Cooperation Democracy: Bernard Harcourt
November 9th, 2023
”The idea of cooperation democracy is to try to extend the democratic culture to every facet of our life.”
Bernard E. Harcourt is Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science at Columbia University -- and he was also our very first guest on the podcast! Bernard's most recent book, Cooperation: A Political, Economic, and Social Theory, offers the blueprint for a society based on cooperation.
The idea of creating a space that benefits the stakeholders, rather than the shareholders, has a long history. Cooperatives offer a robust way of being. They practice self-governance among equals through democratic process. In fact, we could have democratic processes, democratic education, and democratic training in every aspect of our lives. We could even nurture a culture of democratic self-governance at work, which is traditionally one of the least democratic places in our daily lives. Cooperation democracy aims to extend the democratic culture to every facet of our lives.
Follow Bernard on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/BernardHarcourt
Follow Mila on Twitter:
Follow Future Hindsight on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/futurehindsightpod/
Love Future Hindsight? Take our Listener Survey!
http://survey.podtrac.com/start-survey.aspx?pubid=6tI0Zi1e78vq&ver=standard
Take the Democracy Group’s Listener Survey!
https://www.democracygroup.org/survey
Want to support the show and get it early?
https://patreon.com/futurehindsight
Credits:
Host: Mila Atmos
Guest: Bernard Harcourt
Executive Producer: Mila Atmos
Producer: Zack Travis
-
Bernard Harcourt Transcript
Mila Atmos: [00:00:04] Welcome to Future Hindsight, a podcast that takes big ideas about civic life and democracy and turns them into action items for you and me. I'm Mila Atmos.
I've been thinking for some time that what we need in the world is a new system, a new paradigm -- that we need to start over. But what would that look like? And how do we get there? Because I've also come to the conclusion that whatever is next, we can only achieve it by working together; and in the current political climate and state of global affairs, that seems like a huge, unlikely lift. But it turns out that many of us are already finding a way to cooperate, and their example sheds light on a path forward. And I know that you, dear listener, share my enthusiasm in checking out ideas, big and small, that inform our civic participation. And today's idea is truly big. As big as capitalism and communism; it's called cooperism, and it might just be the most exciting thing you'll come across today.
Our guest is Bernard E. Harcourt. He's Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law and professor of political science at Columbia University. And he was also our very first guest on the podcast. His most recent book, Cooperation: A political, Economic, and Social Theory, offers the blueprint for a society based on cooperation. Bernard, welcome back and thank you for joining us again.
Bernard E. Harcourt: [00:01:40] Thank you, Mila.
Mila Atmos: [00:01:43] So as I mentioned in the introduction, I've been thinking about what it would look like to start over. So I'm coming out of the gates hot, and I want to ask you, is democracy incompatible with capitalism?
Bernard E. Harcourt: [00:01:56] Wow. That's a big question. What a way to start, huh? Mila Atmos: [00:02:02] Yeah. Well, you know...
Bernard E. Harcourt: [00:02:03] Um, yes and no. Yes and no. I think that both terms are somewhat ill defined, or we have aspirations as to what those terms mean that don't
reflect the reality. The first, capitalism, is I think it's a little bit of a misleading term. We tend to think that capitalism is something about private enterprise, private capital, capital, private investment, and private property, when in fact the only way that at least American capitalism works is with a state that guarantees the stability of the system. So it turns out that basically, without the kinds of bailouts that we so often see, and without the Treasury coming in during a time of crisis like COVID pandemic or the financial meltdown, the whole system wouldn't work. So we tend to focus on the idea that it's capital that's doing all the work, when in fact it's really a big state, the US Treasury, that's guaranteeing our debt and guaranteeing that large enterprises survive through crises. So that term is a little bit misleading. On the other hand, the notion of democracy is also somewhat misleading, particularly when we think about, say, the United States and reflect on this idea that we've been a democracy for 250 years; the fact that women couldn't vote or participate in any kind of democratic processes until the 20th century, or that African-Americans were enslaved, raises real questions about whether and when we achieved a full blown form of democracy. And still today, with a lot of the gerrymandering and other political shenanigans, it's an aspiration to a democracy. Now, when you start ambiguating the terms, both capitalism and democracy, then it becomes less clear whether you could say that capitalism is in fact consistent with or or contradictory to democracy, because actually both terms are a bit confusing. I would say that we have a system in the United States that is largely electorally democratic at this point, although citizens do not participate nearly as much as they should. So our voter turnout of about 55% to 60% in the highest and in the most important elections, which are presidential elections, should put most of us to shame. But I wouldn't say that that form of electoral politics is inconsistent or at odds with the kind of state capitalism that we have in this country today. But I think that both should make us wonder what's wrong with the situation.
