 So it is my great pleasure to welcome G. William Domhoff goes by Bill to the political economy workshop. He is currently distinguished professor emeritus of and research professor of psychology and sociology at UC Santa Cruz. You know he did his undergraduate at Duke, where he played baseball. I've been told I've had you're going to keep this short. It is going to be short, but I just want to throw in a couple of these things. I will keep it short. But I've also been told he was an incredible basketball player. I've heard from several people so we have a, at least some of us have an interest in basketball in this political economy workshop. Robert Pollan, you might know as a, has an interest in basketball as well. And actually has his PhD in psychology, not in sociology. And amazingly, I'm going to talk about his, you know, he'll, he's doing a presentation and I'm just going to talk about his work in political economy. He has an entire other research trajectory and the study of dreams, which I find utterly amazing. Okay, so amazingly productive and done such important work, and basically has had two totally separate careers just kind of blows my mind. For my money, you know, and I know this is my opinion, I think Bill is the most important social scientists working in the US, because of his work on the distribution of power. And theoretically, he's kind of a combination of, or somewhere between Marxian and institutionalist thought. I think is one of the most foremost practitioners of power structure research, which I'm trying to teach to people at UMass, and I would like to become a major methodology that's that's utilized in economics. I think what really distinguishes Bill's work on the distribution of power in the US or what Marxist Michael theories of the state would be another way to put it is his incredible empirical rigor. I know I'm sounding like I'm going on too long, I'll wrap it up. But I've noticed the incredible rigor, which is lavished on econometrics, but if you're not doing econometrics basically anything goes, and there's like, like no conceptions of rigor outside of econometrics and I think Bill really demonstrates in such a great way how you could. It's hard. It's hard to be rigorous when you're not using statistics but the ability to test competing hypotheses, which most people just don't even bother to do. It's really hard to do outside of econometrics but Bill does it brilliantly. So that's why I really love his work. He's best known and probably most of you know his work, his book who rules America, first published in 1967, and the eighth edition is coming out soon. So that's who rules America, the corporate rich white nationalist Republicans and inclusionary Democrats bills written many other books and articles, some of the most famous were the higher circles, the powers that be the diversity and the power elite or my personal favorite the power elite and the state. Much of his work is based on archival work, such as this last book the corporate rich and the power elite in the 20th century, how they won while liberals and labor lost. And that came out in 2019. And I could go on and on introducing him, but I, he asked me to be brief. So that's as brief as I could be. I'm introducing one of my greatest intellectual heroes. So with that I'll turn it over to Bill. Thank you so much Larry for for asking me to do this for arranging it for DBA I asked for very short introduction that it's not what I got so maybe loosens me up a little bit. I'm a peer assist I do follow my nose. I do have a quantitative. My work on dreams that he mentioned is quantitative content analysis of dream reports and the title of my dissertation tells it all a quantitative study of dream content using an objective indicator of dreaming. You can see how defensive that is in terms of saying look where he is in dreams collected and REM sleep in the lab and we're quantifying. And I would say in that regard that I think there's two basic methods in power structure research. And they are network analysis and and content analysis and network analysis in effect takes us to the key organizations and to the key people in those organizations, and then we study the output of those organizations of end of those persons. And this is the tradition of Floyd Hunter who was a great sociologist that got pushed aside by the pluralist. And also of C right bills. And they've really started with organizations and built from their organizations, division of labor, a tremendous efficiencies tremendous productivity, but the people a direct organization have a tremendous strategic advantage. And they soon dominate these organizations social psychology takes over. They think they're wonderful, and they soon eliminate power rivals, and so on so it's hard to keep organizations at all accountable. So we have this paradox that, on the one hand, they've changed the, you know, material wealth, collective ability to worship together. Lots of kinds of things, but at the same time, they lead to the solidification of power structures that are very difficult to to dislodge. So, and my interests are totally separate out of totally different curiosities. And they're just a matter of the zeitgeist in terms of when you come online. And when I came online in the late 50s and early 60s, there was first of all, the discovery of a kind of sleep REM sleep that seemed to be the only time we were dreaming. Wow, that's exciting. That's like Pedro and Caitlyn they're coming online at a certain time certain things look more interesting. And secondly, shortly after that, with my guess personal dispositions and all having spent some time at Duke and the segregated south. I was really enthused by and taken by the SNCC in particular to the civil rights movement. And that's what got me into power structure research because I thought I can do some empirical research that allows me to compare what the various viewpoints say. So it's pretty much as simple as that. But I do I did come to it as an innocent in a sense of the baseball is relevant because I was never interested in politics I must confess, until I was in my 20s already married family teaching I started teaching as a professor 1962. So I've been around the bend for a long, long, long time. Three parts to my talk today. I want to first give a sense of where I think we are now, both in terms of power and in terms of those who challenge power. The second thing I want to try to do is to give a quick explanation of how I think we got to that situation. And that'll be in a way the longest part of the talk. And the third thing that I want to talk about is what are the factors that will be involved in the elections in 22 and 2024. Basically, here's what I think the variables are. I don't think we know what's going to happen. I don't think you can predict the future. And I think we're saying my 2022 book on who rules anyone will walk on a razor's edge it could go either way. And lots of little things can then tip it when it's so close is any one of a million variables that can change things. So, that that point then where we are now. I think, and then we can put the title up now if you would Pedro so the title of my talk is setting the stage. Finally, we're we're in this situation of having a white nationalist group against an inclusionary group. We have a tremendously powerful corporate rich. And I'm going to try to explain that in terms of this concept of a corporate rich that dominates the caste system in America, and what happened to the union. Oh, that's right. I'm still up here. So the point now is that I really do draw on a lot of historical archival research, as well as network analysis. And I've interviewed women outlook and, you know, participant of not participant observations that that observation. I think a lot of workers brought together in that corporate rich book and I did ask Larry to mention the title I think the corporate rich one. And I think we can under and I know, I think I know how they want. And I say why liberals and labor's lost labor and lost because I think that some flaws in the liberal labor, labor coalition did matter big time. And then the Who Rules America book just for its subtitle because once again we have a corporate rich. We have now a white nationalist Republican Party where we used to have a white nationalist Democratic Party. We have an inclusionary, the Democratic Party. I think that the corporate rich are going to continue to dominate this country, whether it becomes an authoritarian ethno nationalist what I'd call white supremacist supremacist democracy quote, or whether it becomes an inclusionary democracy. I mean, at the same time, I don't know for sure where they're going to go in the 20s I don't have good guesses, and I also don't think they could fully controlled if they were quite united in, and we're really trying to push in one direction or another to be able to to influence that but I think it's much bigger forces that are operating in terms of people's identity, lower classes in the society and so on so I do think we're in a very unusual kind of moment. So, my, my general explanation will be around this concept of corporate rich which is one that Mills developed to talk about the fact that there really had been with the rise of these big corporations that executives, usually from the middle upper middle classes, done from the upper class, they really have melted very much with the, with the owners. And so he talked of a corporate rich. And so I'm going to explain things in terms of corporate rich and also a leadership group I call a power leap drawing on mill but defining it differently because I think it's a leadership group that's rooted in the corporate rich but it's not just the capitalist that we're talking about. So I want to explain that the current moment, and then I want to talk about now will be a most talky part about how I think we got there. I want to highlight it's sort of a power version of history which will leave out a lot of history, then very briefly, I will talk about these factors of where we, we might go. I had a refrain from the academic tendency to want to give too many examples and to be nuanced and then make sure you know that I know there's a lot of variables and so on I hope we can do that in our discussion and I like the size of the group for, for that very kind of, of reason. I do want to say I have been in a lot of archives, it's been a lot of fun it's like rerunning, you know, things I live through I now read about in archives. And so I and I have found some, some new things I'm, I'm really proud that I found like in the electricity museum or whatever it's called in connectivity and I'm down the basement that's a very minor archive. I'm reading letters between the from sent by the head of general electric to the head of standard oil New Jersey Exxon mobile today and so kind of, you know fun and new and I read all the Rockefeller archive stuff that came available. Over the years and also read a man named Gittleman on on the Rockefeller kind of of involvement. So at all time for me then the issue will be one of power. political sociology and you'll hear me talk about indicators of power that's how do we infer that somebody is powerful. And basically there are who benefits who has the goodies, and then then from there you try to understand who, how they got them will also talk about who sits in the peak seats of power. Explain how that works and then I'm going to look at indicators are called who wins that is, if there's a conflict over something who is triumphant in that particular conflict. That's the general overview. Now, I'm going to turn to the to the next slide. It's a who benefits kind of slide. This is from Edward Wolf's work, a century of wealth. It's financial wealth and as you know he defines that in terms of basically not durable goods not the house you live in. It's, it's more liquid kind of assets and if we start on the right and go clockwise we can see that 1% in 2013 I think it was yeah had 43% the next 4% we had another where it's 77% the next 5% we're at 85% and then the next 10% we're at 95%. So huge, huge disparities in wealth, 80% have 5%. If we if we talk in social class terms the upper class does half a percent the upper middle class, probably another 1516% skilled work people who have been able to credentialize their occupation, keep