Episode 398 – The National Debt & the $40 Trillion Nothingburger with James Fauntleroy

Steve Grumbine:
00:00:42

All right, folks, this is Steve with Macro N Cheese. Folks, I had the opportunity back in August 28th to be on the Jaybefaunt, aka James Fauntleroy Channel and… YouTube channel. And it was very, very nice to get together with JB to have him give me an opportunity to talk about MMT, talk about socialism, talk about the work we do here, and in particular talk about the national debt and why it’s a big giant nothing burger. The conversation had been the first that JB and I had had in quite some time.

So us getting back together was quite an opportunity for him to see the changes in our organization, the changes in our messaging, the changes overall in understanding and combining our knowledge of Modern Monetary Theory, the state, and quite frankly, Marxist Leninist theory. It was really, really fun time. And I hope that it changed some people. It got the word out to some people. I hope that people realize that MMT is not just, you know, the sanctuary for Democrats. It’s not just the sanctuary for capitalists. It’s an opportunity for everyone to either understand how the state functions, to suppress our rights and keep us from the good life.

It’s an opportunity to see what they’re doing to us, to maintain hegemony. It’s an opportunity for us to understand the inputs and the outputs, the flows of the money and how money is created and how they can spend it into existence to support genocide, but not spend it into existence to provide us with freedom from paid labor, freedom from wage slavery, freedom from huge medical bills, freedom from horrible student debt, freedom from a million things. They don’t want us to have that. And it’s really not about them simply being ignorant of ledgers. It is really fundamental to capitalism.

It is really fundamental to the overarching needs and desires of the ruling class. And this episode, I think, provides a snapshot into the convergence of Modern Monetary Theory and Marxist Leninist thinking. So with that, here’s the show.

James Fauntleroy:
00:03:23

Welcome to the Jaybefaunt Channel. I’m your host, James Fauntleroy. Good to see you guys. Happy Friday to every single one of you guys joining in. Just let you guys know that I typically stream every single Tuesdays at 3pm Eastern Standard Time, but this is a special stream that we’re going to be having because this is a conversation that I’ve been wanting to have for quite some time. And it really just had given us a perspective, something that is really something I think that people really need to consider these days.

So we’re going to be talking about the national debt and how it just crossed the threshold of $40 trillion. But to really go over this and really put together the ins and the outs about this and why it is so important that we not only we focus on this, but the larger system and what it involves. I have with me part of Real Progressives and also Macro N Cheese, Mr. Steve Grumbine is coming back. Good to have you so back. So good to have you back, Steve. I can’t even talk today because I am so happy to have you here.

Steve Grumbine:
00:04:29

Well, it’s a pleasure, man. It’s been too long. And I want folks to know we didn’t succeed in doing this. But way back when we tried to set up a podcast where we’re going to have Sabby [Sabs] and JB join us. We’re calling it the S Word. It didn’t take off. We tried, but here we are years later. And it’s so good to be back with you. So I’m happy. I’m thank you for having me on.

James Fauntleroy:
00:04:53

Yeah. Thank you so very much for coming on. You know, there has been, there’s been a lot that has happened over the last few years now. I’ve been doing this thing for about five years now. You’ve been doing this for probably longer. And so we’ve been talking to you especially about Modern Monetary Theory and what it means and what it means in regards to the national debt and the deficit. And there’s a lot of these things that we were talking about in regards to different policies: Medicare for All, housing first, and you know, education, you know, tuition free public college, things like that.

We were talking about all these different things. And so I would like to just share a little bit of the beginning of this first video and then I would like to get your response to this. This has really been something that I wanted to talk about for quite some time. This is actually from NBC News that says, quote, “Nothing has gotten better.” And they talk about the focus group talks about the affordability.

But the first part of the video, they actually talk about the national debt hitting $40 trillion. And we will shall talk on the other side.

Meet The Press:
00:06:10

Welcome to Meet The Press now. I’m Kristen Welker in Washington. As the economy reaches an unsettling new milestone, the US debt hitting $40 trillion for the first time as President Trump continues to face economic headwinds just months before the midterm elections, all while he threatens what he’s calling economic warfare at an unprecedented scale on Iran, as that war continues to drive up energy prices. The debt has exploded over several administrations. It rose nearly $8 trillion during the first Trump administration.

It rose by more than 8 trillion under President Biden, and it’s risen by trillions of dollars under Mr. Trump’s second administration. The White House, however, downplaying the new marker and blaming the Biden administration for the rising debt. “Look, the 40 trillion is a big number. It is smaller when we look at the publicly traded amount because our Social Security funds and other government entities hold a substantial amount. And what we’re going to do, we have to grow our way out of this. And remember, we did not get here in a day that we were left with a mess.

The Biden administration had the highest deficit to GDP in history. When we went weren’t at war or weren’t in a recession for 2025, we brought it down by more than a percent.”

