Episode 288 – RP Live Presents: Fiat Socialism with Carlos García Hernández

(very lightly edited, please excuse any transcription errors)

[00:00:44] Steve Grumbine: Hey folks, this is Steve with Macro and Cheese. We recently hosted a webinar with Carlos Garciá Hernández talking about his book Fiat Socialism. For this week’s podcast we’re bringing you the audio from the event. Here is RP Live with Carlos Garciá Hernández.

[00:01:03] Virginia Cotts: Welcome everyone. This is Real Progressives and today’s event is an RP Live, which is our semi informal webinar series with a guest expert and then a conversation, questions and answers. So, we are real progressives. We see ourselves at the intersection of MMT and class analysis. Some of us are socialists, some of us are socialist curious.

Some of us are old fashioned Marxists. I’m speaking for myself. But of the people who come to our events are well versed in MMT. Okay, I am going to introduce our guest. I just want to say that Carlos Garciá Hernández is the founder and director of Lola Books. It’s a publishing house that has introduced MMT to Spanish and German readers.

He’s joining us from Berlin today. He is the author of Fiat Socialism, Achieving the Goals of Socialism through Modern Monetary Theory. So that’s perfect for Real Progressives. This is exactly what we are focusing on. So you’re the perfect guest, Carlos. Oh, and Carlos, you should also tell them about the book that you’re about to publish. So anyway, welcome.

[00:02:22] Carlos Garciá Hernández: Well, thank you very much, Virginia and everybody in Real Progressive. For me, it’s huge pleasure and a huge honor to be with you. And I am very thankful. I really appreciate it very much. Yes, in Dola Books, we are presenting a new book written by Bill Mitchell and, um, Warren Mosler, called Modern Monetary Theory, the Excellent Adventure.

Today. I am very pleased , to introduce you to my book,  Fiat Socialism. I will try to share the presentation with you. I will try to do the presentation within 45 minutes and then I would love to answer any question that you asked me. This is the only slide that I will read is the longest one, but it’s kind of an experiment so bear with me a little bit because i’m gonna read it, the rest I will not read.

But I like to start my presentation with this slide, because it’s kind of a mental, experiment or a thought experiment. And, I would like to ask you directly, which one of these two ways of understanding socialism resonates with you. I think they are very different, and I would like you to think at least which one is your favorite. The first one says,

“I do not know if humanity will ever know communism. That is eschatological vision of Marx. What I know in any case is that socialism, the forced transition Marx spoke of is the “shit” as I proclaim in 1978 in Italy and Spain before audiences bewildered by the violence of my language. Thereto, I was telling a story. Socialism is a very wide river with a very dangerous crossing.

Very soon we will have an immense boat in the sand: that of the political and trade union organizations where everyone can get in. But to cross the whirlpools, a helmsman is necessary. The power of the state in the hands of the revolutionaries. And in the great ship, it is necessary that the class rule of the proletarians. reign over all the paid oarsmen, there is still the salary and private interest, otherwise it will capsize.

The rule must be of the proletariat. The immense ship is thrown into the water, and all along the way, the oarsmen must be watched over, demanding strict obedience from them, removing them from their post if they falter, and replacing them in time, even punishing them. But if that immense river of shit is finally crossed, then at infinity, there is the beach. The sun and the wind of a rising spring.

Everyone comes down. There is no more struggle between men and interest groups, since there is no more mercantile relations, but a profusion of flowers and fruits that everyone can pick for his delight. Espinosa’s, Joyful passions, and even Beethoven’s hidden to joy, then burst forth.”

This belongs to The Future Lasts Forever, a memoir written by, Louis Althusser. This is the first view of socialism that I would like to present you, but there is a second one that I think, uh, is very different.

And it says, “In the West, too, the ideals of human rights and democratic freedoms have taken a backseat. The social rights of citizens are under severe attack. The media hardly pay any attention to them or, in general, keep quiet about their violations. It has now become clear that these ideals, so inordinately trumpeted until a few years ago, are not the most important values of life.

But a secure job appropriate to one’s profession, housing, medical care, education, and instruction of children, personal security, all age and disability pensions, humane personal relations. Everything that was somehow customary in the Soviet Union of the pre Perestroika period.” This was written, in a book called The Demise of the Evil Empire by Alexander Zinoviev.

And, I would like to ask you to make this little thought experiment. Which one resonates with you more? The one written by Althusser or the one written by Sinoviel. I am not going to keep you on edge till the end of the presentation. I will tell you right now that, for fiat socialism, the vision that, uh, we adopt is the one exposed by Zinoviev. And not the one, written by Althusser. In the book, it is very clear since the beginning that this historical view of socialism based on historical laws, inexorable laws that predict the future, that tell us that there is only one possible future. And that we can know what that future will be because we are able to know what historical laws there are since the beginning of time. This is a vision that we reject.

When I wrote the book since the beginning, I make very clear that I don’t believe in historical loss. I think that the future is asked to be written. I think that the future is therefore not written yet.

But, what I make very clear is that the social rights and ideals and, like Zinoviev says, everything that was somehow customary in the Soviet Union, of the pre Perestroika period is the most important, thing in life. So once we have made that clear, maybe we can talk about the contents of, the book. The book is divided in three parts.

The first one is called, philosophers have here to only interpreted the world in various ways, which is more or less an interpretation of the socialist vision that Fiat socialism brings into the table. And the second one is more. Uh, what, the famous, 11th, thesis about Feuerbach, says the point is to change the word.

The point is to change the world. It’s a more practical reflection. And, it is more based on actions. So, it is divided in seven chapters. The third, part is called Euro del Endus Est, the Euro must be destroyed. Because I live in Germany, in the European Union, and of course, Modern Monetary Theory is absolutely incompatible with the inexistence of monetary sovereignty.

So, this third part, is, composed by my articles that I normally, write in Spanish and in German. And, uh, these articles, some of them are very important for the concept of fiat socialism. So I thought it was very important to put them into the book. and I always finish my articles with this sentence. Euro delendus est, the euro must be destroyed. Because the only way forward for socialism, in my opinion, is through monetary sovereignty.

Well, let’s start with the definition of fiat socialism. Fiat socialism is the achievement of the goals of socialism through Modern Monetary Theory. This is a definition that encompasses different aspects. First of all, we are talking about the goals of socialism, and we are talking about a method, Modern Monetary Theory.

When we say that there are no historical laws, what we are saying is that the most important thing is not the arriving point, it’s not the end point, it’s not that wonderful pitch that Althusser told us, where everything is wonderful and we are all angels. And we have destroyed capitalism, and we are in this Adanic state of nature, where we are just, yeah, angelic beings, and, uh, after a very, very hard period, we have made it to paradise.

That way of looking at history puts the essence of time and the essence of history at the end of a process. It is the end process. the end point that is important. For fiat socialism, the most important thing is the starting point. So, the goals of socialism are our starting point. So, the essence of history, or the essence of our political proposal, is not at the end of a process. It’s at the beginning.

It is the goals of socialism that matter. It is the access to the goals of socialism that are our starting point. Just like Finoviev said in his quote, the things that used to be customary in the Soviet Union before Perestroika. Who has access to what and under what conditions. That is socialism.

We have to define socialism. We will see that in other parts of the book, we have to define socialism based on what we can achieve, what do we have access to, and who has access to, and in what conditions. So that is our starting point, and that is the most important part. So the goals of socialism are at the beginning, not the end point and we also talk about method.

