Ep 349 - Cultural Syndromes of Capitalism with David Fields

Steve Grumbine: 00:00:43

All right, folks, this is Steve with Macro and Cheese. Today's guest is a returning guest, my buddy, David Fields. And David Fields is more than a buddy.

He's an academic and he's an author and he's a really decent dude. And I'm going to go ahead and read this bio here.

His research is grounded in critical, realistic and genetic structuralist ontology and epistemology, focusing on the complex interactions of foreign exchange and capital flows with economic growth, fiscal and monetary policy and distribution, with particular emphasis on the concept of endogenous money.

Additionally, he investigates political economy of regional development, along with the examining patterns which with respect to housing, social stratification and community planning. He is currently an economist at the Utah Department of Commerce and the author of a Medium post for the Utah Vanguard, which is his publication.

He does on Medium.

And we're going to be discussing the cultural syndromes of capitalism, given what a glorious Donald Trump moment we're having these days where anybody that is left of center, in some cases left of left, yours truly included, probably is not a favorite of Donald Trump's. And his whole apparatus seems to have, you know, developed a slight micro chubby over looking at lefties.

And today we're going to talk a little bit about capitalism and the cultural syndromes of capitalism. This obviously drew me in big time because a lot of what we're dealing with these days is the outcomes of capitalism.

We're dealing with the fraudulent democracy, the fraudulent planned obsolescence, the fraudulent rentier economy, the fraudulent investor grade retrograde scumbag capitalist economy that impacts so many of our lives. And for me, this article really, really started a bunch of thoughts in my head.

So I quickly asked David to join me and he was kind enough to agree to do so. So, well, let me bring on my guest, David Fields. Welcome to the show, sir.

David Fields: 00:03:07

Hey, how's it going? Thanks for having me. A pleasure to be here.

Steve Grumbine: 00:03:10

Absolutely.

Again, I respect the hell out of anyone that's willing to speak out on these issues and write about these issues, especially those that aren't timid and lecturing people on tone and rudeness, things like that, because right now we're in A weird timeline, right? We are in a timeline where the most decent people are being beaten up by ice, the most decent people are being in trouble for speaking truth.

And all the while we're watching what looks like at the most corrupt, most radical, most fascist elements driving us into a direction that is just absolutely terrifying. Raising kids in this environment is scary business.

The outcomes, the outflows, if you will, of capitalism, the ancillary elements that come as a result of capitalism, are being felt by a lot of us right now, and there have never been more on display than they are right now. So with that, tell us about your article, sir.

David Fields: 00:04:21

I was going to follow up with what you just said. It reminds me of this infamous passage by Anne Frank when she was hiding in the attic.

She wrote in her memoirs that that outside folks are being disappeared off the streets for no apparent reason, et cetera, et cetera.

But the crux of the story is that what she was describing is essentially happening right outside our window here, which no one could think is fathomable, but is. And that's incredibly frightening.

Steve Grumbine: 00:04:53

Yeah. Yeah, it is. It absolutely is. I mean, the idea of the basic things you would have learned in college or even high school are being turned into.

I don't even know what you call it. Like, up is down, down is up, left is right, right is left kind of insanity.

I envisioned the guy in: 1984

David Fields: 00:05:24

Four.

Steve Grumbine: 00:05:25

You're holding up four? And he goes, no, Winston.

David Fields: 00:05:28

Yeah.

Steve Grumbine: 00:05:29

How many fingers am I holding? Four. I don't know what you want me to tell you. I see four. Four. It must be four.

And he's like, no, Winston, the number of fingers depends on what the Party tells you.

David Fields: 00:05:39

Yep.

Steve Grumbine: 00:05:39

If I say there are three, there are three. If I say there are 10, there are 10 kind of thing.

And it's like, I see people that are willing to go along with that, and I say to myself, you are the most terrifying person on the planet. The most terrifying person on the planet.

David Fields: 00:05:58

Yeah. And what I've been trying to argue with my writings lately is that what we're facing is not an aberration. It's not an outlier, so to speak.

It's deeply ingrained in this system that we are heavily embedded in, which is capitalism, which suffers from psychosocial pathologies which I've come to the conclusion are Regained Primacy Syndrome, More Cultural Syndrome, Zero Sum Rivalry Syndrome, and the Ownership Syndrome.

And what I mean by these concepts is in the first instance, this constant need for perpetual self optimization to gain as much wealth as you can at whatever social costs, constitutes a culture of narcissism, you know, the entrepreneurial self, if you will.

And this syndrome facilitates a deep sense of estrangement, which then leads to alienation for the working class, specifically because they can't rely on the utmost means of security, unlike the leisure class reaches a pinnacle of loss.

And that loss is a space of which fascist tendencies to save capitalism from itself can easily latch on and exploit to use said class to support far right forces which are inherently against their interests.

Blame the migrant, blame the person of color, blame the foreigners, et cetera, et cetera, for problems which are inherently structural because they haven't been able to attain that image of or that presentation of the utmost success of which capitalism celebrates and represents.

And then there's this competitive strife, the zero sum rivalry I talked about, where this constant comparison of another can lead to self deprecation, psychic regress, mental destabilization, so contrary to what a psychologist would say of this personal dismantlement and unable to take care of his or her emotions, is in fact a manifestation of a system where cooperation is not the key essence of the society in which we live in. It's dog eat dog, Hobogian brutishness. And that Hobgian brutishness translates into a constant social comparison of rank.

