How capitalism enslaved us all | Grace Blakeley interview 

“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.

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 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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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!

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

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

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

techno feudalism is the era we are in

This woman is sound as fuck, more interviews like this

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

Great interview. Grace Berkeley is spot on.

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

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?

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.

❤Thank you

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.

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.

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👏👏👏

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.

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.

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.👍

‘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 ❤✊

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.

That was a fascinating talk. Thank you xxx 😀

"Toxic individualism". Right.

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

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

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.

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.

"'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

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

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 😳 ❤

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.

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. ✊✊✊✊🙏

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.

Brilliant analysis from Grace, fabulous interview. ❤

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

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

Bought the book, loving it. Great show

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Very intelligent woman.

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?

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

I often heard that taking nationalized services out of the public sphere and privatizing them was "giving power to the people." It took a long time for me to understand was that Privatization just moves the the means of production out from under the direct responsibility of the government, which allows for more exploitation and extraction of profit.

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

Thank you for exposing the truth Grace. Great interview Oli

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).

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.

Grace Blakeley is brilliant.

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!

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

I'm realizing that my route off the drama triangle is framed within the context of individualism. It is tough though because collective action falls outside the realm of my control. And the more I realize I don't even have power to control myself, I am tempted to give up. Am I giving way to acceptance and peace, or simply resigned to defeat?

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

A pinnacle of critical thnking, thank you.

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.

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?

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

Fascinating. She makes some very eye-opening points.

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

Comfortably clarifying Grace on efficient pen use =^-^=

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.

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

great conversation thanks Grace

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.

Great conversation.

Our whole economic system is based on two illusions..Disunity and Insufficiency. We believe we are seperate from each other and that there is not enough to go around. A New Guiding principle must be put in place to guide our evolutionary process. Evolved beings understand that all things are One so this would guide the process.

Another good interview, 👍🏽. Good work, keep going.

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

Absolutely mind-blowing! I'd love to see a conversation between Grace and Noam Chomsky.

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.

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.

Dominance based hierarchy VS consensual cooperation

She's future PM material.

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 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 Brits do have some great independent left wing media platforms

I am both in love and inspired. Amazing interview.

She is reliably excellent.

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.

Fantastic interview, would love to see more discussed on this.

Great show, very interesting and revealing. Keep up the good work.

Big fan of Grace! Looking forward to reading her book once I've finished The Trading Game.

Politics Joe, just on fire atm with some great guests

This is real, practical hope. The revolution may be quieter than imagined..

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?