“When the rich steal from the poor it’s called business, when the poor resist it’s called violence”. Mark Twain

The pervading and rampant culture of individualism. Absolutely nailed it. The cause of so much despair, division, hopelessness and suffering in western societies.

My God, I was talking about the insidious transition from the language of "citizen" to the language of "consumer" 30 years ago. It was truly heartening to hear her explicitly make this important (yet seemingly minor) point. Thanks for this.

I was 19 when Thatcher came to power and I can confirm everything stated here. It was all a calculated con. The problem was, organised Labour had made itself an easy target for divide-and-conquer politics. Unions appeared to be driven by selfish acquisition for their membership and the aggrandisement of their leaders. The general public did not take much persuading with a few cheap bribes like utility privatisations and social housing sell-offs. What we have come to now is an obscene caricature of a political “system”, dominated by lies, corruption and greed. First, we need to cut out the diseased tissue at the next election and then get to work improving what is remaining. There is hope, but it will be a very long haul.

We need to stop dancing around the fact that capitalism is economic authoritarianism

The guy who ran the Lucas Plan and went to work for the GLC was Prof Michael Cooley. A truly remarkable man and an original thinker. Born in Ireland in 1935, he passed away in 2020. President Michael D Higgins termed him a delinquent genius. He was the founding editor of AI & Society and is regarded as one of the fathers of CAD. He was nominated for a Nobel Prize and received the 'alternative' Nobel prize in the early 1980s. A school friend of famed Irish Playwright Tom Murphy, he started his career as a trainee machine master in Tuam Sugar Factory.

I just have to say, Politics Joe is such a WONDERFUL interviewer. Listens well, allows her to speak, engaging responses, knowledgeable, he did his homework and this is a wonderful conversation

This was extraordinarily good. The way this flowed was really impressive. Talking for nearly an hour, barely pausing and with no repetition and being completely engaging throughout too.

I feel I've been banging this drum for 20 years. Blakeley puts it all so succinctly - really important to do the history lesson first as well, as so many think what we have now is just the "default setting". Just pre-ordered the book. If it's anywhere near as good as the interview, it'll be 15 quid well spent.

Utterly brilliant, accurate, incisive and reaffirming truth, thanks a million Grace and Oli.

Grace articulated here what so many of us understand but can't necessarily express, better than almost every other current commentator. Thanks to both. A double-act with Nick Abbot is urgently needed.

It blows my mind people can't understand the collusion that goes on between big buisness and government.. And that you can't pull down one without pulling down the other.. Keep handing out the message! Appreciate it guys!

The culture war isn't Left vs Right it's Top vs Bottom.

techno feudalism is the era we are in

She is well spoken and highly intelligent. An absolute treasure to listen to. Thank you for sharing this.

Wow....what a smart woman....great to listen to....thanks a lot for this informative interview

This woman is sound as fuck, more interviews like this

These are the kinds of conversations we need to be having, very important and very insightful.

People have lost belief in organising. But the elite are always organising. Always at it, devising strategies, tactics, the ways & means to control people. Greed, the driving force.

Great interview. Grace Berkeley is spot on.

The fundamental problem is that everybody works within a business to produce a surplus. A small group of people within that entity then decide what to do with that surplus. It's really no surprise that they choose to use that surplus to enrich themselves by voting for larger shareholder dividends and increased pay for board members while hundreds or thousands of other members of the organisation get almost nothing or literally nothing despite being the largest group that contributed to the surplus that was created. The solution here is to democratise the workplace. Trading shares should be made illegal. When a person joins a company they get a single share which grants them a single vote in all company affairs. When you leave you surrender that share. Then Monday to Thursday everyone works like normal. Friday is voting day where everybody votes on all company decisions. Who to hire, where to move production to, how much to produce, who you want to lead your department, how much to sell things for, who to sell it to and what do the with the surplus. Under this model, how many companies would vote to outsource work to the other side of the world? How many would vote to dump toxic waste into local rivers where the employees live? During a cost of living crisis shouldn't the workers be able to vote to use the surplus to ease their suffering?

❤Thank you

To be fair, this was a stellar interview. All areas on topics covered and found the commentary very coherent and on point. Great 👍

This is the best and most encouraging thing I’ve heard all year. Maybe longer than that. Thank you so much. ❤️💪

"Toxic individualism". Right.

I was pleasantly shocked to hear her recapitulate Marx so clearly. We Marxists don’t do it half so well. How does she know all this stuff? Well it shows how old I am, I guess. Grace is over 30 years old.