And if somebody can't reach that rank, they're demonized, they're ostracized, they're considered less than dirt, and that translates into a downward spiral.

Another space of which fascist tendencies can exploit to entrench its hegemony, saying that your deep sense of loss is again that migrant, that foreigner, you know, that next door neighbor who. You get the idea.

And then there's this ownership syndrome where celebration of humans is not centered on their authenticity for who they are, how they treat others, etc.

But conspicuous consumption to fill a void of meaningless that the society celebrates and reproduces in that conspicuous consumption where we treat humans as things facilitates a fictitiousness inauthenticity where nothing seems real, nothing seems genuine, nothing seems filled with emotion.

And this is another space which is not mutually exclusive from the two other spaces I talked about, where again, fascist tendencies can latch on, exploit and use to entrench itself and facilitate a hegemony which provides an inauthentic sense that well, here's the essence and here we're going to save society or bring back society which has been lost in the past and Bring back something that's genuine, which we know is not true, but that sense of loss is a means to manufacture that and allows fascism to come to the surface and essentially perpetuate capitalism, even though the person who is being exploited to support that tendency doesn't realize that this is a means, a far right means to save capitalism from its own destruction.

Steve Grumbine: 00:10:28

In the article you talk extensive and I think this is really important for folks.

We will have the link to this in the show notes, but I think it's really very interesting to see the grid that you put together, the table that you put together, kind of breaking it down into capitalism's core principle, the ideology behind it, the syndrome that it associates with, and then the social manifestation. I think that is really interesting.

I mean, you go into the profit motive and you say utility maximization, profit maximization, wealth as a goal in and of itself. The syndrome, gain primacy syndrome, and the social manifestation, perpetual self optimization.

I mean, you just went through this, but the way that you laid it out here, all anybody needs is a ruler or index card to block out the other line and they can read left to right how this starts and how it ends and how it shows itself. Definitely worth taking a look at. You brought something else up there that I think is really important.

And for folks that listen to this podcast, you'll have heard me bring this up several different times, but I feel like there's never been a better time than right now to learn about Gramsci and cultural hegemony and understanding how hegemony works and a crisis of hegemony that brings about these harsher, more fascistic tendencies during that period. I mean, these are not permanent states.

I don't believe you could live perpetually in a fascist state without the contradictions rupturing to the point where there would be mass violent. I don't think you could keep it for long. It would have to be a tactic as opposed to a long term strategy.

But can you weigh in a little bit how cultural hegemony speaks to these syndromes of capital?

David Fields: 00:12:23

Oh, for sure. And I'll connect it with Carl Polanyi, who developed the concept of the double movement. First, I'll center my attention on culture.

A lot of folks like the poo poo culture, like, ah, culture, it's touchy feely stuff and doesn't really explicate the concrete economic realities. And for a long time I said, yeah, maybe that's right. Culture's too, you know, softy, touchy.

But then I started thinking more deeply and culture is actually Very important because it's a plane where the conflicts of capitalism are played out. So it's not just on the shop floor, it's not just in the streets. It's also fought on what constitutes meaning and essence.

And to me, that's what culture manifests is the meaning essence. You know, what does everything mean to this person? And how does it structure relationships with other folks?

And in that realm, what Gramsci was talking about with respect to culture hegemony is more culture and parallelism, if you will, which he discussed and developed.

And is meaning in the sense that the system which the meaning supports facilitates misrecognition, you know, a sense of distortion where the overall dominance of what makes everything seem real to the person is not real, but it's made to seem real.

To think that this is just natural, like your relation to other person as things, or the gain primacy, where it's perpetual optimization through utility maximization, profit maximization, where everything is all about market competition. You know, a pejorative term, Social Darwinism, but makes sense. And private property is some natural essence, natural force.

The only way that these pillars can survive is a meaning that supports it, is a meaning that emphasize that this is just natural. It's always been like this.

Steve Grumbine: 00:14:19

It's.

David Fields: 00:14:20

There's nothing you can do about it. And therefore if there's nothing you can do about it, well, you treat it as eternal.

So that's the cultural imperialism or the cultural hegemony I'm talking about the meaning that emphasizes entrenches these pillars. And if that meaning starts to be contested, like I said before, the fascist tendency is there to save it from itself.

Now I bring in the concept of the double movement into this, famously captured by Carl Collandis book the Great Transformation. And the way I interpret the double movement, there's economic plane where folks are trying to make sense of their economic insecurities.

They can go a path towards more social democracy or socialism, or the other end, where you have charismatic cult of personalities like what we have now, use that economic disgruntlement to push for more fascist means to save the system from collapsing. But on a cultural plane, there's a double movement as well.

And that's a cultural contradiction or a cultural connestation, if you will, where there's a way for culture to shift towards a direction that contests, that radically tries to transform the dominant sense of meaning, that treats everything as eternal. But then on the other side, there's a counteracting force to prevent such cultural condensation with reinforced sense of meaning.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. All that is just radical dogmatic nonsense. We need to save our nation. We need to save our society.