people out. Mostly males keep women out of these skilled trades they do everything they can to do that. We get a picture here of, I think the wealth distribution in the United States. It has become more unequal over the last 4050 years but it was always pretty unequal. And more generally those of you know, work of Piketty and Stays and Zuckman and others in that group. It fluctuates with whether there's war whether it's depression. In good times they, they went calm times I would say they, you know all accumulates to the top. The next slide we see this through income, taking again from that same group of researchers. If we look at the share of pre tax income that's held by the top 1% versus the top 50% of the bottom 50% excuse me, you see this dramatic kind of change I don't need to give the exact numbers to keep keep myself on a little bit of a schedule here. But you can see it's dramatically change. Now let's look at this and just regular $2018 and the next slide. You can see that as you all know, basically workers in America that now indexed by not for your college education, they've been making about 19 grand a year for a long, long time. Meanwhile, it's gone out of sight for the top 1% if we broke this down which we could, but I didn't. I don't quite have the resources anymore, plus the energy, plus people to work with the get really fancy which I think much better job of course could be done on this, but you can see what what has happened. The power is accumulating even more this is examples of the corporate rich winning. Okay, well of all these these indicators suggests that there's this 1% that's actually I'd say a half percent 310 some percent is the real ownership class real upper class. How does this happen let's go to the next slide then. I think it happens through a leadership group and it's draws from three. We put it in a Venn diagram. It's three three overlapping groups. These would be mills as higher circles so to speak. We start on the on the left. It's obviously this corporate community that I'll define more that's that's really the starting point. And the corporate community is very large in terms of Vice Presidents, middle level executives, CEOs, boards of directors, but a lot of those people are not part of the power league, they are. They may, those Vice Presidents may someday have 35 year old vice president may be 55 or she's 55, maybe on the board of directors may be a CEO, but right now they are not in a leadership group. They move in and out. And then on the top you see the social upper class and these, these are the, the owners, the big wealthy. And here I stress that, you know, a lot of them are socialites a lot of them are jet setters. If we got more nuance there are ones that fail. They get hooked on drugs they do whatever, but there are also some change agents in that group. There are people who have really a way gone over to the other side. I've interviewed such people. They maintain their class style and manner but they support the ones I have interviewed, but they also support other causes. But some of those people are active in the corporate world or they're active as experts or serve on boards of trustees of the groups I'm going to get to. So they really are actively involved in, in trying to generate policy. And then on the right you see what I call a policy planning network and I think this is a nice example of network analysis. And in effect, I stumbled on this network just by in the 60s by writing down people's names and all their connections and then in effect or read a million who's who biographies and you start to say geez they're all in organization X or what's organization why. Now we can do that we can generate that we can accept test hypothesis by putting all the people and organizations in a big network. And I think this is what you come up with in fact I have such a analysis on my website who knows America dot net for data from about 2011 that has 14500 plus several other 1000 1000 other corporations that we said okay what happens you put in the directors of various of foundations or think tanks and bang you find out which ones have that overlap. So I think that this is the general picture of the power structure. You can then map it with great care. You can look more closely at things you can look at the there are a lot of companies friends here I'm straying a little. You know that are privately held. Well, are there directors are some of those people directors of Fortune 500 firms yes they are. Are they on these board of trustees for these nonprofits yes they are. And so on so you can build out and you can also find out, you know who's on the periphery who's excluded who's not there. And so on. You can look at the social clubs for example and you'll find that people of certain religious backgrounds are not included that they are treated badly at prep schools and they will speak of that. If you interview them, and I think it has an effect on what their politics are, and I interviewed one man once who said I'm on a board with a bunch of fascists he said but I choose to use my money to do different things. And I'm a very liberal Democrat. So, those other identities matter. Okay, so that's the what the power look elite looks like now I want to turn to, you know, more nitty gritty of how they govern. And since it's a small informal group and I'm, I guess I found my comfort mode, my mojo's back. I want to say that basically, there's four avenues through which. We can really trace in detail how that power lead operates. And this is the second of the four so I might as well go in the right order. And that is, we all know about the interest group process and we know there's, you know, the American William Institute, the Home Builders Association and Union X and Union Y and, and the good government league and, you know, the groups that help the seniors they're all interest groups. So there is what I call the special interest process and, you know, there's been thousands of studies and not maybe 10,000 right now. They show exactly how it works. Use of lobbyists hiring people that used to be in government, hire former staffers, high shot lawyers. It's going on right now of course over the Biden's infrastructure bills. And the other thing it looks out for short run interests. One sociologist called the wealth defense industry, they're always finding new loopholes always finding new ways to, to carve out exceptions for their, their industry or for individual families and so on. I think that matters but famous guy in the past Grant McConnell and political scientist who wrote a book on private power and American democracy pointed out most of the government has carved up into these smaller parts but he said there's no overarching. There's no bigger picture. I think there is a bigger picture. And I think that Grant McConnell who was once a colleague of mine somebody I learned a lot from. I think a lot of others don't take seriously the policy planning network. And so I got it up here corporate rich, you know, they get their money from major corporations, they start foundations. I could hear say here that major corporations also create foundation, and they finance think tanks, policy discussion groups. They talk in those areas, and the way it happens is this, I'm a guide that runs a company in Northern New York. And but I am in there sitting at a discussion group in New York and they're saying, we got to talk about Canadian policy and a guy says hey I know this guy Joe up, but I wanted to prep school with him or I knew him from summer this or summer that. I'm not interested at that point he might say no I'm not interested I like running this business or he might say okay I'll come down for that particular discussion group. He or she may not like that. In other words there's de selection, or they may say this person does not forward a discussion and you probably have known this for interactions in the faculty. We're interacting with people in science division you're going to interact with students. And you say I don't think Frank's the guy we got to send you know I mean, pretty sort out this person is good inside he's good economist but now I don't think he's for faculty governance so it's a very, in that sense a very informal social technological process, but these people are learning beyond just their narrow business world, and they're being taught by these experts from think tanks, maybe spending a year at Brookings, but maybe your whole life, you've been trying to figure out one thing. While you're at Brookings or the Urban Institute or whatever you're educating these corporate people on their larger issues. And then serve on blue ribbon commissions that have been set up by the government task forces for government. They testify to congressional committees, and they do end up appointed to the executive branch of federal government, down a million studies of what are the backgrounds, socially and educationally occupationally of the people appointed to the government and they're all, I would say they're mostly from the policy planning that people, but I think it's important. I also think social cohesion is important and that's where the schools the clubs trust people don't trust each other easily. They're in group and out group and you're from Texas I'm from New York you're from one religion I'm from another how do we get a comfort level to then talk about these policies. And there's many people know anything that this is the second process process here I now just show you the third process. I know first, this is perfect go back to go back Pedro go ahead yeah, here's the most important things they've done. You've all heard that phrase state building state state leaders supposedly build the state I say state building mostly happens by the corporate rich. Based on case studies these things I've thrown up here. First one was a federal trade commission, but I think the key wins for us. If you look at the A a agricultural adjustment act so security administration. We've got the papers we've got the oral histories I've looked at all of those papers, and I think I can trace practically month by month just how it happened. I think they built those. I think case studies were done on the employment act of 46 that showed business leaders led to the council on of economic advisors. And I've studied the council economic advisors and publish something 87, who goes on and off, and where do they come from. Maybe you go on as a minor person from an academic background, and maybe you come out you're on a corporate board remove up or now you're asked to be at the Brookings institution so. So, they're all part of a whole complex thing. I'd like to jump to the 62 and 74. Sorry, sorry, Pedro. Pedro's role is to try to guess what I'm going to say next so it's it's a tricky role. Yes. But we talked about it beforehand, but the trade expansion act of 62 and then I think 74 for what they called it, but they create that office of trade representatives and called special trade representatives. It's very important it's got a fair amount of autonomy, and it's really led to keep parts of the project of of expanding American form trade. And I think you know just jump down to the bottom here. And it was essentially a very important part the option of special trade representative. They very important all this advisory committees and creating NAFTA and creating the World Trade Organization, and I would add permanent normal trade relations with China which essentially finished a project that had been gone, begun in the policy planning network between 39 and 42 that said the post World War post World War two world, we've got to expand. It's got to be an international economy. And as part of that, and this we important later. We've got to open our economy. We've got a, we're the biggest market. If these, if there's going to be capitalism in Europe and Japan. And these days you they got to, they got to have us as trading partners and they're, it's compatible, sympatic, very important economists of those days, but one of the key ones being Alvin Hansen who must be somebody, you know, from economic history. Convert to Keynesian we could call him quite a guy. He, he was key part of all of this and he talks about well, I've read his papers and then say well we'll talk about this at our meeting at the Council on Foreign Relations, and