bad regulations on the part of governments that have allowed that concentration then and what happened when the market when the capitalist system wanted to would have discipline these banks and financial institutions by making them fail the government in fact stepped in to bail them out so what you got of these two great powerful institutions the government and the financial system

working together so you have an even greater concentration of power the answer for people and for the system and the way the market system works and the way the capitalists. them is designed to work is to disperse that power keep government and corporations separate let them be competing power bases and society can't happen but there's no in this there's no incentive on the part of these of the leaves to give up any of their power they've balance back so well after this financial crisis when millions of people are and we were facing a double dip in a matter how you i mean if you're if you're if your neighbors unemployed that's a recession if you're unemployed it's a depression and this is how a lot of people are looking at there is no hope out there for so many people and we see so much indecision in the eurozone and the united states will in this election cycle no one is good and it was going to help obama even if he could do something. of course look at the world the problem in the us is the revolving door between washington and wall street so washington was basically ruled by wall street the

grass in the west doesn't rule in a saloon the approval rating of congress and the american population you know they are eighty seven percent popular because they are not representing the interests of the american people they're representing the interests of the corporations who put them there in the first place and look at europe the braes equally works for norse in europe for the club med council as i was i just came back from italy it doesn't work for the club bad countries because they cannot even export themselves out of debt that's the case of greece for instance and you see each allianz greeks spaniards and frenchmen nowadays we know we should go back to our old car is this at least we have control of our monetary policy and it's not even for ford you know so these are big crowds but look at the places where it go we place this and where this revolving door between politics and economics at least it's you know the

outcome is better standard of living for most of the population and i'll go once again brazil as an example turkey is an example however imperfect the system is with their soft brand of. china for large swathes of the population at least a half of one point three billion people and even for some russians as you offer some bricks and india don't forget india as well the same process of lifting millions out of poverty but the key problem nowadays is how do you try to change the system from the inside and not even our best to your efficiency not even our noble prize economies know how to change capitalism from the inside in fact wallerstein has been saying for the past twenty five years or so is that capitalism as we know. it's going to implode but nobody knows what's going to be next so we go back to graham she you know the old order is floundering where the new war does not

mean born yet ok richard if i go to you that's very interesting commentary you want to go you want to jump in on that one. it is an interesting comment. i certainly think that what's i think that's right one way. i don't think it's going to explode it's going to implode which is quite a different thing which is the western european economies and north american economies are gradually going to become satellites to a much more complicated economic and labor picture in the world let me give you an example of. we're beginning to see a kind of permanent constriction of employment opportunities united states and the question of restoring jobs because there aren't jobs to be restored but there are lots of jobs available brazil turkey these are places that are growing

the labor force it's a kind of i wouldn't use the word explode. i think it's the you know the old cliche applies that when you have a decline one place you have growth somewhere else will the system be different yes it will be much more government controlled government control has helped nurture. turkey brazil as an as in china. but it's it's not going to we're not going to have a revolutionary situation i don't think that's really an interesting way to think about character finally cherry here shift if we see if we see this major shift in capitalism in capitalism producing what people think it should produce like wealth and jobs and things like that what happens to democracy then because we always tied it to together in this post cold war environment but now there seems to be pulling apart going in different areas because if the city economics isn't working for people people rely upon the democratic system to change things but if they can't get change because of things we've already talked about in this program then itself

i'm sorry democracy will start being question because it isn't produce the goods. yes peter but let's be clear the system is working for people around the world we're in a temporary downturn right now but over the last two decades this system has this capitalist system has lifted millions of people tens of millions of people hundreds of millions of people out of poverty around the world and it's the capitalist system and globalization has taken hold and spread economic power and economic opportunity to people around the world we see poverty reductions in africa and asia in the united states and europe everywhere around the world in latin america and that is because of this capitalist system now you can throw out the baby with the bathwater if you want to but the idea i would say would be to improve the functioning of the system not to throw it away because what are the alternatives to the socialist system we've seen that leads to stagnation the communist system that

led to a complete economic collapse and for those who are at why am i the person marx karl marx here about an essential part of his philosophy was of the withering away of the state and yet the other two guests seem to see an increase in the power of the state the somehow the salvation of humankind i don't think that's right i think the problem is i don't say there are already it is government it's too powerful to jump in go ahead that this is this is that this is rubbish i'm sorry look the slav which is that when people who post wall street last sunday and he delivered the. version of what his be saying to his best ten books or so basically he said that the marriage between capitalism and democracy is over. what does that mean this means that china which is seizing capital world global capitalism at the

moment scruples in the. completely different system of total economic freedom like male liberalism on steroids with political repression can the rest of the world by the system of course not it's untenable and it's going to be unthinkable even inside china but in fact this is a third way they are proposing or an alternative system lots of developing countries including many developing countries in africa are actually looking at this system as a kind of salvation for them and even some countries in the middle east and north africa are also looking at the chinese model as why not you know but of course this is not the answer the answer would be reform from the inside in terms of what color marks would say is we need more social justice so this is not going back to the realist real politic socialism as we had during the u.s.s.r. in the iron curtain because this was. a total perversion of the original humanist

marx ideas we're not talking about that we're still talking about a force weight any hasn't been conceptualized anywhere in the us in europe in south america or in nation all right fascinating discussion gentlemen we've run out of time many thanks to my guest today in new york washington and in some paolo and thanks our viewers for watching us iraqi shia next time and remember rastafarians. if you can.