James Fauntleroy:
00:07:32

So let me ask you this, Steve. They said we’re. The United States is $40 trillion in debt. Who do we owe? The Decepticons?

Steve Grumbine:
00:07:44

So let’s, let’s. People hear me talk and they think I’m making excuses for a system. I’m describing a system. I’m explaining a system. I’m not telling you that I support the outcomes of the system. I’m not telling you that I support the power dynamics behind the system. I’m just merely explaining the system so that people get angry at the right things and that they focus their energy toward productive outcomes, right? The national debt literally is nothing more than the sum total of all the money the government spent into the economy that it is yet to tax back, okay? So you…

For years we’ve explained that taxes don’t fund spending. People rolled their eyes, come up with a million reasons why we’re wrong. And it’s not really, I don’t really care. I didn’t say it. I didn’t make it up. I’m just explaining it, right? So it’s like, don’t shoot the messenger. But the reality is that the government doesn’t ever, not once, not twice, never spends your tax dollars on anything.

So taxes in a fiat system are used to create a tether, a need for the currency. So when the government spends money into the economy, it doesn’t print money. It keystrokes into bank accounts, into The Treasury’s bank accounts, like, “Hey, where did that thousand dollars come from?” Yeah, my finger. Keystrokes, right?

So when the government spends money into the economy, there are rules on the books that say, hey, we’ve got to sell bonds every time we spend money into the economy, right? Like I’m not going to get into all the ticky tack details because people’s eyes would roll back into their head. It’s snooze fest.

But in reality what it is, is that the government sells bonds, okay? And those bonds are bought by pension plans, they’re bought by corporations, they’re bought by states that can’t fund themselves because they don’t create money. So they buy bonds and those bonds earn a nominal interest. Not big money, but it’s sure money. It’s a guaranteed hedge against the ebbs and flows of the business cycle.

So the government, the safest investment in town from any country, by the way, okay? It doesn’t matter whether somebody downgrades the bonds or any of the other nonsense. The government sells these bonds. And so countries like China or you know, anyone in Europe, England, Canada, whatever, when they buy and sell goods and services in the United States, they get US dollars for that transaction. And they don’t necessarily need all those US dollars. So what do they do with US dollars? They’ll go ahead and park them in a savings bond there at the Fed, at the Treasury.

And the Treasury chooses to sell these things. And all the interest, every penny of the interest is brought on by a keystroke, not by your “hard earned tax dollars” or anything like that. So we had to start off first with understanding what creates the debt, what is the debt. And the debt is just spending, okay? And what do you, where’s this big, huge money coming from? I want you to think about something. When they create interest rate hikes to stave off inflation, guess what that is? That’s new money entering into the economy. Expanding, expanding, expanding, right? And so what happens with rich people? Rich people want more money.

What happens with countries and stuff like that when they receive money? Well, they’d like to have more money. Everybody like to have more money. The only people not getting more money is Main Street, you and I. But if you buy a bond, it’s no more scary to the government that you’ve bought a bond than it is you going to your bank and creating a savings account that earns you 2 or 3% interest. You’re not bankrupting the bank by having a savings account. They don’t care.

Well, the government’s even less caring of that, right? The government creates these bonds for a three year bond, three month bond, five year bond, ten year bond, whatever. They sell bonds to stave off inflation at the terms that they do or because they want to create a savings account, a savings vehicle for the desires of various things like pensions and retirement accounts and the like.

So the debt is the sum total of every dollar spent by the government that has yet to be taxed back. Taxes delete money. Your tax dollar is never sent to Israel, no matter how much we hate Zionism. It’s never sent to some rich guy. Taxes are always deleted. New money is spent, old money is taxed away. And that’s the way a fiat system works. That’s not the way I like it or you like it or anyone likes. That’s the way it is. So let’s. If we start off with that understanding up front, I think we can all take a big sigh of relief that the debt isn’t going to hurt us.

James Fauntleroy:
00:12:42

Yeah. It’s because hearing that part especially is the sum total of all the money that the US has spent. It’s not as scary anymore, right? It’s like if I have like a lot of people don’t know this, but if you’re getting like Social Security, retirement or disability, you can actually see a record of all the money you’ve ever made.

Steve Grumbine:
00:13:07

Yep.

James Fauntleroy:
00:13:08

And so that would be likened to. And if I don’t have any money left over, then that. That’s basically the debt that I basically spent, right? And so somebody would look at me and say, “Well, James, you must be a hundred thousand dollars in debt.” I’m like, “No, it’s just all the sum total of all the money that I’ve ever earned that I’ve got. The only difference is I can’t keystroke it into existence, existence.

