Bhaskar Sunkara

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1,609 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Dec 2022 last heard Dec 2022

Bhaskar Sunkara’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Lex Fridman Podcast · #349 – Bhaskar Sunkara: The Case for Socialism · 22 Dec 2022 podcast

In the U.S., with national popular appeals, FDR was able to unite a nation to elevate ordinary working class people into a position where they felt like they had a real stake in the country, and I think did great things with the New Deal.

In Russia, of course, this language was used to trample upon individual rights and

and to justify hardship and abuses of ordinary individual people in the name of a collective destiny.

A destiny, of course, that was just decided by the party in power and during the 30s and 40s by just Stalin himself, really.

Now, I think that that's really the case for

making sure that we have a bedrock of civil rights and democracy.

Then on top of that, we can debate.

We can debate different national destinies.

We can debate different appeals, different visions of the world.

But as long as people have a say in what sacrifices they're being asked to do, and as long as those sacrifices don't take away what's fundamentally ours, which is our life, which is our basic rights.

So I think you need to limit the scope of where the state is and what the state can do and how the state functions, first of all.

Now, for me, social democracy was like the equivalent of I'll give a football analogy.

It was the equivalent of, you know, getting to the red zone and then kicking a field goal.

You know, you'll take the three points, but you would have rather got a touchdown.

And for me, socialism would be the touchdown.

It's not a separate, different playing field.

Sure, sure.

No, and they would have the right to, again, to say that and to say we shouldn't go further.

But I'll take the three points.

I just want to march down the field.

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