americans love. this was a fundamental part of how our political leadership and our country at large understood the bargain you get a hope and then you know rebel right as the things you don't revolt if you have

a stake in the system. and think about the longer deeper history. in the united states not just. question of the american dream but the bigger question of who the dream is for. hello and welcome to cross talk where all things considered i'm peter lavelle americans had a long and contentious history with the word socialism for conservatives most often it is a dirty word even unpatriotic for many liberals it's about social justice and compassion

however for better or worse it remains a red line within the electorate. ross talking socialism i'm joined by my guest mouth in new york he is a journalist and political analyst at r.t.e. in miami we have soraya foss she is a former us presidential candidate and in atlanta we have lived on jones she's an attorney and a former state director for bernie sanders in 2016. in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciate it. being let me go to you 1st because we've kind of bumped heads in the past about this issue here what does socialism mean to you in and i really want to make it very clear here i don't really want to go into the pros and cons of it i want to talk about the meaning of it in the context of american politics because everyone knows i'm a conservative but i have to you know show my cards

a little bit here i'm really tired of conservatives throwing that word out is that is if it really means much anymore go ahead caleb in new york. well the essence of socialism in the sense that karl marx and lot of your lenin and others wrote about the essence of it is growth and progress the idea is that the means of production the banks act or ease major industries should be organized to serve the public good and liberated from the anarchy of production and the chaos of the market and if we can get beyond profits and command human growth and creativity can be unlimited and you know wealth can expand for all of society you know in a rational society in a socialist society self driving cars would be a great thing because then there would be less work for everybody but under capitalism technological progress leads to poverty and instability the more efficient it becomes to produce things the fewer people you have to hire less people are getting paid in wages and we lead to the disaster receding in the west right now which is

a high tech low wage economy where working people who can only only work so long as they're work in riches a boss they are they are left outcast and starving as the means of production get more and more efficient and socialism is about overcoming the irrationality of profits and command having a centrally planned economy so that growth can be unlimited ok so i have a how do you how do you define it because well what we just heard from caleb is that everything essential eyes essential by the state ok and historically in the 20th century we have been seeing that is problematic at the very least but i think that caleb i give him credit that is basically the me me the bones and flesh of what the idea is all about go ahead in miami your thoughts it that it i think might in anything that's clear that everybody has a socialist in at the end will eat will lead to a classless statements and capitalism. you know within society and that's the fear that everybody has right to hear it the word socialism. ok all right you know

sounds as to what tests you know what their original definition of less should. ok well let's get a lot done here because i think now we're kind of kind of circling the wagons around really what's going on here because it's you know progress on one side clearly the aughts the theory of it here but the practice of it is about who has the power and i think that that's what that's really the debate here i mean is it is it good to give the state all power or give it to all the dark so i mean if you're home on the lowering of society does it really make any difference go ahead in atlanta. so one very important component and let that is that it is not socialism it is not connect it is not going to act right and so it's not just the government making decisions it is cheaper who are left behind the individuals who will be running the system that makes it socialism right is that bad and means of production so the people who will be educated in the system elect the officials who

decide how the system works and then we can all equally use the system so that's a very important component a socialism as it is today is a thought is that true homie of democracy and so there are not oligarchy who can come in and make decisions unchecked they have to elect it and line it by the people just like they can be removed by the people if they don't ensure the entry one has a bite at the apple core those important things like energy transportation health care education housing all those things that we all need right here all the time throughout the entire world ok caleb i mean if it's that idyllic and i and i actually hear an echo of bernie sanders there and i have to admit we're done and it's turning into ancient history but i've said repeatedly on this program and people $1016.00 there were only 2 candidates that i follow that was donald trump and bernie sanders ok so because his message does resonate resonate with people and with a lot of conservatives believe it or not ok caleb i mean so i mean in the american

context because i mean i believed around the world i've lived most of my entire life not my adult life my entire life in different countries in the world and all of them have had health care all of them ok some of them better than others here so why is it that america can't take best practices because that's the question i ask myself all of the time go ahead caleb well part of the rise of neo liberal economics not friedman and iran and and alan greenspan was pushing this notion that any invoked by the government in the economy is. by definition socialism and leadings communism and a lot of americans believe that if they pay taxes that is socialism a lot of americans believe that the post 'd office is socialism but all capitalist economies have state actors and state government spending to some degree or other and yet have paved roads you know to facilitate people going and shopping at capital stores and the notion that any state sector is somehow somehow communism

