Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic
Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic
dimensions of our lives—our debts, our incomes,
our wages and how we think about all those
things.
I’m your host, Richard Wolff.
Well, today I want to begin with Warren Buffett,
one of the richest people on this planet,
who recently at a meeting of his Berkshire
Hathaway corporation commented on the growing
interest in socialism and the comparisons
between socialism and capitalism.
He avowed that he was a 100% capitalist, which
came as an immense surprise to nobody.
In addition, he answered a question with a
remark I thought was extraordinary.
“I am afraid capitalism will always hurt
some people.”
Well, you know, coming from a person who is
never in the group “some people,” this
was an extraordinary remark.
Because if capitalism will always hurt some
people, and if today a whopping majority of
people feel hurt by capitalism, then even
by Mr. Berkshire Hathaway—Mr. Buffett—even
by his lights, maybe a question ought to be
asked.
He also boasted that he didn’t think socialism
would come here in the next fifty to twenty
to third years.
That reminded me of President Trump, whose
State of the Union message was that socialism
would never come.
All I can say is Mr. Buffett and Mr. Trump
are part of a group.
It’s the group of all those leaders, in
all those countries just before they went
socialist who said the same thing.
Let me turn now to the economic updates for
today.
The big one that several of you asked me to
speak about is called the college admissions
scandal.
It turned out that a clever hustler named
Rick Singer got an awful lot of people to
give him an awful lot of money—we’re talking
millions here—to arrange for their children
to get into prestigious universities.
He did this in a number of—I was about to
say unorthodox ways, but that would be inaccurate.
Let me tell you what he did.
He bribed coaches to make up stories about
how these young people were great athletes
when they weren’t.
He arranged for others to take tests for them
because their performance would have gotten
them no chance at all.
He bribed folks for changing grades that weren’t
so good.
Caught up in this scandal were famous actresses,
Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman.
To make matters worse, some of the people
who gave him huge amounts of money then took
that money off of their income tax, for tax
purposes, claiming it was a contribution to
the school.
You really have to admire their courage.
One Chinese couple, in China, paid Singer
6.5 million dollars to get their daughter
into Stanford University, where she is today.
Why am I bringing this up?
Well, I want you to understand, if you don’t
already, what inequality means and here’s
a juicy example.
It means people who can’t make it in others
ways use their money to do what their brains,
for example, don’t allow them to do.
You can’t get your kid into school?
Buy the way in.
That’s what inequality does.
Most people get away with all of that, because
that’s how our system works.
Occasionally it’s so gross, as in this scandal,
that it gets out into the public awareness
and we tell each other stories about how it
shouldn’t be.
So let me add a story, a little different.
I was a student at Harvard in my undergraduate
life, and one of the things that surprised
me was that there were so many in my dorms
who didn’t want to be there, who weren’t
happy there, who had no interest in education,
who couldn’t do the work that was asked
of them—not because they weren’t smart,
but because they weren’t interested.
And when I asked them, well, why are you here?
They told me my parents bought my way in and
there was no conversation—I had to do it.
So the irony is even for many of the young
people involved, this is not a happy outcome.
But I want you to keep in mind that when people
flash a college degree, a university degree,
a Harvard degree, a USC degree, keep in mind
what it really means.
It’s a crapshoot.
You may be getting someone who knows something,
but you’re just as likely to get someone
whose money is what you’re talking to.
Then there’s another example of inequality.
It’s called lobbying.
If you have a lot of money, you can hire a
bunch of high-priced lawyers, accountants
to work on the state legislators or the federal
legislators to get the kind of law you want.
And a story on May 1st in The New York Times
epitomizes this and so I wanted to make sure
you were all aware of it.
It’s about a New Jersey lawyer named Kevin
Sheehan.
His firm had close ties to Democratic leaders
who run the state of New Jersey.
And they allowed him, several of him did,
to write the actual words in the laws before
they were passed.
And he wrote in the words that helped the
corporations that had hired him to be a lobbyist.
How nice!
Or to be an advisor, if he wasn’t an official,
if he wasn’t an official lobbyist—how
nice.
And here’s what the New York Times’ research
showed: the companies got a break on their
taxes worth 260 million dollars.
That’s money deprived of the state of New
Jersey, unavailable therefore to maintain
the schools, the hospitals, the roads, all
the public services.
How much did the state benefit for giving
away 260 million in taxes?
The New York Times calculated it: $155,000.
Lost 260 million, gained $155,000.
That’s what goes on every day, in Washington
and in all fifty state capitals.
The money talks and the more money, the louder
it talks, and that’s how the laws get shaped.