The method that I propose is Modern Monetary Theory. Modern Monetary Theory can be understood as a method to achieve full employment without inflation as we will see later on But that full employment without inflation is up to us to be used in one way or another Modern Monetary Theory is not a political system. It’s not a political regime. It is the implementation of that method that defines if we have a political regime that is on the left or on the right.

We can have full employment without inflation, but by no means have any socialist system. We can have full employment without inflation, but without having a hospital to go when we get sick, or without a school to learn how to read and write, or without a roof on our heads, that is by no means a socialist system.

But if we use that method of achieving, full employment without inflation, if we use that method, of achieving full employment without inflation for goals that are on the left and that belong to the socialist paradigm, then we are in a political regime or a political proposal that can be called socialism. And that is exactly what fiat socialism is.

Fiat socialism is the achievement of the goals of socialism through Modern Monetary Theory. Again, the goals at the beginning of our journey. So in order to explain this a little bit better, I referred to a professor, a philosopher, called a Stefan Yet, who said that Kant is not the solution, but there is no solution without Kant. I’m talking about Immanuel Kant.

In my opinion, one of the biggest mistakes that the Marxist and the communist movement has made is to adopt the cosmovision or the the schema of Hegel.

Hegel is precisely the philosopher who defended that there are historical laws. That the goal of the end point of history is the essence of history. He is the one that you can read, in between the lines when you read the quote of Althusser. Althusser, when he says that socialism is that wonderful paradise at the end of the rainbow and that wonderful beach, what he’s talking about is a cosmovision based on the teachings of Hegel.

Hegel is the one who defended the existence of historical laws, And the one who said that we can also know what those historical laws are, so we can start a process in order to fulfill those historical laws on the theater of history in order to achieve our destiny, you know. And I reject that vision.

So I opt for another vision, which is the vision of Kant. I do that with a lot of problems. Because, as I explain in the book, I have to adapt the Kantian schema to economics. Kant didn’t think about economics when he wrote his books. He was thinking about ethics, and he was thinking about natural science, physics, chemistry, things like that. He was not thinking about economics.

Actually, a way to look at neoliberalism is precisely the attempt to adapt the schema of Kant to economics. So I have to reject that proposal coming from the Kantian right, and I transform it in order to be able to present my proposal. What I keep from Kant is this schema in four different parts, reference, general principle, rule, and case.

The reference, meaning the goals, meaning what is important, what we want to achieve is at the beginning. The first step is the reference. That is what we want to achieve. And that is our starting point. Then we go to a general principle. Then we go to a rule. And then we go to a case. And I respect this schema. And I adapt it to fiat socialism where the reference are the goals of socialism, our starting point. Then our general principle is Modern Monetary Theory.

Then as a rule, I adopt Kalecki’s profit equation. Rule and equation are similar concepts. And, as a practical case, I talk about the macroeconomic policies of the state. In the case of the book, I talk about Spain. Because I am from Spain and it’s the practical case that I know better. But, of course, the proposal of fiat socialism is not exclusive about Spain at all, so , every country and every socialist forces should do this exercise with their own country.

But in the case of the book, I had to choose a case and I chose Spain. So this is more or less the schema that I follow. A reference, the goals of socialism, modern monetary theory as a general principle, Kalecki’s profit equation as a rule, and macroeconomic policies of the state as a practical case that in the book is Spain.

So what are the goals of socialism? So what are our starting point. Some people find this a little bit contradictory, but it is really not. The goals at the beginning. Well, when we think of a goal, we think of the end point. Well, that’s the point. The goals are the beginning of our proposal.

So as the goals of socialism, I adopt what Stuart Chase said in his book written in 1942 called The Road We Are Traveling. What he said in that book is that there are five goals of every rational government. Not of every socialist or of every communist government. He said that these goals are the goals of any rational government.

And I take these five points that Stuart Chase points out as the five rational goals of every government and I rebrand them as the goals of socialism. Those five goals are full employment. Here I talk about job guarantees that are proposed by Modern Monetary Theory, especially through the work of Bill Mitchell.

Full and prudent use of material resources. Here I talk about the Green New Deal, and I also talk about what in my opinion is the only way forward, which is nuclear energy based on thorium. Guarantee of five essentials to every citizen, food, housing, clothing, health services, and education.

And number four would be social security. Social security, in the form of pensions and allowances and benefits for the people that are not working anymore or are sick or that are temporary unemployed.

And, the last point are labor standards. As labor standards, I mentioned the function of the trade unions. For me, the trade unions, which, uh, is a field that I know very well, it’s very important. So without the trade unions, there is no possible proposal of socialism.

So the labor standards should include minimum wages, maximum hours, etcetera. But it should adopt the active enrollment of trade unions. I would like to say something about full employment, because, probably this is the most difficult point here, or at least the point that is being discussed in the open more often. When I talk about full employment, I talk about the job guarantee based on employment buffer stocks, like Bill Mitchell proposed the job guarantee.

Many things have been written about the job guarantee. But there are things that, in my opinion, and I hope that the book makes it clear, there are many aspects of the job guarantee that, in my opinion, are being a little bit misunderstood. Why do I say this? Because the way to measure the success of the job guarantee, is by the small size of the job guarantee.

In other words, the smaller the job guarantee is, the more successful it is. Why? Because the job guarantee is, uh, an employment of last resource that pays the workers the minimum wage. So we want as few workers on the job guarantee as possible. The job guarantee, of course, will, grow bigger in times off, crisis when there is an economic crisis and people lose their jobs momentarily. They will have to go to the job guarantee in order to have an income.

But as soon as the economy recovers, they will leave the job guarantee and they will work for the private sector or the permanent public sector. So what we want is to keep investment always high enough in order to assure full employment and the job guarantee is the employer of last resource. So the smaller, the better.

We cannot, for example, confuse the job guarantee with the Green New Deal. We can propose a green new deal that has a job program, that is fine. But that is not the job guarantee. If we have workers that work in industries that are not sustainable. We don’t want those workers to stop working for those unsustainable industries and put them in the junkyard. We don’t want that.

We want to put them in a Green New Deal where they make more or less the same money they made in the other industries. So we cannot use the job guarantee in order to pay people less. No. This is something very important that I hope I make clear in the book. I have read books and I have read papers where there is a confusion there, you know, the smaller the job guarantee the more successful the job guarantees is.

I take these five goals and I re brand them as the goals of socialism. What is socialism? Socialism is a system that guarantees to everybody the access to these five points, not subjected to debt. People will not have to go into debt in order to have access to these five goals. And that is what I call socialism. Every economic period will have these five points as an endogenous part of that economic cycle.

We have other endogenous variables, for example, we have a law that says that everybody has to go to school. Well, that is an endogenous factor of the economic cycle. It doesn’t matter how bad the economic crisis is, every child has the right to go to school. Well, the same thing we do with these five things. It’s not only going to school, it is the access of everybody to these five goals without being subjected to debt. That is what I call socialism..

Then we go to the method. The method of fiat socialism is Modern Monetary Theory. Modern Monetary Theory is a method to achieve full employment without inflation. But it is also an explanation of how the monetary production economies work, all of them, since the beginning of the monetary production economies.