Steve Grumbine:
00:13:34

That’s right. [And so that makes sense] Let’s talk about that real quick, buddy. Because I don’t want to get past that. It’s so important, right? Social Security is the exact same way. You, they make us feel like we’re paying into Social Security. They take a tax out, okay? But in reality, there is literally nothing to prevent them from spending as much money as they want on every Social Security person. They could give you 10,000 a month. The amount that you put in is statutorily, legally, they’ve made a law that says that, “Hey, you’re…

We give authority to this Social Security trust fund that doesn’t really exist.” It’s not really money. It’s a spreadsheet. It tracks It. Because taxes are always deleted, and that includes Social Security, okay? So the interesting thing about Social Security is these are the lies they tell us to create the conditions that allow us to think the government’s broke. What. Who does it benefit to think that the government is broke? Think about it for a minute. Does it benefit you and I? Does it benefit the poor?

Does it benefit, you know, homeless people? Does it benefit people that are just graduating from high school that are going to be looking for a job, that can’t buy a home? No, it benefits the rich to keep us from asking for things to stay pliable and willing and unable to fight back. And then they all of a sudden get money. How do they get money? With interest rate hikes and all the rest. They get all that money. That’s. That’s where the debt is scary, right? Is that rich people tend to buy bonds. Rich people tend to have these things, okay?

It’s a little muddy because our retirement accounts are in there, but rich people do. So really, you’re watching the wealth gap grow because of interest rate hikes, because that’s how they make their money. And I didn’t want to interrupt you, but I felt like it was important to say Social Security, since you brought it up, is exactly the same. I don’t want anybody to think, “Oh, well, I’ve been paying in Social Security for all this time. I’m entitled to this small amount.” No, brother, sister, you. You are entitled to a hell of a lot more than that if they wanted to, but they don’t. And there’s a reason. And we can get into that later.

James Fauntleroy:
00:15:45

Wow. And it’s so funny when you think about it that way. It’s, you know, because, like, if you literally make the currency, then you could make. You can basically give whatever sector of the economy you want the amount of money that they need or they want. Like, for instance. Now, correct me if I’m wrong on this, but back in 2020, I think it was March of 2020, during the COVID pandemic, they dumped $4 trillion into the stock market to shore up the markets. That’s $4 trillion in just that month. Just to shore up the markets.

And I’m like, wait a minute, that’s $4 trillion that they could have done to infrastructure. They could have done it towards health care for everybody, for Black Americans. There could have been reparations for slavery, right? It could have been, like, if they did $4 trillion for five years, that would have been the entirety of reparations as owed to Black Americans since 1865. And they didn’t do it. It’s wild to me how they will. It’s really about priorities. It’s the priorities of whom. And one of my. One of the people who, you know, is friends to the channel, his name is Roger Meadows. He’s always in my chats.

One thing he’s spoke about, and now I put in my head, is that government is like a hammer. You can use it to build or you can use it to destroy. And if I put a hammer in the hand of an axe murderer, well, of course it’s definitely going to do damage. But if I put that hammer in the hand of a construction worker, well, of course he’s going to be building.

So it depends on who’s holding government. And that kind of goes into the power structures and what. And who’s wielding the powers of our government in order to keep us at a lower tier versus the small little group that’s at a higher tier.

Steve Grumbine:
00:17:54

You said an awful lot there. I mean, you go back in history, right? There is all kinds of work that was done. People like Rosa Luxemburg, Antonio Gramsci, Marx, Lenin, on and on and on, that have talked about this. And the fact of the matter is the institutions, all the institutions of the United States and in all capitalist governments, governments that are led by the idea of private property, every single one of them have rules and laws and constitutions baked in to absolutely prevent any impact on private property.

Okay, so Rosa Luxemburg famously said that, you know, “A socialist elected into government doesn’t transform a capitalist government into a socialist one, but instead a socialist is transformed into a bourgeois minister of capital.” It’s not because they’re good, it’s not because they’re bad. It’s because that’s what the system does. The laws and rules that they are elected in to uphold are all based on capitalism, okay? So we keep going back to the…

Well, I mean, we started out talking about third parties. We started talking about all these different things, and I’ve weirdly left all of the electoral space and understanding that Gilens and Page in 2014, a Princeton study came out that showed that there is a near statistical 0% impact on public policy based on the will and desire of regular people, voters, affinity groups, social justice groups. Nothing, nothing that they want, unless it happens to line up with the elite oligarchs. We live in an oligarchy.

So take in what Rosa Luxemburg said, take in what you know, from the Gilens and Page study, and you start realizing that these efforts at bourgeois government aren’t really producing. Our lying eyes are showing us that we don’t have the outcomes that we would like. You see, 70% of people want Medicare for All. Where’s Medicare for All? Where is it? 70% of us want it. Why don’t we have it? We have a democracy. We got to save our democracy and all the other nonsense, right?