And this is where the culture of otherness starts to play a role which is meant to save the cultural hegemony, to ensure that the system doesn't collapse or doesn't push towards those more progressive forces I talked about before.

So when we talk about cultural hegemony, we have to consider the double movement that Karl Polanyi talks about again, not just on an economic plane or the political plane, but on a cultural plane where forces are going in different directions to try to make sense of the situation that we're in. And history shows that prior to World War II or even before World War I, but during that time period, economic crises were reigning supreme.

There was a lot of condensation of whether or not this system called capitalism could sustain itself, and there were a lot of progressive socialist movements, et cetera. But the only way fascism was able to gain a foothold was, no, no, no, no, no. We're going to save our society.

We're going to make sure that we can go through this with super nationalism, otherness, xenophobia, et cetera, et cetera, which is parading today.

But that's the point, because fascism is the underlying force, not just economic and social and political, but cultural, to ensure that the system doesn't go towards the direction that folks like you and I would see, which is more social justice routes and more transformative routes that radically transform the system. So those syndromes, like I talked about, are not prevailing and not treated as eternal.

Steve Grumbine: 00:17:40

I want to read from your article here real quickly. It's two quick paragraphs, but I think they're powerful and they play right into what we were just talking about.

You say, on the one hand, capitalism acts as a powerful driver for socialization, propelling advancements that demonstrably improve collective power and interconnectedness. For innovation enables the pooling of resources, knowledge and effort on scales previously unimaginable.

Yet the collective advancement is fundamentally compromised by an economic framework wherein the proceeds of labor are expropriated. This engenders a pervasive sense of powerlessness and isolation.

Laborers experience detachment from the products of their efforts, exercising minimal control over the production production process or the ultimate disposition of their creations.

This alienation extends beyond the confines of the workplace, permeating social relations as workers are increasingly perceived as cogs rather than integral members of a community.

By subjecting the substance of society to the laws of motion of capitalist violence, the structural Bifurcation provides for fertile ground for the emergence of political and social cataclysms. Anomy systematically transmutes human creative power into a personal and social antagonistic force, a social condition for fascism.

And I'll continue with one last paragraph.

Fascism, hence, rather than representing a radical departure or direct opposition to the capitalist system, operates as a profound and often brutal mechanism for capitalism's continued existence and perpetuation. This is achieved through the deliberate cultivation of a false consciousness. We're now talking about hegemony right here.

This is the cultural hegemony right there. Effectively blinding the proletariat to the true roots and architects of their economic and social subjugation.

By diverting their attention and misdirecting their grievances, right wing fanaticism ensures that the fundamental structures of capitalism remain unchallenged and intact, often leveraging nationalistic fervor, scapegoating and the suppression of dissent to maintain social order and economic stability for the ruling class. Hello. If that isn't exactly what is going on right now, I don't know what, I don't know what else it is.

David Fields: 00:20:19

Exactly. No, that's it. That's it. There's no other way to describe it. And that's exactly what's happening. So like I said, Trump is not an aberration.

Trump is a part impossible product of the sick system that we have.

Steve Grumbine: 00:20:32

The people act like, you know, it's radical or extreme to identify this stuff and to speak on it.

David Fields: 00:20:40

Yeah.

Steve Grumbine: 00:20:40

Which I find tragic, quite honestly, because you don't even have to be a well researched scholar or a some sort of radical extremist or whatever.

David Fields: 00:20:55

Yeah.

Steve Grumbine: 00:20:55

And at this point in time, let's just be crystal clear. Yeah, we are living in an extremist timeline.

We are living in the most, excuse my French up timeline that I have ever experienced and I'm almost 60 years old.

David Fields: 00:21:12

Yeah, you're not wrong.

We are living in the system where what I wrote here exactly constitutes what's happening, which is these right wing tendencies are getting a foothold, is encapsulating the minds of everybody, pitting people against other people, facilitating interpersonal violence along with structural violence. And yes, that's happening. But what gave rise to this, and I emphasize, well, liberalism facilitates these forces. And why?

Because apologetic reformism can only go so far. Okay.

Because apologetic reformism, which is the essence of liberalism, is not meant to facilitate social transformations where everybody and anybody, regardless of circumstance, can reach their full human potential.

Liberalism is a means to say, okay, okay, we'll provide some welfare state provisions and give the appearance that the system works for everybody, but it doesn't. And then you have Democrats saying, how is this possible? Easy.

When you have folks like Kamala Harrison saying, okay, let's calm down, let's be reasonable, etc. Etc. They have nobody except themselves to blame for what's happening.

Steve Grumbine: 00:22:34

I think to myself, and I want to be crystal clear on this, right? Like, if we had a visual on the board and we had a Venn diagram.

David Fields: 00:22:42

Yeah.

Steve Grumbine: 00:22:43

And we said, here is your liberation right here in this spot on the Venn. We don't even have a Venn diagram yet. We have a universal set at this moment. We haven't done any intersections or anything else. Right.

Just here is liberation. And you look and you see that liberals believe that they represent liberation, but they are not in any way.

They're capitalists that facilitate this very thing.

And what they do is they put out like a pittance for welfare that allows the other side, which is not really an other side, it's just their alter ego showing up saying, hey, you lazy, no good pieces of shit, how dare you milk off of my tax dollar. And you lazy, good for nothing sob, you're stealing from my plate. They don't look up, they don't look at the rich. They don't.