we'll meet with someone. He spent a lot of time during World War two talking back and forth with Keynes for instance. So that's enough of why I think this policy planning network is important. So here's our next slide here. And this next slide is a quickie. This is the fourth of the proper processes through which the corporate rich dominate. They have enormous apparatus to try to shape public opinion. The key takeaway is that general beliefs of the public have not changed there. There are a little more liberal on economic issues there less hard line on foreign policy issues and then what you find in the policy planning network. And they have different kinds of organizations interact with different people. There's these upper middle class discussion groups that come out of the foreign policy association, UN Association, they deal with a tent of publics. They try to go through the corporate affairs department of each corporation. Create very benign PR kind of groups that reach average citizens that put good stuff about the corporation newspaper and all that kind of thing. But there's also dark side PR groups they are disruptive groups and they disrupt activists. They plant stories against people. They smirks the names of journalists. They do that kind of research. I think they have their biggest impact on specific legislation because most people don't know the details of legislation. And so what they, one book is called merchants of doubt, because that's what they sell is doubt science is being built on a consensus and so they say there's no consensus and they find a, you know, has been or never was who's on the margins of the field and make him or her a public person. This has been studied very carefully in the case of Exxon mobiles, huge network it's now run by ultra conservatives Exxon mobile and so on have gotten themselves at more in the background. But there is that attempt by them, it floods the, it floods the airwaves and everything else benign groups like the ad council. People start pollution people can stop it. Not externalities you understand people start pollution. And so they have all these clever ad campaigns including one I really like. While the pandemic is going on and nobody get a job they say, maybe it's time for you to think of a new profession, why don't you learn something new like blame the victim, get out there and learn something new to your fault. So I think there's a lot of that that goes on how successful is I don't know. And from my point of view, the way that Congress works. It's very hard for general public opinion to have an impact. Okay, let's go to the next slide. Okay, here's where we are right now. That was the power side of it. This is pie charts of who were the Trump voters how much did they contribute. And if we start on the right with the Trump voters we see a white party, and we see a white non college educated party, white non college educated people contribute 58% of the Republican vote college educated. That can contribute 27% of the Trump in vote. There's a small black percent there. There's a larger Latino percent that larger Latino percent matters I think in Florida greatly and I think it matters. In Texas and mattered along the Texas border. And Asian American Pacific Island vote. I think people that over people that came from China, or came from Vietnam are often more Republican voters, both because of think you know quating communism and liberalism but also because some of them quite well educated and wealthy. Look at the Democrats we see a multi color multi ethnic multiracial you name it, those things. It is definitely now as of 2018 and 2020 inclusionary coalition, but what I'd want to stress to you is, it depends tremendously on a white vote. And that includes the, the people that aren't college educated, and they matter because they're a big percentage of the, of the whole electorate. So one two percentage point change in them is a lot and I think Biden Harris got I think a percentage point or so more matter. And the other thing that's happening of course is the college educated whites, contributed a large percentage to the Democratic vote. And that matters and it could matter more as it if it continues to change college educated whites did vote a little more for Biden overall, but it's, it's big. The big the black percent is the Latino Latin X percent Asian American, other meaning Native Americans, Americans from India, several other places here the simple point is and I'll come back to this. States changed switch from 2016 to 2020 man alphabetically they are Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, and in all those states. The people of color matter big time, both of them, you know, no walking matters. Detroit matters, Philadelphia matters, Pittsburgh matters. Arizona, the Latin X vote matters, but there's still a black vote there to Navajo Nation mattered down there. And Georgia, they all mattered. They all matter. It was so very close. Those are precisely the five states in which the Republicans have generated most of their concerns about we're going to, we're going to recheck the vote. And that's the states there aimed at precisely those states that lost, and they can win them if they can scare enough whites, and if they can suppress enough votes from people of color. Okay, let's that's where we are now right now. Okay, let's now go to the next slide. Here I'm going to say, talk about how the United States arrived at this particular point. And it's a, you know, a stylized history. I'm going to go pretty fast over those. There's not going to be. When I look at the difference between the first four differences between Western Europe United States compromise of 87 down to World War one, I can have slides for those. But I do have a couple of slides that relate to the New Deal World War two and and post 1960. I'm going to show you those slides as an example of where we're going. So Pedro, if you would put that first slide up. Now here what I've done is taken the genie coefficient, and I ran it against the non agricultural union membership. It's pretty good study I actually had a retired applied economist named George Blackford. I'll go a little bit the email and his interest is retiree in Michigan. I had him look at it for me if it's a if we do it. I think I forget we did it a number of ways, but the correlation is is minus point 89. And I recognize it's more than just power because there's, you know, technology changes and new industries arise and so on. But in fact, what you can see is basic generalization the unions do well. In times of real strife, especially World Wars, but they also benefited mightily from the New Deal. And so you see how fast the unions rose and we get back to this, but then notice the dip, the dip until 42. And that and the unions were actually on a defensive at this time. I think this is an excellent who wins indicator. We know workers want unions most of them. We know the wealthy want to hold on to an increase their wealth. This is a class conflict diagram in a quantitative term I do believe. And you'll notice that 19 what rescued then the unions was the Korean War, because they did remobilize for the Korean war. And there you get your closest and from there it's been the parting of the ways ever since with some accelerations here and there. Now, this diagram actually masks what's going on. So let me go to the next slide. And this is I take out the public sector I separate public sector union membership from private sector union membership. And here I want to stress, and I might have switched here to standard stuff I was using Richard Freeman stuff. But his things run out in 95. So it's little small glitches that have to be smoothed out by really good econometricians, which I'm not. But I want to stress here that we're just talking percentages here not actual number. And so public sector unions grew very fast from mid 60s on, but picking them up about 1970. About 17% of 18.3 or so million, excuse me, my union members, but by by 1998 99 something like 48% of 16 million give or take a few hundred thousand union members in other words declining number of union members. 48% of the union movement and by 2009 air 51.2% of the union movement. And then union movement was 51 was 15.3 million I think it was. Now I'm risking, you know, not looking at my at my notes, but you can't. Understate the way in which the union movement was really in a serious decline. And it really I think takes a nose dive there in the early 1970s and and and this time marches on here. I think I want to say at this point to it's a good point to say. And what I'm going to say. I think that the timing of the series right turn as has not been correctly stated. I think the crunch time came as I'm going to explain in the late 60s and 7071. I don't think that the US Chamber of Commerce had anything to do with it. I don't think that the idea that the corporate community suddenly realized it was under siege and decided to collectively organize had anything to do with it, which are the narratives I hear from other researchers via their their writings. So, now let's go back to that maybe go back Pedro to maybe we'll go back to yeah let's go back to the list. Let's go back to my list. Okay, let me talk about the difference between the United States and and Western Europe and I think are really important more than the comparative kind of thing. The first big difference is the American capitalists had no rivals. They did not grow up in a feudal society. I think was was very crucial. And we've got to remember that, you know, although the plantation capitalists were very different. They were putting together land and labor to sell a product on a market and, you know, for them it was a good part of European kind of market. And for all the differences the northern capitalists and the plantation capitalists had. There was a lot of synergy in terms of their growth, including for New York Wall Street and especially groups on Wall Street that were willing to work with the British. So I think that matters it also matters that separate colonies had very small government they were really fairly lightly overseen by the British government. And so the economic elites as we can call them out of the segments of the capitalist class. They really did have a lot of stature and say so, compared to European countries that had a strong influence. The third thing I'd say is the United States really never had a big military until World War One and then it was expanded and then we had a big one ever since World War Two. But what this meant was that basically the corporations hired their own army. And finally, there was no big one church in the United States. Christendom mattered here and following a man of socials named Michael man. And I do think it mattered and I do think that church was powerful. And even a thing like the papal bull of 1892 or 1894, which they call you got to treat the workers right in effect maybe called for union Christian Democratic parties are possible and so none of that if she is like I think can happen in the United States. So very different power situation that the capital's have have no rivals they don't have state rivals. They don't have church rivals they don't have a feudal rivals. When they created their, their constitution, they had an inadvertent result I want to emphasize them. Richard Hofstadter wrote on this called making of a party system. They didn't like parties, but they created the rules the structure that makes for a two party system. Winner take all in districts and in states, your zealous to have states, and you're going to everybody's going to have two senators. And when you add a presidency that's going to be the glue, you've created one giant winner take all district called the United States. And you can win that election, as you know, 45 40 Nixon had like 3043 44% because when we all know about the electoral college so I don't want to get off onto that. But the point is they inadvertently created a powerful structure of a two party system. This was one of my here a small group, I would press my frustration about the 70s. When we talked about these things. And I could never get my next door neighbor Jim O'Connor, my next door neighbor in the office building and the next office structural Marxist, and I could never, like I said, how about the structure