What do Conservatives Like Deneen Actually Want..?

So, if this is his critique on liberalism, what does he want? And the answer comes in his latest not latest, but his last big influential book 2020 >> want Before we leave this, do you want to say something about his relationship with Marx? Cuz I mean, we've got a quote here. >> Oh my god, yes. Yes. So, again, there are the people in the right who you listen to them and they remind you of Marx. And there's someone like Deneen who actually quotes Marx in a way that I want to defend my argument, so therefore, this is what Marx said. Can we go to the alienation to the alienation quote? >> So, is this the one that says citizens are more likely to be called consumers? >> Uh yes, uh it's No, no. Yes, but go to the next one. Marx once argued >> Marx once argued. Okay. Marx one Okay, so let me share the screen so you guys >> So, to give context, the in the previous paragraph, he talks about how inequality leads to anxiety. The same thing as J.D. Vance told us that if someone has more than you, then you are rightfully [clears throat] becoming bitter. So, let's go to the quote. >> So, he says Marx once argued that the greatest source of economic discontent was not necessarily inequality, but alienation. The separation of worker from product and the attendant loss of any connection with the goal and object of one's efforts. I I Let me just say this cuz this keeps coming up cuz Marx is so in right now, and everybody's talking about this alienation stuff. I mean, think about think about what a good manager does. Think about what well-run companies actually do. I mean, a lot of what they do to motivate employees is to connect them with the goal and object of the effort. To to show them how what they are doing results in this something bigger. And And you know, and to and to recognize that they're adding something. I mean, part of So So there's something here, right? If you're just twisting a thing, a knob, and at the end there's a an automobile, and you don't you don't really have any relation with your automobile, yeah, there might be something alienating is the wrong word, but but there's something But managers go out of their way to try to show, "No, you're twisting a knob is crucial, and we're paying you for it because you are part of creating that thing at the end." And And good companies, I think, are very good at doing that. Uh And I don't think most workers I I think workers, when when you take a automobile worker on the line at Ford or GM, how many of them think they built the car? I mean, I I I remember, you know, I was a I was a civil engineer, and uh I worked on a worked on some civil engineering projects. And every time we we'd drive by a building that I'd worked on. Like, I was a junior junior junior junior sub sub sub civil engineer on a project. Every time I drive by the project, I'd go, "I built that." Right? I I built that. And And And yeah, and and there's a there's a real pride, and I think workers in capitalist companies take real pride in the product of the company. I I think Apple workers feel that way. I think I think people feel that way. Now, uh part of that is good management. It's It's It's It's It's doing a good job creating that. Instead of orienting the worker to feel that way, what Marx does, and what all these neo-Marxists do, is they reinforce, "No, no. You didn't build that building. You shouldn't feel pride about It's the capitalist who built the building. You know, they're exploiting you. You have no connection to that building. Feel alienated, please. And then when they do feel alienated then then the needs of the world say, "See, I told you. They were alienated." >> Oh my god. >> So, you know, you know, I have a real life example of that. My uncle, who is like a real life Mike from The Fountainhead, they even look alike and they use the same colorful language. Uh he was throughout his career uh basically a builder. And uh he built the Olympic Stadium and also the basketball court. And when he built it they gave him something like a season ticket. And back then I remember I was thinking and every time he would tell me, "Oh, this is how we built this." He's something like also civil engineer. And I remember in my Marxist phase I was like, "Uh you know, no, you you are just a tool." And then I thought, "How horrible. This guy had this pride and he should have this pride." He I've never met someone who Do you know, before the Olympic Games there were days he would wake up at 3:00 in the morning cuz these things had to be delivered on time. And he had this pride and there came the the Marxist punk telling him, "No, no, this is uh this is like the capitalist brainwashing." So, exactly what you described happened with me and my uncle. >> Yeah, and and notice how much we're talking about Marx when this is a show about on the right. Uh he continues. "Today's economy not only maintains and extends this alienation but adds a profound new form of geographic alienation." Whoa. "The physical separation of beneficiaries of the global economy from those left behind." So uh you might you might build something in I don't know. You might be in an auto assembly plant in China and those cars are going to Europe, and all those Europeans who are driving electric cars should doubly alienated because you don't even see the product that you're you know, because it's gone somewhere else. Um, and then of course, what about the Americans who lost their jobs so that the Chinese can build the car in China? An American lost their job in America and doesn't have a job here. He's alienated from the whole society that made that possible. >> By the way, it's interesting how always they bring the example of a car. Because you could imagine owning a car. If you're building a rocket for the space, should you then own it? Like if you if you're building I don't know, like colonoscopy