it's now three thirty pm on monday here in moscow this is a quick recap of the stories now. protests across the united states have passed one month mark and they show no sign of abating despite breasts at the weekend the occupy wall street movement wants an end to the big banks dominance that has inspired similar rallies all around the world. the syrian president's promise of a constitution gets a mixed response of home aspiring politicians welcoming the reform is the only way to end the ongoing bloodshed but key opposition figures still insist quitting is

the only option. and serbia braces for renewed attention and because of those northern border as nato threatens to remove barricades on monday if they don't do it themselves previous attempts to clear the way to the checkpoints seized by cause of the last month led to clashes people. do stay with us here on our next. guests zero in on who's in the firing line stoking the tempers of the wall street protesters cross talk is now. play. list. ok.

hello and welcome to cross talk i'm peter lavelle the era of great discontent 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 place like the arrival of a new paradigm shift in every sense. can. start. to cross-talk 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 about secretary miller he is the director of the center for international trade and economics the heritage foundation and in some power we go to the 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 little man's cry of despair over social injustice mohamed bouazizi self-immolating out in front of a government building in tunisia on the seventeenth of december two thousand and ten and then days hundreds and then thousands of the nation's caught the fire of protest against the ruling regime then along came egypt libya syria bahrain yemen and so on practically the entire arab world wasn't gulf in a 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 have long since reached europe where for their own reasons people were challenging the status quo general strikes and demonstrations sparked by austerity measures in response to its debt crisis began to sweep through greece in two thousand and ten the scene of some happening in portugal by two thousand and eleven it was space and pretty soon

pockets of sewer resistance were percolating all throughout europe nobody in the know obama wanted people to wake up otherwise we'll just become slaves to the system finally in september as new york city mayor michael bloomberg was warning 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 other. brothers and sisters all over the world arab spring or greece and spain where we can see that it did send a powerful message and this message a call for a radical change in the governing system in place has traveled across the ocean cursing economic and political boundaries are wearing together a global narrative of dissent but will there be more countries partaking in this narrative for hasn't reached its peak just to begin tapering off so what do you

think it are going to pound some of these questions over against russia thank you very much but maybe 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 are there some rumblings here what connects them all together or is it just serendipity and they're all separate. that's broadly what connects them all what connects them all together if i may be as broad as your question is the up for failure of neal liberalism this david harvey has been speaking about this for at least for the past fifteen years you manuel wallerstein as well from the point of view of this stablish meant more or less than the real rubini has being seen in the directory if you see what's going on in us nowadays 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 casino 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 not fact that we have a very good style system work one percent basically controls the destiny of the other ninety nine and this implies what. this that belies in the concept of liquid more bernese by zygmunt bulb one i'm not very big fan of bottle 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 or two percent of the global population if you are an investment banker and if you are a journalist travel around the world and if you are. high value 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 that categories of cause and effect that we can from the lightman and they still control the actual wealth that circulates around the world and so we have a real mouse all right when i say i just used to drive out the bench a lot richard what do you think about them if i can sum up with that 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. well it depends what you mean by the system i 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 conditions. along the north african river but 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 and. 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 that they would be able to do what they expected to do which was go to work have good jobs and so on. they waited for three years i think without knowing they were. well i mean something i didn't richard didn't get a very. interesting decision feel good let me just release the system failed them. yes but it's

a different system the system that failed people in libya. kerry where you vision system of the system. failed people in. in greece so you know i think it's. make a cartoon of saying this kind of global uprising against capitalism it is there are there are lots of rumblings against capitalism and there should be ok but they're not the same ok terrifying go to you i mean and i think we should keep in mind this is are not equalize the n.s.a. already terrifying go to you i mean all this is not good 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 a continuation of a revolution against excessive government that we saw twenty years ago in the

collapse of the soviet union were seen it now in north africa we've seen it throughout africa itself as the quest for individual liberty and freedom and 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 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 and elites and 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 what do