And, probably we have to go back to the origins of Neolithic, you know? when we stepped out of Paleolithic times and we got into Neolithic times. There is a wonderful book by Randall Wray called Money for Beginners, where he explains this. Money for Beginners

Well, Modern Monetary Theory, in my opinion, has two aspects. One is a descriptive, aspect, and the other one is a prescriptive aspect. In the descriptive aspect, we find the state nature of money, and we find that the state holds the monopoly of issuing financial assets in the state’s unit of account. The state decides what unit of account it uses and the state can issue those financial assets in that unit of account. And he does it in a monopolistic way. Only the state can do that.

Number two is that taxes are what give value to money. That is something that Modern Monetary Theory always stresses. Taxes don’t pay for the current public spending. Taxes don’t pay for anything. Taxes actually destroy financial assets. Public spending creates money. Public spending creates financial assets, and taxes destroy those financial assets. They are just IOUs of tax debt that once is paid are destroyed. Those IOUs get destroyed, so that money is destroyed.

This fact makes the state money accepted in financial transactions, but not because money pays for the public spending, but because we don’t already want to pay taxes, we also want to keep that money for buying other things. And that money will always be accepted because it’s the money we need to pay taxes.

Number three is the state money as a means of supplying the state. The state cannot run out of its own IOUs. The state can go to the national market and acquire everything that is on sale in its own currency. That is the point of having a state. The state can create as many IOUs in its own unit of account in order to supply itself. You know, in order to function. It cannot run out of money.

So, everything that is on sale, it’s in its own currency, he can buy, including the unemployed labor force. That’s why the government decides what level of unemployment it wants in the economy. If we have monetary sovereignty and we decide that our level of unemployment is zero, we can do that by buying all the unemployed labor force by a minimum wage. And then we can have a job guarantee that brings the unemployed level to zero percent.

Number four is the endogeneity of money. The creation of money is determined by productive activity itself and by the need of money in the finance production, the need of money to finance production, contrary to monetarism. The central bank is not the one that controls the money supply, but it is the economic cycle. If the economic cycle is prosperous, the amount of money in circulation will be bigger than if we are in a crisis. But that is not controlled by the by the central bank.

And there is a second aspect, which is prescriptive. And there I make two distinctions, a monetary policy and a fiscal policy. For Modern Monetary Theory, the most important one is the fiscal policy. Monetary policy is secondary. Monetary policy tells us that the interest rate is fixed by the central bank. So the central bank decides what is the interest rate in every moment.

We also find that inflation is not a monetary phenomenon. That is something that also drive us away from Monetarism. Monetarists always say that it is the creation of money that brings up inflation, that inflation is a monetary phenomenon. Well, it’s not. All hyperinflations that we have experienced in history are related to real resources. And to the scarcity of real resources.

It is the scarcity of real resources that puts up the pressure and creates inflationary pressures. Inflation in practice is never, never a monetary phenomenon. Maybe we can find, very extreme cases, for example, with extremely high interest rates that we have in Argentina that precisely tell us that monetarism is wrong when they say that high interest rates drive down inflation. Argentina is precisely an example that high interest rates, in practice, brings up inflation.

So that’s why number three in this monetary policy is what we call ZIRP, Z I R P, Zero Interest Rate Policy. Modern Monetary Theory in general defends zero interest rate policy. But what Modern Monetary Theory also says is that much more important than this monetary policy are fiscal policies. Fiscal policies are the policies that really work. So MMT gives top priority to the role of this fiscal policy.

And we find that contrary to what many paleomarxists and neoliberals defend, the growth of the public spending is what produces the growth of production, not the other way around. It is not the growth of production that brings up the growth of public spending. It’s the growth in public spending what makes possible the growth of production. So the more public spending we have, the more production we have.

So we should adapt this spending in order to have enough production to fulfill the goal of full employment in all moments. And very important is that MMT defends a policy of floating exchange rates. Fixed exchange rates, or now some people talk about managed exchange rates, and things like that don’t guarantee the full economic sovereignty of the government. Only floating exchange rates guarantees monetary sovereignty.

So MMT defends floating exchange rates. And then we come to a very important part of the book which is dedicated to Kalecki. Kalecki is someone that is very important to our program of fiat socialism because of this equation which says that: net profits equals investment in fixed capital, plus capitalist consumption, plus public deficit, minus worker savings, plus the position of trade balance.

In the equation I have written public deficit in red because this is the aspect that Karl Marx doesn’t include in his work. In his work he only talks about the role played by workers and the owners of the means of production, the capitalists. So for him, it is the fight between the workers and the capitalists that explain everything. But here we find that there is another actor, which is the public deficit.

The public deficit being carried on, of course, by the government. So now we not only have two actors, we have three. We have the workers, we have the owners of the means of production, and we have the state. And we can see that the net profits in the economy is also affected by the public deficit. This is very important for the program of fiat socialism because it allows the democratic discussion to decide the size of the private sector.

It is depending on the public deficit and the public spending that the size of the public sector will be bigger or smaller. So we find that for example, Keynes came to a very similar conclusion. For Keynes, the most important thing was the creation of aggregate demand through public deficits and public spending, so we can get rid of the lack of investment.

And we have Kalecki who says that the main problem of the lack of aggregate demand is the inadequate levels of consumption among the working class, meaning that it is the public deficit, the public spending is what really decides the levels of consumption of the working class. But in that schema, we don’t have an equation that tell us that the existence of private investment means that the whole system is doomed to fail.

Here in that equation we have net profits and we have public deficits. So we don’t have a view of a system where the existence of net profits and private investment means that the whole system is doomed to fail. That is not the case of Marx. When Marx presents his theory, he only presents the fight between capitalists and workers. And his point of view is that if we allow the existence of capitalists, the contradictions within the system will only tend to grow.

And at the end, the whole system will collapse the way that feudalism collapsed in the Middle Ages, or the way that esclavism collapsed in the antiquity. Well, here, when we have three actors, we find that we can incorporate the public deficits and the public spending without getting rid of the net profits. Why is this important? Well, first of all, because we get rid of the historical law that I was talking at the beginning.

In reality, what Marx was trying to present us, and basically the third volume of Capital is dedicated to this, is a historical law based on the philosophy of Hegel that tells us that: if you allow the private enterprise, the whole system will collapse. And after that, we will get to a new system, the wonderful beach system that I’ll do some talk about, where we will have communism as a system without any kind of private enterprise that will bring humanity to the next evolutionary level.

So it is really historical law that bring us to that inexorable end. Well, here we have an equation and we have a system with Kalecki that brings us away from that historical law and also explains, by the way what history has show us. History has show us that the one that failed was the Soviet Union. And the capitalist system with private enterprise has not collapsed. Well, that makes us think that it is the public deficit, the one that allows the system with private enterprise to keep on existing.

So why is this important for the project of Fiat Socialism? Because there is another idea expressed by Kalecki that is very important, which is point number two. The workers should have the right to produce what they wish to produce. This is an idea that Kalecki was very fond of. And it looks like if we can decide the level or the size of the private sector through public spending and public deficits, we can also allow a mixed economy where the workers have a very easy way to decide what they want to produce.

And that in the words of Kalecki makes the identification of the workers much better or much bigger than in a system where they don’t have any say of what they produce. They have to produce what they are told to produce, but there are no mechanisms of mixed economies that allow them to decide what they want to produce. So that is another idea by Kalecki that I think is very important for fiat socialism.