And that’s why there’s budget crunch at
the state level and at the federal level.
When those politicians tell you there’s
no money to do the things you, your children,
your neighbors need, that’s not true.
The money is there, but it’s been given
away to those with the biggest purse to pay
the biggest bunch of lobbyists.
I want to take my hat off, in my next update,
to the teachers of North and South Carolina,
who have been conducting strikes against those
two states’ bureaucracies.
You know, the Deep South is not a place where
you read about strikes too often.
It’s a place that is hesitant to go that
road.
But it’s been too much for too long for
the public school teachers of North and South
Carolina, both of them around May Day staged
major public strikes and actions saying that
the children of the state have been neglected
by no funding for the schools, inadequate
funding for the teachers, who are among the
lowest paid in the fifty states of the United
States, nor did those teachers shy away from
pointing the finger where it belongs—not
really at the politicians, because they’re
just puppets.
The politicians are cutting the budgets of
school systems around the country, because
they don’t have the courage to tax rich
people and corporations, which is where the
money is, which is where the money has been
accumulating and which have been buying those
politicians’ silence, until and unless the
teachers, like other working people, fight
back.
Hats off to the teachers of North and South
Carolina.
My last economic update has to do with another
story in the news that I want to speak with
you about, because of the lessons it teaches.
This has to do with NDA’s.
What’s an NDA?
Non-disclosure agreement.
You know, that’s what President Trump arranged
for a couple of women that he had relationships
with to sign so that they wouldn’t go public
with the sex he had with them.
They signed NDA’s.
So did a lot of the people caught up in the
scandals around Hollywood producers, big-name
TV personalities.
It turns out that this is routine in America
and in other countries.
My attention, in fact, was won to this issue
by a story from Australia, where they have
put up a new government agency that is looking
into NDA’s.
They named a famous lawyer, Kate Jenkins,
to lead this effort and she circulated a memo
asking corporate leaders whether they were
prepared now to open up their NDA’s so everybody
would know that this was going on.
She expected they would, because many of them
had said this was a good idea.
They mostly refused.
She got six companies to give her access.
The rest refused.
Why?
Because NDA’s are a way for wealthy people
to buy their way out of being held accountable
for what they do.
You violate someone’s privacy, you abuse
someone sexually and you are afraid that the
victim may say something, so you say to the
victim, “I’ll buy your silence—how much?”
And then you negotiate the price.
And, of course, there’s a threat.
Because if the victim doesn’t agree, then
you’re going to throw lawyers and public
relations slime agains them—very scary.
Most people sign.
The BBC in London recently did a study and
discovered that universities in that country,
over just the last two years, paid out 110
million dollars in NDA agreements.
In the United States, millions have been paid
to just a few that caught the public eye—Mr.
[O’Reilly] in the Fox News empire, Mr. Weinstein
in Hollywood and so on.
Wow.
It turns out that New York State has a law,
but like so often the law is window-dressing.
Here’s what the law says.
You can’t have an NDA between and employer
and an employee unless the employee agrees
to request one.
OK, so the employer—instead of saying, “Sign
this or I’ll really hurt you,” he now
says, “Ask for this or I’ll really hurt
you.”
You haven’t changed anything.
You won’t, not with this reform or another,
because this kind of abuse and behavior with
its countless victims is a result of a working
system, a job system, a workplace arrangement
in which some people have power and a lot
of money and other people don’t.
The inequality of wealth and power built to
our capitalist enterprise is an invitation
that has been accepted by countless top executives—people
above other people in the hierarchy of capitalist
enterprises, abusing their economic position
for whatever other needs they have and coercing
those below them to accept the deal for money
and silence.
Is it ugly?
You bet.
But don’t think that this or that rule imposed
by the company or by the government is going
to get around the problem.
It’s the system’s inequality that lies
at the root of this behavior.
If you re-organized enterprises, so that they
were democratically organized with everybody
with an equal voice, then you would see this
behavior stop.
We’ve come to the end of the first half.
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Stay with us, we’ll be right back.
Welcome back, friends, to the second half
of today’s Economic Update.
It is my pleasure to introduce a remarkable
man, whom I’ve asked to joined with us,
because he can tell us stories and realities
we would not otherwise have access to.
His name is Victor Grossman.
He was born Stephen Wechsler, a New York red
diaper baby of the 1930s.
As a Harvard student, which is where he went
to school, he joined the Communist Party.
He also served in the U.S. Army and settled
in East Germany at the end of the war.
He became a freelance writer and a popular
speaker in East Germany, where he has lived—in
the city of Berlin—ever since.