of the electoral system. The structures always seem to not count. It was very frustrating. Kind of thing. And I thought I had say Jim convinced that they ought to be challenging and democratic party primary in 1980 he is the nominal county leader of the citizens party so so so much for structure. And it comes to the state which is a personal aside I recognize but that you know a little where I'm coming from on how serious it is to take the structure of the state system seriously as well. Well I jumped from there, and they created a constitution it compromised most of their differences or put them aside or tacitly accepted and so on. That agreement came apart over the next 70 you know till till the war till civil war, horrible civil war in terms of blood and treasure and every kind of thing, but it did change the country in terms of aiding the growth for instance of more and more big companies. There starts to be the influx of all immigrants from northern country, your and then basically Eastern Southern Europe. So, I want to jump then to, we know who won the war we know there's an attempt at reconstruction. Why reconstruction and why did why was there, but I'll call a compromise of 1877, meaning by that more broadly than what does see van Woodward. said, but there was a compromise that both political and I think big business kinds of levels. The first reason that there was a compromise was the whites of the south were not going to acquiesce. They had a dominance culture they had been slave masters and drivers they had been vigilant. They were ready for violence at the drop of a hat. And they fought a terrorist war, and they just were wearing down. I think it would have taken for many, many more troops much more money. At the same time, I think what and I, and at the same time I think more and more was big business that was running this Republican Party and here's I think the key point. They were starting to have their own labor problem. And person that I think I've learned a lot from in the last just the last five, six years has been Heather Cox Richardson on it, you know, basically talking about the south and the Civil War the end of reconstruction, how the south one the Civil War. I think they got worn down. And they were having their own labor problems, which in this jump said slightly, which is exemplified with what happened later in 1877 for five months after the compromise. There's the huge outbreak of strikes, starting with the railroad strikes after big, big wage cuts and a lot of property destruction and troops moving all over the country and railroad cars, you know, finding and fighting these, these uprisings. So I think then the compromise of 1877 was one in which both sides of the capitalist equation, if you will, decided they could live and let live and let each other deal with their own labor situation, which meant they said, Okay, if you guys do whatever with the southern blacks and that meant a caste system and I've decided to use cast, at least from the time being, because it means from birth to death everything is proscribed that you're subject to immediate violence you have no rights. And, and of course you cannot intermarry etc you can't go to certain places. And there was a lot of terror. Michael Schwartz wrote a book on this as sociologist fierce combative wonderful sociologist. Michael Schwartz wrote a book on the fact that what happened in the in the fight with over tenant farmers and so on is that it ended up that black people were the tenant farmers and whites in the south for the ones that went into the mills so that it's kind of an interesting way to compromise the differences between plantation capitalism and the business people in the south. So we have, and at the same time there's an expansion westward, and that is a conquering, and that involved creating cast cast for Native Americans cast for Chinese immigrants, a lot of times for African Americans, and some of these states blacks were not allowed California and Oregon originally said no no black citizens. The land was taken from these people step by step by step. And so you create another one of these real strong dominance, the kinds of of cultures. It's been solidated in the years, I put broadly 1895 to 1914 but I really think it was 1895 to oh five. There's a lot of reasons for the merger movement, a lot of meat, a lot of reasons for the incorporation of of industries industries they had not always been incorporated. I think William Roy, a sociologist at UCLA wrote a great book on the socialization of capital and explains all these things involves class conflict and involve the populace. And by 1900 19 to you had a pretty solidified corporate community. And at that point you have a corporate rich, because you have corporations you have big managers, and you have them talking to experts and creating the first policy group. So I think right there was a consolidation, but at the same time as there was a consolidation in the north that was a corporate community that could defeat the working class. There was also a consolidation of cast system in the south, the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain States. And I think that creates that that's the context I think we still mostly live in today. Now there's a brief period of what was called the era of good feelings and some things where business, the biggest businesses actually talk to had conversations with some AFL leaders about, could they in any way be collaborative. And there were, and the unions were even helping encourage businesses to get a little more organized. What was that about. I'm rushing now seats turned to five o'clock your time. And that is that basically it was a deal with the skilled workers. It was a deal with the people from the British Isles and northern Europe. And the tremendous number of them were German Americans. German Americans is the biggest ethnic to ask people in 1990. They asked who, what, if you had to say where, what are you in that sense they said German American was far, far bigger. I'm bigger. But they're all integrated into the whole system in most places. Because they had school, but so that Germanic British kind of thing. The skilled workers. And industrial union force, Wendy Mink wrote Wendell and me, who came to Smith, left Santa Cruz, I think it was Smith, it's near you. And she wrote a book called old labor new immigrants, beautiful book on how the AFL looked at the world and keep out the immigrants keep our keep the labor market tight. They were certainly discriminatory towards African Americans, Phil Fauner told us that not Eric but Phil, you'll see P historian. I think he's right. I think Paul frimer political science that Princeton has shown has shown that quite fully as well. There was a caste system in America by that point and it involved not just those countries I've said, but in fact, white, more elite working class, if you will, or skilled working class. Certainly, it cast out African American in the caste system. It was a long time before a gradual simulation of the southern and eastern Europeans. In the context of course there were union gains in World War one because of tight labor markets, but also, I think Howard Kimmeldorf sociologist that Michigan has given us great concept in 2013 called replacement costs. How costly is it for a corporation to absorb strike in terms of can it replace its workers. And there are some workers that are very hard to replace. And they are basically skilled workers such as type setters in that time, or construction workers machinists. But there's also workers that are hard to replace and to mess with, because there's time constraints, railroads delivering milk or vegetables products that arrive at docs. They also have possibilities. And then finally, let me say the third one. And also very isolated workers who the famous examples coal miners and then Howard did a great job Kimmeldorf did a great job of showing that for rural Pennsylvania and West Virginia. You don't walk into coal mines in West Virginia from New York City and just think you're going to not be running out of town. So, the unions that then made it were very unique in terms of replacement costs, and where that relates to World War one is they needed uniforms they needed garment workers. The garment workers have decided they should quit fight among each other and they got Sydney Hillman to be their leader. Hillman had his connections in the government, and the amalgamated clothing workers were one strong union that came out of that war although they got then really beaten to death in the in the 20s as you know but the point is here and rushing and telescoping. You got the United Mine workers and the amalgamated clothing workers are the two key unions that that go towards creating the CIA. Well, the Great Depression and the New Deal. Obviously, you've seen the slide how it goes up, but I want to stress to you, a couple key things about it. And here I'm really trying to move even faster and that is, first you got to understand the important role of the deal that essentially Senator Wagner had made already during the NRA with the prisoners. That is we're not going to mess with your labor force. The Democrats by then for ethnic reasons machine Democrat reasons were pretty close to the AF of them. Wagner was able and people worked with him were basically able to carry the Section 7a through the NRA all the way into the National Labor Relations Act. Now I want to say a couple of quick things about the National Labor Relations Act and in the context of the policy planning that was large businesses had been trying to figure out how to deal with unions. The most conservative ones were just smashing the others were kept trying to work out company unions we call and then they were trying to get a deal. Basically, again, this is important with the skilled kind of workers. So when the NRA passed it had Section 7a. I think Fran Pivens right it created an explosion of organizing. It wasn't fully successful. Didn't go wasn't a straight line, but it was important. It stirred things up. And the business advisory group within the NRA said, called the labor advisory group said hey let's let's see if we can put together maybe a little labor board it was kind of like during World War One. That was the origin of the National Labor Board, which was the first board. General electric guy and the standard oil guy some others were on. Now, so they actually were part of a collaboration there looked like it's going to be state building. It didn't happen. And the businessmen ended up totally opposed they did not like what happened. In one sense you can say it got away from them. What happened. The deal, the fight was over a question of coal, what I'll call winter take all versus what the word was used proportional representation. The big business said we'll deal with these unions separately. That's what they wanted to do, which means they could deal with the skill workers, give them a good deal and say no to the industrial workers. Hillman and, and Lewis, and I'm telescoping, they wouldn't go along with that. And there was enough power now generated by the unity of the working class by the militancy. There were enough liberal Democrats a liberal labor coalition and forged, and they are able to pass the national labor relationship. They were a very important part of creating that they meaning, yes, a militant working class. Yes, liberals. Yes, the people had been elected as Democrats in the north. But you have to understand that it happened at the sufferance of the Southern Democrat because their labor force was left out. Otherwise they would have filibustered it forever as they had successfully could successfully do. Okay, so at that point, big business turned unalterably against unions. They did everything from that point on and we have the records. We have their newsletters from that time. So I've read through them. They're available in New York City. They're available a couple of places. So you can just see what was happening week by week. They turned against it. They fought it every which way they could, and they never stopped and then they financed constitutional challenges to it south laid back until the unions came south. They came integrated and by 3738 the south was forever against unions. So you had a reunited two segments of the capitalist