Bhaskar Sunkara
speaker
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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Often, I think people today just look at the end outcome, like we go to the pyramids, and we'll marvel at the pyramids and the human achievement that it took to make it happen, but we won't stop to think about all the suffering that went into the making of that thing.
So I think we kind of lean in the opposite direction, where we marvel at our achievements, but we don't often think about
Yeah.
What Stalin did, actually, too, it's not just capitalists, but what Stalin did was he sacrificed whole generations because he thought that he was building something for the future, for future Russians to enjoy and for future people of the world to enjoy.
to enjoy.
And actually, that analogy that I just gave about the pyramids was written by Karl Kotzke, the German socialist, anti-Stalinist critic, when he was complaining about US journalists and others going to Russia in the 1930s and marveling at all the new industries.
Are these people blind to the suffering behind these things they're marveling about?
I think there's no tension.
And in part, I think that it is very condescending or patronizing to assume that people can't take debate, that people can't, either as a society or individuals, visually be engaged in the exchange of ideas without, or even very vigorous debate, without being broken by it.
It's just not the case.
I'm basically a free speech absolutist.
I mean, I would draw the line at obviously direct incitements of violence or certain other speech like that, but in general.
No, I mean, not people who know my work.
I mean, more generally, I think a lot of people on the right, even in the center, I think might have the idea that a lot of the far left wants to censor them.
I think some of the center left wants to censor them, but I think a lot on the far left, on the Marxist or socialist left.
I think that free speech is more or less the norm.
I think we might need to just take it case by case for an example, by example, because honestly, I would have to think about a particular case.
But let's just say generally that a lot of American liberalism
rightly sees the revolution around the civil rights and later the extension of this rights revolution for gay rights and so on as being a very positive achievement of the last half century.
And I completely agree.
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