Episode 296 – Caste, Class and the Capital Order with Charles Derber and Yale Magrass

[00:00:00] Steven Grumbine: All right, folks, this is Steve with Macro N Cheese. Today’s guests, one of them has been here before; the other one is brand new. But these guys have written a book and it’s a book that’s more of a conversation. It’s exciting. A conversation that I’m looking forward to discussing. And the book itself, before we even get to our guests is called Who Owns Democracy?

And the subtitle to that is The Real Deep State and the Struggle Over Class and Caste in America. And this book, right here, is going to be the subject of our conversation with our first guest, Yale Magrass. He’s a Chancellor’s Professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. He is the author, co-author, of nine books. Most co-authored with Charles Derber, who is our other guest and has been here before, and 80 articles. His books include Bully Nation, Glorious Causes, and Capitalism, Should You Buy It.

And my other guest, Charles Derber, professor of sociology at Boston College, is the author of 28 books, including The Wilding of America, The Pursuit of Attention, Sociopathic Society, Corporation Nation, People Before Profit, Dying for Capitalism, which is the book we covered last time, and Greed to Green and others.

So without further ado, I bring on my guests, Charles and Yale. Welcome to the show.

[00:02:11] Magrass: Hi, thanks for having us.

[00:02:12] Steven Grumbine: Absolutely. Let me start off with you, Yale. The book, which, folks, please do buy this book, by the way, and, for those of you who are wondering, it’ll be in our bookshop application that we put out all the recommended readings from Real Progressives. But I guess my question to you is, Trump and the Right appear to have introduced the phrase deep state.

And this subject of deep state has got most of us on the Left, we’re focused on it because we understand that this democracy, or at least we feel something is amiss with the so called democracy we’re saving, right? We’re trying to save democracy and it just sort of feels hollow.

But this concept of deep state, you know, which the Left has typically referred to as the ruling class, the power elite, et cetera. Trump’s gang kind of popularized the term, deep state. How do you differentiate between these things?

[00:03:05] Magrass: Deep state itself would be a very good term. But it’s not the term typically used on the Left. As you said, there is this idea that we live in a democracy. The people rule. There’s a government they elect, which is accountable to them.  The deep state says that’s not true.  There is another layer, a hidden layer. Hidden power, to quote another book title by Charles Derber, where the real power is located and is normally unseen.

Now Trump has a different idea of where the deep state is located than most in the Left do. Trump sees the Left as the deep state. It includes bureaucrats within the state itself. The media, education, academia, intellectuals. And to his credit, he does include repressive institutions like the CIA, the military, and the police.

The term ruling class, a term I guess we would attribute back to Karl Marx, refers to the capitalist class. What Bernie Sanders calls the 1%. The owners and controllers of the largest corporations, and the power they have over the elected state. But the state is accountable to them, not to the people.

Now, there is the idea of a power elite. Power elite is a little different. It was a term used by a sociologist in the 1950s named C. Wright Mills, and has been carried on by people like G. William Domhoff, who also used the phrase “ruling class.”

The power elite is somewhat broader than the ruling class as Marxists understand it. It includes that ruling class. It includes the corporations. It includes the economic elite. But also includes certain elements of the government and the military. Now, then there is the military industrial complex. Which is the alliance of the military and the corporation. And that probably is where we would argue the real power lies in that alliance.

And most people give it a sense that we have a democracy accountable to us, when the reality is, we are ruled essentially by this military industrial complex.

[00:05:30] Steven Grumbine: Yeah! It sort of jumps out at you, I mean, I’m just gonna use my favorite subject right now, and it’s not my favorite, subject right now, it’s the least favorite, but the genocide in Gaza, I cannot imagine anybody voting for this, just like, yeah, let’s sign me up, man. You know, the Democrats say that they’re supposedly for the little guy and anti-war, but there’s nothing about them at all.

And we see this in spades. So it’s gotta be coming from somewhere. And so, yeah I fully agree with that. Charles, do you have any thoughts on this?

[00:06:03] Derber: So a couple of things. One is, it’s interesting that Trump has popularized this term, in some ways, perhaps more persuasively than the Left traditionally had. The idea that there are unelected people, you know, outside the people that are voted for and are running the country theoretically, as President and congressional and so forth.

Polls are showing that a very significant majority of people, first of all, do sort of agree that there are unelected people. Whether they’re, you know, in corporations or in the military, or, in the civil service as, uh, or as Trump says. That concept has become quite well accepted.

So it really does become important then, to say this is an idea that people have, just as you said, Steve, people find intuitively plausible. And that sort of debate that needs to be had publicly is, well, just who are these unaccountable people or groups or structures? And as Yale was sort of hinting, there is some overlap between what we’re arguing and what Trump argues. Which is that we do think that parts of the national security establishment in the state, which Trump tends to focus on as really central to the deep state, in our view, are also really central into our concept of the deep state.

So there is an overlap. And just your response about Gaza, Steve, makes me think that today people on the Left are increasingly – let’s just say we’re ordinary Americans – sort of recognized the military and the military industrial complex. An idea which was voiced initially by Eisenhower, you know, in the 1950s, that’s become pretty plausible.

But in other ways, we are really at odds with Trump because Trump views the deep state as, basically, the liberal intelligensia. The regulators and bureaucrats in the government, itself, and the cultural elites that Yale referred to in the university and the media. And our view is that Trump, he’s leaving out the really core group, which is the corporations and the wealthy elites.