But this goes back to the lies told, and this is why the national debt is such a powerful lie. Because you’re right. Who do we own owe this money to? What? You know, Zeus. I mean, where. Where do we go? Right? It’s, it’s comical. But in reality, you have to first divorce yourself of the idea that the government is broke. You have to stop from that, because you must realize that whether or not the government has the Federal Reserve or any of the other conspiracy things out there, it’s not a conspiracy. It’s real life.

The fact is we live in a capitalist system. And guess what? Oligarchy. And guess what? The Federal Reserve is part of a system of institutions that govern us. It’s not like the government will save us from the Federal Reserve. They are one. They are one capitalist entity, okay? Now, there are different factions of the capitalist order. There are different factions, of course, but when it comes down to us fighting Democrat, Republican, this and that and all the other pitch battles they put out about the national debt.

And you saw that in the video clip you put forward, right? The. Oh, it’s Biden’s fault. Oh, it’s Trump’s fault. Oh, it’s. The fact of the matter is. Is that what you’ve done, both of you? Elon Musk got some $40 billion from Biden, okay? And even more under Trump with DOGE and all the other insane things that have gone on. So this is not a partisan thing. This is literally. And it’s not even. It’s not even bipartisan. I think it’s important to understand that these parties represent the interests of capitalists. The oligarchy is managed through these things.

And so the national debt serves as fodder for you and I because we have a household budget in our brain. We think of, hey, man, I ain’t got money in my bank account. I’m not going to make my mortgage this month. I can’t. Yeah, there you go. Exactly. But it’s more than bipartisan, though. Fascism. And this is one of the things that I learned. And I’m not a Trotskyist, but I give Leon Trotsky his flowers here, when he talked about fascism as a tactic of capital in crisis, it’s not a governance policy. It’s a way of bringing everybody into discipline and crushing labor so that while capital goes through whatever crisis it’s going through, and let’s be fair, capitalism has gone through a major crisis since the pandemic and all the other things that went with it.

I mean, think about all the money that was spent to keep people at home. It was trillions, to your point, trillions of dollars spent. And what did they do as soon as it was over? They pretend, oh, now we’re broke again, right? But the reality is, is that if we didn’t, you know, just dump that information that we knew back then and we keep it front and center with us today, we know something is fundamentally wrong. We know that it’s not that we should know. I don’t say we know because I don’t think we know or we wouldn’t be talking today.

Not you and me, but I mean, just in general, this is such a big deal. People believe that the national debt is going to kill. And what about faith in the dollar? Let me ask you a question. When you think about faith in the dollar, which is the favorite comeback for people, what do you think maintains the dollar? Do you think it’s because people have faith in it? Or do you think it’s because we have the largest military in the world and we let them know, hey, dude, either open up your country for capitalist plunder or we’ll open it for you. And it’ll be through a CIA coup.

It’ll be through some other arm of this empire that we live in. We are in the imperial core. These people in the periphery are dealing with the results of accumulation from a very, very small global few. That. And you see the factions fighting, you see the geopolitical factions fighting at the top. None of these things are about you and I. None of these things are about the poor working class. And you could look at Gaza for examples of the open air test system that they used all this money to invest in AI Daddy’s Home [Where’s Daddy?] kind of warfare that they use for spying and destroying people with Flock cameras and these swarms, these drone swarms and all the other things they have used all of these test beds, if you will, killing poor people that don’t have the ability to fight back and blaming them for the cost.

So the national debt is so many things wrapped in one that it doesn’t really have anything to do with the debt. It really has everything to do with what the ruling class is doing. And do you really think you’re going to vote that away. I mean, do you really think you’re just going to go to the ballot box and God love Jill Stein. God love all the… God love Kshama Sawant.

But their strength is not going to be in trying to vote their way to the promised land. Their strength is going to be organizing people to fight back and resist. And I think that when push comes to shove, you know, this national debt thing is useful fodder to keep us deaf, dumb, blind and stupid and controlled, okay? To keep us from looking up. We look at each other like, see that trans person over there stealing your tax. See that gay person over there? They’re stealing your tax dollars. See that useless dude smoking weed? He’s stealing your tax dollars.

And when I think about Washington D.C. which is where I’m from, I live in Pennsylvania, but I’m from DC and I hearken back to a period of time where the Washington Capitals and the Washington Bullets or Wizards were going to move to Northern Virginia. Why? Because they sold DC as the, the horrible crime. All this crime going on, right? And you pull up the hood and you realize they’ve cut all the spending, they’ve eliminated jobs, they’ve made life so unbearable that people are doing whatever they can to survive. And if that means stealing a loaf of bread, guess what?

All right, so when you think about the national debt, the real crime here is not that we’ve spent all that money. The real crime is where we’ve spent it and to whom and why they have all this power. And then for us, the real crime is believing we can vote that away, when in reality, it’s their system, the laws, the Constitution, all these things that we of the rule of law. And all this stuff is all there to protect capital. It’s always been there. And it’s just us that mistakenly believe that we’re saving our democracy so that we can fight back.