In 2003, he published a book called Crossing
The River: A Memoir of The American Left,
The Cold War and Life in East Germany.
He has recently published a new book, which
is part of why I asked him to join us today.
That book is called A Socialist Defector:
From Harvard to Karl-Marx-Allee, which is
a major street in Berlin.
If you’re interested in some of the specifics
and particulars of his remarkable life, take
a look at this new book and it’ll give you
many details.
Victor, welcome to the program—glad to have
you.
Thank you, thank you.
OK.
I would guess my listeners and my viewers
will want to know, as their first question,
give us an idea why you made the decision
as an American student, as an American GI
to spend the rest of your life in East Germany.
What was that about?
It wasn’t voluntary, really.
It was because I had been active leftist at
Harvard before, then and after, partly as
a red diaper baby, and then I was drafted.
I was lucky not to be sent to Korea, but to
West Germany at that time, hoping that the
army would not check up and find that I had
been a leftist and had not admitted that when
filling out a questionnaire.
Because if they caught me that I had been
lying, five years sentence was due—was possible.
So when I found out that they did find out
about my past, I saw five years, my god!
And that’s when I decided in real panic
to desert.
And I did, in a very dramatic way.
I deserted by crossing from the American zone
of Austria to the Soviet zone, which meant
swimming across the Danube river.
And I managed that, really in panic but safely.
As you see, I arrived safely.
So you’ve led the last several decades of
your life in East Germany, in what was then
the official name the German Democratic Republic—the
DDR, as it was called there.
Having lived there, having lived in that society,
give us your sense of the strengths and weaknesses,
what you think was an accomplishment we can
learn from and what was something we need
to learn to avoid.
How would you put that together?
There were about four reasons why I felt close
to the GDR, why I really felt myself a part
of it.
One basic reason was because right starting
in 1945, under pressure from the Soviets who
occupied it, they got rid of all of the war
criminals who had been guilty of Hitler’s
crimes in the war—that’s where these big
industry banks and so forth, who had built
Hitler up and profited from his war, they
were all thrown out and that for me was, as
a Jewish antifascist, especially important.
The second thing as that because East Germany,
as opposed to West Germany, supported Allende
in Chile, South African freedom movement,
the anti-Franco movement in Spain, North Vietnam—these
were things which were part of my upbringing,
always for the underdog, and I supported it.
A third reason was because the GDR in its
way, which was very complicated—that I would
come to with the bad parts—but it was trying
to establish a society where nobody was poor,
where poverty was done away with, and it largely
succeeded in this.
In fact, one of the main things I think of
when I go through the streets coming now to
visit the States again, in all the years—thirty-eight
years I lived there—I didn’t see one single
person sleeping in a street or one single
beggar.
And, to add to that, they succeeded with a
certain basic tax that all medical expenses
were covered, everything—including all prescriptions—you
never paid a penny.
And education the same, I went to college—my
two sons went to college.
We not only paid no tuition, you got a certain
amount every month to cover basic expenses.
Things like that.
The same with maternal leave and childcare
was free.
These were good things that I liked.
As for the bad things, because of this, because
they chased out all these big shots and huge
economic things and because a lot of people
never really appreciated this or some people
took it for granted, after a while, that they
didn’t pay—only a tenth of their pay for
rent, for example—they were constantly under
pressure from the West, constantly.
And little East Germany, which was only a
third of Germany, could never compete with
rich West Germany, with all its modern commodities
and its Marshall Plan money, etc.
It could never compete.
It was able to make sure that everybody had
enough to get along, but an awful lot of goods
were missing.
Nice cars, even many fruits—bananas were
short, for example.
Many other commodities.
And this put them at such a disadvantage that
many people thought, gee, we want to go across
and this forced or this meant a degree of
repression, which was the basic negative part
of East Germany.
Repression in terms of…?
Give us a little sense of what that meant.
Well, there was no freedom of the press, for
example.
The press publications, all the media were
basically directed by the central party.
That means—there were variations…
There were phases when a stricter and less
strict, but by and large there was no freedom
of the press.
And also, people were not afraid of the Stasi
and every word they said—this secret, state
security—they talked freely in private terms,
generally, but in public, at meetings and
so forth, people were careful as to what they
said.
They might—they wouldn’t be thrown in
jail, but they might not get a bonus.
They might not get a promotion.
They might not get this or that perk or advantage.
OK, let’s move forward.
In 1989, 1990 the Soviet Union imploded on
itself, Eastern Europe shifted and in Germany
there was a reunification.
The East and the West, which had been separate
countries since the end of the Second World
War, were reunited.