class fighting the unions. They still might not have won. In fact, but what happened was 38. Now here's where I think fate and dumb things come in and what we don't know. Roosevelt made a mistake. He balanced the budget. At the same time the Federal Reserve Board made some mistakes. They thought they had too much excess reserve. The result was a drying up of money balancing the budget. They created the second biggest depression, the Great Recession, the Roosevelt Fed Recession, and the Republicans won. And here we have to know about voting and Larry Bartels and Aiken in their book on voting. And people vote their short run. What's it looked like lately. And Northern Republicans returned to office in 38. And there was enough strength to create what's now formally called what's called a conservative voting coalition. Conservative voting coalition ruled America from 1939 to 1994 on anything that had to do with the workforce. They ruled on every union issue they never lost in the legislature again. They also ruled on civil rights. And they ruled on a number of other things too. But the Democrats the Southern Democrats would side with the Northern Democrats when it came to spending. So Congress was basically a conservative voting coalition on class issues, and it was a spending coalition, which was subsidies for the Southern Democrats. And in agriculture and subsidies for the Northern machine Democrats the ethnic Americans in the growth coalitions, the in the real estate land business in the north. That was the two parties. And, and the whole point of the Democratic Party was to exclude African Americans. World War two changed a lot because a lot more African Americans came north a lot more African Americans gained the feeling we have a right, and we're then activists after World War two. It was also the case, I think that World War two brought a business into government. It made it made the corporate community a military industrial complex and it's not a separate one is one in the same it's all the same big businesses. And after that war what happened down went the, the Union density percent. The Union War you saw in that slide helps save the day. And then it's downward, but 60s transformed power structure to a considerable extent. And I want to look at this quickly from labor point of view. And I know I'm leaving some of the war out but it goes like this. The civil rights movement, dynamite the power structure, because it ripped open the Democratic Party, using strategic non violence they were able to disrupt normal political and economic reproduction of the system. They had the help of, of, of Northern white new leftist which is where they came into the occasion into the equation by 1960, 60, 64, 65. Just a whole lot of white Americans had had enough they said it's gone too fast it's gone too far that registered in the north through the primaries and the vote for George Wallace should be taken seriously. But 64 election, nonetheless, Woody frimer, I mean, Paul frimer has pulled out of his work on black and blue on the African Americans in the, in the unions. A4% of the white union is voted for LBJ that year 1968 40% of 1972 36% that split within the union movement, they chose their skin color and resisting integration of neighborhoods, schools, jobs. Blacks are mostly an unskilled job and their unions. They chose their white identity. Did they know they were shooting themselves in the foot as far as their union. I don't know for sure. I kind of think they must have known to some extent. There are more reasons. I'm now going to explain. But that changed that created a first opening in the Democratic Party toward it becoming and it was by no means, Nick inclusionary party at that point. But the, in the south you got to remember all water one to five deep south states from South Carolina on over through Mississippi and Louisiana. That was their new stronghold. That was the beginning of this real change that happened. The other thing that you got to understand, I think about the 60s is that the real labor conflict and real annoyance on the part of the corporate tree. Now they've been fighting unions ever since there was never an accord never a treaty of Detroit. Every inch of the way every minute of the day. James Gross has shown that to my total satisfaction in his trilogy is great under. Appreciate it. Trilogy on the American class struggle he doesn't talk that kind of language. We're looking at it from the point of view the National Labor Relations Board, because what happened was Nick. So Kennedy got two appointments to the Labor Board and put two Democrats on their pretty liberal one very liberal, very decent guy Paul Douglas who knows it Douglas or Douglas is the system but at any rate, very strong. The Gallitarian oriented people, and there was already a Democrat on there, and they made a ruling on outsourcing that really upset the corporate community and they made a couple other rulings to. And at that point, the people that were more modern corporate people began to organize to deal with the National Labor Relations Board, they started a labor law reform group which later became very important as part of the business around table but already at that point they were organizing against labor and fighting them hard. And the point then became that in the late 60s. The corporations have their own reason why they are in a fix. They created this fix in part for themselves as I said earlier, because now these big corporations from Western Europe and Japan were competing with them on steel and on autos in the war. But at the same time it's boom time, because of the war, because of the prosperity of the economy, tight labor markets, and there's inflation. But Johnson doesn't makes a decision not to do, you know, to get put controls on the economy like in the Korean War and World War two, and you get run away inflation. The corporations are trying to complete more factories they want to compete now they asked for this competition, but they got it now deal with it. They are really upset, and their views become much more hard line on a number of issues. And in August of 69 they created the construction users anti inflation round table and starts the story of trying to destroy the construction workers unions by creating alternative training programs by organizing city by city by working closely with the construction union. I think they were starting to be successful. And I think Jill could diagnose great sociologists for states done some fine work on this. So they really had the unions back peddling by 7374 and construction. And the construction user anti inflation round table became the business round table that became the center of corporate power from that point on, and we have a lot of their papers as well. So I'm saying that's the turning point from 64 to about 7468 elections. That's a killer. Nixon puts all starts to put these right wingers on the court and on the National Labor Relations Board and it's just small things here and there. And then pretty soon the goon kind of goon investing firms are back in the 70. So I think the Carter years are a mop up there a total defeat for the, for unions. And I'm sorry to say this this way briefly but I think. The Reagan years were a mop up in many kinds of way. It gets lionized 1980 to 2020. I'm argued to know the 60s race complex situation for the big business euro dollars, all of them are more important. We jump and basically come close to quitting with read was something that we haven't appreciated till the last five years. I don't think we give enough credit. We don't give black community enough community credit won't give John Lewis enough credit redistricting and transformation of the major parties 1990 1996. The Republicans came to it was Southern Republicans but Bush knew they were doing it. And he the first Bush, and they came to the Southern Democrats and said Southern black Democrats but you consider maybe a deal over redistricting. What was the deal in the most brief terms, it was, look, we will create a lot more seats for black Democrats. If you let us create seats, use strategies that will get us more seats. And the common goal is to get rid of Southern white Democrats. And that worked. And I'll come back to why the southerners took it southern blacks took it. But any case, in 92 94. Basically, the Southern black went they'd had three seats. Here's what they think they were in a political cast. They had three seats between 1965 and 1989 in the traditional 11 or 12 deep south states three one Atlanta which is john Lewis was in one in the middle class funeral guy with director guy was in and, and a big rural district in Mississippi 1990 they won the seat in New Orleans. So, they knew they it wasn't going to happen for them. So at any rate, in that time period, the Republicans did the Democrat Southern Democrat Southern black Democrats gained from three, four to 17 seats. They're now 17 seats in the house. But the Republican got a lot more. I mean they went to have about 26 more 1994 and five Democratic House members said I'm a Republican, and the shall be the Senator Democrat Senator from Alabama said I'm a Republican now. So you had a big switch and then it 96 even more four or five more seats they want. That's the near Southernization of the Republican Party, but it really was finished off in Texas. There's some good work by a political scientist on this, showing that the Democrats had had 17 seats to 15 for the Republicans in about 2002 10 2006 22 Republicans 11 black 1111 Democrats, but now two or three of them are are they created some black districts. So overall right now we have about 51 black members of the House, who are Democrats, and one black Senator, but in any case, what this did was to Southernize the Republican Party, the Democratic Party was now possibly a inclusionary party or you know multi athlete party, but it didn't really become so. It was only very gradually. And I think john Lewis's deal and this need needs to be researched more like goals would be somehow see his papers and his strategy he said, we're for this. He said I can envision multiracial coalition is led by you know people of different colors. And so I think they were trying to become big enough to work with their northern allies, but the northern allies weren't getting any bigger. Now we're 2018. Very many people are scared by Trump, and you get the 2018 election result is that point that I think the Democrats became an inclusionary party but the point is they had been way had been prepared by these. The events I've, I've talked about with the final step being redistricting. Andrew, can we go to the next slide. No, the yeah, so here, Republicans, I think we have white dominance right now. I think there's also clearly an effort to make it it's going to be white male dominance and that's an all out the dominance. Republicans have these strong weapons of gerrymandering voter suppression, possibly this legislative control elections. And the filibuster which Gentelson in a new book called the kill switch just a year or two old he worked for former speaker and had a speaker the house speaker Senate for for Harry Harry from Nevada. And the president calls it the kill switch it killed everything. And, and thirdly, you have an ultra conservative majority on the Supreme Court, who knows what they're going to do on which of these things. So then the map below it shows you America, the Republican Party has a stronghold and 11 of 14 of 17 former slave states that means the only ones that aren't part of it are Virginia, Maryland and Delaware. There's nine Rocky Mountain Great Plains States, Indiana has a history that makes it mostly towards the south as does Southern Ohio incidentally, but any case, we also have a situation of where the Republicans control the state in the swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, but they do not control the governorships in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin so on gerrymandering that could be quite who knows. This is all who knows kind of territory at that point but that's that's the real I think that's the reality of America in that map. Okay, next slide. So the issues are, will Congress pass the voting rights will will voters suppression succeed. To me that's that is the existential issue I think it's the biggest issue. I hope the Democrats showing bias here politically but I hope they have a plan. I'm not not sure anymore that they do, or that they can get much out of the Congress. And then, of course there's the infrastructure build back better bills. They could be important, because I think these. I think the deaths of despair kind of idea is important. I think these white males that were union people that are not college educated. They're law souls in Ohio, Kentucky. There's a lot of the Midwest. They can they don't feel that they're established, and yet they're white why is this happening to me. Can they get good enough jobs that they can feel good enough to vote class instead of white identity. Will the Democrat voters turn out in his large, or larger numbers than they did in 2020. We don't know that. And more specifically, I think there's the following things. Will the white voters in the face of any kind of disruption and constant fear threats and so on. Will some of the more of these white voters turned to the Republican Party. You've got to have the 4344% of my guest to to to win. I think they get skitter, you know, getting into cattle, I think they get skitter and run they get stampede. What'll happen with Latinx. You know, there's a lot of outmarries, a lot of lighter skinned people of Latin background, they're intermarrying like crazy. 