They look and they demonize their brothers and sisters. The other people that are working class schmucks like myself that have to, you know, go to work for a living, do whatever.

And I mean, not saying anything about the type of work we do or whatever issues that come as a result of the type of output we have, it's just in general, we have to work for a paycheck. And if we don't have a paycheck, we lose everything. And so in a liberal, you know, version of the world, they're still sitting.

I mean, I remember the God blessed dnc, what was it in Chicago or whatever this year and watching people protest in Gaza. And I remember this black guy who's dressed in Prada, basically. Oh yeah, slings his head back laughing.

David Fields: 00:24:26

Yeah.

Steve Grumbine: 00:24:27

Yes, laughing. What a disgrace. That is a shitlib extraordinaire. Someone so perverse, so grotesque, so unbearably liberal.

And you think to yourself, there's a genocide going on, homeboy bonanza.

David Fields: 00:24:44

Yeah.

Steve Grumbine: 00:24:45

You're sitting there chuckling and laughing and throwing your head back like a privileged SOB that you are. And it's because you don't represent change. You don't represent resistance. There is no resistance there.

You are every bit as much a capitalist as the Other guys are. There's no difference there.

Except in your world, you'll go ahead and starve people with pittances and then act like you're doing God's work, trying to save those pittances instead of actually fight for meaningful, real change that fundamentally helps everyone.

David Fields: 00:25:23

Look at the timeline, like from Obama. Hope and change. Hope and change. Okay, that, Where'd that get us? And then you had the last DNC and what was the phrase that they kept saying?

We're not going back, we're not going back. And I'm sitting here. Okay, well what the fuck does that mean? I'm sorry, part of my Anglo Saxon words, but really, what the fuck does that mean?

It's like, oh, don't worry, don't worry, we're going to get together, we're going to say some positive words and we're going to make sure that the most violent forces which we're experiencing now don't happen. And we can go back to just taming the system which has been our modus operating for years on end. Don't worry about it.

Steve Grumbine: 00:26:10

Brunch at 10.

David Fields: 00:26:12

Yeah.

Steve Grumbine: 00:26:12

The more I think about it, right?

And I bring this up because I feel like as part of that cult cultural hegemony, people really have been conditioned to believe that they're going to vote their way out of this.

David Fields: 00:26:24

Yeah.

Steve Grumbine: 00:26:25

And I've tried to explain to anyone that'll listen, I mean, listen, I have been a strong 15 year plus advocate for modern monetary theory even though I haven't been regarded by some of the individuals whose books we hump. I have absolutely been a non wavering structure, staunch advocate for modern monetary theory.

And the idea that we are just going to quote, unquote, source the vote that we're going to just vote a few more progressives in and change this, it fundamentally misses why none of that ever happens. It fundamentally skips the hegemony, the actual elements that make. It's not an issue of facts. We don't need facts.

Every, nobody cares about the facts. They're not listening to the facts. They're listening to the vibes and feels okay.

And every time I get into a discussion with people, they want to tell me about tone, they want to tell me about. Well, that was rather rude, wasn't it? And I'm like, you're not getting this.

David Fields: 00:27:31

Exactly.

Steve Grumbine: 00:27:32

This is not a matter of ledgers. You're not waking up the world by explaining how, yes, once they are awakened to the fact that these things could happen, you can radicalize people.

And that's my That's. Let's just be fair. That's my goal. I want people to wake up and smell the coffee. Now, I'm not asking for anything beyond.

Because I'm not smart enough to tell people what to do once they've woken up. I'm just asking people to wake up. And then I'm hoping that smart people come together and make some different decisions. I don't know what that is.

I'm not smart enough to know what that is. I'm really not.

And I don't think that there's any kind of class struggle theory that really, truly understands the times we're living in, the disproportionately underemployed or the lack of a central work area. There is none of the things that happened back in the days of Lenin or Gramsci or any of the other folks.

It's a totally different world today and the rules are different. You've got Palantir and you've got what's his name, Ellison, who just bought TikTok and owns Oracle and CNN and CBS and all the other things.

You've got this guy who's basically saying, hey, we will record everything, we will observe everything.

We will look over you and the citizens will absolutely shudder and be well behaved because we are your overlords and we are looking at you and we are monitoring you when we were. And it's like, tell me, explain to me how we vote that away. Help me understand how we vote that away.

David Fields: 00:29:09

I think George Orla was pretty spot on.

Steve Grumbine: 00:29:12

Yeah.

Intermission: 00:29:13

You are listening to Macro and Cheese, a podcast by Real Progressives. We are a 501c3 nonprofit organization. All donations are tax deductible.

Please consider becoming a monthly donor on Patreon substack or our website, realprogressives.org now back to the podcast.

David Fields: 00:29:35

I mean, in: 1984

Steve Grumbine: 00:29:39

You can't.

David Fields: 00:29:40

And sure, voting can give you some benefits. There's no question. I mean, there's empirical evidence to concretize that. But in a bourgeois democracy, it can only go so far.

