The ABCs: Does Human Nature Make Socialism Impossible? with Adaner Usmani

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🗓️ 15 March 2017

⏱️ 40 minutes

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Summary

Sure, the concept of socialism sounds nice, but people aren’t very nice, right? Isn’t capitalism much more suited to human nature — a nature dominated by competitiveness and venality? Isn't socialism great in theory but terrible in practice? Adaner Usmani, a PhD candidate in sociology at New York University, answers these questions in a discussion with Jacobin's Jason Farbman.This is the second episode of The ABCs of Socialism, a four-part series taking up some of today's common questions asked about socialism. Each of those questions is also a chapter in The ABCs of Socialism, which was produced by Bhaskar Sunkara and the editors of Jacobin, and published by Verso Books. You can buy the book for just $5 at the Jacobin store: https://www.jacobinmag.com/store/The sessions are recorded at the Verso loft in Brooklyn, New York, in front of a live audience.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, good evening. Welcome to the second episode slash class of our ABCs of socialism series. We're having one of these each
0:15.7	Monday in March each session as people may know are taking up questions from a
0:20.3	different chapter of the ABCs of socialism which is a book that was produced by
0:24.4	Baskers and Kara and the editors of Jacobin and published by Verso Books.
0:28.9	Verso is also the host of this space.
0:31.3	They're putting on the live stream.
0:32.3	We thank them so much for doing the book with us and for hosting.
0:37.0	So the question posed tonight in the title of tonight's discussion is, does human nature make socialism impossible?
0:44.8	Well, I'm just going to tell you right at the top of the program.
0:48.0	spoiler alert, the answer is no.
0:51.2	Human nature does not represent a barrier to socialism.
0:55.0	I just want to cut to the chase because I know people are anxious to get home and beat the snow.
0:59.0	I'm sorry, I hope I didn't ruin that for you. No, okay. Tonight's discussion will actually be taking up the question why human nature doesn't make socialism impossible. And it's an important question and an
1:14.4	apportion discussion, excuse me, an important discussion to have. There are clearly
1:18.4	deep inequalities in this world that I think we can all observe no one will argue otherwise. I mean I can't
1:26.5	think of a single instance when anyone argues that there aren't huge obscene
1:31.8	inequalities in this world.
1:34.0	What we do here all the time are various explanations
1:36.6	for why that inequality exists.
1:39.4	Socialists say it's because capitalism
1:41.7	is a system of domination, exploitation, and oppression.
1:45.1	But in the mainstream discussions, one way these inequalities are justified, and there's many
	...

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