65% one study of American born Latinx identify themselves as white. There's a lot of your Asians. I think right now your Asians are so targeted that I think that they're likely to to stay Democrats but who knows. First of what are African Americans who are 1112% of the population who are double in size as far as the middle class, who have far greater access to college and professional educations, who have many positions in corporations in the media in big corporations. What are people that are still treated as second class citizens going to do if they now lose their votes. I don't know I don't think they'll break along class lines I think they'll break along cast line. I'll also say that another variable for me is what I call w w w w you know, obviously mocking there, but what will the w w w is do and I mean, what will white women do. They're under enormous provocations on abortion. However, most are not many are not of reproductive age, they have access to fly to somewhere and to get an abortion, but they are being constantly put in a position of where they can't go back to work. They don't have controller bodies. They are very close to having, you know, some kind of breakthrough to power. What are they going to do in the face of a male patriarchal white supremacy. I frankly don't know let me go to my final slide. You know, it's a game of inches it's a game of a few votes, and the Henry Wallace party was a disaster was carefully studied. It was a mistake, but that was forgotten by 1968. It didn't have any impact, but, but nonetheless it was a mistake. And, but that's okay very common or did it again in 1980. And then in nine, and then in 2000 Ralph Nader who was a great activist and consumer activist. On the other side, I one friend of mine they asked, they said Ralph you got up you got it endorsed Gore in Florida. And my friend told me he said, we got to teach the Democrats a lesson. He taught him a lesson. He would have voted for Gore to the voters in New Hampshire that voted for the Greens had voted for Gore, he would have been president. If a half a percent of the 97 98,000 native voters had voted for Gore in Florida. He would have won and won the presidency. We've looked at this in terms of all the right and left voters in Florida about 100,000 left voters, about 3637,000 right voters. So if everybody voted, you know, their, their cautious vote he would have won or would have won. I do put up here. 2016, you think everybody'd learn because feminists people of color environmentalists they're all so angry with later they couldn't see straight as Bush came into office. But in 2016 Hillary Clinton would have won Michigan if she had just 22% of the Green Party votes. Now they sure didn't vote for her. The percentages are very small. She would have won Wisconsin if she'd gotten 77%, which is a stretch. Of course, obviously, but there were no Green Party on the ticket on the ballot in 2020 do a technicality, and the Democrats won that state so they won Michigan and Wisconsin. I just want to say to you that I think that it is indeterminates what's going to happen depends on what a lot of people do. It depends on whether whites in general skitter depends on whether white women vote on more their own equality and freedom. It depends on whether highly educated people who have become morally angry. Decide to vote purity over Democrats just a whole lot of things. I will close at that point. I don't know whether I've been right but I hope I've been not provocative and I'm glad to entertain. Questions comments and try to make clarifications for as long as you want to talk. Thank you. So, so bill you'd like prefer the questions and comments people to type out their questions and then I could read them out to you. Okay, if you want, if anybody has so if you want to, we could write questions. This is incidentally my hearing issue. I got hearing aids, and so a lot of this stuff doesn't come through well if your mic's not just right I lose higher pitches might be more likely to lose Caitlin's voice. So, I appreciate it if kind of if I heard it from Larry I can hear his deep voice. We have a request from David cuts to so that he can't type out his question, but he has a deep voice so we're going to violate this and I'll David, ask your question and then I'll repeat it. Bill can you hear me okay sort of that was pretty good so far. I'll shout louder. You emphasize the late 60s as the key period when the big change occurred can be explained. Now, at the same time the data show that the big change in trends on inequality and so forth began around 1980. So, what do you think is at stake in your argument. Clearly, there were roots of the changes in the late 60s, and additional things kept happening in the early 70s the mid 70s, the late 70s. Under Carter Paul Volcker becomes head of the Fed. The regulation begins then 1980 first bank deregulation bill. Many people think the key to the change was in the late 70s to early 80s. What do you think is at stake in interpretation. Yeah, I do talk about that I should say I talk about that in my 2020 book. I wrote a book that was in terms of his format of mistake, but I wrote a book in 2013 or 2014 called the myth of liberal ascendancy where I went into this stuff in depth because I basically tracing the changes in the Committee for Economic Development and the origin of the business round table. I think the key changes. It took them a while but power wise that 68 election was pivotal because it meant that the labor board and the Supreme Court could be changed, but not just them the Department of Labor was used to create a variety of of apprentice programs and to farm out apprentice programs to get, you know, to take things away from the unions. All of that was going on at that particular time. And the Davis bacon act was suspended for a time which prevailing wage and the construction people in an area. All of those undercuts started to show. And I do think that if we look at the actual numbers on the, the genie coefficient. If we look at the start of the labor decline you do see these little drops start to happen. You see drops in the 60s a lot of times the wages held up, because the unions, even though I said the union started to decline. The key unions which I left out. The auto and steel and construction unions machinists, they all could they could still, they had the corporations by the throat in a lot of ways, still at that particular point. So Republicans taking over and switching these other other agencies, which I think was made possible by the huge shift in the middle American white vote. A lot of which was white unionists that's why I used Frimer's numbers. I think that mattered. And I do think those things all started down at that particular point. I'd have to go look step by step at these numbers as they change. But in every step, they did lose on everything. Everything Nader tried really failed from 75 on Carter, the Labor Law Reform Act, for instance, which was the last big gas. It got 58% of the vote in the house. You got 59% of the vote in the Senate, but 41 senators said no. This is the kind of powerful and there was powerful changes that were going on. And the other thing that happened and this, this would I put forth for political economists. I think that the really huge thing happened was the way in which the corporate community decided to deal with inflation in the 70. As you know, inflation took off in part because of the heating up of the Vietnam War. The fact that the business is really one that they were double timing people. I mean, you know, really working people to get these factories built to compete with the Germans and Japanese. So, but the play then they got control the inflation what really caused the inflation was the shortage in raw materials, then OPEC and shortage in agriculture, and we didn't have reserves because Nixon didn't foresee the future and he sold a lot off to the Soviets. So inflation shot up like crazy. So the initials for King's institution. Mainstream. Keynes in his day, he gave a talk to these big business guys. And he said, look, your problem is that there's a tremendous decline in demand, because these people aren't working. Because of the essentially the money's going to, let's say Saudi Arabia. The prices are going up on basic foods. You named several of these things like and oil prices are going, you know, you're paying for the gas and you, and with the inflation, you're in a higher income bracket. So he suggested a Keynesian way to deal with it actually spends get some money in the consumer's hands cut the Social Security tax or, you know, stop it for a while. There were several liberal members of the corporate community that who were more fringy and one was a real estate guy and a Democrat. And they argue for this more Keynesian solution. A liberal Keynesian can suit conclusion. The other the business Keynesians which was the who had more monetary policy in their whole thing they said no raise interest rates. I claim raising interest rates is a tremendously powerful power move because throws people out of work. In other words, my view is from reading that literature and I say it best in the myth of liberal ascendancy book, I think in those detail. The book, I, I was so annoyed with hacker and Pearson and several others that the book is also built around, you know, saying that I don't think their work is very good and I still don't. And various other people like that so I was and Mark Mizruchi sociologist I thought. So I was trying to still think I was part of an argument with them, but it just got pushed aside. Not to mention the institutionalist, the theta, these scotch pools so on but that of course was hacker and Pearson or her students so that but the book has a detailed statement of Charles Schultz's view and and and then Charles Schultz went on to say to economists who interviewed him later, you know, I freed retired. He said, look, the only way you could get away with the fed raising interest rates was to not put it on the on the on the president. So when Volcker came in and said I'm just tracking the money supply. And a number of other economists said baloney. That's not what you're really doing. That's your cover. And they said that. And in there, one of them was a fed economists who I think, you know, I didn't review on names for this. So I think there is, I think the I want to stick with the argument that it was this series of events. And the other thing that was going on at this time, you know, we talk about all the transportation revolutions that, you know, led to the container ships and all. I think they're a little later to the key thing was that with the Eisenhower highways and the whole the improvement of of of trucking. In fact, they were outsourcing the whole time they were moving to the south. They were always moving southward. So the unions were being undercut in that kind of way as well. That's why I think Union density percent really tells you something it tells you right to work states are on this, you