Because that voting or that platform, that manifestation, gives the appearance that one can say, well, if I just gather folks up and get the ballots, get the signatures, deliver my piece to the floor, things will follow suit. So I can pursue the legislation that I want to see and social justice can follow suit.

Well, this 19th century social theorist, who I think everyone should read, and I think you know who I'm talking about, said that every now and then the masses come. Who's going to vote to exploit them next. And that's pretty concrete. Which was concrete back then and remains quite relevant and significant today.

Steve Grumbine: 00:30:38

Yeah. And, you know, when I say we don't live in a democracy, I mean this. First of all, we are not a democracy.

And I know this seems like one of those difference without distinction kind of moments. They always say, oh, it's a republic or it's this or that and the other.

David Fields: 00:30:52

Yeah.

Steve Grumbine: 00:30:52

But we really, truly do not live in a democracy. And you could see this every time you go to primary times, Right.

We're going to have a primary now for whatever the Democratic Party and the party bosses, the powerful, the elites say. Yeah, you know, we're just not that interested in having a primary this time.

So, no, we're not going to let it happen because we are a private corporation, AKA more of the capitalist society and more of this private ownership, more of this not public. We're going to make the rules and we're going to.

David Fields: 00:31:29

That's a structural means of enforcing syndrome, which I talked about.

Steve Grumbine: 00:31:32

Yes. And that's the point. Right. Is how in the world do we make people stop being children?

Baby bibs and milk and mother's milk and, like, you know, warm cookies and cream and onesie pajamas and stuff like that.

How do we get them to stop lying to us and stop lying and stop curtsying and stop bowing and stop pretending that it's all about rudeness and politeness and bullshit, when in reality, if you watched Ice beating the taste out of that woman's mouth whose husband got taken away and, you know, shot and everything. We're talking about a whole different timeline here. And we're talking about people that are selling normiedom when people have a gun to your head.

David Fields: 00:32:19

Yep.

Steve Grumbine: 00:32:20

I wonder. It's like, you know, yes, we agree on ledgers, but my God, are your eyes not open?

And I mean this lovingly, because I don't understand why this pretense of we can vote our way out of this exists, why they're pretending that we live in a situation. They're already propping up Buttigieg and Kamala again.

David Fields: 00:32:45

Yep.

Steve Grumbine: 00:32:46

They're already rebooting that garbage again.

David Fields: 00:32:51

And I'm not shocked, because that's the whole point. The whole point is theater, a front stage, a celebratory encapsulation to say that, look, give us a chance, and we're going to be your saviors.

Sorry, this hope in a hopeless world has run its course.

Steve Grumbine: 00:33:10

Kamala said the other day. I'm gonna read this just real quick.

David Fields: 00:33:14

Yeah, go ahead.

Steve Grumbine: 00:33:15

It is so hilarious. And I say this as somebody who genuinely doesn't care. Right. Because I. I don't believe any of this is real.

she said on MSNBC, September: 2025

David Fields: 00:33:35

Yeah.

Steve Grumbine: 00:33:37

I want you to realize for the kids in the back row that maybe don't know this stuff. Communism, socialism in general is about worker ownership, worker empowerment. It is not about free stuff. It's not about, like, welfare state.

It's not about those things.

It really is genuinely about workers owning the means of production as opposed to some rich fat catching, sucking off their labor and alienating them from the product of their labor. Now, if you call that radical, you got a bizarre world that you're living in there. If you think that's radical, this is who they're going to prop up.

She literally called Trump a communist dictator.

David Fields: 00:34:22

I fell off my chair.

Steve Grumbine: 00:34:23

Seriously. I mean, is this more cultural hegemony where they don't even question, they just flap their wings like seals? Circus seals. I mean, what.

What's up with that?

David Fields: 00:34:34

Yeah, but one could look at it and say that this is just an aberration, But I would argue no, this is another part and parcel of the system which is meant to facilitate a constant flux of uncertainty and trying to make sense in the senseless, godforsaken world we live in, where you can't make sense of it because you have these distractions like that.

Another example involving Kamala Harris was she was giving a lecture about this new book that she just published, which I'm not going to read, I have no care for it, where there were protesters, wonderful human beings that came and said, you are responsible for giving Netanyahu the means to facilitate his holocaust against Palestinians right now. And you know what Kamala said in response?

Unlike what she said during her presidential campaign where she says, I'm speaking as a means to shut those demonstrators up. Do you know what she said at this moment?

Steve Grumbine: 00:35:35

What's that?

David Fields: 00:35:35

She said, well, I'm not the president. That was her response. Now, if that's not a clear indication that she is just like the disgusting rot like the rest of them, I don't know what is.

Steve Grumbine: 00:35:48

Yeah, you know, I'm going to take a step back with this real quick and just say that, you know, as part of this deluge of chaos that just keeps hitting us, these twisted inversions of words and so very Orwellian. Right.

David Fields: 00:36:04

There's a whole point to it.

It's an instrument, this constant means of facilitating confusion and distraction and Disorientation is a psychological, manipulative, systemic entity to entrench that misrecognition I talked about. So those pathologies which I talked about before, the psychosocial pathologies maintain this destructive system that we live in.

Steve Grumbine: 00:36:32

Yeah. One of the other things that I wanted to bring up, and I'll give you a. I didn't mean to interrupt.