And the big part of that, which is the elites that are tied in with the military and national security sector, they’re very closely intertwined. And if you ask, does the public tend to believe in our concept of the deep state or in Trump’s concept of the deep state? It’s a question that hasn’t been really polled or understood very well.

I will say that a very high percentage of Americans say they don’t like the huge amount of money and political influence that big companies and wealthy people have to exercise. So, in that respect, you could argue people are, whether they’re supporting Trump or not, they do recognize the role of corporations.

And Trump is sometimes a little ambiguous about that. You know, he says that global companies are part of the problem. And because they’re operating against the interests of America and American workers. Now this is pure rhetoric. But, because he sort of hints at that, it allows a lot of people to think, well, particularly I think American workers- working class people, non-college educated people – to sort of say, well, Trump is onto something. And they don’t look at the larger picture of the deep state or the ruling elites that we’re trying to show all through American history has played a very central role.

So, I mean, in a funny way, you know, this book has a lot about Trump in it. So it’s very relevant to people thinking about the election right now. And we try to show how these ideas about who’s running America go way, way back into the history. And a lot of the debates we’re having today about what the deep state is and whether we have a real democracy or not, they just have a really long history in America.

And the book sort of traces that history right from the beginning of the country.

[00:09:55] Steven Grumbine: You know, when I think about who runs the country, you know, a lot of the history that we have in our head are these powerful presidents like FDR and, and Lincoln and, you know, these larger than life figures that have this outsized personality that Ronald Reagan did this, you know, so and so did that. And I think about kings and queens and these old relics that can barely tie their own shoes, much less run a nation.

And you see Joe Biden having to be guided to the podium and he’s staring off and sniffing people’s hair weirdly in press conferences and is that guy really running the nuclear codes and you see Trump babble around. And worse, I think, possibly the most horrific thing is when you have factual evidence right in front of you, stuff that not only your lying eyes saw, but also your heart and you’ve heard it, you got it in your hand, you read it, et cetera.

And then you’ll have some, talking head come out of the woodwork saying Joe Biden is completely fine. And then the next minute saying, no, Kamala Harris is perfectly fine. And no, Donald Trump is perfectly fine. And none of them are making any sense whatsoever. That the propaganda mill that runs air cover for this facade of the strong leader.

I think this recent deposing of, Biden’s, reelection campaign shines a real light on the fact that people were like, no way. And there was a secondary voice out there saying, well, it’s not really the president you’re electing here. You’re really electing the machine, the apparatus, the whole kit and caboodle of all of us. You know. You elect Joe Biden, you get the whole Democrat party running the inside game on this.

And so they’re trying to actively sell the, Hey, maybe it isn’t really the president you’re just elect, you’re electing all of us too, by doing this. I’m curious, what are your thoughts on that? It feels like they’re saying the quiet part out loud, because there’s no way this guy was running the country. I think that the first debate kind of let everybody in on the secret that was maybe not in on the secret previously. Your thoughts?

[00:12:04] Magrass: If we talk about a ruling class, or a power elite, or a deep state, there are certainly alliances within it. There No capitalist will ever be against capitalism. No capitalist will ever be against private property. It is a given that there’s such a thing called national interest. An interest we all share. I have no idea what that is. It is the interest of the corporations, the military industrial complex. Very different from the interest of the average American. But we have this image of a unified ruling class, but capitalism is all about competition.

There are real differences and divisions [in the] capitalist class. There are places where they are united. They’re certainly united over guaranteeing that they continue to be the ruling class and they remain relatively invisible. There’ll be an official state who can bear almost all the blame for everything they do and they remain relatively unseen.

So you have these people who are elected, who presumably represent the people, who presumably have power. But as you say, they are reflections of this power elite. Now the elected state does have real power. They do put constraints upon power elite. They can sometimes impose things that many ruling class do not like. And they are likely to side with, at various moments with one sector of the ruling class, over another, which will do some very real bitterness and anger.

Somebody named Kirkpatrick Sale divided the capitalist class into two groups. One he called cowboys and one he called Yankees. They have some commonalities. They can be with the same family. The ultimate Yankee was George Bush Senior. The ultimate cowboy was George Bush Junior. But within these divisions, there are obvious shared interests. Both George Bush Senior and George Bush Junior had their fortunes heavily invested in Texas oil. And they clearly have certain areas of agreement.

But these dispute/divisions between the capitalist class does produce a space which allows the elected state to intervene and side with one sector or another. And, sometimes, side with the ordinary citizen over this elite called ruling class, deep state, military industrial complex will give you whatever you like.

[00:14:45] Derber:   I think Yale’s making an important point, Steve, in response to what you said. We’re not arguing that there’s no voice for the American people. Because the ruling elites are divided and even if they were not, there are certain limits that keep them from being absolute. I mean, if Trump is elected, one of the dangers is people talk about – the breakdown of democracy – is that the current, relatively loose, constraints on what these unelected corporations and military people can do under a Trump regime is going to fall away and even the kind of shallow rights which are connected with civil liberties and voting, and so forth.

They don’t allow ordinary people to run America, but they do allow Americans to have some influence. Particularly because there are these divisions in the deep state and divisions among the elites. So when, you were talking, Steve, about how it was kind of weird to talk about saving democracy, since the democracy we’re saving is pretty, and this is a big part of the book, it’s to sort of show from the very beginning how really shallow or weak the democratic process has been in the United States.