tools, are you alienated if they're used for someone else's colonoscopy? >> [laughter] >> Like it's it's always the car. But like the the example of the car that they use. And by the way, with capitalism, yes, now most factory workers can own a car. So, that's not even a good example anymore. >> And and most factories owners own a piece of the company itself. Through their 401k or through their pension plan, they almost all are shareholders. I mean, we're all shareholders. I it's So, yeah, I mean He continues, "This leaves the economic winners." I mean, notice also winners and losers, right? It's it's zero-sum. Winners and losers, it's all zero-sum language. The whole economy is ultimately zero-sum. This leaves the economic winners to combine lamentations of economic inequality with sotto voce denunciations of the backward views of those who condemn globalization's course. The losers, meanwhile, winners and losers, right? The losers, meanwhile, are consoled with the reminder that they're wealthy beyond compared to even the wealthiest aristocrats of an earlier age. Material comforts are a ready salve for a discontents of the soul. I mean, he had he had a paragraph here where he said it Where was that? Where it's better It's better to do something primitive um >> Oh, yes. This is This is where we talk about uh Oh, yes. The aim is communities. Yes. It's It's the one that starts all technological developments. Yeah. I was skeptical of using this cuz it's a caricature of the caricature of himself. And yet he wrote it. So, we wrote it. >> He wrote it. So, we should definitely use it. All technological developments are subject to the basic question. Will this and will it help the fabric of our community? The fabric of the community. Go and define what fabric of community means. And how do you measure whether something helps the fabric of the community, right? To me, one of the most powerful examples of this criteria is the decision to issue insurance on the grounds that our form of insurance is premised on maximum anonymity and minimum personal commitment. So, don't buy fire insurance. Don't buy life insurance. Don't buy car insurance because it's anonymous. Right? For the price of a premium based on calculations of actuarial tables, I join a pool with others seeking insurance for a variety of objects or conditions such as automobile, house, life, or health. Now, notice that insurance is one of the great human achievements. It's beautiful that you can anonymize it and protect yourself in these kind of ways. He views it as horrible. Because why? Because if we didn't have insurance, I would then come to Nikos and say, "Nikos, I crashed my car. I don't have any money to fix it. Please help me." And Nikos would then be obligated to help me. And that obligation is what's beautiful. That's the fabric of our community. It's the obligation we have towards one another. This is the the deep-seated altruism. The you know, we we have to take care of one another. Insurance, that's anonymous. We want to make altruism personal. It has to be it you have to feel it. You have to you know, you have to suffer. He he writes certain Amish communities ban members from purchasing insurance. Rather, the community itself is the insurance pool. Now, notice the implication here. The implication is the government should do it all, right? What does it mean the community itself is the insurance pool? Ultimately, who is the ultimate insurer of all the communities? That's the government. So, we should have government running health care, government housing, government run life, government all of this. Members seek to foster community where there's everyone shared responsibility and obligation to make someone who suffers a loss whole again. Such liberation from all obstacles is finally illusionary. >> All right, that's a different context, but that's yeah. >> For two simple reason oh, which they I I've I've gone over. All right. For two different reasons, human appetite is insatiable and the world is limited. So, here I agree with the first and don't agree with the second. Human appetite is indeed insatiable. Good for him for recognizing that. But, the idea that the world is limited is ignorant as Nikos mentioned earlier. It's just ignorant given Julian Simon. Um and it's stupid. Uh you know, it it it it's it's it's unthinking. He so, he writes, "For both of these reasons, we cannot be truly free in the modern sense. We can never attain satiation and we will be eternally driven by our desires rather than be satisfied by their attainment." And and this is I mean, this is a criticism we get all the time, right? You climb the mountain and you get to the top and instead of being satisfied, you're looking for the next mountain to climb. And there's a there's a a of fallacies here. One is You should be satisfied when you climb the mountain. At the top, you should be satisfied. And you are happy. But that is just a launchpad for climbing the next mountain. Absolutely. Because life is a process of constant achievement of values. As soon as you are satisfied really satisfied, you're done. Well, you're dead. Right? You know, you're done when you're dead. What What is um There's a line from Kiva in We the Living. Something like I'm paraphrasing. Life is wanting. Life is wanting. In other words, life is valuing. So, and valuing is an act to gain or keep. It's an act. So, you're constantly acting. Yes, we're constantly acting and we constantly want more. And we're never satiated. That's fine. That doesn't mean we're not happy, we're not satisfied. It It It's It's It's It's It's a You know, again, this divine right of stagnation. It's the idea that somehow you're happy if you stagnate. If you're just satisfied Just because we're satisfied with what you got. Your ambition is what's making you unhappy. >> And but it's also the environment. >> Yes. In an obsessive satisfaction