know, there's more of them. They're moving more to the south. They're defeating certain unions. And at the same time, that the top 1% is getting more I think I think if I use says data on the half percent I'd probably get this better. Anyway, we do disagree but it's a friendly disagreement I think it's around data. Here's the other thing about that I think is wrong with. I'm wary about that from a power position that the position is from the 80 onward and wary of it. Because when when it's told by hacker and Pearson and people like them. They, it's essentially. Oh, well, pal. I know and then there's the pal memo which I think is totally off base. It was written by no right wing lawyer yes became on the Supreme Court. He wrote it in 70 or 71 to a buddy in the Chamber of Commerce. No impact on the Chamber of Commerce till 73 or 74 according to historian of business Ben Waterhouse now at North Carolina. So everybody then essentially has it Oh, and and the person that forget her name at the historian at NYU, who who writes about the right wing. There's a lot more credit to the right wingers and the right wing think tanks they they came later, and, and it creates this view that on one hand the businessman just had to get themselves together. No, I think there were real things happening like Republicans that made it possible for the businessman. Otherwise there's been more of a of a of a stalemate. The second thing that happens. And this is a more touchy issue. I think that their analyses, essentially, underplay the role of white racism in the union movement. It's destructive effect. In other words the poor workers were defeated by a now aroused set of capitalists. I don't think those capitalists could have beaten them. If they had stuck with their union and a Democrat vote. I think it would have been much more of a standoff. And, and so that's sort of an analysis that takes a little further but also gets into the arguments of the day of the time but now, and, you know, and get into more trouble with you I'm sure but I think David Harvey gets these things mostly wrong in a short history of neoliberalism and he has state where he talks about the Powell memo and then shortly after we don't know whether causal or not the business roundtable is formed in 72 and, you know, I don't think that he has an accurate view of what happened based upon my reading of archives and my reading of people that I think have been in the archives which are James Gross for unions and Kevin Boyle historian on union. They are better on unions and what happened to them. And a man named Mark Linder who was in the business roundtable paper and wrote a book in 99. Not, you know, he's a lawyer, former lawyer for farm workers and then the University of Iowa Law School Iowa Law School I didn't know his book till 2014. He wrote a book called Wars of Nutrition, and you can see how they're fighting these construction unions they let him see their papers in late 90s and never again, and many did, but he did he was in their paper. Those are the people I'm trusting for my analysis, and I am then critical of hacker Pearson scotch pool on the one hand, and I must confess that David Harvey and liberal neoliberal ideas on the other. I think the neoliberal ideas is the ultra conservative ideas that were put forth, you know, in the early 20th century, and fought over. Then after World War two, the corporate moderates after World War two they, and during they said, we can't go back to our standard economics. We can't go back to the NAM view of the world. We have got to create our own version of Keynesianism. There's a fine book on business Keynesian by historian as well. So I think the post World War two world was fought between liberal Keynesians, many of whom were leftist Bertrand gross I mean I go on and on about those people. And on the other hand, there were a set of business Keynesians, and they were people I called moderate conservatives, which was a word that people didn't like. But I think the moderate conservatives turned more conservative. And at the same time, the National Association of Manufacturer kind of guys became less isolationist, so they, they recongealed. Anyway, I appreciate your question, and we do this. We do disagree I think, as they say I think I think we'd have to go to a lot more sources I hope people do more with this they do a better job with the time series that I think are as much as Piketty at all have done. I think more could be done with it. Any other questions. Yeah, we have some ready to go so from Kevin young. Here's this question. What do you think is the potential for greater. Fractional, fractionalization within the US corporate elite. And what do you think it will slash could be. I know you disagree with Ms, Ms Rucci, but that's the question, greater fractionalization in the in the corporate elite. Is it going to happen. What's it going to be about. I don't know for sure because the way I put it is that we're not able to barge into their houses we're not able to ask them for their papers we're not able to know their strategies. We don't know which which quite which business journalists or which Washington Post journalists and so on, have the best line into them. So, so in that sense I'm reading from a distance, and I'm not sure they I think they're going to. My best guess is they're going to play a game where they try to smooth. On the one hand, they, they're still pretty short run on on their profits. They got a real problem dealing with their whole fossil fuel part of it, which is a huge part of it. I think they know the plant they're going to fry the planet and flood it. If they keep this up I think they know it. But, and I don't think they're that afraid of the Republicans. I think they'd have to come to terms with the idea that they could do well within a modern welfare state I don't see them heading the headed in that direction. But I think the issues that concern them are the ones that are right before the country right now. It doesn't have to do with anything. Mark Ms Rucci said, he said Lee, although I disagree strongly with Mark Ms Rucci on that particular book. He did write a fine book on the development of the corporate community effect from 1900 and 1982 I wrote a forward for it because he asked me to. He asked our colleagues who came to disagreement over this he put he his background is much more. Marxist finance capital, and he wanted to put everything on the banks and when the banks. I happen to think that Suzy was more right that it was more corporate capital at that point. And I've read all those debates and then. I just, I think he's, he's, he's rolling on those things but he did some fine, fine work in the past, but I don't think his issues are water on the table now is the way I would put it I when I try to think of what Mark had to say they they aren't the ones that are, that are now before us. Thank you. Yeah. So now from Michael ash of a series of questions. Incidentally, he says, he met you when your son was coaching his nephew and Santa Cruz in a basketball game. His son was coaching your son was coaching his nephew in a basketball game and Santa Cruz. This is Michael who Michael ash. Yeah. Anyway, that's it. That hit. Here his question is, are Republicans potentially so far so far off the deep end that they can no longer keep the corporate rich in their corner, or, or are endless tax cuts good enough. I don't think endless tax cuts. Yeah, are good enough. But, you know, there are a lot of those social, social like types that I talked about can give millions and millions of dollars to right wing things. When you do the network analysis of I mean, heritage foundation all is they're way on the fringe of those networks. You know, look at their actual boards. You don't see anybody that's, you know, from a corporate Fortune 500 firm, so, so they're really very, very, I think, fringy. The Federalist Society thinks that the American Bar Association is very much corporate dominated is corporate lawyer dominated they think they're, they are, you know, liberals. So I think they are, they have money. But I don't think they're, you know, part of this corporate community, I would want to know what the business roundtable and organizations around it are going to do on these various issues and now they've played a double there's a very good new newsletter by a guy named Jud J U D D Legum called popular information and he's he's probably in his early 40s I've just learned of him he's a good journalist, strong background and bringing in terms of I think liberal lawyers and so on. He's he's really carefully watching. So they'll say, oh, we're against this, but they're still giving money to those these corporations still giving money to, you know, climate deniers or anti, you know, anti voter suppression guys and so on. But at the same time they're saying look, in generally we know we got to have a carbon tax. They put out crummy plans, they raised out, they cause delay. And then they put out an alternative that, you know, maybe it's sort of plausible what's not enough. I just don't know what they're going to do. But, but most of all I don't think anybody does and, and, and that for me is the frustration with the people who are sure that that they think they know what is, is going to have. But I, I, I don't know. I once read, I've read some essays from Trotsky, don't ever forget this one thing he said, if the ruling class, and the bourgeoisie are together, it's fascism. If the ruling class and working class are together, it's a social welfare state. And I think the corporate rich sit in the center. I think there's there's complexity in their views. There are people in their center in their community that are black that are from religions they're not from. And I think they have a debate and what these people are going to do. I just don't know. Maybe other people do, but I, I, I, I can't quite answer that question confidently. Okay, I am. Tell me when you're getting tired. And we've been going for a couple hours. So, Well, the thing is that once I get rolling, everybody's going to have to disappear. No, I'm frankly glad to have a chance for this kind of intellectual interchange. I now not even teaching and then two years of pandemic isolation and strictly, you know, doing things through books. You know, it's just, it's comfortable for me. And so I think whether anybody has any questions and we'll keep going a bit. I mean, I'm glad to hear the counter arguments. Okay, so I'm Michael has a bunch of more questions. I'm going to, I'm going to skip down and we can come back to them. So Pedro has a question. In your view, our opinion shaping networks transformed by the rise of large online digital platforms, for example, Facebook, and also how does big tech relate to the policy plan works. For instance, we see an increase in scrutiny and rising concerns over anti competitive behavior from these digital conglomerates. So those are the questions. So that's several things for me in terms of, I think, first of all, lots of the organizations and the policy planning that of the opinion shaping network have definitely gotten on Facebook and all those kinds of social media. If you want, I think of that sort of a generic of this is the ad council, and they're, they're all over it. They're all over their organization. We often don't know there's the committee for X and Y. We don't know who it is at first. Then it turns out to be, you know, whether a right wing group or a moderate group or whatever. I have no doubt that they are using Facebook but what I would say about that is that I think basically what's happened is the Republicans used to be able to control those right wing Republicans. The right wing Republicans were saying these incredible things. Long long decades and decades and decades ago. They had conspiracy theories eyes and hours of Congress, you know, on and on. But the worms turned they're much more powerful. And they're much more powerful, because the white southerners are now such a key part of it. The white southerners had their reasons to have a certain distance from the northern Republican and big corporations and involve their need for subsidies they have a tremendous need for subsidies in their agriculture. And they were wanted to maintain their own distance now they don't. And so that reinforces it brings in that whole