These unelected deep state forces have always been, from the very beginning, really powerful in the United States. But they have been divisions between the South and the North where the ruling elites are more connected with caste in the South. Caste being race, gender, and other personal attributes that are based in biology, partly, or seen as inherent in a person’s, identity. And class being their, position in the economy.

Caste and class are kind of the two overriding concepts that we use in the book to help frame what are the sources of power that these unelected deep state forces are using?

And they go right back to the beginning. You know, the, ability of the South and the North to come together in founding the country was really difficult. I have always thought about it as a kind of really difficult marriage. It was always troubled. And as time went on, it got so disruptive and conflictual that it led to the Civil War and violence. And then the country had to be put back together with a new configuration of caste and class.

But it never went away. You know, after the Civil War, Jim Crow came along, which was a caste system and sort of carried forward the original deep state in the South that was based primarily on caste and the power of caste, particularly race.

And in the North, you know, the deep state, the rise of the robber barons, the Carnegie’s and the Morgan[s] and so forth, set the foundation for the corporate deep state. Which sort of took over the North. And there remains today this, you know, if you think of the country as being this kind of uneasy marriage within this deep state, I guess, another way of talking about what Yale is talking about as divisions within the elites.

The concepts of class and caste are very central to the book. And we think they run through any attempt to understand democracy and power in the United States really means coming to terms with the role of caste and class. And they’ve never gone away and they’ve never been completely easily reconciled. So there remain today important differences between corporate elites and caste elites.

But what’s happened today, with Reagan initially and then with Trump, is that a kind of new integration is occurring where the caste forces that are very tied to racial domination are tied to the class forces tied to you know, the big corporations, and so forth. And you know, when you talk about the Trump regime, it’s a kind of new integration of these caste and class forces that are coming together.

If Trump is reelected, which, I think we’re understanding, it’s – this is going to be a very close election. And there’s a very real chance that Trump will get power. There will be another integration of these caste and class forces. Meaning, you know, money and Christian nationalist kind of racial and sexist kinds of hierarchies, which will come together. Which are very old in America. You know, the kind of, caste – class – power integration that will happen under Trump is very likely. It just goes back all the way to the beginning of the country.

And one of the reasons I enjoyed doing this book was that there was so much discussion about Trump as being this absolutely new figure. And I think both Yale and I felt there was something wrong with the way the media was talking about Trump as being just a totally new sort of force in American life. And in some ways he is. There are new things about him. But in very basic ways he represents the rise of very dangerous, scary kinds of autocratic power – extremely hostile to democracy – and which go all the way back to the very beginning of the country.

And so I think the value of this book for people today, as they’re confronting the election, is that it puts the current problems with democracy in a much more understandable and historical context. Where anybody can see how ordinary people have faced problems we’re dealing with today in virtually every phase of American history. And often they’ve been subjected to control by the deep state.

But there’s always been efforts. There’s a long set of progressive movements that have challenged both class and caste. And we kind of document those struggles, as well. So I think the book is just very well situated for people who are obsessing about the election as they should be – really, really focused on it. And it gives people a broader sense of how deep these issues have been in American history and how they’ve been resolved in the past.

[00:20:46] Steven Grumbine: Very good. Speaking of the book, you guys chose to write this book as a conversation, not just as a narrative. What was the reason for that?

[00:20:56] Derber: So Yale and I have written a lot of books together and we’re both progressive. Very to the Left. We also have many significant differences in our politics. And, since it’s a book about democracy, we didn’t want to force either one of us to simply compromise in a way that would not allow us to express our own perspective. So we thought that a conversation would be interesting. It’s easy to read a conversation.

We wanted this book to be very accessible. And we thought it would model, in a way, the kind of democratic practice that we’re writing about. You know, we’re hoping to encourage in the country, which is that you can really talk together and have a kind of shared democratic discourse without coercing the other person to fall in line with a point of view that they don’t like.

So, I think it worked out well. It was surprising to me how well a conversation – you can say what you think, Steve. But I thought the conversation led to a fairly readable approach. Where it was easy to read the conversation, and allowed us to get deep into the issues about democracy that we wanted to talk about, without sacrificing either our own particular perspectives or the readability of the ideas. Because I think the ideas are just so incredibly important right now.

[00:22:16] Steven Grumbine: I think that’s spot on, actually. The book, as much as I was able to read through, it does read very well. And I do like the approach. Y’know, it’s unique. Everybody doesn’t write in a narrative form like that.

You touched on – you did more than touch on – but you really touched on the fact that the deep state is not a monolith. And I appreciated some of the depth that you provided in terms of understanding the geographical differences in the way the South views things through caste, and the, the North through more of a class based approach to things. Can you help me understand more what the difference is between the caste system and the class system.

Because I’ll just say this up front, people that are very devoted to reading theory, really probably don’t lack for an understanding of class. But class has been wiped off the map. We don’t talk that way anymore. We’re in a post socialist world, like a lot of the thoughts that Marx brought out are very relevant today, but they’re not discussed today. And they’re not thought of the same way because unions have been slaughtered over the last 50 years.

I am curious if you can provide more insight into caste and class and a a little bit more depth of what we should pay attention to there.

[00:23:30] Derber: So go ahead, Yale.