And it also gives a solution to the problem of the realization of profits. The second volume of Capital proposes a problem that Marx is not able to answer which is the problem of the realization of profits. Where do profits come from? What Karl Marx proposes is this equation: capital V equals C plus V plus S, where capital V is the value of production, we know what that is, C is the cost and capital, V is the replacement of variable capital, what we know as wages, and S is the surplus value.

Well, we know where the surplus value comes from, it comes from the work of the workers. We know what the surplus value is. It is the amount the capital is keeps from what is being produced by the workers. But how do you explain where C comes from? C is the constant capital. The investment in technology. The investment in infrastructures. And all the big investments through history we have been seeing going on and you cannot really, explain where does it come from.

One of the main chapters of volume two of Capital, Karl Marx says that the capitalists cannot take out of the economic cycle what they have not put in before. Well, if that is the case, how do you explain that the spending in cost and capital is always growing? It’s not only always growing in sophistication. It is also growing in the amount of money that we spend on that. Let’s think about the amount of money spent on technology and high tech, nowadays.

Where does that money come from? If that money is only the money that the capitalists have put into the system before. It seems like there has to be a third actor that is able to invest in the economic cycle that pays for that ever increasing, and ever more expensive investment in cost and capital. And that is, of course, the government. The government can spend and does spend in its own currency as much as it wants, through history, in order to pay for that cost and capital.

So here, when we find the Kalecki profit equation, we also find a solution to the problem of the realization of profits. This problem of the realization of profits was studied by Vladimir Lenin in many occasions. And what I say in the book is that he really knew that it was the public spending, but he never got to the point of saying that clearly. Because he always knew, of course, that that public spending was also possible with the existence of private entrepreneurship. So he never said that directly. But what he said was this:

The central bank, “A single state bank, the biggest of the big, with branches in every rural district, in every factory, will constitute as much as nine tenths of the socialist apparatus. This will be countrywide bookkeeping, countrywide accounting of the production and distribution of goods. This will be, so to speak, something in the nature of the skeleton of socialist society. We can lay off and set in motion this state apparatus, which is not fully a state apparatus under capitalism, but which will be so with us under socialism, at one stroke by a single decree.”

Of course, he knows and he knew back then that for the socialist program, the central bank was fundamental. The central bank was absolutely necessary because the central bank was the entity that had monetary sovereignty. And what he basically did was to hire everybody. What the Central Bank of the Soviet Union did was to have a full employment policy that said that everybody had to work.

Everybody was going to be hired to work in the what he called the GOS plan, the planification plan of the Soviet economy. So the GOS plan planned the economy and the Central Bank paid everybody a salary to work for the Soviet industrialization.

Of course, the Soviets paid very little taxes. When I find people saying, I’m a Marxist and I like the Soviet Union, we have to pay socialism with the taxes of the rich. Lenin didn’t have rich people to tax.

He didn’t need the money of the rich people. He had the central bank of the Soviet Union. There he could spend as much money as he needed to hire everyone and to put in motion the Soviet economy. That’s how he paid for the industrialization of the Soviet Union and how Stalin paid for the space industry. And for the arms are for what Zinoviev calls customary benefits that the Soviet citizens used to receive.

The amount of taxes that the Soviet paid was very, very little. It didn’t pay for anything. It paid to preserve the value of the robot, but it didn’t pay for anything. It was the central bank. It was the role of the government that paid for all that. And Lenin knew perfectly well that this was also possible in a system with a private entrepreneurship.

But of course, he wanted the collapse of the capitalist system and that only in the Soviet Union, these things would be possible. Well, we find that we can allow the private entrepreneurship to exist and have full employment policy through the central bank. And that would allow workers to decide what they want to produce, in order to make bigger the identification of the workers with this social system.

Then we come to the last part of the book which is dedicated to Spain. And one of the main points of this chapter is the monetary sovereignty that we don’t have. Spain nowadays is a colony of Brussels where we have a deficit limit, we have a debt limit, and we absolutely not have monetary sovereignty. This is the main problem for the socialist transformation of the country.

Without monetary sovereignty, Modern Monetary Theory doesn’t make any sense. No monetary sovereignty, no MMT. So the first thing we have to do is to exit the euro and regain our monetary sovereignty. In the book, I talk about the plan that Warren Mosler presented in Madrid on September 15th, 2015, and he described his plan to regain monetary sovereignty in five points. He called it new peseta. Peseta was the old currency that we used to have in Spain.

I don’t like the name peseta, in the book I talk about the laborable or the peso, peso espanol or the duro. But we could call it nueva peseta or new peseta. And he said that the best way to regain the monetary sovereignty is to tax and spend a new peseta, no deposit conversion to sustain a firm and sustainable currency, full insurance for peseta and bank deposits, a permanent 0 percent risk free rate policy. And the Bank of Spain offers a full time transition job, job guarantee for anyone willing and able to work.

In the book I explained these five points in depth and I explained how we could regain our monetary sovereignty in the best possible way. And I also talk about the reindustrialization of Spain. So, the conclusions of the book are five. The first one is that the fundamental question of communism is not who owns the means of production, but who has access to what sorts of things and under what conditions. This is an idea that I take from the late David Graeber.

David Graeber in his great book, in depth, explains this idea and I think that this idea is correct. That is what he calls baseline communism. Fiat Socialism is a version of Graeber’s baseline communism, where the ownership of the means of production is not the main question of communism, but who has access to what sort of things and under what conditions. Of course, in the case of fiat socialism is the access to the five goals of socialism.

What is communism? And there I do quote Karl Marx saying that from each according to their abilities and to each according to their needs. This is the definition of communism that we really should use. And then I also say that the goals of socialism serve as a reference and a starting point, not as the end point of a historical law, which bring me closer to what in the first half of the 20th century was called Austro Marxism. This is what the Marxists in Austria used to defend.

Number four, I talk about that at most only one of these two laws can be correct since they are mutually exclusive. We can state them as follows. On one side, we have Marx’s law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. Which says that every economic system based on private ownership of the means of production is inevitably destined to collapse. This we can find in the section three of the third volume of capital.

And on the other hand, we have Mosler’s law, which says that there is no financial crisis deep enough that it cannot be overcome by means of increased public spending and or a decrease in the tax part. In the face of these two laws, Fiat socialism chooses Mosler’s law, and moreover, the validity of Mosler’s law is the reason why the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall is not fulfilled. So this is what my opinion is, and this is how I build fiat socialism.

And number five, I say that the size of the public and private sectors can and should be decided democratically. The principles of Modern Monetary Theory apply no matter how big or how small the private sector is. We can have a private sector composed only by families without private enterprise, the principles of Modern Monetary Theory apply. Or we can allow mixed economy where private enterprise is allowed. In the case of Spain, I think that is something that every country should decide.

Every country should decide if they want to have private enterprise or not. And in the case they want to have private enterprise in order to allow the workers to decide what they want to produce, then they should decide democratically how big they want that private enterprise to be. The principles of MMT apply no matter how big the private sector is.

The last section is a selection of articles. The first one that you will find in the book is called a practical exercise for the reconstruction of the left. And there I say that fiat socialism or the proposal of Fiat socialism can be resumed in this slide. We have to convert the following variables into endogenous variables of the economic cycle.

And then I talk about the five goals of socialism, job guarantee full and prudent use of natural resources, food, shelter, clothing, health services and education to everybody, social security in the form of pension subsidies, and guarantee of decent labor standards. They should be endogenous variables of the economic cycle.