Mila Atmos: [00:05:12] Well, I think your book does a really good job at trying to tackle both of those questions in a way that's maybe, I don't know, it feels like a side door. Right? Because you look at an existing history of cooperation, of cooperatives. And of course, there continue to be many, many cooperatives today. In fact, I was astounded by just how many people were part of a cooperative worldwide. So I was curious about the cooperatives that you looked at. What did you find were the best practices and how did they inform your thinking to arrive at cooperation?
Bernard E. Harcourt: [00:05:46] I mean, one of the things that I really try to emphasize in the book is that most of us don't even know that so many forms of economic exchange are cooperatives. There is much more cooperation going on today than meets the eye. And then the question becomes, what's interesting or productive or attractive about cooperatives that exist today and the idea would be maybe that we could amplify and augment. And that's, I think, where you started matters, right. Democracy and capitalism. On the democracy front, one of the most remarkable things about co-ops is that they are self-governing. They are democratic through and through. Now, the idea here is that basically in a worker owned cooperative, the workers have to democratically self-governance. It's almost a training ground in democratic culture. I mean, one of the problems with democracy today, I think, in the United States, is that it's mostly limited to the electoral context. What cooperatives show us is that we could have those same democratic processes and democratic education, democratic training, in every aspect of our lives. It could be in the work space so that there isn't simply a hierarchy, but there is democratic self-governance among equals. But it could also be in food sources, in consumption, in insurance, in banking. We could be training and educating ourselves to be democratic in a way that I think would solve some of the deficiencies that we were talking about earlier, about American democracy. Now, on the other hand, in terms of the capitalism question or state capitalism or some form of state dirigisme we have in the United States today, cooperism would be really coming at things from the opposite direction. It would be coming at economic exchange from the bottom up, instead of kind of putting our faith in the state to guarantee and bail out large enterprises. It really starts from us. There are a lot of things about cooperatives that show the advantages, and I know that was part of your question. Right. What do you see in these cooperatives that are, you know, so attractive? Well, I'd list a few things. I mean, first of all, as I mentioned, this question of democratic self-governance and democratic education. But secondly, longer term issues of sustainability and environmental sustainability, because most of these cooperatives being run by the people who are most affected locally by the enterprise and its consequences and its externalized costs are the ones who are subject to the environmental impact, say. In other words, it's a local consumer co-op that is making decisions that are going to affect their own environment. So it affects them. So what cooperism offers is a kind of localization of decision making, where the focus really is on economic sustainability, but also environmental sustainability and the well-being of all of the stakeholders. By
contrast, often when you have shareholders running a business, there isn't that same sense that this is going to affect us.
Mila Atmos: [00:09:59] Yeah. I mean, another question that I've also been asking myself in these past few years is how do you make a foundational social transformation? And with everything that's going on, I've been wondering, do we need a revolution? Or has it always been the time of revolution? And it's still coming? But in the book you write that -- I'm quoting you now -- "The path of cooperation does not depend on wide scale coordination, nor on the dismantling of the state." So why is now the right time for cooperism?