you think about that as you said your system isn't working for the people it's a system itself is fine it's just it's application of it this is what we've just heard. there's a series of great they all views lee you cannot compare tahrir square with need so many. in libya but you can compare it to reassess where with zuccotti park in new york it's a more or 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 song and all of the young rascals that people has got to be free it's much more complicated than that because this blaming the government for all reveals on the planet this is so so so old i'll give you two examples brazil now or in. because of what the ruler did in these past eight years is starting to become known more or less over the last in equal 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 any in china i think the impact of becoming the leadership in beijing and one point three billion dollars is very clear as ok i'm not defending them i'm say what the contract 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 is what they show said in one 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 horses 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 these so-called evolutions in north africa and the aborted arab spring by the house or solid even in the persian gulf people want to get rid of the bigger ships is a completely different scenario what's happening for instance in the arab spring that i was just going to answer is really crucial central right before we go to break and you really want to jump in there go ahead jerry in my head. well i think there's a lot of similarity in 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 chair and enjoy any around we wish you were present when we turned

the radio one of the originals to our break we'll continue our discussion on global protests state are keen. to to. stick .

please. please. just say. on. the luggage the smallest single. mum i trust i'm peter lavelle to remind you we're discussing if the world is

slipping into a global revolution mux the slowest summer. ok i'm about to go to richard in new york and we were in palo been talking about the system and maybe i agree with you it's a bit amorphous saying that word how we scouted alyson changing and how is to model . 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 interest in a certainly in north africa people want some of the freedoms that americans claim that they should have so i mean how should the the mix of capitalism and and democracy change to accommodate people because we see concentrations of wealth we see cronyism and i think there's those are commonalities all over the world right now. i mean i think focusing on government is the wrong this is wrong. problem.

in western capitalism is a concentration of power financial system. we had very weak government dealing with the crisis that began in 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 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 that 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 oppressive is economic it's corporations it's the financial system ok harry what do you care what you think about this but we're going to washington to 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 concentration then and what happened when the market when the capitalist system wanted to would have disciplined 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. i mean 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 leats 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 no matter how you i mean if you're if you're 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 well in this election cycle no one is good no one's 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 congress and us doesn't rule in a salute to the approval rating of congress the american population you know they are eighty seven percent in particular 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 ways 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 med countries because they cannot even explain work themselves out of debt that's the case of greece for instance and you see each allan's greeks spaniards and frenchmen nowadays we feel we should go back to where old care is at least we have control of our monetary policy and it's not even a friend ford you know so these are big for us but look at the places where it girl

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 islam. china floor large swathes of the population at least a half of one point three billion people and even for some russians as offer some brits and india though forget india as well the same process of lifting millions of over to the key problem nowadays is how do you try to change the system from the inside and not even our best theoreticians not even our noble prize economies know how to change capitalism from the inside in fact what wallerstein has been saying for the past twenty five years or so is that capitalism as we know. it's going to

blow but nobody knows what's going to be next so as we go back to what i'm sure you know the old order is falling but it knew what is about being born yet ok richard if i go to you that's a very interesting comment there 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 and one way. i don't think it's going to explode it's going to implode which is quite a different thing which is that 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 but to give an example of that we're beginning to see a kind of permanent constriction of employment opportunities in the united states 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 a you know the old cliche applies 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 this help nurture. 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 find a chair here and 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 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 producing 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

the socialist system we've seen that leads to stagnation a communist system that led to a complete economic collapse and for those who are why am i the person bringing up marx karl marx here but an essential part of his philosophy was the withering away of the state and yet the other two guests seem to see an increase in the power of the state. somehow the salvation of humankind i don't think that's right i think the problem is i don't say that this is ridiculous government it's too powerful have to jump in go ahead that this is this is go this is rubbish i'm sorry look the slav wishes they went to a wall street last sunday and he delivered the. version of what his been saying in 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 and at. 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 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 and 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

realist real call it six 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 we any hasn't been conceptualized anywhere in the us in europe in south america or 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 follow up and thanks to our viewers for watching us here darkie see you next time and remember astafy. if. you can.