And number two, we should allow the citizens to decide which variables should be endogenous or exogenous in the economic cycle by democratically deciding the extent of private sector participation in the economy. Because of course, there are many things that are not included in these five goals of socialism. I don’t talk about transportation. I don’t talk about communication. I don’t talk about many things.

Well, the citizens should have the possibility to decide democratically what variables they would like to make endogenous of the economic cycle. I don’t know. For example, access to free internet. We can do that, an endogenous variable of the economic cycle.

The most important idea is that the limit of the government is real resources. The economic financial resources will always be there if we have access to real resources. So it is the limitation of real resources tell us what we can or we cannot achieve. If we have the, material, physical, real resources to achieve something, we will always have the financial means to achieve it. So the citizens should decide democratically what variables should be endogenous or exogenous in the economic cycle. What services should be provided by the government and what services and goods should be provided by the private sector.

Okay, thank you very much. This is my book and I am very happy to listen to your questions.

[00:53:33] Virginia Cotts: Well, Carlos, thank you so much. And we already have 13 questions, which is a rarity. Usually we have to encourage people to ask questions. So this speaks to how interesting your material is.

[00:54:12] Carlos Garciá Hernández: thank you very much.

[00:54:12] Virginia Cotts: So let me start with, um, Commie John’s first question: the Macro N Cheese episode Carlos did recently was pretty awesome as they all are. Carlos, you mentioned Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky. Could you briefly give your take on them and their respective understandings and implementation goals of socialism in your opinion?

[00:54:39] Carlos Garciá Hernández: Well, I don’t even consider, Trotsky. I think that Trotsky was the biggest Hegelian of them all. He wrote, for example, that the New Deal in the United States was going to fail because Roosevelt was not going to be able to raise all the taxes to pay for it. So he really had no idea at all what he was talking about. But Stalin and Lenin understood what the central bank was.

So, uh, it was them, that used the central bank for what it has to be used for, which was the creation of the Soviet state. So that is, in my opinion, what makes Stalin and Lenin much more superior to Trotsky.

[00:55:24] Virginia Cotts: Okay, well, one of Cheryl’s questions is: In the US, people with disabilities lose federal benefits if they earn an income that surpasses a particular threshold because of their employment. The policies we have are screwing individuals from earning a livable salary and pursuing employment for personal fulfillment and self worth.

So what would jobs look like for folks who have disabilities and cannot work a standard job without accommodations under the federal job guarantee?

Well, of course, the job guarantee is for those who want and can work. If you cannot work because you are disabled, of course, you should receive a pension that allows you to live in a decent way.

And if you are able to work, but only in a specific conditions, of course the government should provide you those specific conditions, so you can fulfill your potentiality in a proper job.

Right. You know, I think we had a Macro N Cheese episode with I believe it was Scott Fullwiler, I might be wrong, but it was a guest whose wife has some condition that makes it hard for her to commute to have a full time job. And he was talking about all the different possibilities under a job guarantee. Working from home, different hours, all those possibilities. I mean, that’s the beautiful thing about the job guarantee. It can be designed however the society feels it needs to be designed. As my understanding of it is there’s not a one size fits all job guarantee.

[00:57:13] Carlos Garciá Hernández: And it should welcome everybody. You know, it should make everybody feel home. I mean, uh we are all necessary with our capacities and our failures and our strong points and weak points. In this society, nobody is too much or too many. We are all welcome, and we all have a room for every one of us in this society, and the job guarantee should provide that room.

[00:57:40] Virginia Cotts: Right, great. Okay, Bakari, ask your question.

[00:57:46] Bakari: Oh, thank you so much. And thank you for Carlos being here to give a presentation. I read your book last year, it was really great to read that. I would just ask what is your view of China? It seems to have a mixed market and they still say that they’re on the road to socialism. You know, and then they have the comments of the Chinese Communist Party, but I just wonder what is your view of China’s economy and its economic growth over the last several decades? Thanks.

[00:58:14] Carlos Garciá Hernández: Thank you. Well, there are many articles in the third part of the book dedicated to China. China, has understood that precisely the essence of communism is not the ownership of the means of production. The essence of communism is that politics should always have the upper hand over economy.

Politics should always decide over the economic powers. So you can have, like in China, private entrepreneurship, and it has created huge amounts of growth. And I think that the mixed economy that we have in China is the way to go. They have found an equilibrium between economics and politics that is being extremely productive.

The only thing that I criticize in the book is that the five goals of communism, or the five goals of socialism, are unfortunately not guaranteed for everybody in China. I think that the Communist Party should provide access to the five goals of socialism to everybody. That is the only critique I do to the economic system in China. But I think that the mixed economy that they have put in place is the way to go.

[00:59:32] Bakari: Thanks. Great. Thank you.

[00:59:36] Virginia Cotts: Okay, Bob Lior has two questions I’m going to read them both because I think they’re kind of connected. Will the state own the means of production in fiat socialism? And also, he says, I think a bit more clarity is needed on how things get produced in this economy. Would you still largely rely on private enterprise, but use the central bank to allocate resources via its monopoly on credit?

[01:00:07] Carlos Garciá Hernández: It depends off what people decides. The size off the private sector will be different in different countries. If in a country the population wants that the government provides all the goods and services, then there will be no private enterprise. If they want the private sector to provide a lot of goods and services, because that’s their culture, they should also be allowed democratically to have such a system.

So every society should decide democratically. the size of the private sector. The main point, the most important thing is that everybody has access to the five goals of socials.

[01:00:54] Virginia Cotts: Oh, good. That brings us to another question. Can somebody unmute Paul, please? Hi, Paul, go ahead.

[01:01:03] Paul: Hey, so I heard your talk using the phrase access to certain social services, goods or whatnot, health care, education, housing, all the things that we require as human beings to have a a full healthy life. But that phrase is often, I don’t know, misplaced with a right to, or confused with, in some cases I think, and I’m wondering if you could explicate the differences that you might see between access and, you know,, full right to.

Because in the United States, often we have even progressives, Democrats talk about, Barack Obama Obamacare was access to healthcare. And sure, you have access to buy it. But the question is ultimately affordability. You know, if it’s a 300 insurance plan a month, then you know that it’s available to everyone, but you have to be able to pay for it.

As opposed to universal health care that’s provided at no cost at the point of service. Universal available to all but doesn’t actually cost you. So I’m wondering if you could speak to that, please.

[01:02:17] Carlos Garciá Hernández: Yes, thank you. Uh, what I mean is the access the universal access to those five points without being subjected to debt. So people should have access to this without going into debt. Everybody should have access to this. In the case of the United States, I, Well, I don’t study the case of the United States in the book. I study the case of Spain.

But I guess that the way to go in the United States would be to lower down, the age of Medicare from 65 to 0. That would be the way to go to put 65 and then go to 0. Then you will see that the private system you have in place is extremely ineffective is extremely expensive, and it would be much better and much cheaper if you had a public system, but that is something that it should be up to you to decide, to the public workers, to the American workers.

But what I would do is to low down, tomorrow, Medicare from 65 to 0, and then present the public a way to nationalize the health system in the United States. My proposal for Spain would mean that most of the economy would be public. I would nationalize big chunks of the economy. Of course, I would only have a public health system, like we used to have.