Bernard E. Harcourt: [00:10:35] Well, I would say because of everything you were just saying. It's the only solution. I woke up this morning with a guest opinion essay in the New York Times about temperatures, global climate change, talking about the fact, well, we're all cognizant of the fact that July was the warmest July ever recorded in history. Well, so was August, and so was September. And it turns out that not only was September the highest, but when you look at the inflection, it's starting to look exponential somehow that the temperatures are rising. The article was telling us we're at 1.3 Celsius above the 1880 average temperatures. Everybody knows that the 1.5 Celsius is what we're trying to avoid. It's a little bit the cliff. We thought we were at 1.1. We're already at 1.3. It was a horrible way to wake up. Of course, it's a wake up call, but nobody is waking up. So we've got an extraordinary, urgent problem.
Mila Atmos: [00:11:34] Oh, I wanna say, the people are waking up, but they don't know what to do about it.
Bernard E. Harcourt: [00:11:37] Right. Okay, well, some are waking up, but we've got a, you know, House of Representatives that is completely dysfunctional, where the Republican Party, which has the House right now, is a party that, for the most part, that denies human involvement in global climate change. I think many of the more extreme Republicans in the caucus there are very happy that that it's completely dysfunctional and would have wanted, you know, a meltdown and a shutdown of the government because in part, that's the objective, not to have a functioning government. So it's true that many of us do and are waking up and not knowing what to do. Many are completely resisting and turning a blind eye to this reality. And that's what creates the dilemma.
Which is: it's unimaginable at this point to think that we would be able to address climate change through the conventional apparatus of government decision making. Not only because we have a divided Congress, which makes it impossible to imagine passing any legislation. Not only because there's a filibuster in the Senate, which would require a supermajority coalition. So you don't have the House, you don't have a supermajority in the Senate. And we've got a supermajority conservative Supreme Court that strikes down green regulations, in the West Virginia case under the new major questions doctrine. So basically, it's hard to imagine that the governmental process is going to rein in greenhouse gases and provide the kind of leadership that we would need. So then what do we do? I mean, yes, it would be wonderful to think that a revolution could change this, but I just don't see it coming. What I do think is that we can all in our own lives, begin to embrace these forms of cooperation that would amount to an entirely new regime of cooperism. In other words, right now, each and every one of us who is motivated to address these issues can begin to do so immediately by finding forms of cooperation and cooperatives that work towards these goals. And the goals here are not only environmental sustainability and climate change, but also more democracy or more democratic processes, and also a less unequal, fractured and hierarchical society. So these cooperatives really give us some insight into ways to work together.
Mila Atmos: [00:15:01] We are taking a short break to tell you about a podcast we think you'll enjoy, and we'll be right back with Bernard in a moment.
But first. Have you heard about one of the biggest threats to democracy? There's a brand-new podcast I want to tell you about called The Voucher Scam. It explains what education vouchers are, why they are a danger to democracy, and how we can truly support public education. If you love our show, check out The Voucher Scam. Claire Campos-O'Neal and Nichole Abshire do the work of taking the complicated issue and explaining it in a way that's accessible to everyday folks. Many of us sit on the sidelines when it comes to engaging with local government because it's confusing. But these hosts draw you in with personal stories and compelling research. You can find the show at mothersfordemocracyinstitute.org, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
And now let's return to my conversation with Bernard Harcourt.
Mila Atmos: [00:16:04] So tell me more. How does cooperism work?
Bernard E. Harcourt: [00:16:07] So for instance, the insurance industry is heavily mutualized. What does that mean? It actually means that insurance agencies like State Farm or Mutual of Omaha or anything that's got mutual in it, is basically owned by the policyholders who play the role of a shareholder in a publicly traded corporation, which means that the enterprise is run by the people who are most interested in the longevity of the enterprise and the sustainability of the enterprise, and also the impacts of the enterprise in the banking sector. There are large credit unions. Navy Credit Union has got approximately 9 million members. And again, that's a cooperative in the sense that it's the depositors who are effectively the stake holders and the owners of the enterprise. And actually, there are producer cooperatives. Land of lakes is a producer co-operative. So the farmers are actually working together as producers. There are consumer cooperatives like REI. And then there are large worker cooperatives as well that can function really just as well as private enterprises. In Spain, for instance, there's a large worker cooperative called Mondragon. It's a consortium of cooperatives at this point, because it's grown so large. It's got approximately 75,000 worker owners. It's the seventh largest industrial group in Spain, and it produces industrial equipment, ovens and refrigerators and whatnot. So it's in a sector that we don't typically think of as, you know, a worker cooperative.
