Ed Helms

The Spanish flu has torn through cities and rural communities alike, killing over 675,000 people, which is more than we lost in the actual war.

So the whole country is basically a powder keg.

And then a spark from overseas really lit the fuse.

Any guesses what that might have been?

The Bolshevik Revolution.

Oh, that.

Yes, that.

Yeah, of course.

Yeah.

Here we go.

In Russia, Lenin and his followers overthrew the czar.

They executed the royal family and declared the birth of a communist state, a government where the working class held all the state power, in theory, at least.

Now, to struggling American workers getting terrible wages and monstrous working conditions, that may have sounded kind of intriguing, like maybe a ray of hope.

But obviously to the American elite, the power brokers, the dealmakers, it sounded like an existential threat.

I see this as basically the collision of two very primal emotions.

It's rage versus fear.

You have the workers raging about inequality and then, of course, elites are afraid of losing their status and their fancy things.

Is this dynamic just baked into capitalism or is there a better way?

Is socialism kind of trying to have both sides?

Yeah, that's a good break.