[00:23:31] Magrass: A caste is a very old concept. It was adopted in the West from India. But we can look at feudalism, which would be a, I’ll call it classical caste society. We have fixed positions for life. You are either a noble or peasant. You are a King or you’re something else. Wherever you’re born, that’s where you’re going to be for life. Race is something you normally can’t change. Gender is something you normally can’t change. So these can be considered caste categories. There’s another one – birth order. Primogeniture, where the older sibling has power over the younger. That pretty much has died out, at least in the mainstream.

The American Revolution was really a revolution against caste system. Jefferson proclaimed equality. What he meant by equality is that there would be no caste. Everybody would be of one single caste. Now being one single caste does not mean there are not going to be enormous differences. Everybody can be a commoner. But if you go to Britain, for example, members of the House of Commons are often very, very rich bankers and industrialists. You can be of one caste, but have enormous differences within class, vastly exceeding any caste differences.

They can be very rich and very poor, but they’re all of the same class. Everyone’s equal because they are of one blood. But within that one blood, you have competition. You have very rich. Very poor. Worker. Peasant. Owner. They are all the same class. They are all equal in the sense that they all are of the same blood.

Now, race is very odd. If you go back to the very beginning of this country, the number one industry was the slave trade. The American capitalist class built itself through the slave trade. But, as I just said a minute ago, slavery is a caste category. So there was this contradiction in the attitudes of the proto -capitalists, the early capitalists. I don’t want to call them capitalists. The founding fathers of the North. The Adams, the Hamiltons. On one level, they were against slavery, on another level, slavery was their main source of income.

Now you look at the so-called other founding fathers, and I want to emphasize, the American Revolution was not a revolution. It was a war of independence. The elites before the revolution were people like Washington, Jefferson, Adams. Leaders after the revolution were Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin. Nothing changed. The same people were in charge.

But in the South, you had a less ambiguous attitude towards slavery. Slavery was both the source of income and the basis of a caste system. So you had two evolving separate elites that both opposed the British crown. And when I say crown, the crown was not really the source of anything. When Jefferson said in the Declaration of Independence, the king did X. The king did Y. He knew the king did not do any of these. They were all done by Parliament.

England was actually an early capitalist so-called democracy, which had a symbolic king. But the British were, in fact, interfering with American trade. Interfering with the interest of American deep state ruling class. And the American deep state ruling class wanted to rule without interference.

Okay. But now they’re independent. Independent, but you still have these very strong divisions. A slave-based self that makes no pretense of being anything other than a caste society and, in fact, tries to model itself after European feudalism. And an emerging Northern capitalism which initially is dependent upon slavery, but gets into infrastructure – things like railroads, canals, steel – and slavery becomes less important. They want a pure capitalism, which would be a capitalism without slavery. Incidentally, Britain abolished slavery a generation before America did. And of course, Britain protected Native Americans far more than America did, be that as it may.

These two elites could not coexist. They wanted very different things out of the federal government. You keep hearing, to this day, the South ranting about states rights. The federal government should not interfere with the states. Before the Civil War, the South wanted the federal government to guarantee slaves could not escape and become free in the North. They wanted the federal government to impose slavery upon the entire nation.

So any claim that the South cared about states rights is a lie. The Civil War was over. who was to control the federal government. Once the war was over, It was clear that the control of the government has shifted from North to South. And the South did everything it could to preserve its caste system. Charlie pointed out that slavery is now illegal. So instead you have Jim Crow, another attempt to maintain the caste system. And this conflict has continued ever since, never ended.

[00:29:36] Steven Grumbine: It’s interesting. ‘Cause one of the things that I studied some time ago was how Adolph Hitler, not just him, his his minions around him, looked at us as how to structure this kind of racial caste system. And, you know, people will deny this, but we were the model in many ways. I mean, there’s so much documentation out there that shows they studied us. And they were like, Hey, these guys are the prototype of a racially divided society. This is, kind of, playing right into it, what you’re saying here.

I I want to ask you a very specific question. We touched on the democracy earlier, but you guys touch on two different types of democracy: a shallow democracy and a deep democracy. Charles, what are your thoughts on this? I mean, cause I feel like we have no democracy. You’re providing nuance to that conversation.

[00:30:50] Steven Grumbine: What is the difference between shallow and deep democracy?

[00:30:54] Derber: Or no democracy. I mean, to say there’s no democracy – I give you the best historical metaphor for your thought, Steve. So Jefferson and these people who were founding the country, just to give a quick historical background, they were very much thinking when they opposed the King – the sort of American mythology about these wonderful democratic founders – is that they were really, hundreds of years ago, speaking up for democracy. Even though it’s so hard to achieve in that period.

And I think history has really raised questions about this. Jefferson and Madison – people who wrote the Constitution – were very well read in British history. And we know from letters and things they said in the Continental Congress, and so forth, that they were very much influenced in their thinking about democracy by the Magna Carta. Which was the medieval revolt in 1215 by the medieval barons that were trying to limit the power of the King.

But, you know, the Magna Carta – there’s a picture – and the words Magna Carta appear on many of the founding documents. So when people say Jefferson, sort of the symbol of democracy, and the American creed as a democratic creed – Steve, I’ll give you this historical point for you to use in your arguments about no democracy –

Jefferson, who’s seen as the embodiment of American democracy, was very, very explicitly organizing his thinking. Not so much some of his phraseology, particularly in the Declaration of Independence , but his thinking that would influence the Constitution around the Magna Carta.