And for example energy the energy sector should be public in spain, but I wouldn’t get rid of all private enterprise. I am the owner of Lola Books, uh, which is a publishing house that I own with my wife. And, I don’t think that, having that in the hands of the public sector would be that important. Much more important is that everybody has access to healthcare and energy and all those kinds of things. So that is what I would do.

[01:04:27] Virginia Cotts: Okay, um, Liano, yeah, would you unmute yourself, please?

[01:04:30] Liano: Yeah, okay, can you hear me?

Yes. Thank you. Yeah.

First of all, thank you. This has been a really great presentation. I really like pretty much everything that I heard here. What I’m really concerned about is that your vision of socialism includes economic issues, but not so much power relationships. Economics is one kind of power relationship, but there are other kinds of power relationships.

And I’m concerned that, you know, it’s one thing to have a private sector, it’s another thing to have a private sector with companies where there’s a few people making all the decisions and other people having to live with those decisions, including their differentiation between what they’re paying their laborers and how much they’re receiving for that labor.

And there’s another conversation about what you said about profit before that I think would be interesting. But I’m curious would you consider past a certain size that you would have to be a worker co op or something like that to remain private or some kind of way of ameliorating the problem of some capitalists gaining so much wealth that they start to buy the political system.

[01:05:41] Carlos Garciá Hernández: Yeah, thanks. That is a huge problem. That is probably the main problem. What I present in the book is the ideal system that I would like to present. I would tell you right now, if I had a, political party in Spain that would win the elections democratically tomorrow, and would try to put forward a program based on fiat socialism, they would kill me tomorrow. I know that. Bernie Sanders, the things that they did to him. Look what they did with the coup d’etat in Ukraine. The European Union would never allow this. So this really has to be a democratic revolutionary movement. It wouldn’t be enough to have 50 percent of the votes plus one, because then the real powers would make this impossible.

This has to be a really massive movement. Because, for example, take into consideration the job guarantee, what we are saying with the job guarantee is that the level of unemployment is taking away from the private companies, put in the public sector. So the public sector takes away huge amounts of power that the private sector has nowadays.

Nowadays, the level of unemployment depends on how much the private sector wants to hire. Well, no, not anymore. What we are going to do is to put that power in the hands of the government, in the hands of the people, and not only that, through the job guarantee, we will make sure that the employers that don’t pay at least as good as the job guarantee will disappear. If you pay less or you have worse conditions than in the job guarantee, nobody will work for you.

That takes away from the private sector huge amounts of power. And to think that the capitalist forces, especially in this European Union that we have, and especially in NATO, and especially looking at what the United States is doing around the world, it’s going to happen with peaceful means, it’s illusory. That’s why I also in the book, when I talk about Spain. I talk about Spain leaving the European Union. The European Union is a horrible thing.

We have to get rid of our king. We have to have a democratic republic. We have to leave NATO immediately, and we should join BRICS. BRICS is different. In BRICS, the monetary sovereignty of the members is welcome. And places like China, Russia, and the rest of BRICS, things are different. But to think that this kind of transformation is going to be something that is going to be accepted. If you win by the 50 percent plus one votes, It’s illusory.

This has to put behind this idea massive amounts of people, so the capitalist forces will not be able to stop it.

So let me, let me just say one thing about what you just said. I completely agree with

what you’re talking about, but I would add that right now I’m dealing with this a lot. We really have to get people to understand what democracy really means because we’ve been told that we’ve been told an awful lot of lies about it. And there’s a lot of perceptions of things that people think are democratic that are just not. But anyway, thank you very much. Really appreciate your thoughts.

[01:09:14] Virginia Cotts: Thank you. And we actually have a question or two about democracy coming up soon.

Flo Schad, who’s in Canada, and very active in a socialist organization there and in Real Progressives: If a job guarantee were instituted today, do you think the majority of firms would be able to compete with a government’s living wage? I could see a lot of over leveraged firms or small businesses closing shop, whereas the monopolies would be forced to compete. Can you comment on the dynamics of private employers in Western economies today and what impact a job guarantee would have in the near term and what that says about our societies?

I love that these questions are all kind of related. Yeah, go ahead, Carlos.

[01:10:08] Carlos Garciá Hernández: Well what the private employers should understand is that if you cannot pay a decent salary and decent conditions for your workers, you shouldn’t be an employer. End of the discussion. If you are going to have a business, you have to be able to provide to your workers with good payment and decent conditions. If you are not able to do that, then you shouldn’t be an employer. That’s the end of the story.

And if you put in place a job guarantee, nobody will work for you because everybody would prefer to go to the job guarantee. And I think that this is something that the private and entrepreneurs that they are like Godlike now. They should understand if you are not able to provide decent labor, you shouldn’t be an entrepreneur, period.

[01:11:00] Virginia Cotts: Well, and Carlos, isn’t this also something where, I think, the ideal image of a bank, of the central bank could come into play. So, if I have a small company that the state deems as responsible, a good idea perhaps I could borrow money from the state to build up my company, pay the workers a decent wage, etc, etc. Is that something that could be considered?

[01:11:32] Carlos Garciá Hernández: Well, in the book when I talk about Spain, the practical case that I studied, I say that if we are going to allow private companies. We should also allow private banking, because I don’t think that one of the functions of public banking, meaning the central bank, should be to finance private companies. In Spain, we have, not only in Spain, in Germany too, in the whole European Union, we have horrible problems with corruption.

And I don’t even want to think if the public banking had to finance private companies what would happen. But I also say that allowing private banking should be done extremely, extremely cautiously. I talk in that chapter about Bernie Sanders, when he said that the assets of the private banks should never be bigger than 2 percent of the GDP. I think that is a very, very intelligent proposal.

I talk about Randall Wray when he talked about the three S’s: safe, small, and simple.

[01:12:44] Virginia Cotts: Wait, safe, small, and simple, you said?

[01:12:48] Carlos Garciá Hernández: Yeah, that is the three S’s. For example, in the case of Spain, almost all of the banks, which in Spain we have a huge concentration of banks. The 10th biggest banks should be divided in small pieces. So, there shouldn’t be a private bank that should be too big to fail. All the banks should be very, very small, and we should have a lot of private banks, and extremely conditioned.

I talk about the work of Warren Mosler and the proposals that he provides to the banking system. He basically says that the banks cannot do anything but eight things which are very basic and very business orientated. And don’t allow the banks to take part in any speculative activity. They should only focus on keeping credit going in the society. And when they are bigger than 2% according to Bernie Sanders, they should be divided in a smaller box.

So, I think that, or at least in the case of Spain, again, this is a very flexible proposal. Every country should decide. But in the case of Spain, I think if we are going to have private companies, we should also have private banking, but extremely, extremely conditioned, and small banks, safe, and extremely watched by the government.

[01:14:16] Virginia Cotts: Well, I’ve got to tell you, Carlos, I have a problem with that. There’s something about allowing the non productive class, the rentier class, ownership of a bank. I think banks should be non profit and state controlled, but maybe, you know, I told you earlier, I’m an old fashioned Marxist. I get a little dogmatic about those things.

[01:14:41] Carlos Garciá Hernández: I don’t have a problem with that, but in that case, I think that there shouldn’t be a private entrepreneurship. In that case, I think that the means of production should be all public. If there is only public banking, I think there should only be public enterprise.