Bernard E. Harcourt: [00:17:59] They have a cap on the disparity ratio between the least paid worker and the highest paid worker. And they require that their cooperatives do not have wage ratios greater than 4.5 to 1. That means it is a democratic process, but it doesn't mean that there aren't delegated responsibilities. There's going to have to be someone in charge of the finance of the cooperative. There's going to have to be someone in charge of human resources and whatnot. But the ratio 4.5 to 1 is very low. I mean, that contrasts to an average in the United States of about 670 or higher to 1. It contrasts in some large entities like McDonald's or something over 3000 to 1. I mean, so huge disparities in income that create forms of inequality and hierarchy that are also detrimental to the goals of democratic sharing. So there are lots of different aspects of these cooperatives that immediately begin to address most of the crises that we face, I think, and we can do them immediately.
Bernard E. Harcourt: [00:19:17] A few people can come together and start a food co- op, or turn their enterprise into a worker co-op. And that's what's happening, for
instance, in San Francisco. The folks who make Anchor Steam Beer. The brewing company itself was going to cease operations, and the people who worked there at the Anchor Brewing Company decided that they're going to form a worker cooperative and turn the brewery into a worker owned enterprise. Recently, there's a story in the paper about a mobile home park in Durango, Colorado, that had about 63 families. It was called the West Side Mobile Home Park, and the owner of the park was going to sell it to a large corporation in California. And one of the things that this large corporation is known for is jacking up the prices and kicking out most of the tenants. So the 63 families came together and they organized and created a housing cooperative and a land trust for affordable housing. And so now they're going to be the resident owners of the park, and it'll protect the affordable housing aspirations of the cooperative. So these are small things that anybody can do. You see, it doesn't require even convincing others that this is a good idea. You can know it's a great idea in your own heart and do it and begin to live that way. And through all of these different forms of cooperatives. And that process can bring about through a snowball effect, this form of cooperativism as actually as a full economic regime.
Mila Atmos: [00:21:02] Yeah. Well, the economics are very compelling. As you said, they're a basically no brainer. Everybody buys in. But in terms of solving something big like climate change, which even though, I mean, we don't have a government that's functioning, how can we, everyday people, practice cooperism to solve that problem. Because that's way bigger than buying the housing or the brewery. And I feel like, how do you scale that actually to a global way of solving problems?
Bernard E. Harcourt: [00:21:36] Right. Well, the answer there is that while we may continue to try to find global solutions, which it feels as if we need solutions at that level, we can immediately engage in creating these forms of cooperation that will address and should reduce the emissions and problems of global climate change. So most food cooperatives try to source locally. You have to understand that it's not just a one dimensional flat thing, a cooperative. It's a robust way of being. And so, for instance, how does a food cooperative operate? Well, pretty simply, members participate. They might run the cash register for a couple of hours a month, maybe, say. But the sourcing and everything is oriented towards sustainability. So for a lot of food cooperatives, the idea is let's try and get all of our food sources from a 50 mile radius from where we are
right now, and let's try to satisfy people's consumption needs without being overly consumerist. Right.
Mila Atmos: [00:23:13] Like we're not getting avocados from Mexico.
Bernard E. Harcourt: [00:23:15] Exactly. Right. And so many different ways that kind of taking a more reflexive view of your own role and your participation in this enterprise. And what we're trying to achieve by working together can immediately begin to reduce our footprint without really being this totalitarian. Kind of like you've got to reduce your footprint thing, right? It's organic in a way.