But in reality, this is just them accumulating lots and lots of cash and lots and lots of power and doing lots of things that only a handful of people in the world can do. And while we bitterly fight amongst ourselves about Democrat Republican bullshit,

Intermission:
00:26:58

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James Fauntleroy:
00:27:20

Well, to your point. So there was a conversation between Sabby Sabs and Briahna Joy Gray and one of the things that was brought up and shout out to Sabby Sabs for this question, but really it was about even if Kshama Sawant was elected to Congress, even if right now the new star of the progressive left is Angie Nixon here in Florida. Any one of these people who are considered super progressive, right, or even third party, let’s say hypothetically that Jill Stein actually won, who would she have to work with to get things done?

She would have to work with the Democrats. She had to work with the Republicans. She would literally have to work with the system that is still in place, that is still exploiting us, right?

And to go back to your point about the faith in the dollar, what pushes that power of that dollar, it’s not faith, it’s fear.

Steve Grumbine:
00:28:20

Amen, brother. Yes.

James Fauntleroy:
00:28:23

It’s fear of you getting shot in the face because you won’t give the oil that’s beneath your feet. It is fear that forces people to actually have to dig into the gravel to get the cobalt and the coltan for your iPhone. It is fear that is reason why that we live in duress day in and day out. And it’s like, wait, our fear of staying in this spot has to be greater than our fear of retaliation from the system.

But then that, once we achieve that, then that’s when we can start doing things like, okay, we need to get together and we start doing mutual aid and building dual power.

Steve Grumbine:
00:29:05

Yeah.

James Fauntleroy:
00:29:06

But our fear of, you know, other things, and it’s legitimate fear. I’m not going to discount that because rents due next month, right?

Steve Grumbine:
00:29:15

Oh, yeah.

James Fauntleroy:
00:29:16

It’s the 28th. We got what, four days.

Steve Grumbine:
00:29:19

Yep.

James Fauntleroy:
00:29:20

Before rent’s due.

Steve Grumbine:
00:29:21

Yeah.

James Fauntleroy:
00:29:22

At the same time, it’s like. I think. And one thing that was brought up to me from a comrade, Sabby Sabs, again, was that one of the key things that actually sparked revolutions was when people could not feed their families.

Steve Grumbine:
00:29:38

Yeah.

James Fauntleroy:
00:29:39

We’re headed towards that.  Faster than I even I thought. Yeah. I don’t.

Steve Grumbine:
00:29:46

Man, it’s terrifying. No, it. It is terrifying. But, you know, one of the things that I’ve been telling the people in my organization is that as long as people put their hope in electoralism, as long as they think that they’re going to vote for somebody and they’re going to make it so, we’re never going to be able to make them realize the alternative of what we have to do, what we must do. And you can go back to Lenin, What Is To Be Done? You can go back even further to Capital and you can read these various works that these guys understood. They were understanding capitalism.

They weren’t talking about socialism as much as they were understanding the way capital operates, right? They were understanding it’s not the great man or the bad man theory that we live and die. Think about how many hot takes are about how bad this guy is or how bad that she sold out this or he sold out that. The reality is what Rosa Luxemburg said inside of our system, all of those elected officials put their hand up and they’re sworn to uphold the laws on the books. The laws on the books 100% protect private property.

The laws on the books 100% do everything that we don’t want done. And so when you think about it, they are sworn to uphold these things. They become ministers of capital, not of the people. And so the best you’re going to get is somebody that tickles your ears with words. But in reality, the best they’re going to do is buff the edges off of a thorn that’s in your side. Emancipation will never come within a capitalist system. We will never be able to spend our way out of it. We can’t reform our way out of it because the mechanisms by which we could reform aren’t really there.

It’s like taking a electrical cord and plugging it into itself and claiming we have electricity. They control the system. They can.. think of… You remember the very first Bernie Sanders campaign, Jared Beck took the DNC to court in your state of Florida. And when they went to court, the DNC successfully argued that they are a private corporation, that they have no responsibility to funnel the funds that are collected for a candidate to the candidate, that there’s no such thing as a Democrat.

So no one has standing as a Democrat, legal or otherwise. And, and this might be the biggest one, they have no responsibility whatsoever to honor the results of a primary, much less run a primary, okay? So all of these layers upon layers are there to block any real, actual outcomes that would benefit us. In fact, the laws on the books which these technocrats support and literally enforce, none of them will allow us to do anything through the official channels. That leaves you with a lot of freaking questions, doesn’t it?