David Fields: 00:36:37

Go ahead.

Steve Grumbine: 00:36:38

No, it's. This is a conversation, bro. If I go on too long, you have every right to cut my ass off. Excuse my French, but.

But I want to just read something to you, and this is very important to me personally. Okay. I come from a Christian background. Okay.

My recovery from alcoholism came as a direct result of my faith and working through step programs and dealing with people of all shapes and sizes, walks of life, from homeless people that are toothless to the wealthy and powerful who. Who all are equally afflicted by alcoholism. It's a disease, right? But there was one guy who I got turned on to during my walk as a Christian.

Now, mind you, I was not raised in a Christian household. My mom and dad were marginally. You know, they had Bibles around and pictures of Jesus here and there with Reagan and. Love you, mom and dad.

But let's be fair. I mean, we weren't going to church on Sundays and so forth. My mom later in life did, but that wasn't the way we were raised.

I came to this as a last ditch effort to survive from addiction. I was turned on to a guy, a great Lutheran theologian named Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

And Bonhoeffer was part of the resistance against Adolf Hitler back in World War II. And he was captured once by the Nazis and he was rescued out of Auschwitz, I believe it was, by the Brits. And he could have lived out his life safe.

And he's like, nah, I can't be part of a new Germany if I don't go back. He went back to Germany within, like two weeks, was captured, and he was hung right before the Allies took Auschwitz.

But all the Nazi guards talked about what a great man of faith he was, as he would stand there as the bombs would be falling, and he would be steadfast and not shaken. He was just at peace. And he would talk to them about peace and about love and about altering their worldview.

And I have no idea how many people he changed or was able to somehow or another quote unquote, convert or whatever, but there was a great many firsthand testimonies of it. But he wrote a book called the Cost of Discipleship.

And I think this is important given how this is being used as the measuring stick for whether a person is fit to be an American these days. Right? They, oh, you know, normal family values, American values and so forth.

And I say to myself, okay, well, if we want to break out the Bible, I am totally down for the cost because I was studying to be a minister years ago and I kind of know my stuff a little bit.

And so this quote is really important, and it is really one of the key quotes from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Cost of Discipleship, where he talks about cheap grace.

What he says is cheap grace is preaching forgiveness without requiring repentance, Baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ living and incarnate.

Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field for the sake of a man will go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods.

It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble. And it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.

Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ.

It is costly because it costs a man his life. And it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner.

Above all, it is costly because it costs God the life of his Son. Ye were bought at a price. And what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us.

Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the incarnation of God. The gospel makes much of sin because Jesus died to redeem us from our sins, to pay the penalty for our sins.

And the more we can appreciate sin, the more we can appreciate grace, the more we can appreciate the gospel. And what Jesus died because he didn't die a horrific death on the cross to show us that sin didn't matter. We see the cost of sin at the cross.

And I read that not to preach the word of God so that everybody's like, oh, I read that because if you are going to say you're maga. If you are going to try to stand on high and speak this stuff. Show me this grace. Show me this grace.

Because grace is all it is, if that's what you're talking about. And I'll be honest with you, I see zero grace in Republican Jesus. I see zero grace in Maga Jesus. I see zero grace.

All I see is white supremacy and quite frankly, fascism.

I don't see anything that would even remotely resemble the kind of sacrifice and the kind of love that people in sobriety find every day when they try to get themselves straight. And I say it knowing you're a Jew and I'm a Christian and here we are talking and hey, nobody's perfect.

David Fields: 00:42:52

It's okay.

Steve Grumbine: 00:42:54

Well, and there in which it is though, right, you can have people of differing beliefs and different thoughts and so forth without having to demonize and kill somebody over it.

And at the same time though, there is a lot of pain and suffering that comes from this kind of fascist inclination that demonizes people and turns them into other others, them and makes them the scapegoat and makes them the ire of an entire group of people. And in lockstep. Because what happens when you go to a church, David?

What happens is you let your guard down, you open up your head, you open up your heart, and the guy pours whatever he's pouring into you and you think about it and you wrestle with it and so forth, but you have allowed yourself to be as a child where these words become part and parcel with who you are.

And if they're preaching hate, if they're preaching the kinds of othering that was never part of the red letters, whether you're a Christian or not, the red letters are beautiful words. There's no hate involved. None. It's nothing but love and acceptance.

In fact, when they ask Jesus, at least in the Bible, whether you believe it or not, the Bible says, so to speak, what is the greatest commandment. And he says to love one another. Yeah, period. They didn't see it and go into a bunch of stuff.

Only them Republic, only those Democrats, only those whites, blacks, whatever he said love one another.

And so when I think about the hegemony and I think about capitalism and I think about the end around it does to destroy our brains, destroy our minds, to destroy our souls.

And I think about the very idea that Republican Jesus is being used as a weapon as opposed to the biblical Jesus that doesn't say any of those things.

David Fields: 00:44:41

I hate to interject, but.

Steve Grumbine: 00:44:43

No, please.

David Fields: 00:44:45

It reminds me when I used to teach, I used to say, students, I'M not religious and I'm not here to preach, et cetera, et cetera. But are you familiar with the Sermon on the Mount?

Steve Grumbine: 00:44:57

Oh, wow.