The Magna Carta was really no democracy at all. It did try to limit the power of the King. But it had no concept of empowering ordinary people to run Britain. What it said was, we want the power to run things to be divided between the King and, increasingly, the role of other nobles who were not, you know, the King, but who were barons and feudal lords who felt like they needed to put limits and take a larger part of the property and the, sort of, goodies that the King was able to control. The king was able to exercise.

That was a notion that, sort of, guided American democracy. And notice the Magna Carta is not a democratic idea at all. It simply says, let’s change the ruling elite from a single monarch to a clique of white nobles who are basically an amalgam of caste and class. There were people who were white. They were nobility in the feudal sense that Yale was talking about. And they also were enormously wealthy and powerful because of that.

So then, is there really any democracy if American democracy grew out of this? We have a long discussion. We document Jefferson and the founders being steeped in this anti-democratic way of thinking out of Britain that actually – Steve, it’s not crazy for you to say the Magna Carta is not a theory of democracy at all.

It’s a theory of elites who are not organized around a single ruling person. But then, the American historical experience that offers some sense of possibility is that people understood the ideals of America to be in this idea that it was moving beyond these early castes. It was that the Constitution was opening the door. Opening the window to a gradual and powerful expansion of ending both cast and class power. So that, eventually, the spread of power from the king to the nobility would spread from whites to blacks. From capitalists to workers. From, you know, men to women. And everybody would be empowered.

Well, that kind of model of a multi -racial democracy would be real if it were happening. But it isn’t. For reasons of both caste and class. So when we say shallow democracy, what we say is: You have to have – given the importance of the creed that people like Jefferson introduced which sort of helped Americans define who they were – they had to put in credible veneers of representation and voice for ordinary people that made it seem credible to call this a democracy.

So , eventually, they permitted, various forms of representative bodies. They called it a republic rather than democracy. There was very little election of any kind, initially. And, you know, it took a long time for any of this caste and class. I mean, the country was run for the first 30 or 40 years with almost no elections.

Slaves couldn’t vote. Women couldn’t vote. None of these people could own property. Even poor white men, or working men, did not vote. It was in the 1830s until you got any really significant even role of poorer white men. And then, all of this expanded. But the Magna Carta idea, I think it’s fair to say in the way we see the history, never really permitted this veneer. Which is not insignificant. The fact that there are certain kinds of civil liberties that are protected. The fact that there actually are elections. The fact that there are certain kinds of constitutional accountability that have to be met, and so forth.

We don’t trivialize that. And one of the reasons that Trump is dangerous is that the veneer of what we’re calling shallow democracy, while it’s anything but deep, sustainable, real accountability of government and power to the people, it’s still not inconsequential. And if that’s removed, if these shallow, but significant forms of civil liberties and, rights that we do have – limited though they are, they’re important – a Trump regime could take many of them away. And that would be terrifying.

But a deep democracy – coming back to the question, what’s the difference between shallow and deep democracy – all through American history there have been social movements. You can think of abolitionism. You can think of the populist movement in the late 19th century. You can think of the labor movement in the New Deal. And, as it developed, we now have 7 percent of the labor force unionized. In 1960s it was more like 40%. So there have been both caste and class movements that have tried to, essentially, challenge the hierarchies of power associated with both caste and class.

And people are aware of these concepts. People understand that race and gender and other forms of caste power are real. The civil rights movement, the feminist movements, and so forth. In fact, the Democratic Party and Kamala Harris, in many ways, seems to be largely an effort to build on this kind of what we call identity politics. Which is a caste politics. Trying to eradicate caste without really attending to the powers of class that – as you pointed out, Steve, and which is very central to our book – have always been really fundamental to the absence of real democracy in America.

If you’re going to have a genuine, deep, real accountability of the power to the people – people really exercising power – it has to happen not only through ending caste hierarchies and ending racial and gender related differences. But people are aware of it. You said this, Steve. That, you know, that there is a rich corporation. People who are running the country who are very rich.

The Democrats and liberals have largely abandoned class politics since the end of the New Deal. Which really crashed in the late seventies when Reagan came in. And the Democratic Party embraced much of the Reagan revolution. Which was really an effort to say that class was not really a problem in America.

And the ruling elites, both parties, the way they tended to differentiate themselves was more around caste issues than class issues. The two parties are both class parties. I think we’ll call them Bush and Bush light. And they’re both parties of business.

So in many ways we have a politics right now. And I worry about Kamala Harris in the same spirit. That is, that we have a politics that is being organized around identity issues related to gender and race. But, where class issues have largely fallen away, there’s no real meaningful political route other than a labor movement that’s beginning to awaken under Sean Fain, the UAW and the teachers and there are some very progressive unions, which are beginning to raise the class issue.

One of the things that comes out of our book, I think, and it’s very relevant to the current election, is that the Democrats have been saddled with this sort of identity politics. Which is a politics based on dealing with elements of caste and basically abandons class altogether. And that has led since Reagan – since Clinton and Obama actually both participated – in this kind of wipe out of class as a major organizing force for the Democratic party.

The biggest change, and the reason why we might get a Trump election, is that the white working class looks at the Democratic party. You know, it was part of it during the New Deal. White workers were right at the heart of Roosevelt’s power. And, even in the Sixties, the LBJ Great Society version of the New Deal.

But class since then – while Americans are kind of aware of it and it’s become incredibly intense in a global capitalist system – it’s fallen out of the core of American political life. Both parties are corporate class parties. Um, and even though Kamala is talking about building a quote, “opportunity economy,” her concepts are so vague and so diffuse that she doesn’t talk about class.

