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 from Vaush here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMMLSbyJynA

Today, we have something much requested by the audience. We are going to be speaking with Varsh, not Vash, not the oche, but Varsh, a popular streamer

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debater, progressive socialist with nearly 300000 subscribers. Now, I think it's important my audience understands that I don't call people socialists when they're

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not socialist. You're an actual bona fide socialist. Yeah, I'd like to think I am at least cool.

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Well, we'll get into that. And now what? I'm always curious, any time I deal with anybody who uses a pseudonym.

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How did you decide to operate under a pseudonym? I was a big old art kid back in high school.

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You know, every art kid wants to draw comics, or at least a lot of them do. OK is the name of a character that I wanted to draw.

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Anyway, when I started doing the content, I just decided to use it as a placeholder name and it stuck. So that's catchy enough.

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And I'm guessing for privacy reasons, it's not the worst thing. Oh, sure. Yeah, but I mean, people go either way, but I think it's nice and catchy anyway, so I

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don't mind. So let's let's talk a little bit. I mean, maybe to get into our conversation, we are coming off the heels of an election

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in which Donald Trump lost Joe Biden won Senate control. Is that at this point?

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And we're sort of trying to figure out what what is the next step for someone with your perspective as a socialist, where both Joe Biden and Donald Trump are very different

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from you in terms in terms of their politics? Do you see replacing Trump with Biden as a good thing?

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How good of a thing? Oh, undeniably, this is something that I learned when I looked into the writings of people

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like Engels and Lenin and Mao. Is he socialists are, at least, as I understand it, most comfortable making our arguments

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in a democratic or a bourgeois democratic system. That is to say, in a system where we have sort of this veneer of corporate democracy,

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where people expect things like rights and representation, you can make arguments like,

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hey, couldn't we be doing this better in outright fascist societies or societies which have become so nationalistic that national interest takes precedence over class interest?

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It's really difficult to get those arguments across. That's why we typically lose whenever fascists take power, we're the first ones out, we're

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the biggest threat. So preserving the system for a little bit longer under Joe Biden, vastly, vastly preferable

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to the threat of our democratic institutions crumbling. Also, just frankly, Biden's just better look objectively at a number of issues.

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Climate change, health care. Can't argue with that. So very clearly, you're making you're making it obvious that you are not an acceleration

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as the acceleration ism being the idea that there would be a shortcut to your eventual

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ideal arrangement of of affairs by having society crumble, by having those institutions

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crumble, that that would in some way accelerate or more quickly get us to that endpoint. You very clearly don't subscribe to that.

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The conditions need to be right for that. If things collapsed right now, we would not be the ones to take power.

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We do not have that kind of infrastructure established. They would be the ones to take power in a system where it felt like chaos or collapse

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would be something which would inspire some kind of, you know, natural, organic, democratic

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control. I could get behind that. But that is not the world we live in right now. What would happen in your mind if things crumbled instead of a socialist utopia?

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What would we most likely see? Oh, man. I mean, if things I mean, depending on how things crumbled right now, the general prevailing

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attitude in this country is fear and nationalism. We would probably set up some sort of, if not one singular, at least a collection of

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ethno nationalist communities. The direction this country is taking right now, the world is controlled, at least in

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chaos, by the most militarily prepared. And right now, I think a large number of Trump supporters are ready.

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They believe they're on the precipice of having to take hold of a dead world, whereas a lot

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of progressive and left leaning people, you know, God bless them, whatever, I don't think are ready for that.

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And for that reason, if push comes to shove, I'm just not confident that our chances I think that we're going to go dramatically far.

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Right. I think we're probably going to turn into an isolationist ethno nationalist state and from that point forward will be completely unable to affect the rest of the world as

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its course changes. And I don't I don't want that. Yeah, OK. So so far, I completely agree with you. I think that if we do see a crumbling that some imagine might lead to the ushering in

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of the idealized socialist circumstances, I think we get exactly what you're talking

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about now. Under what circumstances do you believe that your socialist organization of the country

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would be most likely to be achieved? What would happen between now and then leading up to it?

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We need to do a lot of cultural work and we need to get people to. Fixate on issues that actually affect their lives.

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What gets a Trump supporter out of bed, what gets them angry at the world, is that the state of their schools, their infrastructure, their education, their health care.

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Very rarely. No, usually it's meaningless cultural issues. You have trans people. You have the belief that BLM is going to burn down their suburb.