Tell us what that meant for East Germany,
to be reunited in one country.
How has that changed Germans and Germany?
What’s your sense of the significance of
this reunification for Germany, then to become
the dominant economy of Europe and all the
other consequences.
Well, the positive side, which is very strong,
is that families which had been divided were
able to get together.
East Germans were able to travel to Western
countries, which had been difficult—very,
very difficult.
They could travel to the east, but not to
the west—except pensioners could, but others
were limited.
So there was free travel and a huge, new array
of modern commodities.
Shops were full, the department stores and
the supermarkets were full.
This was a big advantage.
And, of course, the pressure I spoke of in
the media, they became much more—well, sensational.
There was now advertising.
We didn’t have advertising in East Germany
before, basically.
But the disadvantage was that almost from
the start, within the first two years the
entire industry was destroyed.
The entire industry of East Germany and most
of the agriculture as well, which meant that
millions were out of jobs.
And not only that, but youth clubs were disbanded.
Childcare became expensive.
Medical care was still much better than it
is here, in the United States, but it meant
now that you had to pay for your glasses,
you had to pay for hearing aids, you had to
pay for prescriptions.
So there were many disadvantages.
And especially, you weren’t sure of a job.
You didn’t know what was going to happen
tomorrow.
And you were willingly to work overtime or
weekends just so that you wouldn’t be fired.
This was one of the differences.
Here’s a question that two people asked
me to ask you.
What would you say, based on your life in
a very different society, what are the things
that the United States could learn from what
East Germany did for those years that it was
the German Democratic Republic?
Well, of course it should not learn from the
repressive side.
But then the little GDR was always under pressure
for outside, that led to this repression—they
were defending themselves.
As I used to say, a besieged fortress is never
very tolerant.
But what they could learn is—I think that
only when you get rid of these huge, huge
millionaires and billionaires—you quoted
one earlier—I think that they will never
permit most of the people to have a free and
decent life.
I think it with every crisis it will get worse.
It means that I think that they should learn
that only by taking over production into the
hands of the people who work on it—and with
the experts, of course, who learn to do that—I
think this is the only way to solve the dangers:
ecological, the danger of atomic war, this
terrible gap between the very, very wealthy
and the very, very poor which I noticed every
day here.
I think this could be altered and done away
with if you got rid of the main winners, the
main profiteers, which are the extremely wealthy
and their companies.
Do you have the sense of the Cold War, this
extraordinary period from 1945, roughly, until
1989—for lack of a better term—what did
it mean?
You lived your life in a sense on the other
side.
How does it look, looking back, what was that
period?
What was it about?
Well, it was extremely tense, because the
GDR was always conscious of the fact that
West Germany officially wanted to take over—they
said re-unite, it was basically more like
taking over, because it was more like colonization,
even though many people rejoiced at it.
But this conflict between east and west was
fought out every evening on the TV screens,
because West German television was always
telling their people that GDR—how bad things
were.
And the GDR television was trying to tell
them how good things were.
Interestingly, the West German television,
right or wrong, was very skillful—more skillful—than
the GDR, which was often—not always, but
often very dull.
So that there was this constant…
Based on TV was the main manifestation of
the Cold War and a constant question…
You’d have two women standing on line, waiting
for rolls in the morning and one would talk
to the other, “So, last night I made a sort
of mistake, I pushed the wrong button…”
In other words, they got western television.
And the other lady says, “Oh, I did too,
by the way!”
And they start chatting about western television—unless
maybe a man standing next to them was wearing
a party button and then they perhaps would
not talk about it, because they would make
a fuss, say, “What are you doing listening
to that?”
This was sort of the situation.
It was in all our lives, all the time—this
East/West conflict.
Last question we have time for, unfortunately.
What’s the legacy now?
Do the left-wing parties, either the German
Socialist Party or the new Die Linke party—are
they in some sense carrying on at least a
plus side, the positive sides?
Do you see some return to an interest in those
things that the GDR did well?
Well, first of all, the Social Democratic
Party is its title—no.
They’re opposed to everything involved with
the GDR.
The Left Party—Die Linke, as it’s called
in German—is somewhat divided.
Many members of this Left Party say we don’t
want to return completely to the GDR, but
some of the things were very good.
You had job security, cheap rent and things
like that.
Victor, I wish we had more time.
Thank you for your reminiscences and your
thoughts.
Thank you all for listening.
A glimpse, without good guys and bad guys,
to the strengths and weaknesses of another
socialist effort is something I thought would
be worth bringing to your attention.
I look forward to speaking with you again
next week.