She’s managed to get the endorsement of , maybe, labor. And I think there are parts of labor that are really thinking more strongly about politics , again, based on class to some degree. But what we’re arguing here is that because class has always been in America such a profound obstacle to democracy, that we need a politics where class is reintegrated as a central part of American political life.

This election, are workers going to vote Democratic or for Trump? We know the election is going to be decided by workers in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. The blue collar vote is going to be absolutely central. The abandonment of class politics which is the route – and we show this all through history – to a deeper kind of democracy. You cannot have real democracy, if you’re not dealing with the hierarchies associated with big money, corporate power and class, you can’t have real democracy.

So whether workers see their interests, their economic interests, and understand that their voice and the real democracy is tied to some sort of deeper class struggle that the Democrats historically represented in the New Deal and have abandoned today, is going to be a big, big issue.

And, you know, the outcome of the election in 60 days. If she loses I think it’s going to be because caste, race, and gender have become the dominating issues for the Democratic Party. And they’ve driven the working class to Trump who talks about, I mean, it’s all rhetoric, but talks about protecting the forgotten man. The forgotten working man.

That’s the voter in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin who’s going to determine who the next president is. So. All the issues we talk about in the history of the country around class and caste are coming out in scary ways in the current election.

[00:42:56] Steven Grumbine: Yeah, I gotta tell you, you know, from my vantage point, a lot of people are saying, you know what? I am a single issue voter right now. I am voting against genocide, period. And, um, I think genocide, like, to this day, I’m 55 years old and you know, that’s not a hundred. But I, have enough history lessons and enough propaganda that I’ve heard that has really hyped up the Holocaust of World War II. Which was a tragic, horrible thing, but we’re experiencing it today.

And it’s being live-streamed for us before our very eyes. And I think that it’s very hard to get away from that. I think that right there, seeing children killed on a daily basis. And seeing parents, families, people that we know and love, friends in our neighborhoods who have family back there looking at that and saying: There’s no way in the world I can support you. You didn’t let us talk at your convention. You’ve ignored us. You’ve sent out jack-booted thugs to the campuses to quell our uprises where we’re trying to bring attention to a genocide. And you’re acting like we’re the antisemitic ones? How crazy are you? And I think that that is, unfortunately or fortunately, depending on where you sit – and I’m not here to judge because I’m not involved in the political angle – I would suggest, strongly, that that right there is going to probably cost them greatly. Especially in places like Michigan.

I want to move on here to the next part. And I know that you guys have touched on this and then, in the spirit of time, I’m going to try and blend a couple of questions here. One of the concepts that we talked about earlier was the military industrial complex and how powerful it really is.

And you know, obviously World War Two – the United States has a huge advantage over the world in many ways as a result of the outcomes of that because the United States wasn’t bombed to hell and back like Europe and the rest of the world was. But the military, and to your point, Eisenhower, took on a very large and outsized role in American politics and in the governance of America.

Can you guys discuss how the military industrial complex strengthened the deep state.

[00:45:09] Magrass: In a very real sense, the military industrial complex is the Deep State. At least, the Deep State after World War II. In both World Wars, the United States went from having a modest sized military to the world’s largest in barely a year. After the First War, that military was largely dismantled. United States went from 10 million active troops to a quarter of a million. A 40-fold reduction.

World War I had weakened the British and French empires. But they were still strong enough to act as the world police force to impose capitalist Euro-American will on the Middle East, East Asia, and Africa. After World War I, the rest of the world was so indebted to the United States. In both world wars, Steve, the rest of the world was devastated. But the United States came out economically more powerful than ever. So powerful after World War I that it could extract almost all the booty, all the wealth, from the British and French empires and allow them to be the patrol.

After World War II, the British Empire and French Empire were now so weak, neither state decided to assumed complete control. When it assumed complete control, it discovered something else. Actually, it knew this much earlier. There’s gold in them there wars! That in fact, you can extract billions, maybe trillions of dollars of wealth from exploiting so -called undeveloped countries. But equally important, you can use the military as a stimulus for economic growth within what we will call the metropolis. What we will call the core of the empire.

And the United States, essentially, is an  empire. The same empire as the British Empire. What happened was the economic capital was moved from London to New York and the political capital was moved from London to Washington. But it is still one empire. Be that as it may, you had industries now in technology, computers, steel, automobiles. These were all being produced along with weapons.

You can name a number of new technologies. Plastics, as I said a minute ago. Transistors, computer chips. These were all developed for American offense. American weaponry. But, the United States was so prosperous, it didn’t bother applying these new technologies to improving the quality of civilian goods. Europe and Japan took these new technologies, developed for American armaments, and applied them to televisions, computer chips, tape recorders, cameras, civilian goods. And of course, automobiles. Which meant that the Europeans and Japanese were benefiting from American technology and the average American citizen was not. As you pointed out, Steve, at the end of the second war, United States had 50 percent of total world GNP.

[00:48:53] Steven Grumbine: Wow.

[00:48:53] Magrass: United States is still the world’s largest economy, but it has only 20 percent of the world’s GNP. A huge decline. Which means the rest of the world, including so-called allies, are now in a position to challenge the United States. United States no longer has the dominance it did, In the immediate aftermath of the world wars. It is still, by far, the world’s largest military.