and we should get beyond it that was introduced in the united states during the 1970 s. really we saw the rise of this kind of economic thinking and his lead to big economic problems look at the united states crumbling infrastructure i mean the rust belt you know economic u.k. you know we got a system of prisons for profit military contractors i mean we're seeing we're seeing neo liberal free market extremism right to its logical conclusion in the united states and i think that i think that it's those ideas that say that any involvement by the government any social welfare state is you know you should immediately think of joseph stalin that kind of thinking has led to big problems in the united states that that's why the term is now being used so loosely is that you know we've been programmed through the cold war to just you know have this got hostile reaction to anything associated with communism so now it's useful you know as we're facing an economic problem to point at those who would want to resolve it or implement measures that are designed to address it and say ah ha you're

a communist if. you know what became of you're absolutely right i mean conservatives and progressives you know there's a lot to discuss among ourselves a lot and a lot of progress could be made but then we have the big neil liberals and we have the establishment here they throw in the hanger again it's called socialism and then they make everyone argue about it ok that i get sick and tired of that because conservatives and progressives have a lot in common if we give each other a chance and set of letting these neo liberals mediate the conversational attempt so i have pain that really in miami one of things really bothers me. but this socialism to be there's plenty of socialism in the american economy and that's the coddling of big business by the government you know when there's a crisis who gets bailed out 1st big big big companies ok i really resent that i resent that a lot ok and we saw that in 2008 and then we saw it last year and through this year with the pandemic ok if you're rich and powerful you're going to get concierge

service that's socialism in my mind and i don't like that kind of socialism go ahead in miami. i think that one of the issues that we're having interesting today is that these bigger corporations are the ones that are getting the bailouts and the people who really need it the middle class and the lower you know they're the ones that are having them wanted to kill time because we don't see it when it comes to the stimulus you know all these billions of dollars are going to hell that were ations and it's not really coming to the people it works or really i get the well you know what it is they want to help the economy they would go directly to the people from the start or have it yeah but i mean we got them a good was go back to lead on because about what about the democratic process here it seems to me you know when it when i look at polling i look at a lot of gallup polling right before the presidential election is that there is a huge myth out there a lot of people want a system they want to have some kind of like pre-k.

paid for i'm for it ok community college for you i'm for it ok absolutely for it ok you have to give people a stake in society but then you know then it's you know a bill is passed and it's all dolled out to these education industrial complex and then they suck up all the money and they get teach their kids trash that's my opinion go ahead why don't you hit the nail on the head so here's a he component to make socialism work is not just about dylan out money from the government to people who need it we're everything on the spectrum it's also about the sheeple doing the work so we have infrastructure projects in the united states a lot of those are job producing right so you have elected officials who are taking sums of money to invest in a role that we all use that to me also are investing in the employment of people who don't get to receive those funds on the back end because we know labor tends to be one of the highest cost of any project that you have and so when you have something that's like the stimulus right where these corporations got millions of

dollars well we have no control no that already no income. how those millions and billions they use right and the people who run the corporations it's at the side how that money is doled out there's no guarantee that it's going to trickle down to the people who actually work eat right is a benefit to the overall united states economy there's no benefit to the fact that you know this restaurant isn't meeting people who need to eat it's feeding people who are willing to pay the money to eat right and that death panel into capitalism saw the very important component of socialism that people to get it's not just education it's also the employment teachers and pre-k. teachers and all the people who feed into our system from bus drivers to the cafeteria workers the same thing with any other level of socialism and still hopes they get back into the plate it sounds 100 thinking about what happened during the cold war we have to remember particularly in american politics republicans were once dixiecrats right they were democrats at one time and we did

a switch where they were they never switched back to place right with socialism particularly democratic socialism as bernie sanders and others and a a.s.e. speak of it and we have to look at it in that one minute we're still trying to use the terminology from 800 and the 1900 we're going to miss the point and the benefits of what socialism really well i you know your dear i hope we can all agree all 4 of us can agree the trickle down economics you know we need to retire the term and the up at the end of the the actions ok because it certainly has not worked and and we can that's a topic of a totally different program here i want to jump in here we go to a short break and out about short break we'll continue our discussion on socialism they were talking.

chose seemed wrong. but old rules just don't. let me. get to shape out just because get educated and in. equals betrayal. when so many find themselves worlds apart we choose to look for common ground. no one has ever cruised around the globe in an inflatable catamaran before. you know. just gives it but. it is such a cruise you need a solid crew people you can share a folks home with so to speak. to do with the

one. who was not the most evil these let me ask you that you just love them enough mike was there because the group with the bottles will be what you need for me that you get the relief are you going to maybe look at you when you look up. welcome back to crossfire all things considered i'm peter lavelle to remind you we're discussing socialism.