Like, well, “Okay, so you’re telling me, Steve, that I can’t vote my way out. What’s your solution then?” Right? And it’s like, well, look, first of all, don’t look at me. It’s not what my solution is. Let’s look at the theorists that began to crack open capitalism, that started looking at capitalism, describing the anatomy of capitalism and the way it forms and functions, not only domestically, but globally. Let’s look at imperialism and what the imperial core does to a nation that’s an empire. Let’s look at what it does to the periphery.

Let’s look at the tools that they use, like the dollar system. You think about what they did to Russia, okay? Russia, they cut them off, the SWIFT system. What did Russia do? Russia said, “We don’t care. We create our own currency too, dude.” And so they went ahead and they created alternative systems and they are thriving. They’re doing fine, right? What did we do? We said, oh my God, we can’t have that. We’ve got to go ahead and back a puppet government in Ukraine and we got to have a proxy war to try to rough, you know, rough Russia up. But what happens? China says, you know what? We got you, homie.

So all these things are going on at one time. It doesn’t really matter about people’s faith in the dollar or not faith in the dollar. What matters really at the end of the day is, is that we are an empire. And that empire has certain privileges, that it is exacted certain tribute that they collect around the world, whether it be through unequal trade, unequal exchange to these, you know, Global South countries or whatever. So the national debt is just a. ledger. It’s just a. A nothing burger. It just tells you how many dollars have been spent into the economy that have yet to be taxed out.

And all the interest, you may not like usury, you may not like interest on money. You like any of that. It’s a policy. They could stop selling bonds tomorrow. But think about. States would go belly up if they didn’t have bonds to buy. Your pension plan would go belly up if they didn’t have because it would be stuck in the business cycle. The ebbs and flows of the stock market. You wouldn’t be able to deal with that. So we have to overthrow this. We have to end this system somehow or another. I’m not smart enough to tell you how we do that. I’m really not.

I do believe that we have to educate ourselves. We do. There are pathways that have been laid out. I think that you’re the, the Fred Hampton, you know, Huey Newton method of building dual power and creating parallel systems is a really nice way of starting there. Building capacity, structural capacity for people outside of the official channels. Very important. You know what I mean?

But at the same time, though, we’re fed a just a constant sewer truck full of nonsense about debt and deficits and taxes. And you know all kinds of weird fantasy stories that we’re fed so that we keep our eyes off the prize. The fact that the rich, and it’s not even the rich, I want to be clear, I. It’s real easy to just say, “the rich” but in reality it is capitalism, the system that creates and breeds and completely reproduces these outcomes over and over and over again, no matter how many people are in office. You figure if the Democrats are different and the Republicans are different, we should at least be at neutral, right? But we’re not.

We keep going further and further and further to the right. And why is that? Because capital is consuming the public space. We had a public space back when it was sexy to do so. Capital wasn’t threatened by it then. But little by little, as capitalists had to grow and accumulate and more and more and more profit, it is eaten into the public space. And you’re watching it happen in places like England, you’re watching it happen in places like Australia where the all these great public commons public services are being eroded through capital’s never ending desire for profits.

And it doesn’t care what the outcomes are. Anything that’s an outcome that is going to destroy the planet, destroy people, is just a cost to doing business. They don’t care. It’s an amoral thing. It’s a system that breeds this.

James Fauntleroy:
00:36:57

Yeah. And one of the things though that I have a question in my mind is a lot of people are saying, “Well, what should we do in the meantime?” For instance, as somebody who does do mutual aid and I try to help with building dual power, you know, I’m just one person. It’s like, okay, so there is somebody who is being elected to office that is wanting to do something that is slightly better for the working class than the other guy or the other person. And there is no third party option. It’s like, do I just bubble their name in on a Tuesday in November and then just keep it moving with building dual power or do I just like not vote for that person? And then what if the person who is even worse gets in? It’s almost like a, it’s like…

Steve Grumbine:
00:37:59

Got you in a vice, don’t they?

James Fauntleroy:
00:38:01

Yeah, definitely.

Steve Grumbine:
00:38:02

Yeah. So I mean, I don’t, I’m not smart enough to tell you what to do. I will tell you that we all have to understand that we can’t vote our way out regardless. So whatever you decide to do, you know, your conscience tells you to vote for that person. I’m not, I’m not going to scold anybody. I’m not going to scold anybody from the working class for doing what they need to do because we’re all stuck in a capitalist system. And let’s be fair, we haven’t organized. We aren’t organized. We’re splintered into a thousand little pieces of glass instead of a big windshield, okay?

We’re a bunch of pinkies instead of a fist. And so with it, we don’t have the organizational power, we don’t have the, the combined power to make these things. It’s not that we don’t have the ability, we just haven’t done it. And I think a large part of that comes from the fear of not voting for xyz. The fear of allowing the bad guy to get in like you were talking about. And I think that you can walk and chew gum. I’m not going to tell you that you’re going to vote your way out. I’m going to tell you flat out this system is not meant to be won, okay?