David Fields: 00:44:58

I would get a lot of hands up, and they're like, yeah, bust the poor, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Okay. And then I would say, do you think that it's good to say that?

Repeat it, study it, emphasize it when you go to services on the weekend, they say, yeah, of course. Okay. And I'm like, oh, great. Okay, that's great. Again, you know, I'm not religious, I'm not preaching, but that's good to know.

And then I would ask like, well, do you think it's not good to then forget about the rest of the week?

Steve Grumbine: 00:45:24

Yeah.

David Fields: 00:45:25

And it got them thinking, like, well, what do you mean? Why is this some bullshit? You say on the weekend, but then forget about the rest of the time?

If it's holy, if it's essential, if it's celebratory, etcetera, and has deep, deep meaning, why is it obstructed? And then forget about and used it for unsavory intentions, or not even used, but just completely disregarded on Monday.

And they'd be like, where are you getting at? And I'm like, what I'm getting at is this. Does this have meaning? Is this a distraction? Does this give a false sense of, like, makes you feel whole?

And if it makes you feel whole, why does it seem alien on Wednesday?

Steve Grumbine: 00:46:06

Amen.

David Fields: 00:46:06

Wow.

Steve Grumbine: 00:46:07

Yeah.

David Fields: 00:46:07

And they didn't know how to answer, but that's what I wanted. Because if you don't know how to answer it, that means you're starting to think and say, huh? What does it really mean?

And now in Judaism, you have tikun olem, which is similar. And tikun olem is about the practice, the praxis.

Steve Grumbine: 00:46:26

Yes.

David Fields: 00:46:26

Where you treat each and every person with dignity, respect, because we're all part of the same community. We're humans connected, where we should strive to make sure everyone is respected and nobody has to suffer from anything. And I'm like, that's great.

That's wonderful. And that's something I held onto when I was in Hebrew school and I was going through my bar mitzvah studies, et cetera. This is great.

I tried to live by it. I tried to do it, which in Judaism, we call mikvah. Why are we systematically denying it? Israel and in other areas. Right.

Why do we have this thing called Israel in the first. That's antithetical to what this all means? And I think I told you this once before I was called anti Semitic. And I'm just sitting there like, what?

So, yeah, I'm a self hating Jew. That's apropos. But I say that story in connection with the other story because it gets at the point like, what the fuck does this all mean?

This is great.

But is this to say that, okay, it gives you that nice touchy feeling so you can stay in the matrix and not see what's outside of it, or is it a tool to help you get out of the matrix and destroy that software program?

Steve Grumbine: 00:47:45

Yeah, I love that you brought the sermon of the mountain, the Beatitudes and all that stuff, but one of the things that really jumped out to me was the one time where you really got to see J.C. angry.

David Fields: 00:47:57

Yeah.

Steve Grumbine: 00:47:57

And that was dealing with the money changers in the temple. It's easier for a camel to climb up a pyramid or something like that than for a rich person to enter into the kingdom of heaven.

And you think about this, there's a reason for that, right? Like, I think ultimately when you consider that, in my estimation, Jesus, however you view him, was the first communist.

I mean, the early church was very much a communal space.

David Fields: 00:48:30

Yeah, absolutely.

Steve Grumbine: 00:48:31

We bear with one another, we help one another, we feed one another. We don't ask them, hey, did you earn enough yet? You don't deserve to eat there, boy. What are you looking at? You some bitch. None of that.

David Fields: 00:48:45

None of it.

Steve Grumbine: 00:48:47

And so for me, debunking, I've made it my own personal mission, aside from MMT and these other things, to reclaim Jesus from Maga and to reclaim Jesus from those guys over there. My old pastor was a messianic Jew.

David Fields: 00:49:03

He called himself, and a messianic Jew.

Steve Grumbine: 00:49:06

Oh, he was fully Jewish, but he believed in Jesus and he taught. His name was Rob Schenck. And I've watched him. He is. I don't practice the way I did anymore.

I find it very challenging to be around right wing thinking at all. But he did too, and he really fought the Trump narrative and watching so many Christians fall into this thing.

And, you know, I'm not here to act like any of these things are good because they work together. Both of these groups are not like working class people.

This is part of the oligarchy, the power elite that has shared interests and there are differences of what each want, but not much. They both stand for AI, they both stand for domination. They both stand for fattening the wealthy and literally using austerity on the poor.

David Fields: 00:49:58

It's Nietzsche's concept of slave morality, which is to keep this at bay.

Steve Grumbine: 00:50:02

Yeah.

David Fields: 00:50:02

Now, people like to poo poo Nietzsche that he gave the philosophical foundations to fascism. That may or not be true, regardless.

What I'm saying is that he did come up with this concept how such forces can facilitate a sense of loss, which therefore translates into subjugation and subservience, which he called the slave morality.

Steve Grumbine: 00:50:23

Yep.

David Fields: 00:50:23

And if that is not a complete essence of the system we live in, I don't know what is.

Steve Grumbine: 00:50:28

Well, think about what you just said. Like, I want to add to this and build on this momentarily as we close things out.

David Fields: 00:50:35

Yeah.

Steve Grumbine: 00:50:35

I think it's really important to consider who we think of as the bad guy.

David Fields: 00:50:41

Yeah.