Fantastic interview, happy to see young intelligent people not buying into the oligarchy we live under today.

I remember laughing out loud in a HMRC meeting in the 80s being told taxpayers are now customers. Ludicrous then and now and I have always known thisxwas when it started to change under Thatcher and Reagan. Both dead but still causing misery from the grave. This young woman is great . I shall read her book. Thanks for another great interview, Joe.

Am I the only one that had to change the playback speed to .75 in order to follow and understand. It was well worth the listen.

Funny how those who advocate for complete state control are saying that there is a critical set of problems with capitalism BECAUSE of COMPLETE state control.

Grace is so lovely, intelligent and empathetic. Just wow. I saw and felt that cultural shift within the 60/70's to the beginnings of this mess that had taken full hold by the 80's. If I'd had a daughter I'd have been proud as hell for her to be like grace👏👏👏

Very intelligent woman.

Blakeley is amazing! She is so interesting and explains some hard to grasp concepts in a way that is easy to understand. Looking forward to reading her book.

Great Vid Joe, really interesting look at what an alternative future could look like. Grace explains her ideas in such a clear and understandable way. This sort of stuff should be on the BBC.👍

"'Rugged individualism' has meant all the 'individualism' for the masters, while the people are regimented into a slave caste to serve a handful of self-seeking 'supermen.' America is perhaps the best representative of this kind of individualism, in whose name political tyranny and social oppression are defended and held up as virtues; while every aspiration and attempt of man to gain freedom and social opportunity to live is denounced as 'un-American' and evil in the name of that same individuality." ~ Emma Goldman

Phenomenal. Ordered the book, can't wait to read. It's refreshing to hear someone talking as Grace does about not just what is wrong with the current system, but crucially what we could do to make better systems and live better lives. That messaging is the only thing that will get people to take notice.

That was a fascinating talk. Thank you xxx 😀

‘Stolen’ the first book really hit home with me how the Thatcher years I lived through were the formative years of changing society forever. Living through it. You could feel something really wrong was happening. So looking fwd to getting my hands on Vulture Capitalism ❤✊

We need less Sunak’s and Gove’s in government and more like Grace.

Everything she describes is not Capitalism, it's Corporate cronyism and Gov't clientelism. In a proper Capitalist economy, there wouldn't be any Federal Reserve, fiat money, bailouts, nationalisation, Gov'ts acting as quasi corporations, pork barrelling, welfare state, NHS, etc. That's not to say Capitalism is a perfect system: it isn't, but put the blame where it belongs.

I’m confused and dismayed at Grace’s repeated use of the term Anarchy. I realise there is a historical precedent for referí g to some economic systems as Anarchy. But imho it muddies the water between what the political ideology of Anarchism has achieved over hundreds of years. ( ie: bottom up structures - a dissolution of hierarchy ) and it continues the trope in people’s minds that Anarchy is Chaos. It’s really unfortunate but using the term chaotic or something would be much more helpful.

Love Grace, she’s bloody excellent. Would be good to see her on Mainstream channels again too as it’s been a while and she’s long overdue. ✊✊✊✊🙏

OMG 😲 Someone who can give us a sense of reality. She is so correct in her evaluation and perception of the obstacles that we allow to overwhelm us. How did she get here, with her ability to see clearly 😳 ❤

To Grace Blakeley: I got 35 second into this interview and clicked off and reserved a copy of your book "Vulture Capitalism". It was two points that did it for me, firstly your description of the population as "consumers" and secondly, your usage of the term "toxic individualism". The book is reserved for me at Blackwells Book Store. ( I will watch the interview after I have read the book).

That is the finest dissertation of political and economic circumstances I have ever heard. Cogent and intelligent. This girl should be in parliament - if it wasn’t so corrupting. Thank you for that précis of the situation everyone faces. This was a joy to listen to.

It's not capitalism. If it was another system, they would set it up the same way. When you print the money, you shape everything top down. We have a central bank problem, not a system(capitalism) of finance problem.

As a free market, Capitalist leaning person Grace has made some compelling arguments. So now, tell us which Socialist country, existing today is anywhere close to the ideal to which a Socialist aspires to? Not a single country in history has made Socialism really work. ALL Socialist countries either have collapsed or had to go back to Capitalist policies because unfortunately history is littered with brutal, impoverishing Socialist countries. Anyone??

Everyone should read: 'The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists' by Robert Noonan (pen name Robert Tressell) and 'The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism' by Naomi Klein and watch the documentary films, 'Sicko' and 'Capitalism: A Love Story', both made by Michael Moore (film maker) Those are a good place to start when looking into the mess we are in atm.