But if you go voting, I’m not here to shame you. I’m just here to tell you that as long as your hope is in that dope, you’re not going to ever free yourself up. Because I believe there’s like a box that we live in it like blinders on that keeps us from even truly understanding, you know, working class struggle at all. And I’m going to avoid using some of the terms like Marxism and stuff like that, even though I am a Marxist. I think of it more along the lines of just think about what people need. Just think about what is needed right now and what the material conditions they’re suffering through are today.

And then realize at the end of the day that none of us did that to each other. A trans person didn’t do that to them. A some random guy that runs a pizza shop didn’t do this to them. It is literally the system of capitalism. And the capitalism that we’re talking about is codified into law, enforced by police, enforced by every mechanism that we have.

And so somehow or another we got to get people if they’re going to vote, do it, but just do it. Don’t waste all of our energy focused on campaigns and talking about turn that organizing to understanding the material condition. I think of Che Guevara and his book Guerrilla Warfare. If you haven’t read it, it’s a weird, funny book. It’s got a lot of really important stuff in it.

But he talks about the the gorilla must eat a box, have a thing of chocolate with him, and maybe a pack of smokes and, you know, he must keep his pistol clean and things like that. You know, I mean, it’s real. It was what he was going through. But in reality, he talks about how necessary it is for guerillas to work with the people, to understand the people, to ingratiate themselves to the people, to build capacity with the people.

Because when they go into hiding, the people need to be able to protect them too. And they need to be able to feed them and they need to be able to do all these things. So there’s a symbiotic relationship with us and each other that we don’t see because we see each other through a political lens. And as a result of that Democrat, Republican thing, you know, those thoughts that many of us share that we think about online are not our own thoughts. They’ve been given to us by the people upstairs, by the cultural hedge- you know, hegemonic messages that we all just take as common sense.

If we can break from that-and the only way I know to do that is to look at the electoral space as not a solution, but a tactic. And I think a lot of people can’t understand that. And this is why DSA drives me insane, right? DSA is nothing but Democrats, really. And, you know, they have the S in there that makes people get all spicy and feel tittilized by the idea that…

But their solution is vote for more progressives. Vote, vote, vote. Right? And they keep you away from understanding that capitalism cannot be reformed. Capitalism itself cannot be reformed. And the laws and the books… think about it. If you say we’re going to, we got to get money out of politics.

Let’s, let’s role play that. How do you get money out of politics? Some elected person that is there representing the ruling elite that has been sworn to protect and serve the, the laws of this great land kind of thing. They’re going to vote against their own interests. Look at what happened. If you think about AOC and I think about this all the time, because in the very, very beginning, I got swept up for a half a second, right?

Because it’s like, holy shit, we got this girl. She’s holding up the MMT textbook. She’s learning the economics. She’s five minutes later after standing on Pelosi’s desk with the Sunrise Movement around her. She was mama bear. She was fighting force the vote. She was fighting all these things. And that set my spidey senses ablaze. Not so much that, oh, she’s sold out or, oh, whatever, but it was these other things that I talk about with Rosa Luxemburg. These are things that we got to hold near and dear. I saw before we got on here, you showed me The Little Red Book, Mao and stuff like that.

I think it’s really important to read theory. I think it’s really important to understand that we are not creating new ground. The material conditions of our society are different today. We are not in industrial capitalism anymore. We are in money manager capitalism now. We are in a different world, but the principles of class struggle still remain. And if we hold those, that’s when we’re going to start building capacity and we’re going to start organizing and building strength.

But that doesn’t exist within that voting space. Within that voting space, you’re saying, “Here is my vote. I’m going to make you a God, and when you fail me, I’m going to be heartbroken” right? But in reality, if you stop that dance, that fake dance, that. In the wrestling, okay, they have this term called kayfabe. And it’s the, the difference with, with the wrestlers go in character and the people buy into the fake. They know it’s fake. They know it ain’t real.

But they sit there and they play this game anyway. I think a lot of us know this isn’t real. A lot of us know that we can’t vote our way out. But to acknowledge that, to say it is, it’s scary, it’s spicy. It. It changes our whole compass of what we think is possible. Because the minute you accept that you’re not voting your way out of this, you’re left with a very, very uncomfortable idea that. Wait a minute. That, then, then, then what? What, what? Right? And that’s scary. Even as I say what I’m saying, knowing full well what I’m saying, it’s terrifying to say those words for real.

Not to be cool and online and hyper-online, but to really think about that and articulate that and say that. And I think that’s where we’re at, JB. I, I think that’s. That’s what in order for us to cross over from just constantly running to the ballot box, putting “I voted” sticker on our forehead, taking the selfie and telling everybody, “Hey, I voted” Who you know, you. You. Your fault for Trump, your fault for Hillary, your fault for Biden, your fault for Kamala, your fault for whatever.