Steve Grumbine: 00:50:41

Right.

When I look at slavery and I think to myself, if I was a slave and my wife was a slave and my kids were slaves and the slave owner, to calm us down because we were getting uppity, took my wife and sent her off to be sold elsewhere.

David Fields: 00:51:01

Yeah.

Steve Grumbine: 00:51:02

And whip my children in front of me to make sure that I bit my tongue. And maybe cut the tongue out of one of my children because they scream too loud or something like that.

The idea that they would be wrong for violence against the slave master is what is being preached today by the powers that be. How dare you be such a radical to say that's not okay. Ice and all the other things. How dare you do that?

And to me, we've literally turned what we know to be true on its head to make it work within this sick culture that we live in.

David Fields: 00:51:42

Yeah. It's the pathology.

Steve Grumbine: 00:51:44

Yeah. I want you to take us out. David. That was my tea for you to put the bow on not only your article, but this conversation.

David Fields: 00:51:53

Yeah. And that hit the nail on the head.

It's these psychosocial pathologies to turn on its head what we know to be true and essential and of utmost importance for with respect to humanity, turn it on its head and have folks who become willing servants to the oppression, to the oppressive system that essentially oppresses them. That's why you see how working class folks support these fascist tendencies.

And to learn both to say, oh, they don't know they're dumb, they're stupid, they have no sense of what it means to do this, et cetera, et cetera. And I say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Why are they doing this? Because they've been caught up in a system that turns their interests against them.

Because there are levers, there are instruments in Zari that are symbolically, interpersonally and structurally violent. To ensure, through violent ways more explicit nowadays, that the system that is against them sustains itself and reproduces itself.

Steve Grumbine: 00:53:01

Yeah. All right, listen, folks. David, for taking the time to do this. Thank you for indulging my sermonizing from Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

David Fields: 00:53:11

You bet.

Steve Grumbine: 00:53:12

Folks, I promise you, this is not intended to be a, you know, a church session. That's not my intent.

David Fields: 00:53:20

It's okay.

Steve Grumbine: 00:53:21

Yeah. You know what? At some level, these are the narratives.

David Fields: 00:53:25

Yep.

Steve Grumbine: 00:53:26

That are out there. I'm watching the daughter of one of my friends who works with us.

David Fields: 00:53:31

Yeah.

Steve Grumbine: 00:53:32

Who came home with a, you know, I am Charlie Kirk shirt. Not I am George Floyd shirt. Nada. I am whatever. But I am Charlie Kirk.

David Fields: 00:53:42

Yeah.

Steve Grumbine: 00:53:43

And it's a tragedy when anyone gets killed. It is. Period. I don't know what the plan for them would have been had they. You know, maybe they would have changed. Maybe. Who knows? Right?

You never know. I don't. I'm not here to. I have never owned a gun in my life, and I'm not a violent person. That is not who I am.

David Fields: 00:53:59

Yeah.

Steve Grumbine: 00:53:59

So I want to be very crystal clear on that. But when you see this stuff, it's like the cultural hegemony of that movement has turned misogyny into something to be proud of.

It's turned racism into something to be proud of. It homophobia and just absolute xenophobic bigotry into something to be proud of. And they're calling it traditional American values.

And I think to myself, wow, I don't want my kids being poisoned with this hate.

David Fields: 00:54:32

Yeah.

Steve Grumbine: 00:54:33

And yet this is what's coming, man. This is what's coming. So I appreciate you allowing me to crack open my biblical knowledge a little bit there. And my.

David Fields: 00:54:44

You're good, man. I like it.

Steve Grumbine: 00:54:46

I appreciate it. All right, let me take us out then, folks. My name is Steve Grumbine.

I am the host of this podcast, Macro and Cheese, and also the founder of the 501c3 nonprofit Real Progressives. We are not a political organization. We do not focus on any elections whatsoever.

But we do talk about the topics and subjects surrounding macroeconomics, and we do try and educate. We use the intersection of class struggle, working class people. Like much of the folks that are maga.

There's blue collar folks that are striving in their own way, but have been captured by a rhetoric that is just. I don't know, just not good. Toxic.

And we're trying to intersect an understanding of MMT and class struggle and trying to help people see the world just a little bit differently so that they see each other not as enemies, but as friends, as people of the same struggle. And not to demonize one another, but to come together.

Because there is no way that this divided political system that we live in will ever produce the kind of working class solidarity that is necessary to change the world. Well, I guess I want to say, hey, we live and die on your contributions.

So if you would consider becoming a donor, you can go to our website realprogressives.org you can go to our substack substack.com forward/real progressives. You can also go to Patreon and you can become a monthly donor there as well at patreon.com forward/real progressives, we need your support.

And if you think that the work that we're doing is interesting, thought provoking, worthy of your support, we welcome your support. And thanks to great guests like David Fields who's joined me today and others.

I mean we have been going non stop now for seven years and I hope that folks go back to episode one and listen to all 350 that we've got. We've never missed a week and we don't plan on missing a week. And as long as you guys can keep the lights on for us, we'll keep moving forward.

So without further ado, I bid you ado on behalf of my guest, David Fields, myself Steve Grumbine, the podcast Macaron Cheese. We are out of here.

End Credits: 00:57:13

with the working class since: 2015