of our limitless desires, we will quickly exhaust the planet. That's environmental nonsense. But it's the psychological issue that I find more interesting. Um Yeah. >> So, let's see then what is his >> let me one more, right? He's too good not to quote. He says, "Utility and ease must be rejected." This is the quote I wanted, right? "Utility and ease must be rejected in preference to practices of local knowledge and virtuosity. The ability to do make things for oneself, to provision one's own household through the work of one's own and uh one's children's hands hands, should be prized above consumption and waste. The skills of building, fixing, cooking, planting, preserving, and com- composting. >> Composting. >> Yes. So, this is 1220. This is the return to the Middle Ages. You notice there's no reason here. There's no thought. There's no innovation. It just happens, which is typical Marxist and typical leftist. Innovation just happens. There's no thinking. There's working. It's purely materialist. And it it it you know, this is the conservatism of uh Michael Knowles, who I've talked about on my show. This is the conservatism of middle of of wanting and designing the Middle Ages, of going backwards to a a simpler time where we made everything with our hands. And and uh you know, half of our children died before the age of 10, but okay. You know, there there the trade-offs in life. But at least we made this stuff, and and the children of before they died made stuff. So so it's okay. >> The first time I came across the term Uh Yeah, the first time I ever came across the term composting was when I was doing my research for my PhD, and I had a very disgusting experience of actually visiting radical green camps and radical green sites, and they had these compositive uh disgusting stuff. And here again, this is an episode about the thought leader of your next president, people. This is This is a of your next president will come from the Republican Party. Again, a constant reminder. This is not We're not discussing the Frankfurt School. We're not discussing any green philosopher. Now, what does he want to achieve? What is the new regime? He wants to bring a new regime, not a new government. So, the goal of the post-liberal right is to return conservatism to its true roots. And he claims the true roots of conservatism disease opposition to liberalism. Because he claims the the alliance between conservatives and liberals just meant that progress and chance and change and therefore non-conservation would just be slower. So, with communist you have fast progress, with liberal you you have slow progress. But in both cases conservatives lose and therefore conservatives should break up with liberals. This is also the claim by the way of national conservatives of the guy you debated with my in not Michael Malice uh the guy with a suit, Lex Friedman. >> Lex Friedman. And I debated him at the University of Texas, so both on video. Yeah. >> Okay, yeah, but the Friedman is more hours is it's it's my favorite one. How do we bring that change? We bring this change through aristopopulism. Now, aristopopulism comes from Greek aristos which is the best, populism the many. So, the many need a vanguard of those who truly can see the world and they have escaped somehow this alienation. And then this many will operate in the best interest of the of the sorry, the few will operate in the best interest of the many. And while doing this, they will drag upwards the many with them. Does it remind you any anyone any other ideology? Does it remind you for example Leninist vanguardism? Does it remind you Gramsci? Cuz this is exactly the argument. They are the few who know better and they will drag the many from their days and this is how we'll get from where we are to where we'll be. >> And where we will be is not materially better because material world doesn't matter. Uh but it's spiritually better. We'll just be happier. We'll have better communities. The children will all be playing outside. It'll be safe. There'll be no crime. It's some kind of utopia that's non that that a spiritual utopia. >> We'll see also the concrete proposals that he has, which is the scariest of all the things we've discussed. But before we get there, let me play devil's advocate. Actually, that's a an actual question. I'm not even playing devil's advocate. How is this form of vanguardism different from the vanguardism, let's say, of Francisco in Atlas Shrugged where he tries to literally raise the class consciousness of the producers? >> Well, I mean >> And give them that give them the words that they'll need for the time that they'll need them. >> Well, there's a certain truth to vanguardism in the sense that revolutions happen by minorities, not majorities. Um and and including revolutions that are positive, including the Founding Fathers. You could argue the Founding Fathers were the vanguards of the of the Enlightenment, right? And and they took the Enlightenment ideas and they went and put them into practice, into political practice, and they they brought a revolution. So, I I I don't think the concept of of the vanguard in and of itself is wrong. That is, we know the truth. Most of people in the world don't. And our job is to educate them and to help them see see what it is. The The The The The The question really is, you know, is is it a vanguard that views the people out there as some kind of collective mass that need to be led towards it or or or do you view the people out there as individuals who must be educated and must be you know and and and if you think about what Francisco's doing, he he's educating. He's teaching. Uh and he's teaching individuals. He's not even you know, he's not even talking to large groups. So, the whole idea is to to So, the idea that it takes a dedicated minority to change the world. If that's what vanguardism is, then that's true.