Great interview and glad to know Grace now I'll certainly check out her book and she speaks the truth on many things especially in what we need to do to get out of this mess

Another great interview with Grace. What she was saying about how'oh, that's not real capitalism/socialism' is that people confuse the ideology which is a utopian model of how things should be that usually ignores crucial aspects of how things actually are, so the implementation of those ideas never resembles the ideology because it's just a set of ideas that most people don't even agree with or accept grudgingly due to their lowly position in the power structure. Additionally, they often create perverse incentives eg I remember an Adam Curtis documentary where Russian taxi drivers would drive around pointlessly just to fulfil their fuel quotas.

In my view the effort to turn every person in an entrepreneur, every home in a business is far more sinister than just destroying the social structure, since under this system, 99% of wealth sooner or later will be owned by the 1%. We are all working non-stop to make them richer.

I’m right wing so how come I agree with Grace on most points she raises in this interview? Hang on, agreeing with serious people on the left seems to happening a fair bit recently. Could it be that serious people no matter their politics have more in common because the divide promulgated in the media is false?

Love Grace! We need more ideas like hers in the mainstream to show everybody there are peaceful alternatives to our current failing system!

Looking forward to reading the book. She's saying things I've always intuited, & I've always been looking for answers to this mess, & open to new ideas. Thanks.

Thank you so much for this. Brilliant and oh so true❤

Inspiring and brilliant. Tracking the book down. Amazing words, Grace. Well done, Joe. 💌

Great conversation.

Excellent, very engaging interview, loved listening throughout! "There is no such thing as a society, only individuals competing against each other"... Quite sad

This was not only informative but surprisingly uplifting! I may have to listen again.

Brilliant analysis from Grace, fabulous interview. ❤

John Kay’s “Obliquity” talks a fair bit about the problems with our current flavour of capitalism.

great conversation thanks Grace

A pinnacle of critical thnking, thank you.

Fascinating. She makes some very eye-opening points.

Fucking smart conversation that highlights precisely the issues and problems that face any modern democracy.

Reading through comments on videos like this makes me hopefull that there are intelligent people and who are aware of what is going on below the surface.

This young lady has it extensively right!!!!

Sounds like she should get together with Gary Stevenson, and organise a movement to tackle the wealth gap.

You Brits do have some great independent left wing media platforms

Judging entirely by the results observable in traditionally capitalist countries it is hard to argue against the bottom line: even the people at the very bottom have roofs over their heads and food on the table while most in these societies live luxuriously compared to how people lived a century ago. Likewise, ideologues cannot point to functioning alternatives, only utopian socioeconomic constructs.

Hmm - There is a lot to unpick from this. I don't agree with her on many points but equally the system is broken. What I find frustrating is social capitalism is never brought into the equation. When you leave a system to run to its end game - of course, it will end up in its most extreme form both on the left and right. Don't know the solution but I don't think it is what Grace is suggesting.

I believe we need democracy at work. However the game of monopoly has been played, before you were born. The owner class killed, stole, bribed and cheated, your ancestors. How do we redress the balance? Who do you put in charge to task that redress? Could that person, once in power just become a dictator? Many more issues I'm sure I'm not smart enough to think of.

She's future PM material.

My uni is hosting her to talk about her book I’m gassed 😂

It's great to hear that Grace Blakely has a new book coming out. Thank you!! She makes some great arguments. Give her a chance. Why are women always picked on?

She is reliably excellent.

Bought the book, loving it. Great show

What a great economist along Gary Stevens, Steve keene and jim rickards

What we have now is corporate socialism. More socialism is not the answer. More individual rights is the answer. Less taxation. Less regulation. The only regulation I'd like to see more of is competition regulation. Max market share and streamlining for small business when involved in government contracts. These large corps push govt for more regulation, which keeps out the small players.

Grace Blakeley is able to describe the sort of future may of us are hoping for but aren't able to describe, how wonderful it is to hear her speak, but Wow - I wish she would talk slower!

Well explained to us ordinary punters. Thanks for bringing Grace to teach us!

Remember the FEAR the overseerers told the people of 2000 ? I do and said depending on the programmers that I said women programmers would have written into programs as we were trained Grace Hopper.

I was joking when i would tell people ,the new middle class is living in a van down by the river .Not a joke anymore .The middle are the ones that help the poor .So what happens to the poor ? Thats a scary thought .❤

Thank you for this essential video oh my goodness!!!!!!