Mila Atmos: [00:23:49] Yeah. That's good, that's good. I mean, it's sort of like you said, we don't have to rely on the government to solve these problems, to get into treaties with other governments. We can just do it on our own in a grassroots way that is organic without somebody telling us what to do.
Bernard E. Harcourt: [00:24:02] Right. Yeah. I mean, you're right to raise the flag that, you know, is this going to happen fast enough and at a big enough scale to have the kind of effect that we need, given the climate crisis? And my response to that is, I don't want to mislead you. We've got an extraordinary crisis looming in front of us. And we do need wide scale international global action. It's just hard to see how that's going to happen, given how dysfunctional the American government is right now. And you have to remember that the United States is the largest producer of crude oil in the world, ahead of Saudi Arabia. What we do really does matter. And when you think about a food co-op that is trying to limit its sourcing to a... 50 miles is a lot for New York City. It's a lot less if you're in Iowa or Montana, of course, but that is going to have tremendous greenhouse effects. It means you're not going to be flying food in, and you're going to be only transporting it a short distance. And when you start looking at all the different ways that these cooperative initiatives work, that's where you can see all of the reductions in consumption and kind of stockpiling that would result. Sharing machinery, for instance. That's one of the typical ways in which people cooperate is to share tractors and machineries and plows and whatnot. Of course, that immediately, again reduces your need to kind of ...
Mila Atmos: [00:25:57] Make the tractor, ship the tractor. All of those things reduces everything, reduces consumption full stop, in large ways, and especially when it comes to equipment, heavy equipment like tractors. In significant ways. I want to pivot to the social theory, because, of course, a blueprint for a society based on cooperation needs to also address justice. And you argue that public policies created the punitive society just as it has created inequality. And what's more, and I'm going to quote you again now, because I think this kind of gets directly at the heart of my question: "punishment is not so much a response to crime as it is the mechanism through which these societies create and maintain their social order." So how does cooperism replace the punishment paradigm?
Bernard E. Harcourt: [00:26:47] Yeah, let me just start with one statistic. In our great city of New York, we spend over half $1 million to incarcerate one person, for one year, at Rikers Island. All right, let's.
Mila Atmos: [00:27:07] That's a crazy number.
Bernard E. Harcourt: [00:27:08] That's a crazy number. Let that sink in for a minute. We are prepared to spend in 2021. It was something like $521,000. So over half $1 million just for one person for one year at Rikers. And that was from the city comptroller. That's not a liberal lefty number. That comes from the city in New York City Comptroller. All right. Now. It strikes me that for half $1 million. We could do a really good job of trying to help someone who's in obviously difficult straits, who may have mental health difficulties, who may have addiction problems, who may not be employed, who may have housing problems, who may be homeless. I think for half $1 million a year, we should be able to provide some pretty good services for someone to really actually help them, give them treatment. If they need drug treatment or mental health treatment, give them lodging, maybe job training, counseling. I, I think...
Mila Atmos: [00:28:26] All that would cost less than $500,000. Bernard E. Harcourt: [00:28:27] I think so. I really do, right?
Mila Atmos: [00:28:30] Especially if you're doing it at scale, let's say, all the people in Rikers Island.
Bernard E. Harcourt: [00:28:36] Right. So what does that tell you? I mean, it tells you that the typical way that we deal with society and problems is to really leave people on their own. We don't really invest very much in public education as much as we should. We don't invest in public treatment programs. And I've seen the kind of treatment that we offer for public support, and it's pretty dire. We kind of leave people to their own until we arrest them. And we know in New York City, it's not kind of random who gets arrested, because if you've got a stop and frisk or if you've got a broken windows policing mechanism that predominantly polices African-American neighborhoods and minorities, and if you're using aggressive misdemeanor arrests and 85% of misdemeanor arrests are black or Hispanic people, you're going to have, you know, racial profiling. In any event, we wait until someone gets arrested, and then all of a sudden, we're ready to spend half $1 million on the person. Right. And we're not even spending it on the person, really. We're spending on prison construction. We're spending it on correctional officer union payments and whatnot. That's what I call the punitive paradigm. You just wait to punish and then you punish really hard. That does not seem to me to be the right way to go.