[01:15:00] Virginia Cotts: Well, can you go into that a little more? Why? What’s wrong with the state? Don’t they do that in China?

[01:15:05] Carlos Garciá Hernández: No, no. In China, they have private banking. They have way too big private banking. I think that is one of the problems. And, they allow private banking and private enterprise. I don’t like that. I think that that is very dysfunctional at the end of the day. I think that is very prone to corruption. And I think that if you only have private banking you should only have a public enterprise if you allow private enterprise I think that private banking should also be allowed because I don’t believe that One of the roles of the public banking should be financing private, for profit enterprises.

[01:15:48] Virginia Cotts: Excuse me, I haven’t studied this, but is financing the same as providing loans for?

[01:15:55] Carlos Garciá Hernández: Yes.

[01:15:56] Virginia Cotts: Oh, okay. Yeah, I still, I just don’t, I’m not sure I agree with you, but I need to think about it more, but thank you. Oh, this is food for thought.

Okay. Our next question, Mark Fabian, go ahead.

[01:16:14] Mark Fabian: Hey, Carlos, thanks for being here, and I think Randy also said that banks should be boring.

[01:16:20] Carlos Garciá Hernández: I think that was said by Warren Mosler, but yeah, it should be very boring. Focus on borrowing and things like that.

[01:16:28] Mark Fabian: Absolutely. Getting to this democracy conversation. When you’re talking about democracy, you know, in the United States, Everybody talks about democracy, but we have none in this country.

We have a representational democracy where we think we’re having a say in things by voting, but yet the representatives, every time we ask for them to address our needs and concerns, if it doesn’t serve capital, then they stick their fingers in their ear and ignore us. So when you’re talking about, democracy, is it more of a participatory democracy rather than a representational democracy?

[01:17:18] Carlos Garciá Hernández: Well, in any case, I think that what you have to do is to unite. Yes. You have to unite. And you have to know, who is who. I think that it is obvious that the dark powers of the economy and of the system will try to do anything to stop you. But , the bad guys always win when they are more than the good guys. So the good guys have to be in the majority that has to be the way to go.

So the working class not only in the United States, everybody in the world has to unite, has to have a program, has to have a way to go, has to have very clear path of what they want to have, and how they want to have it. And once they have that, they have to unite and fight and fight and fight and fight back, because you are going to have to fight back.

[01:18:14] Mark Fabian: Well, you know, I’m, old, so I’m looking to see if there is any path towards fiat socialism. Has this book gotten you more exposure and getting more people in Spain on your side?

[01:18:29] Carlos Garciá Hernández: Well, It is very difficult to get the message of Modern Monetary Theory in the, main sphere. Most of the economics taught in the universities are neoclassical, not only in Spain, but also everywhere else. And, unfortunately, I think that the left has not understood that the appliance of socialism and Modern Monetary Theory is a field that is extraordinarily fruitful.

I think that it’s a mine that we have not exploded yet. I think that that is one of the main objectives I have with this book, that, the mixture, if you want to call it that way, of socialism and Modern Monetary Theory is something that we still have to explore because I think is, would open up new roads that have not been crossed yet and could be extremely important.

I don’t mean that to say it’s the panacea. I mean, of course, there will be shortcomings and we cannot pretend to have a perfect system, but I think it would at least present a much better alternative to what we have now.

[01:19:49] Mark Fabian: I agree. We fight this fight every day, and it’s disappointing to see people that consider themselves progressives and activists who are defending the economics that are oppressing them and have MMTers accused of supporting capitalism. It’s very confusing.

[01:20:12] Carlos Garciá Hernández: Oh yeah. That happens every day. I mean, it happens to me many times, Again, as long as the left still thinks that they need the money of the rich people in order to spend, that is a loser.

Of course, we have to raise the taxes on rich people and lowering the taxes to poor people, but not in order to be able to spend. Which by the way, is an idea brought up by Thatcher. Thatcher said there is no public money, there is only taxpayer money. As long as they don’t abandon that idea, which is reactionary and neoliberal, there is no hope.

[01:20:48] Virginia Cotts: Thank you.

Uh, Peter, um, please unmute yourself and ask your question.

[01:20:53] Peter: Well, my question, is is there any possibility for socialism, and or MMT with or without, but without a broad coalition or a broad vision supported by Democratic majority seems to me that this country, especially the United States, in my view here in Southern California, people are just clueless. They don’t care.

[01:21:17] Carlos Garciá Hernández: What I think, it’s a very bad idea is to impose socialism to people who don’t want it One of the main problems that I find in the historic loss of Marxism based on Hegel is that they imposed socialism in places where the socialist forces were in the extraordinary minority.

We are seeing it in the Baltic states right now. The Baltic states in Europe are in the hands of neo Nazis. The society in Poland, for example, is in the hands of extreme reactionary forces. And it has been this way now, it was in the Thirties. And in the ’20s, and in the ’40s, and in the ’50s. But, the Bolsheviks thought this was not a problem. Don’t worry about it. Don’t worry about it.

Because capitalism is about to fail. Capitalism is about to collapse. And once capitalism collapses, not only in Europe, in the United States, and everyone, and everywhere else, also these reactionary people are going to embrace socialism, and we will be the only alternative. How is it paying out now? How is it paying out now?

Where we have the banderistas taking power, seizing power in Ukraine. Where have they been in the Soviet Union? These people, most of them, were raised in the Soviet Union. But look what is happening in Poland. Look what is happening in the Baltic States. Reactionary governments, bought by the majority of people. So imposing socialism or socialist measures. In places where you don’t have the majority. I think it’s always a very bad idea.

[01:23:07] Virginia Cotts: Thank you. Wait a minute. Somebody has their hand up. Hold on. Steve, go ahead.

[01:23:16] Steve Grumbine: Yeah. Hey Carlos, I really appreciate you coming and joining us today and I appreciate everyone’s questions.

Look I’m pretty much a militant on this issue when it comes to democracy right now. And I have no tolerance for anyone that doesn’t fully acknowledge the capture Of our democratic process. I have no sympathies for them. That’s still dream a dream and believe in it. I have no sympathies for those who sell it as if we have access and agency to it.

I feel like that lie is so pervasive and so overpowering that any kind of progress is lost because truly unremarkable people buy in and think they can still vote for whatever it is they think they’re voting for. I mean, Biden needs a bib to wipe the drool off his chin right now. And he’s funding genocide and people that support and are afraid of Trump.

They don’t even care about the children being slaughtered arms lane. On the ground, buried under rubble, people walk and they don’t even talk about it. They ignore it as if it’s not happening. And that is disgraceful. There’s just like zero salvation for a person that ignores genocide, in my opinion. And within that space, it tells me something very powerful.

The manufacturing of consent through the media that is owned by five major corporations, the channels of propaganda, through the parties and the stranglehold they have over the electoral college in the United States and the stranglehold they have on people’s minds. I mean, people say, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I know about the genocide and all that stuff, but what do you want Trump? And it’s like, did I ever say anything about wanting Trump? You horrible person. I didn’t say anything about wanting Trump. You horrible person. I said that this man that’s currently in office is literally funding the erasure of an entire people.

And it doesn’t matter whether it’s babies, children, people in hospitals, doesn’t matter who it is or what it is. So to me, you have to understand the powerful nature of propaganda and the pathetic nature of the unsophisticated mind that allows that. The terrifically smooth brain that just ignores genocide.

