Peter: And you've got Tom Sowell, from a very
early age
to the present when he remains a fellow
at Stanford- at the Hoover Institution at
Stanford,
making his career in academia all the
same.
How is it that you're able to swim
against the current?
Sowell: I don't know. (Peter laugh)
Peter: Please don't be quite so truthful this is a television (Sowell laugh even more)
[Music] DON'T FORGET TO SUBSCRIBE
Peter: Segment two. "Karl Marx and Ronald Reagan".
"The Thomas Sowell Reader" is of course a
book of analysis and opinion,
not long ago I asked you "Tom,
what opinion, what view do you regret
having held?",
and you replied that for more than a
decade, more than
a decade, you had been a serious Marxist.
Sowell: Yes. Peter: Explain that. Sowell: Well, as that decade
began I was in-
living in poverty. Peter: How old? Sowell: 19 years old.
Peter: 19. So, you're starting to
college at that stage or? Sowell: Oh good heaven.
No. Peter: All right. Sowell: I mean I was out there
working in unskilled jobs and trying to
make ends meet living in a rooming house.
Peter: Up in Har- you're living in Harlem?
Sowell: On Harlem. Peter: Right.
Sowell: And I heard about Marx, but I
finally someplace found that old
secondhand set of encyclopedias for a
dollar 19 cents,
which I bought. And there was an article
on Karl Marx, and it seemed to me that he
explained these situations
so well. That's- Peter: And the situation was
what? You took the train from Harlem down
to the lower
Manhattan? Sowell: The other way around, coming
home from work I would sometimes take
the bus
and it would go right up Fifth Avenue,
past all these glitzy places
like cross 57th street where all the
fancy stores were, at Carnegie Hall and the
rest of it.
And then finally as I got near home
it would kind of turn off this
viaduct uh into 135th street,
and there was that sudden change in
the whole scene
at that point. And the question was"Why
was that?"
And the problem was- two problems. One
was that
no one else had given any explanation.
There was no competing
explanation that sounded plausible- Peter: In
your life so far?
Sowell: Yes. Peter: Right. Sowell: And the other was that
no one had cautioned me that it takes an
awful lot more knowledge before you can
make these kinds of sweeping judgments
in any case.
But fortunately, I'd been taught
earlier
to respect facts and so on. And so even
during my years as a Marxist, I would
read
things by people who weren't Marxist. I
would read facts and so forth.
Peter: But you- I have heard you say many
times that you got a
good education in the New York City's
public schools in Harlem?
Sowell: Yes. Peter: So they did they taught you to think.
They may not have taught you Adam Smith,
the defense free markets, but they taught
you to think? Sowell: Yes. Peter: All right. Now,
but keep continue the story if you would.
You're a Marxist at the age of 19, taking
the bus home
from the southern third of
Manhattan island, all the way up to
Harlem.
You remain a Marxist at the University
of Chicago, under the instruction of-
Milton Friedman. Sowell: Yes. Peter: How
did that, if Milton couldn't crack you,
you were a tough nut.
Sowell: Well, but one summer
working for the government
as an economist was enough to
show me that the government was really
not the answer. The government-
the level of understanding among the
people
and I was in a program for interns, where
we saw the top officials of the labor
department and so forth.
And I realized, these guys are not going
to save us.
Peter: In other words, they had no- they were not
the priestly caste,
but you might have been led to expect
they were ordinary chumps bashing their
way through life as best they could like
anybody else? Sowell: Yes.
Peter: I see. All right. And so, but
intellectually,
all right. You spend a summer working for
the federal government, and that
cures you of Marxism. Sowell: Yes. Peter: But
intellectually, when do you pick up the
threat of free markets?
Sowell: Oh, I guess well- I had always Peter: Then
you thought back to what Milton does said?
Peter: That's right.It's not just
Milton, but Hayek and the rest of them.
Peter: Okay. Sowell: Because I had read all those people
while I was still a Marxist.
A couple of, you have an essay in
here entitled "Marx, The Man"
Sowell: Oh yeah. Quote, "Marx's angry apocalyptic
visions existed before he discovered capitalism
as the focus of such visions". Sowell: Yes. Peter: Explain
that.
Sowell: Well, if you can- the poems he
wrote in his
teen years, one of them in particular
I remember
what so this the effect that "Then
will I walk god-like and triumphant through the
ruins of the world".
So, he has these apocalyptic visions
early on, before he's ever even thought
about capitalism.
Peter: And what- the subtext is, I take it of
your,
it's entitled "Marx-", not the Marx the
political philosopher, not Marx the
economist, but "Marx the Man".
And what you're the- what I felt,
reading that essay is you're
in effect it's like the scene in the
wizard of oz, where they
pull back the curtain. Sowell: Yes, that's right.
Peter: The great and powerful Oz turns out to be an
ordinary cranky human being.
Sowell: Yes. Peter: And what you're saying is- Marx is
fascinating in some
highly intelligent in some cases, in some
ways kind of a nut.
Sowell: Yes.
Peter: Just a man? Sowell: Yes
Peter: All right. Another
quotation from that essay. "The members of
the communist league...",
we're talking now about the mid 19th
century, Marx and Engels
form or they participate in the
communist league, "The members of the
communist league
were overwhelmingly intellectuals and
professionals. It had the same kind of social
composition that would in later years
characterize many radical groups in which the
youthful offspring of privilege
called themselves the proletariat."
Marxism is the conceit of rich kids with
fancy educations?
Sowell: Yes. You see that in this, what is this
thing called
the "Occupying Wall Street" group, all
these middle class
accents and so on. I mean, how many
working class people
can afford to take a month off to sit
around in parks,
and carry on, and have all their
electronic equipment with them, but all
the rest of it.
I mean, c'mon? Peter: Sleeping in sleeping
bags with the first rate down feathers,
all right. So, but at what stage was there
a moment when you said,
"Wait a moment, these putative Marxists
and leftists and
liberals, to use the term the way it's
used in this country as a leftist,
they have no cons-, they have no knowledge
of nor concern for what life is like up
in 130th street. Sowell: That's right. Peter: There was a
moment- was there a moment or an incident
when that,
just struck you or whether that's kind
of a progressive realization? Sowell: Oh, it's
sort of progressive realization. Peter: All
right.
Ronald Reagan. "The Thomas Sowell-", I like
juxtapositions here from Karl Marx to
Ronald Ragan. But you do it yourself.
"One old-fashioned way to judge a
president is by results.
A more popular way is by how well he
fits the preconception of the
intelligentsia or the media.
By the first test, Ronald Reagan was the
most successful
President of the United States in the
20th century. By the second test he was a complete
failure. Sowell: Yes.
Peter: The Marxists are rich kids with fancy
educations,
you've got the intelligentsia misreading
Ronald Reagan, and you've got Tom
Sowell from a very early age to the
present, when he remains a fellow at
Stanford-
at the Hoover Institution at Stanford,
making his career in academia
all the same. How is it that you're able
to swim against the current?
Sowell: I don't know. (Peter laughs)
Peter: Please don't be quite so truthful,
there's a television.
Sowell: Oh I guess partly luck,
but I know I don't know. It's-
There are places, and there are
like the Hoover Institutions know it's
no great
handicap to have the views that i have
here.
And there are a few other places here
and there.