Bernard E. Harcourt: [00:30:08] And so that's where cooperation really comes into the picture. Again, as a social theory, not just as an economic theory and not just as a political theory. So it's not just a question of democratic self-governance, but as a social theory, trying to figure out how we deal with social issues and how we act as a society. And I truly believe that if we put in place forms of cooperation with that money that we right now sink into prison and corrections, that we would have a much more flourishing society. And instead of sinking the money into the bricks and mortar of a Rikers Island, putting the money into treatment programs, educational programs, job training programs, residential support programs, et cetera. To kind of create a cooperative network to help people who are struggling. I mean, I think that the focus on cooperation here is a slightly different way to think about it. Because all of that are things that people have suggested for a while. But I don't think that it was framed through a cooperation lens. I think that what was missing was the larger network of cooperative organization and lifestyle that it could fit into, so that these things aren't just siloed initiatives. It has to be the case that the social cooperation mechanisms also fit with economic cooperation mechanisms, so that people who are in a, say, supportive residential, cooperative and educational and treatment space can also try to figure out how to participate in a
workplace that is also cooperative and that has the values of self-governance and kind of responsibility and sustainability that are part of the cooperative idea. You know, what's interesting is that a lot of this is not new. Cooperatives have been around for a long time, and they've been thinking about what are the principles that are at the heart of these cooperatives. There are seven principles that they've identified as being really important to cooperatives. Some of them include the issue of democratic self- governance. Some of them include the idea that it has to be the members who continue to operate. It can't be sourced out. Sustainability. Environmental sustainability is one of the principles that is supposed to inform cooperatives and cooperation among cooperatives. But all of these ideas of trying to find ways to create a space that is beneficial to all the stakeholders rather than simply the shareholders, is something that goes back in history for decades. And that we can really turn to try and figure out how to address some of the problems that we have today.
Mila Atmos: [00:33:47] Hmm. Well, you were just talking about how participatory democracy is really at the heart of this idea. Of cooperism. You also talk about cooperative democracy, which is another leap from cooperism. So since this is a democracy podcast, I feel like we need to talk about cooperative democracy. Tell us more how this is different from the way that we think about democracy today, to go back to the initial question at the top of the hour.
Bernard E. Harcourt: [00:34:13] Right. Yeah, right. No. Great, because that is really important. So I use the term cooperation democracy because cooperative democracy doesn't roll off the tongue. But the idea of cooperation democracy really is that it's a particular kind of democratic theory. Sometimes democratic theory is reduced to the idea that people get to vote and it's a majority decision. That's a very procedural way to think about democratic theory, but in a way that's a bit of a dominant way of thinking about democratic theory today. It's a decision making process with a majority rule where everybody gets to have their vote. Now, the problem with that is that first, it's just not the case that majority vote always ends up well. We have had systems which were sufficiently democratic to call them democratic that end up in very autocratic results. Elections that produce very autocratic regimes from a more or less democratic basis. And that's troubling. But what also is troubling is that if the only place that people are exercising their democratic chops are in the election box once every two or once every year, or once every four years or, and so few are. But if that's the only place that there's
really room for kind of democratic turnout, then I think there isn't an adequate culture of democratic self-governance that forms.
Bernard E. Harcourt: [00:36:22] So the idea of cooperation democracy is to try to extend the democratic culture to every facet of our life. As we were talking earlier, to where we work and of course, where we work that is one place that is truly, usually not democratic. I mean, that is one of the most hierarchical spaces that we live in. It's very much, you know, you get your orders, you have to do your job, you've got a superior, you get evaluated and you've got certain benchmarks you've got to meet and whatnot. So but in most places, there isn't any democracy at all. And the argument here is that what we need, instead of a democratic theory that's limited to the political, is a cooperation democracy theory that covers all aspects of our lives. And I think that if you have democratic self-governance in all aspects of your life, you are more likely to exercise it and have the training and the education and the democratic culture to exercise it better in the political sphere.