Such an excellent interview. Can’t wait to read Grace’s book

I was born in early 90s. I have a hard time thinking economists thought they had solved the boom bust cycles before the 2008 financial crisis.

You can see the ragged edge of dying capitalism here in the US with private equity buying up trailer parks all over the country. These are assets that 20 years ago would have been laughed at by institutional investors but now they are being sought out, finding ones where older owners are eager to sell, doing minimal improvements, then jacking up the lot rents. The tenants own their homes but not the land they sit on so if they can't afford the new fees they can't stay, although they are "free" to have their homes moved (they are "mobile" after all). Once the older tenants have been flushed out, they can then move in a wealthier tenant (generally younger folks who have been priced out of a regular home) and then rake in the profits.

The complexity of the many crises that beset us so often leads to a sense of being overwhelmed and confused about how to diagnose the problems and where to start with solutions. Grace cuts through all this with a clarity that is so refreshing and - for me, at least - feels like she is describing a fundamental truth. I have a sense that the acceptance of democratisation starts with a sense of personal agency - not an expression of individualism but a sense that you give yourself permission to challenge the orthodoxy of our system and seek the support of others who have similarly freed themselves from the old straitjacket. Ironically, individualism may actually stifle personal agency for those who do not have the means or experience (or even the desire) to play the system. I suspect many have been sucked into Thatcher's so-called democratisation of capital ownership and felt the fear of the responsibility not to lose it all as they try to navigate an alien financial world whose rules are opaque and whose unpredictability is alarming. We just should not be handing the management of essential services to a casino-style market where the odds are rigged in favour of the house (for 'house' read corporations) and nor should such a fundamental safeguard as a roof over our heads be put at risk, whether it is owned or rented, through the fluctuation of property prices and the B of E's anti-social efforts to protect the financiers.

Grace Blakeley is brilliant.

Todays paradigm is mistakenly called "Communism" when in fact it is Government working hand in glove with Corporations, which is Fascism. As we can see, Fascism is pooling the wealth of labor at the top with the 1%. Great guest, just stumbled on to your show, will sub today, thank you.

We need this woman or others of her beliefs to get the political power to change things. I am 68 and can remember a fairer society. She is spot on about Thatcherism. Alas, Joe was also spot on when he said the current system has as one of its main weapons, the power and ability to minimalise and discredit all other alternatives.

So refreshing to hear people like Grace, expand, develop and encourage more and more of us to wake up and smell the coffee. Fabulous interview, and ordering the book. Next?

Brilliant interview and explanation of so many of the problems that we face. Thanks

Can anyone name one economically successful prosperous socialist country either one that is operational today or even historically.

But its what saved some of us.

A Swedish man (I think) claimed that he was a high school teacher and a socialist. He told me that he objected to mandatory accounting in schools on the grounds that "the math would make capitalism seem logical to the students." A Libertarian (male I presume) said that he objected on the grounds that "nothing should be mandatory." I have been suggesting this for some time and fail to comprehend any serious objections. In fact another Internet Entity who claimed to be an accountant said he did not mind so long as it was not done until after he retired in 6 years.(I'm not sure how long ago this was. More than 3 years) If you search Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, which is free on the Internet, for "read, write" you will find every instance is followed by "and account". Smith used the word 'education' Eighty Times but consumers did not buy air conditioners and microwave ovens before 1790. Those things wear out and Smith did not say much about depreciation. Karl Marx used the word 'depreciation' 35 times in the first two volumes of his major work. Marx knew about railroads while Smith did not, but there were still no microwave ovens. The concept of GNP/GDP was developed in the late 1930s. For some reason Marx did not get the memo. A derived concept which gets little mention is NNP/NDP where Net replaces Gross. Just subtract Depreciation from Gross. Of course there is a hitch. That Depreciation only applies to Capital Goods, like industrial robots and 18-wheel trucks. The air conditioners and microwave ovens purchased by consumers have their depreciation ignored. The economists do not point out these details. How do you suppose planned obsolescence factors into that? When television began its wonderful job of brainwashing Baby Boomers there were only 2.5 billion people on the planet. The spaceship is more crowded now. Do you suppose mandatory accounting/finance might be a good idea? All over the world?

As system design was mentioned, Deming has a great quote of "a bad system beats a good person, everytime." The "toxic individualism" mentioned is effectively blaming the good person for not being able to rise above a badly designed system.

When will we stop this madness? It's fine and dandy to talk about it but we need action

If this is a feudal society why have I, as someone who has come from a family who lives on welfare, somehow managed to make over 6 figures starting a construction company on my own?

Smoke and mirrors is all the Tories do/have/leave in their wake