because i like a living in new york i mean you know this whole discussion about the infrastructure bill that the administration is proposing and trying to get republican support here again i think that the term socialism warps everything i think the neo liberal media warps everything because they're looking to score points and again had nothing to do with people in a massive do with you know their shareholders and their political affiliations and allegiances here i mean if you look at this infrastructure bill i don't have a problem with the price tag it's over 10 years my goodness. no they'll never touched if defense spending will they but you know this infrastructure thing and i think if it's done right it creates jobs and it pays for itself eventually if it's done right there's one thing i don't really worry about caleb and and maybe i'll kick up a little bit of dust on the program with this one i don't like the strings attached you know you have to have critical race theory you have to have these woke us

telamon so you know to be able to get the money you know there's a lot of people that are very uneasy about that and it feels very totalitarian and particularly if it is a demand and not a negotiation an explanation here how do you how do you you know alleviate worries of half the country when it comes to that issue go ahead kaleb well i share a lot of your concerns peter look i started out by saying the essence of socialism is growth but if you listen to a lot of the rhetoric coming out of the white house right now i seems like sleepy joe doesn't believe in growth he thinks growth is bad smaller is better build a bigger empire i mean this is rockefeller who is in idea right this is this is very dangerous and all throughout the united states we have seen the rise of hasim is in a lot of ways you know joe biden seems like jimmy carter 2.0 wishing this notion that we need to reduce consumption you know while republicans are pushing for full deregulation libertarian free market policies like

a lot of what the democrats want is not growth and rational planning of the economy but rather what they want is simply a state managed austerity you know gradually gradually roll back to living standards oversee a continuing process for the next generation has a much lower standard of living than their parents ever had you know try to control them whether it's with you know manage social media or whether it's with drugs that they haven't already gotten on ritalin when their kids you know give a marijuana and give them hallucinogens as adults and and you know there is a very dangerous kind of managerial us you know social social engine. an aspect to it the liberals are doing right now and small businesses seem to be the most you know targeted by it they seem very very you know upset and you know they may be wiped out maybe the big capitalist like amazon and wal-mart who really benefit from from what they're proposing but it's interesting because if you look around the world the strength of socialism in the 21st century whether you go to vietnam or

nicaragua or china has been you know while you have a state central plan empowering small businesses micro entrepreneurs you know you know socialism with chinese characteristics is all about having a market sector in order to combine the strengths of capitalism with the overall vision of socialism and planet kaleb you know you know what you know you're talking about you know lowered expectations and downsizing you know one in you know what one sector is really exploding super yachts that 6 bloating right now they're building the biggest yachts of all time ok they're not downsizing you know so i that you know caleb brings up such an excellent point and is that i can say again conservatives and progressives can have a lot in common a lot of what caleb said i absolutely agree with you but what about entrepreneurs i mean it's one of the things we'll going through the lockdowns in the reaction to the pandemic there seems to be no interest in helping middle size small businesses i mean absolutely not i mean horrific stories of no reason of all people are to

shut down and then their competitors that are you know these big box companies and you know you can go shopping there but you can't go to a moment pop pharmacy i mean where is that in the end the economy moving forward here because i would have thought that that would be pro people very you know part of the socialist dream but it's not there it's almost completely void go ahead in miami that's very dangerous because you have any sense here a little early a lot is this is very close to me and we have so much this is as much as i would say it came in later i don't. mean. just to touch on a little bit looking at that list saying regarding the infrastructure a lot of the issues that we're having i mean it's great and it's very ideal you're going to see that those companies that are going to get a contract it's not going to be that it's always somebody that knows somebody and knows somebody who is a cousin or study a modern whatever that ends up with these types of contracts and the money just

stays in the same circle and that's what we're seeing that there's a huge problem i mean whether it's kind of local or international it's always they always seem to have a way to still keep the profit out of that it's never really about the people and that's where my concern is really at right yeah well you know we there is it's called influence peddling and pay to play and there is plenty of it to go around we don't need to go down that rabbit hole right now but i think everybody knows that i'm talking about let's go back to it atlanta here you know one of the things a lot of the figures that you'll see in the bottom of your screen when you watch this here is from a gallup poll before the election and i was really kind of struck how many young people are attracted to the idea of socialism and when and reading the fine print on it what i found really interesting is that it may not be particularly an attraction to a certain idea of socialism but a rejection of neo liberalism because you know what it's not working for them ok and any of it you don't have to explain it theoretically they're living it ok go

ahead without so you have a guest hip in the else on the hip right so the reason why now for me in welcoming if they own it so solicit is make sure that you're current then there's the contract behind doors right that's where the government control and regulations come in on the other in this. market that the conservatives like to push for so that you know through capitalism and see the difference is there was a time every public use were conservative and it was right we had. to protect our financial future for a future generation now this generation which was the future generation and they were speaking of the same word with the money we are concerned about is that air we're concerned about being able to breathe we're concerned about pandemics right in these things that spread across the globe and we have a responsibility to ensure that for the future and we are willing to give up some