Mila Atmos: [00:37:40] Mm hmm. So what are two things an everyday person could do to be a strategic actor in making cooperation democracy a reality?
Bernard E. Harcourt: [00:37:50] Well, I think it's very easy. And that's why I'm so taken by this project. Look at any and everything that you do in your life and try and see how you could do it through forms of cooperation. Is there a food co-op near you? What insurance are you using? And to participate in these enterprises not just to buy a membership in a co-op and then leave it at that, but to try and figure out, "okay, wait, I'm invested in this co-op now. I am a consumer owner or I am an insurance policy holder owner. What is it doing? Is it fulfilling these ambitions? Is it thinking about sustainability and the environment and climate change?" So I would say the first thing is to just look around and start embracing and being part of cooperatives. And then the second thing is when you're in them, try and make sure that they're actually living up to the values and the hopes that are ingrained in the idea of cooperation.
Mila Atmos: [00:38:59] That's excellent advice. So as we are rounding out our conversation today, looking into the future, what makes you hopeful?
Bernard E. Harcourt: [00:39:08] Well, what makes me hopeful is the kind of all of the experiments in cooperation that I do see around me and that keep on coming up. And kind of like the more stones you turn, the more cooperation you see. And that really does make me hopeful. I'm relatively new to cooperation myself. I've been mostly in the public interest and nonprofit sector as a professor. Also, as a public interest lawyer, I come to this from the kind of nonprofit sector, and there are a lot of similarities. I actually think that nonprofit sector is part of a cooperation democracy. There are certain certain enterprises that really can only work on a non-profit basis, maybe not as a kind of worker co-op, although maybe that's just shortsighted of me. But what makes me really encouraged and optimistic is how much as I learn more and more about cooperatives and cooperation, is how much cooperation there is around us that we can partake in. So this gives me hope. When I read the newspaper and I look at how dysfunctional our government is, I often lose hope. But when I turn to these experiments and I see that they are so possible. That gives me hope.
Mila Atmos: [00:40:37] That is indeed very hopeful. Thank you, Bernard, for joining us again on the podcast. It was really a pleasure to have you on the show today.
Bernard E. Harcourt: [00:40:44] Thank you. Mila, I really enjoyed talking with you about this.
Mila Atmos: [00:40:49] Bernard E Harcourt is Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law and professor of political science at Columbia University. His scholarship focuses on punishment practices and political economy, critical theory and praxis, and political protest. His most recent book, Cooperation: A political, Economic, and Social Theory, offers the blueprint for a society based on cooperation.
Next week on Future Hindsight, we're joined by Theda Skocpol. She's the Victor S Thomas Professor of Government and sociology at Harvard University, and her most recent book, Rust Belt Union Blues, traces the roots of today's political polarization to the decline of labor unions.
Theda Skocpol: [00:41:40] I actually don't believe most people approach politics by studying issues. I think they look for who seems to be on their side. And that explains the mystery of how Donald Trump, who is not on anybody's side -- let's face it -- how could he persuade people in western Pennsylvania that he was on their side? Well, for one thing, he went there. But he also knows how to signal a certain kinds of anger, resentment, and moral commitments that people say, "well, yeah, he understands." I've had people in interviews say to me, "well, I know he's not going to be able to build the wall, but he's trying."
Mila Atmos: [00:42:19] That's next time on Future Hindsight.
Did you know we have a YouTube channel? Seriously, we do. And actually quite a lot of people listen to the show there. If that's you, Hello! If not, you'll find punchy episode clips, full interviews, and more. Subscribe at youtube.com/FutureHindsight.
This episode was produced by Zack Travis and me. Until next time, stay engaged. The Democracy Group: [00:43:00] This podcast is part of the democracy Group.