It is slightly the world’s largest economy. But if, for example, you add up all the independent countries in the EU, the total GNP will exceed the United States. The United States is in a relative decline largely because it invested itself in weaponry to the point that it neglected its own civilian infrastructure.

[00:49:48] Derber: Yeah, I just want to say the gossip war and how it could be the tripping point of the election. Um. You know, the Democratic Party is so deeply wedded to the national security. As Yale just pointed out, national security has produced enormous insecurity. In a strange way, Trump has emphasized that. He said, you know, all this putting of money into war, all this celebration of war and the military, it’s ironic because Trump would be, I think, highly dangerous from a military point of view.

But I think ordinary Americans sort of understand what Yale was saying. That this enormous investment in war in the military, which the Democratic Party has been absolutely – you know, whether we’re talking about the Middle East or Ukraine, or China and Taiwan, where I think another war could quickly, break out under a Harris administration or a Trump administration, is that . . . Steve, I think you’re right and it’s a really big part of our historical analysis – You cannot separate the deep state that’s been in power in the United States for the whole history of the United States from the military.

Both caste and class values and priorities have required a huge investment in war. And both parties – again it’s like Bush and Bush light – we have two parties. We don’t have an anti-war party in the United States. Which is, again, a way in which the idea of a deep democracy – to have any kind of meaningful democracy in the United States – you need a party that is not a war party. And most countries, most developed countries, develop both green and peace parties that organize public opinion around that.

In the United States, it’s just terrifying. Neither one of the major parties has a kind of anti-war, peace agenda. And they’re not communicating what Yale just was talking about – which is the way the overriding commitment to war, and wars that are crazy in many ways – I mean, they’re, either genocidal or they’re, in the case of Ukraine – the refusal to accept some sort of territorial compromise in Ukraine is going to destroy that country as well. Just like Gaza is being destroyed.

And so, that’s one of the tragedies when you talk about debate of a real democracy in the United States would be – as you hinted Steve – the focus on what’s happening in these wars right now would be right at the center of the debate. And while it does on young people on the campuses that we’re on – I mean, one of the more hopeful signs, we’re not talking about very much hope – I do want to say the book, even though we’re talking all the time about power and exploitation and violence. Economic violence. Military violence. The book has a lot of discussion of mobilizations by anti-war movements and labor movements and anti-abolitionist movements and climate movements. These have always been a really big part of American history. They’re really the center of trying to bring some sort of more meaningful democracy into the country.

The problem is we have a political structure which is so centered around these caste and class power agendas that you don’t have a political party that can really serve to carry these movements’ agendas. Particularly, an anti-war agenda which is so deeply intertwined with corporate power and a global capitalist system. With control of foreign markets and cheap labor. And monopolizing resources around the world and, you know, avoiding taxes and regulation. You just can’t separate historically.

The New Deal, itself, became, with World War II, deeply militarized. Truman, and all of the people who sort of wanted to carry on – including the labor movement – were highly militarized. And that’s why one of the more hopeful aspects of the current landscape is that you’re beginning to see an anti-war politics in labor. Sean Fain has been damn good about this. Surprisingly so. Although, you know, he’s continuing to support the Democratic party, despite the militarism of the Democratic party.

So, anyway. I think when you talk about meaningful democracy in the United States, you’re talking about trying to organize some sort of political representation parties where these class, military, and caste hierarchies – that are so deeply in American bloodstream – can be represented. And I do think they can emerge because all through American history, we spent a lot of the book talking about – this is very similar to what Howard Zinn, the great historian did in his book about the people’s history of the United States.

These progressive anti-war, anti-corporate, anti-racist, feminist movements. We talk a lot about them. So, part of the differences between me and Yale is about how much hope we can have about the possibility of these movements. And, I think, part of the interest of the book is that it represents both the less hopeful and the more hopeful ideas about reading history. And what you can take away from it in terms of what kind of prospects we have for seeing this whole system become more democratic and less dominated by class and caste things.

But Yale and I have somewhat different perspectives on this. And I think the book is more interesting because our different threads of thinking about this come out in the book.

[00:55:04] Steven Grumbine: Yeah, I really want to put an exclamation point on this. Both of the parties that are in power today have an oligarch, military backing, if you will. The idea of an anti-war party would have no oligarch. Would have no military backing. It would be people powered. And as much as the people want to feel empowered.

It’s quite clear that the power lies within that deep state that is not represented by the little guy. So as we go forward, and folks, please do buy this book. It’s worth your time. It’s really important, I think, to have these conversations. Because, you know, our expectations of outcomes. Our expectations of what is unfolding before us. Our disappointments. Our celebrations of, quote unquote, “success” that really yield nothing so often.

I think it puts a new light on that. And, from that vantage point, I found this conversation to be very, very useful to me and the work we’re doing at Macro N Cheese and Real Progressives in the larger sense.

Let me just thank you gentlemen for taking the time to come on here. Where can we find more of your work? I’ll start with you, Yale, and we’ll come back to Charles after.

[00:56:20] Magrass: Well, of course, there are the other books that we wrote. There is Glorious Causes. And, Bully Nation.  Capitalism , Should You Buy It? I would particularly recommend those three books, which were all, co-written with Charles.

Glorious Causes is, frankly, a book that I think deserves far more attention than it got. It talks about the irrationality, or rationality, and how capitalism and war reflect a certain rational way of thinking. Which is incredibly irrational. It looks at Nazi Germany. It looks at the enslaved South. It looks at the Sixties. It looks at Reaganism.