of our freedoms why we're willing to put the really rich folks who are building the yeah they have to build more efficient yachts that are better for our for the atmosphere so in order to preserve the future of one term because you're right they are not the beneficiaries of all of this high end capitalism and better access to capital that the capitalists have pushed forward as the what is important with socialism is one making sure that there are limits on people who are able to just out spin and out i am a both a loser and a sybian a what has gone on since the pandemic only one business that closed in the beginning of the pandemic because we were very reliant on people coming in and if they couldn't come in we couldn't proceed but then my other businesses had have been a bit through the payroll and p.p.p. and other things that come in the had allowed me to roll and hire more people so

there is a bit of it and a burden has come in that all tied in with socialism in the underlying bill is that particularly in america we are far too rich of a country to have as many homeless and to have as many unemployed to have as many people who are struggling out there that if we just took a little bit of time in the organization of the government to assure that everyone has a fair shot at being able to have health care revolving better off yeah caleb you know if that's what it you know with all my current and servant friends really get upset with me when i talk about her. care because i've seen a good part of the world and it's not a debate in the world it's pretty obvious what's right ok and what works here ok and you know and it's something that you know maybe i can tell our viewers here you know you know being an american being brought up in america the anxiety of not having health care really is an amazing amazing negative effect on you you're

afraid of getting sick ok i'm ok and most of the world at least the developed world where nobody is afraid of getting sag i mean it happens unfortunately and there is assistance there because you pay your taxes here but the impact it has on americans is a truly extraordinary and this pandemic tells us everything that's wrong with the with the pharmaceutical industry is really the heights of him. of what we're seeing with these vaccines and i p. and all about when the you know they're protecting their their patents you know the american people paid for those patents they paid for the research they paid for all of the research they've been doing it for one pattern after another for well over a decade and you have the mainstream media parroting you know you know it's you know somebody might be able to use the formulas and cure cancer or god forbid something like that i mean do they do they have any understanding of what they're saying because it really shows the lack of any kind of moral compass of what the

average condition of the average american is and what the world is experiencing because of this pandemic go ahead ok well you know it's interesting because you know this notion that jews servants and capitalism watch and. they don't. american and it's pretty pretty western and you know if you look at it you know conservative anti-capitalism predates marxism by hundreds of years you know the catholic church was looking during the rise of capitalism and saying this is a system where money is being put over religious principles it's in it's encouraging you know breaking apart of the bonds that hold society together and there is a strong conservative critique of capitalism in the united states we seem to have lost that has notion yes we need markets you must be on the left and i don't think that's true internationally speaking i mean if you look at the political spectrum right wing anti-capitalism has been around for a long time but i think that the absence of the problem we have in the united

states is look if the pie is only so big the only way your slice can get bigger is by cutting into somebody else's and nobody ever thinks that their slice of the pie is too big in fact they want their slice of the fire to get bigger and so when you when you say that there is a limit to growth when you declare that growth is bad you're setting up for huge divisions in society you're setting up for all kinds of problems but if we can get back to the notion that growth is unlimited and that if we can get beyond the irrationality of greed and profits running our economy and we can mobilize to build like roosevelt did during the great depression you know with the works progress administration you know appealing to you know people's desire to go out and build a better world friendship with countries around the world that are that are trying to do the same thing and lift themselves up out of poverty you know we could we could get beyond you know the divisions that are inherent in the notion that the pie is only so big and and i think that that is the biggest impediment we have here in the united well you know caleb i think it's male liberalism disappear determines

the size of the cake and they're the ones who decide who cuts it and that's the problem here i thought all the time we have i want to thank my guests in new york miami and atlanta and i want to thank our viewers for watching us here arky see you next time remember crosstalk will. when i almost show seemed wrong why don't we all just don't hold. any old belief yet to shape our disdain comes to educate and in gains from an equals betrayal. when some many find themselves worlds apart we choose to look for common ground.

and. credit if you will work with a cheerful brotherhood with interest. to do good days and see if they do a good for. us to keep the interest. which 90 students that are saying no is reason to become so why think if you. wish to fish now go for it build a mortar shell of these the bits of the sea to the shore a small bubble will burst into us we simply she's beautiful the ball the ball would scold once this issue of. the wolf is really. the story could get a good beat and if we did those meals away as of the much of which i mean a. dog mamma as they should but they say you can be when you get out of the scott. peterson you're chicago's recent research on what your next mistress.

the deadly conflict between israel and palestinian militants shows no sign of letting up with hamas and the i.d.f. exchanging airstrikes as confrontations continue on the ground. so coming up is a day of mourning in the russian republic after its capital was really a devastating school shooting that killed at least 9 people including 7 children left more than 20 others injured. and with a gun ran into the classroom and started shooting people source.