culture of resentment that we're really the best and we're going to get back there no matter what. And the thing about this is a book by Larry Rosenthal called the Empire of resentment. And I think it's interesting because he shows that all of these different resentful whites, like in Wisconsin which was carefully studied by a political They're more rural, and they're they're not fully aimed at African Americans they some of them at some counties that even voted for Obama, both in 2008 and a few less in 2012 despite Walker taking over as the governor and the tea party being big in Wisconsin. There's enormous resentment though towards white elites in the city, and the white woman who was political scientist at Wisconsin. She went out and talked to him, and she's a native state but boy they give it to her I mean she just got a lot of abuse sitting You know, hearing it, those kinds of people have now amalgamated essentially they found enough common ground, the right wing Catholics and I read emphasize right way. They have been able to make an alliance with the evangelical Protestants who used to think they were the popery. That all happened in the 70s as they started to intermarry. And so, you have then this coming together of right and and and you have very strong pro Israel, very conservative Jews that are part of this, because the evangelicals now say, we've got to unite Israel and make it powerful now their reason is that that will supposedly bring Christ back. But point is all of these right wings of these religions that used to fiercely dislike and distrust each other. You know, they're all okay, partly through the abortion issue for the Catholics and evangelical. They're saying a lot of white resentment cultures have now amalgamated including the white working class unions of the middle West, and they are now more powerful in that Republican Party. Then they were in the past, and that does put I think the corporations on the defensive. And then so to the question then I think I also come back to say yeah, I don't think at a certain point tax cuts will be enough for them, because they do want immigrants, they do want a resumption of normal trade. They're not going to grow in a chaotic economy. And look, I don't, I'm not sure that there won't be major disruption if African Americans are harshly excluded once again. That is a very large community is in many places strategically place. But the black, the low income blacks are worse off than ever. I mean, there could be extreme poverty on the bottom. And the cutting of, you know, extended unemployment and all, just supposed to get back people back to work and all Republican dominated states which means all Southern states. You know, plus some other states that have some low income populations of color. I don't know. I think there's a tough mix there in terms of of things could happen. I think it's very volatile open kind of situation we don't even know what are what are these white supremacists going to do if they lose these elections. I don't know what these white men are going to do. We saw what they're capable of at the Capitol and many of you may have looked at them just this Sunday the New York Times had a, they put together the whole thing. You know, in the right cron order from many angles, and they were definitely out to capture rough up and maybe kill some of those Democrats I think. I think the evidence keeps pointing that way. But it's there. You know, it's hard to. It's hard to know what they'll do in that situation, if they don't have steady regular jobs that make it possible for them to feel they can raise a family and be respected. I admit to a social site dimension to all my thinking, and they become very authoritarian, very hard to talk to the whole mask thing met not wearing masks and, and vaccinations is simply incredible right. So, politicize everything. Any other questions, or comments, I mean comments are welcome to where it's wrong. I will, I will have one more question we have from she yen, and then I think we'll end the session just because people have to. Yeah, you guys guys guys guys gotta go to dinner whereas three o'clock my time I'm just getting started. We can talk more later. So this one's from she yen. And he says, how do you conceptualize the role of actors and organizations in the legal system judges law firms etc, and the courts in your framework. Where do they fit in. Wow. I think they're tremendously important. I think, I think that there's still some, I think a lot of them. All of the challenges so far to the voting stuff have shown, I think a lot of integrity within the court system. There have been even some, I think objective votes by, by Trump appointee. I think in the end it does come down to the Supreme Court, and I did look at it. I've spent more pages on it in the new who rules and I have in the past and just read a whole lot of things. And I think they are out to by saying states rights. They're giving that they're saying only Congress can fix deal with this voter suppression only Congress. And, but they also know that there's a kill switch in Congress. And they've been really bad on that, you know, they couldn't have been worse the last few years on unions, you should probably know that they them. One of the they've essentially ruled the right to work laws apply to public unions they've tried to undercut the public unions because you don't have to pay dues, if you don't want to. You know you're represented in your, your shop so to speak by union. The other thing they did. It was kind of amazing, a law that had been on the books in California that you, since I think 1972 that organizers could talk to workers on corporate property during lunch hour, and there were certain set time, the court ruled the last year so that was a taking in the same you know the powerful way of taking somebody's land. So that makes union organizers trespassers in any corporate property. I mean they have made some fierce decisions on both voting rights and on union rights in the last. Last few years. Here's another way I put it as a generalization that the paradox of the years since the civil rights movement have been in a way there's been more and more individual freedom for people were previously excluded. That means African Americans have have a larger middle class they become more likely become professionals. It's also true for women, and white women have probably benefited more from all of the changes than anybody else, and especially upper middle class white women and on up. There's been a tremendous amount of freedom for people of different sexual orientations trans gendered people and so on. So there's all of this individual possibility, but the class at the same time, there's been increasing victory for owners over workers that organizationally the capitalist class has become more powerful I think they have one for the foreseeable future. On the other hand, but it tried to show those slides I think the unions have been decimated. Only a few left. They're usually in areas that involve enormous expertise, or they have some strategic capability to delay or disrupt like ups ups drivers are still organized. But ups depends on fast turnaround time. Yeah, so it is just these pockets of unions that that are left and and half of them are in the public sector which has its limits and now been limited more. And so when I try to look at it. We were going to try to get better welfare state out of union unions were going to force this through their role in the Democratic Party. It may be now that there's no longer a Southern white albatross in the party that really effectively ruled it on all key issues and the only two. The presidents that happened that were Democrats after 1968 of course were southerners Carter and and Clinton. And the only one that might have come close to winning was Gore. So all southerners. I think now it's more likely happened in a party based way in other words, you have two parties one of them is clearly inclusionary. Clearly once a welfare state, if it was able to pass the build back better plus the infrastructure as they wanted it, it would be transformational of the of the society. So, so that the unions in that sense become a much smaller player. Then we had thought when I was starting out in the 60s. The other thing that's happened as big is how long segregation has hap has gone on and wives, you know switch these for now to the word cast, because the thought was, look, people are going to stick together in their union. And secondly, there's going to be more and more understanding liberal individualism social contact, which is what the social psychologist talk about. It hasn't happened neighborhoods are just as segregated schools are just segregated as far as blacks. Immigrants immigrants from Asia immigrants from Latinx are are integrating into this society as fast as the southern and eastern European immigrants did. And that's worked by sociologists that are really good. And they did it for the. The science organization, the big science organizations, National Academy of Sciences, I think they didn't report Mary Waters is her name at Harvard she and others. So you've got this paradox of where immigrants crawl in and go higher faster than African American. So that's a continuation of the past but now we're in. The situation of the courts have made it impossible on unions, because they played a huge role in that. And they are now also maybe making it impossible to win via vote. And so I think that the courts are huge in this, but I stress, I only think for now the evidence is, we're talking about the Supreme Court, and it's clearly 63. Okay. Thank you so much, Bill. That was terrific. Thank you so much. Thank you. I enjoyed it. Great. And we'll, we'll. Michael Lash will have to tell me, maybe email me at Dom Hopford UCSC and tell me who his nephew was that my son was coaching he'll get a kick out of that. Yeah, it was the Samet boys one of the Samets. What say you say that Larry Sam, Samet boys. Oh, great. And sorry, I didn't remember. I lose a lot of names these days, even when I review I was reviewing like crazy on your names of various authors and people and so on. Hey, it was fun. It was a comfort level for me, obviously, and I appreciated your questions your disagreements. It makes me, you know, don't look up some of these things. I, it makes me want to do what I've been thinking of doing incidentally was this book that failed this myth of liberal ascendancy. I'm thinking I just got to write a big long article on the key parts of it of, you know, the day by day changes within this committee for economic development because you can just see this moderately conservative group becoming more and more because one of the things they did they for their own good. They tape their discussions. So I have some of the dialogues of discussions where this moderate Keynesian economist named Frank Schiff who was hired by the Committee for economic development. He comes up against the guy that's still around. Summers. Summers are one or no the other Harvard guy. Anyway, that's just a brutal exchange in which, you know, what's his name from Harvard, the previous senior leader of the conservatives at Harvard, he just, you know, he says, you're for them and you're for this. You can just see the change in their views over a 10 year period. And that might answer the good question that was asked me. You know, my person clearly knew all the data on and 80s and changes. And, and I do agree that, you know, the other thing is deregulation, deregulation of finance started with the talk of deregulation and trucking and railroads and so on. And then only in the late 70s did it get because of credit cards and a whole shadow banking and then the Reaganites picked all that up and Volcker picked it up. The Volcker of course had worked on and off for Chase Manhattan Bank and, you know, it was really a private sector guy. So I did trade, so I appreciated his, his, the nature of his full analysis and just take me back to those things. Okay, so I know what people are thinking now they're not thinking like hacker or Marty David Harvey. I'll figure out if they're thinking like somebody else and I'll give it a try. Thanks again so much bill and I will be in contact and we'll send you the recording of this. Alright, thanks everybody. Okay, thanks a lot. Take care.