The People's Soapbox: Recent Episodes
Eric Poulin
The People’s Soapbox offers critical and thoughtful analysis of the institutions and systems of power that influence our lives through free-ranging and in-depth conversations with notable thinkers, critics, columnists, academics, and writers.
With the increasing tensions both foreign and domestic, and the Trump administration’s complete incompetence in dealing with them, it’s also becoming pretty clear that establishment liberalism, both in the form of political elites and the mainstream press, are simply not equipped to mount the necessary pushback. What is needed is a positive alternative vision for the future to compete with the frightened, belligerent, authoritarian one coming from the right.
The understanding of socialism itself remains somewhat nebulous in the popular consciousness. It’s usually framed as either Soviet-Communism by its detractors, or simply as an alternative to capitalism, which of course it is, among other things. Owen Hill helps to explain socialism and where it fits into today's society.
What might a post-capitalist future look like for America and beyond? Marxists have an answer to this question, but my guest today suggests we need to look beyond socialism as well. So what else is there?
If people in unions have better health plans, better retirement and job security, and better wages, then we should try to figure out how they’ve done it and emulate it, not pull them down to our destitute level. Of course, how unions have historically done it is through solidarity and collective bargaining. Which is exactly why oligarchs like Walker attack these institutions so viciously. Union workers, although rapidly diminishing, are among the best paid, most secure workers left in the country. Yet are among the most vilified and resented, particularly among the rich oligarchs in government. Today, we’ll talk about why.
Mainstream media would have us believe that the gulf between the left and right political factions in America could not be greater. But there’s no question that if the left is to be successful, it must unify. It must find some coherent message around which to organize. So what would happen if the two supposedly opposing sides came together to realize the many initiatives on which they agree?
Freedom comes with contraints. If we accept some limitations, why not others? The atomized movements around the environment, around labor, around civil rights, around economic justice, will have to become a thing of the past. We need to understand the challenges that have thwarted the formation of a coherent left up until now. An Interview with Henry Giroux.
The United States of America is not a totalitarian state… Right? Chris Hedges offers insight into Inverted Totalitarianism and the current state of the world.
Why is America unique among many Western countries in that it does not have a labor oriented political party? Jefferson Cowie traces a path from a level society resulting from the New Deal to the grotesque inequality of today and the precarity of the contemporary working class.
Do populists who capitalize on the anger of the masses always turn into dictators? Would our opinion of them change if they actually followed through on their promises? Have we ever had a genuine populist follow through, and won an election in the US? This week on the Soapbox, we look at Huey P Long and his legacy.
How can the engine of our economy, the worker, be made an equal and fair partner in the economy itself, reaping the fruits of his labors and the rewards of the business he helps prop up?
The labor question, as a matter of fact, consumed American politics around the turn of the century. But the labor question was never really answered with any lasting satisfaction.
An emerging theme on the show so far has been that of the failure of capitalism as an economic structure when it comes to meeting the needs of the people. Capitalism seems to wed us to endless and increasingly violent cycles of boom and bust. The further we get from even the modest democratic socialism of the New Deal and social welfare states of post-war Europe, the more unstable the world economy seems to become, and the less it seems able to meet the basic needs of the majority of people not only in this country, but around the world. But if we accept that capitalism has its faults, as should be obvious to anyone but the most hardened CEO or Wall Street banker at this point, where does that leave us in a world that has been so dominated by capitalism for so long? Today on the show, my guest is Dr. Harriett Fraad. She is a mental health counselor and hypnotherapist out of New York City, a founding member of the feminist movement and of the journal Rethinking Marxism, as well as a political activist and advocate of democracy in the workplace. I wanted to start by asking her about the impact of a collective trauma such as the Great Recession on a populace, but first she wanted to be sure my question wasn’t inadvertently perpetuating a misconception about the Recession itself...
Why has the left’s influence, once so powerful in this country, been receding to nothing over these past decades? My guest is Adolph Reed Jr., labor activist and political scientist specializing in race and American politics.
Today we’re going to talk about what has led the Democrats down the road to political ruin. Thomas Frank is a historian and author of best-selling books such as, What’s the Matter with Kansas, and his latest, Listen, Liberal, Or Whatever Happened to the Party of the People? With his trademark acerbic prose, nimble wit, and keen insight, in his latest book, Frank trains his powers on dissecting exactly what has happened to the Democratic Party. I began by asking him about the Democrats’ obsession with Russia’s so-called “hacking of our democracy.” Near as I can tell, this is an alleged hack that was only successful because it revealed the corruption of the Democratic Party which, unsurprisingly, turned voters off. You might be surprised to learn that Mr. Frank is a little more sanguine about this than yours truly.
Noam Chomsky is a renowned linguist, political philosopher, and powerful social critic with trenchant insight into American political affairs. Is America was a totalitarian state, inverted or otherwise?
Our political and economic systems are undermined by a relentlessly expanding inequality. Robert McChesney talks about his book, People Get Ready, The Fight Against a Jobless Economy and a Citizenless Democracy. He discusses how to have a more equitable world when the nature of work as we’ve understood it for many generations is fundamentally changing before our eyes.
The US electorate has been persuaded to oppose unions, vote for candidates pledging to shred the social safety net and venerate the rich and powerful. It was not always this way. Kim Phillips-Fein helps us understand how we got here.
Morris Berman mounts a compelling argument that America has past the point of no return. Consumerism is a rot that is embedded within the United States.
The People’s Soapbox offers critical and thoughtful analysis of the institutions and systems of power that influence our lives through free-ranging and in-depth conversations with notable thinkers, critics, columnists, academics, and writers.