And there’s Bully Nation. Which talks about how you have a society which, as you say, is very militaristic. Attempts to dominate and bully other countries. It is going to produce a bullying culture among its own people.

And Capitalism, Should You Buy It? Which is basically an introduction to political economy. It looks at neo-Marxism, Keynesianism, and Neoclassicism. Those are three books I would hope people would take a second look at.

[00:57:26] Steven Grumbine: Very good. And we are going to put those on our bookshelf And Charles, you sir?

[00:57:30] Derber: I just would say, if you do put up our bios,   all of our books are in the usual places you can  find books. The themes of all the books that I’ve done with Yale, and other books, have all been about the crisis of democracy. And all about the power and accountability – and the values and culture – that make it so hard for Americans to see through all the fog that’s been produced by the corporate propaganda.

And we have these two parties which are basically propagating both caste and class power. So I think right now, given the incredible importance of this election – because I do want to say that even though this book shows that there’s always been a very, very shallow or limited popular power – public power has been very limited compared to the power of various financial and other elites, they’re still important.

And I do think, and this is where Yale and I disagree a little bit more. I think if Trump wins it will take us back toward one of the things we didn’t talk about was that in this book: Who Owns Democracy? We argue that there was a kind of American fascism that grew up in the American South. Fascism is largely a caste system. We talked a little about it, and the South really was very explicit about it.

You’re right, Steve, that Hitler, very explicitly, drew on the American South and its theories and practices of race. Hitler instructed his scientific advisors to read about American practice and theories of race. And they were incorporated into Mein Kampf and into racist propaganda and politics under Hitler.

So there is this tradition of fascism, which I think – I’m mentioning it because one, it goes real deep in the blood of America, and second, Trump , I think, resurrected in a particularly dangerous way, more so than what we’ve seen since the Confederacy – so I think the history is really important to digest. You know, this is not a joke. This is not paranoia. This is the reality of history.

And I think, again, the virtue of this book is that, like you said, Steve, it might stimulate conversation. You could read it in a book club or this book, Who Owns Democracy?, because it’s written as a conversation. It has somewhat conflicting views on some issues about democracy. People could read it with friends or in a book group and see where they fall out on areas where Yale and I don’t agree. Because we, tell somewhat different stories of democracy, even though there’s a kind of coherent narrative all the way through the book.

So, given the way I see this election as so central to the historical threads that we were talking about in the book – and to the survival of any kind of democracy whatsoever – I think it’s a really good book for people to dig into right now.

[01:00:15] Steven Grumbine: Well, thank you both. I think we have three perspectives that come out through this conversation. That was wonderful. You guys with so much depth and experience and knowledge. I really appreciate you sharing it with us. Folks, my name is Steve Grumbine and the host of Macro N Cheese.

Macro N Cheese is a part of Real Progressives, which is a 501c3 not for profit organization in the United States. We survive by your donations. They are tax deductible, folks. So please, if you find the information we bring to you on these podcasts valuable. If you find our book clubs valuable. If you find our webinars valuable. If you find the information we present valuable – we really need your support. So please consider either coming to patreon.com/realprogressives or to our substack, Real Progressives substack.com.

You can become a donor. We need you desperately. And with that, on behalf of my guests and myself, Macro N Cheese, we are outta here.

Books

Bully Nation – Bully Nation: How the American Establishment Creates a Bullying Society a book by Yale R. Magrass and Charles Derber (bookshop.org)

Capitalism, Should You Buy It – Capitalism: Should You Buy it?: An Invitation to Political Economy a book by Charles Derber and Yale R. Magrass (bookshop.org)

 Corporation Nation – Corporation Nation: How Corporations Are Taking Over Our Lives — And What We Can Do about It a book by Charles Derber and Ralph Nader (bookshop.org)

 Dying for Capitalism – Dying for Capitalism: How Big Money Fuels Extinction and What We Can Do About It a book by Charles Derber and Suren Moodliar (bookshop.org)

Glorious Causes – Glorious Causes: The Irrationality of Capitalism, War and Politics a book by Charles Derber and Yale R. Magrass (bookshop.org)

Greed to Green – Greed to Green: Solving Climate Change and Remaking the Economy a book by Charles Derber (bookshop.org)

Hidden Power – Hidden Power: What You Need to Know to Save Our Democracy: Derber, Charles: 9781576753453: Amazon.com: Books (apparently not available from Bookshop.org)

 People Before Profit – People Before Profit: The New Globalization in an Age of Terror, Big Money, and Economic Crisis a book by Charles Derber and Noam Chomsky (bookshop.org)

People’s History of the United States – A People’s History of the United States a book by Howard Zinn (bookshop.org)

Sociopathic Society – Sociopathic Society: A People’s Sociology of the United States a book by Charles Derber (bookshop.org)

The Pursuit of Attention – The Pursuit of Attention: Power and Ego in Everyday Life by Charles Derber (americanbookwarehouse.com) (apparently not available from Bookshop.org}

The Wilding of America – Wilding of America 6th edition | 9781464105432, 9781464187766 | VitalSource (apparently not available from Bookshop.org)

Who Owns Democracy – Who Owns Democracy?: The Real Deep State and the Struggle Over Class and Caste in America a book by Charles Derber and Yale R. Magrass (bookshop.org)