And when you talk about allowing people to decide and stuff like that, it’s kind of like if we went into Stockholm, Sweden, when those people were captured you know, held hostage and they began sympathizing with the people that had kidnapped them. Stockholm syndrome. This is what you see. People literally making excuses.

Well, you know, Trump would certainly kill him too. What are you talking about? Of course he would. I didn’t say he would not. Words have meaning, folks. So when you talk about these things, I think there’s a bit of reality that we have to stare in the eye. I think this is where some of the incredulousness and some of the pushback comes from.

Is that we are not at a stage right now, with the right wing and in particular in the U. S. And even really quite frankly around the world, is more ready to fight than the left is. And then there’s this weird centrist group that wants to maintain what is. But that right wing, the thing about the right wing is many of them are working class people that just don’t understand Fiat socially.

They don’t understand MMT. They don’t understand a lot of things. And because we’re all being lied to, conspiracies, hit them differently, they, they accept them. You know, I have a hard time looking at this and hearing the people that ignored you. I mean, think of this as a case study and incompetence as a human being.

To ignore a genocide tells you there’s got to be something fundamentally even worse going on underneath that’s making their brains so defective that they can’t see a genocide as a genocide. So when we talk about these democratic institutions, we talk about being able to do these things. I’m a big transition guy.

I am an organizational change manager minded person. I think about what it takes for people to make change, and if your idea of the world is just, what do you want Trump, I’ll vote for a genocidal maniac that’s drooling. He is a good man. He’s the better man. He’s whatever weird shit people say perversion, disgusting.

We are so far removed from any form of democracy that would allow us to do the things that you’re suggesting right now. It tells me there’s a gap between what you’re saying and how we get to the point where we could do such a thing. Like we’re all obviously trying our best to educate about modern monetary theory.

And you can see the Bernie movement is completely resistant to it. Nina Turner is as resistant to it as you can get. TYT is about as much of an abomination as you can find. There’s just literally layer upon layer upon layer of idiocy. To cut through and I don’t think these people don’t have a cognitive ability to think. I think that they have been abused like a Prisoner like like in a cult where they have been lied to so much that all they can think of is what do you want?

Trump just pathetic revolting And you’re like, I didn’t say anything about Trump. Well, you know, it’s a duopoly, Steve. If you don’t vote for Biden, you’re going to get Trump. Well, guess what? There’s enough people out there that do care about genocide. So Biden’s not getting elected no matter what.

So I don’t know if I’m making my point well enough to, for you to interject Carlos, but I, feel like there’s a, Delta between where we start thinking about. A democratic version of voting for Fiat socialism and where we are today. And I don’t see a good outcome. I don’t see an electoral way to do that. Too many bad people will say, what do you want? Trump the incompetence is beyond anything I’ve ever experienced in my life.

[01:29:45] Carlos Garciá Hernández: But Steve, those people are not going to support your policies either. Those people that say those kind of things, who by the way, unfortunately, are the majority, they are not going to accept your policies that you and me, and the people who are in this webinar would like. If you impose those things on them, you are going to have them working since day one to take you down. That is what happened in Eastern Europe after the Second World War.

People, you’re talking about Israel and Palestine, and I agree with you one hundred and fifty percent. But that’s why Putin didn’t have any kind of remote intentions of going into Ukraine, even though there was a genocide against the people who opposed the Maidan coup.

The Maidan coup in 2014 started a genocide in Donbas, in front of our eyes. And we have the bureaucrats from the European Union going there and say, yes, go with the coup, and we will support your coup, and we will support you with neo-Nazi. And we will see money we will give you arms.

And if you impose those kind of despicable people. your policies that I fully agree with and I would like to to apply myself, what do you think they are going to do with them? They are going to fight against you since day one. So my proposal is pluriparty distinction. I think we shouldn’t go for a one party solution. I think we cannot impose these kind of things. I think that imposing any kind of economic system implies the collapse of that system in the long term. I think that was the problem of the Bolsheviks.

I think that they should have never imposed that kind of society in Eastern Europe. Now, the level of hatred in East, Europe to anything that remotely smells to socialism is huge. You cannot talk about socialism to a Polish guy. Of course there are Polish people who are socialists, but to a normal Polish guy. You cannot talk about socialism to a Western Ukrainian.

You cannot talk about socialism in the Baltic republics. These people would hate you. These people would kill you. If you talk to them about that, and that is what you get when you impose things on people that they don’t want. The way to go is to have patience. Chinese people are very patient.

I think we should have more than one party. I think everybody should vote in free elections. Whatever they want. But what we cannot do is to give up. I think that things have always been very difficult I think that our position right now It’s not more difficult than the positions that the bolsheviks were in 1917. I think even the 1917 was more difficult than our position right now.

Now we have technology now we have platforms like yours we have to keep on going We cannot stop now. We have to keep on going, keep on organizing, uh, keep on working until we get our opportunity. And our opportunity will come.

Uh, the BRICS are there. China is there. Russia is there. Lula is there. Things are happening in India. things are happening in Africa. That is the way we have to go. There are no shortcomings. There are no shortcomings. Imposing any economic system, no matter how wonderful that economic system is, in people who don’t want it, only produces the opposite effect that you pretend. In that sense, fiat socialism is a proposal of pluripartistic nature. And I don’t believe in one, , uh, party policy.

[01:33:48] Virginia Cotts: Thank you. Thank you, Steve. Thank you, Carlos.

Now, Carlos, I know it’s very late where you are in Berlin. And so I apologize to the people who still have questions. Everybody who had a question got to ask at least one. So we didn’t get to revisit them. But, you know, for us living in the heart of the empire, where so many resources have been spent teaching us to be ignorant, you know, the ignorance that Steve is talking about. Teaching us to, not understand our class interests, confusing us about the understanding of class, even.

Very few people in the United States understand that they are working class because they have, you know, certain material benefits. But I also can’t help but believe that there are, I know that there are people out there. who are ready to resist. They just need the information, they’re open to learning, they know something’s wrong. And those are our tribe, those are the people we have to keep trying to reach and keep trying to educate as we educate ourselves. That’s my two cents.

[01:35:06] Carlos Garciá Hernández: Well, thank you very much for everything. It has been a huge pleasure. I would like to conclude saying that one of the main points I make in the book is that the transition to socialism shouldn’t be a traumatic one, if possible.

And when people talk about the transition, think about the Spanish Civil War which was horrible. I mean, socialism is happiness, and socialism is freedom. And socialism is making people live better. It’s not a traumatic thing, it’s not a traumatic event, it’s not, punishment or anything like that.

We have to unite. That is the main point. If we unite with an economic program, with economic proposals. Sooner or later, if we are organized enough, we will have our chance. We have to be ready.

[01:36:00] Virginia Cotts: Thank you, Carlos. Carlos, can you tell people how to follow you on social media, how to find your work?

[01:36:07] Carlos Garciá Hernández: Well, my book is published in lolabooks. eu, it’s called Fiat Socialism, and you can also find me on Twitter at Carlos underscore G underscore H underscore. Lola Books also has a Twitter account, and our webpage is, uh, Lola books dot eu.

There you will have all the information about the book. That is available everywhere. Also in, uh, electronic format. And I thank you very much, uh, for this wonderful discussion.

Okay. Well, thanks so much. Have a good night’s sleep. You’ve certainly earned it. I want to thank everyone for coming. And good night.