I mean, my God, they’re going to put someone in charge, and it’s going to be a guy that does the bidding of capital one way or the other. Even Bernie Sanders, if he would have gotten… with all the hype and whatever, even Bernie Sanders would have been stuck managing a capitalist country. For all the people that still think Bernie’s playing 3D chess instead of realizing he’s part of this system, okay? Instead of recognizing that I think people, it’s not my fault, right? You know, it’s not your fault, it’s not their fault, it’s none of our fault, right?

You couldn’t have voted this away if you wanted to. You couldn’t have made a better decision. This is capitalism. And as it eats itself and it consumes itself, and as a virus morphs and morphs and morphs, it continues to reproduce these negative outcomes. And that’s why we get all wrapped around the axle about a national debt. It’s just one more tool that the oligarchs use to keep us down.

James Fauntleroy:
00:46:16

Man, that was a wonderfully stated especially, because I think this puts into perspective to a lot of us that we have to look beyond just the tree. We have to look at the entire forest. And you basically took us on an eagle’s eye view of that. And I know I promised you 45 minutes because I know you have family duties, but, man, that was, that was really great, especially because a lot of us are like, what do we do now, right?

And so it’s like I feel vindicated for saying what I’ve been saying, especially about the mutual aid and building dual power. And so it feels cathartic, you know, to hear that from somebody else.

Steve Grumbine:
00:47:08

Educate, educate, educate, educate, educate. Awaken. I, I, I, I. You know, we know things, but we don’t act on things. It’s when we have awakenings that we have changes. You know, think about an alcoholic that knows, yeah, I keep drinking, I keep screwing up. Keep breaking out with jail cells and handcuffs and drunk driving and this, that and the other. But, man, I like drinking, right? I know it’s wrong, but I’m going to keep wrong. I know it’s wrong for me, but I keep doing it, right?

But when that drunk realizes that if they put another drip in their lips, they’re going to go back to the well and they’re going to crash a car, they’re going to beat their wife, they’re going to do something stupid, right? Until they come to grips that they can’t drink again. And that’s the thing with electoralism. Until we realize that, we’re not voting our way out. Vote for kinder, softer, gentler. Do whatever it is you think you’re going to do, but keep your eyes open to see the fact that you’re not really advancing anything.

I mean, you think about it, it sucks because you think about the civil rights movement fighting for voter rights, fighting for inclusion, fighting for all these things, only to have it roll right into a capitalist society where they take an Obama and say, what are you talking about, racism? We had a black president. How many times have you heard that one, right? But the reality is, this is capitalism. It doesn’t care. It reproduces oligarchs, it reproduces in elite, and it crushes everyone else. And so with that, I do have to go. But JB, it was a pleasure, man.

James Fauntleroy:
00:48:44

Yeah, thank you so very much for joining. I cannot wait to have you back on, to have more discussions like this.

Steve Grumbine:
00:48:50

You got anytime, man. Take care. Take care, everybody. Thank you. Bye.

James Fauntleroy:
00:48:54

Take care. All right. Bye.

Steve Grumbine:
00:48:55

Bye.

James Fauntleroy:
00:48:56

All right, folks, if you have not already, go ahead and give a like. That was Steve Grumbine coming in and coming in hot. That was, man. It’s always good to have discussions with people to kind of take your ideas and put it against a touchstone, to see how close you are to the truth. And I went into this discussion thinking in my head that Steve was going to be a little less radical than me because we haven’t spoken in a while. But now he’s like, right where I’m at. It’s just like, wow, you know, and it’s just like using the logic and coming to the conclusions that he has came to and I have come to as well.

And it’s like, it’s like, wait, I’m not crazy. And he’s like, no, you’re not crazy. I’m just like, wow. Okay, that’s pretty cool.

Steve Grumbine:
00:50:07

All right, folks, this is Steve again. Thank you for listening to this episode of Macro N Cheese. As you know, my name is Steve Grumbine. I am the host of Macro N Cheese. I was a guest on Jaybefaunt’s show. So please give him some love. But as far as our work, we are a 501c3 not for profit. We depend on your contributions.

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If you like what we’re doing, great, you can come to our Tuesday night Macro N Chill where we go through each episode and we talk about it as a team building community, sharing information, learning together. We hope that you’ll consider joining us there as well. So without further ado, I bid you adieu and this is Steve Grumbine on behalf of the podcast Macro N Cheese, Real Progressives and special thanks again to Jaybefaunt. We are out of here.

End Credits:
00:51:54

Production, transcripts, graphics, sound engineering, extras, and show notes for Macro N Cheese are done by our volunteer team at Real Progressives, serving in solidarity with the working class since 2015. To become a donor please go to patreon.com/realprogressives, realprogressives.substack.com, or realprogressives.org.