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These are nonsense, scaremongering, fear issues. These aren't reflective of reality. And for that reason, this is why we are concern ourselves with the spread of something called

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class consciousness. We want people to be concerned first and foremost with the conditions that actually affect their

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lives. And if we can do that, and I believe we can do that and people like Bernie Sanders have shown you can do that to lots of people if you focus on the right arguments, I think

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that will be in a position where the predominant ideological trend of this country will be one towards radical workplace democracy as opposed to radical isolationism, radical ethnic

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exclusionary behavior, that sort of thing. Am I being too simplistic if I say that for the time being, socialists and Social Democrats

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should be united because the next steps are identical for both groups? Or at least they should be?

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No, I think that's totally true. I mean, will backstab each other later, right? Strickly? Yeah, of course.

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Of course. But for right now, yeah. We need to focus on Social Democrats. You consider yourself one. Of course.

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I do know the war. Yeah. Because a senior content, Social Democrats and socialists have a lot in common and that we both respect the belief that the economic resources of our country should be turned

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towards the well-being of the people. We should focus on improving these base institutional needs that we believe humans are entitled

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to. And that's great. And I think that when people are exposed to that, they're way less likely to associate

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their well-being with these meaningless cultural platitudes that Trump supporters or other culture warriors like to obsess over.

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For now, I think our interests are aligned down the line. You know, we'll have our arguments, I'm sure.

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So now let's think ahead a little bit. If we just to really kind of continue exploring your your worldview, imagine that the Social

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Democrats get the things they want. We have democratization of the workplace. We are sort of raising the floor and putting some ceiling in and make sure making sure

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nobody falls too far and doing some of the things Finland and other northern European places have done.

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Social Democrats get their way. OK, once you get to that point. What mechanism do you imagine would usher in socialism, how do we get to where every

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business, for example, socializes ownership of the means of production? By what mechanism is that installed or enacted?

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Well, you mentioned workplace democracy, which I like. I think those are very good Trojan horse for socialist ideals, because it literally is

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the seizure of the means of production in a society in which every workplaces democratic. That is to say, there are some there is some kind of democratic framework that allows you

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to vote in or vote out individuals, managers, that sort of thing. And the means of those firms, the wealth, the resources are collectively owned among

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those who work there. If you have every firm in a country that adheres to those principles, you have what would have

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been called one hundred and fifty years ago, a dictatorship of the proletariat, not very well named, but essentially because dictatorship didn't have the connotation back then that

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it does now a workers state. Well, let me let's pause for a second there.

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Maybe we might have a different idea of what in fact, it's very clear we have a different idea of what democratization of the workplace would mean.

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So when I think about democratization of the workplace, I'm talking about four companies above a certain size.

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You must have broad representation from employees when you so there's a list of things.

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But I think it's probably it certainly doesn't sound like it would go as far as what you're talking about, which sounds like it would almost be a socialization of the means of

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production. That would be the goal for me at least. I think that a democratically minded people are very susceptible to arguments in favor

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of the democratization of the workplace in the way that I describe it. Yeah, I think that once you look at a firm and you look at its traditional organization,

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which is pretty dictatorial in its natural state, you know, here in the States, you don't control who your manager is or your bosses.

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You work there and you do what you're told or you're fired. I think that people are very amicable to the idea that there can be an improvement on that

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system. There's very, very positive data coming out of countries well all around the world and different material conditions suggesting that worker cooperatives are a pretty effective

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way of organizing firms. And it leaves people happier. And in some cases it's even more efficient. So the question is, how can we sell people on the idea that that system, which necessitates

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the destruction of the bourgeoisie, the class, you no longer have an owner after all, it's collective.

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How do we incentivize that? How do we encourage people to move in that direction? But is your view so there's a dramatic difference between everybody is convinced and sold on

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the idea that that's how businesses should be owned versus it is imposed as this is how

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it must be done or otherwise it is not a legal business. It sounds like you're leaning, at least for now, more in the direction of saying you feel

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like you have the facts on your side and you could convince people to do it that way. Are you not suggesting that at a certain point the only legal way to organize a business

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would be socialized ownership? I don't think you can compel democracy. I don't think it works very well.

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I think that when socialism arrives in the states, should it arrive, nobody will call it socialism.

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They will view it as a natural extension of a series of economic and worker related rights that they've been building upon it for a good time before that.

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With regards to whether or not this should be pushed for in an autocratic way, though, an autocratic sort of delivery of democracy is a little little silly.

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But it's happened before. Yes. When we freed the slaves, of course, the slave owners didn't like that, but we did it anyway.

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And I think we can agree that was a good thing. The people who will be pushing back on this aren't going to be the democratic populace.

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It's probably going to be the owners of these businesses. And that's the ultimate conflict. You know, how well how significantly can the interests of the majority be assigned precedence

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over the interests of a very small, very elite group of landed modern aristocrats?

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We're going to continue our conversation with Vashion in the full interview will be posted on the YouTube channel. But on the podcast, TV and radio show, we are going to go to

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a break. The David Pakman Show at David Pakman Dotcom.