3405 - Can Liberal Socialism Work & The War On The Homeless w/ Matt McManus & Rebecca Burns

The Majority Report with Sam Seder

It's an EmMajority Report Thursday! She speaks with Matt McManus, political science lecturer at the University of Michigan, to discuss his recent book The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism. Then, she speaks with investigative reporter and journalist Rebecca Burns to discuss her recent piece in In These Times entitled "Inside the Right’s War on the Homeless."

First, Emma runs through updates on Harris’ rollout of her economic plan, the US economy, drug pricing, the VP Debate, RFK’s grift-switching, polling, Ukraine’s counter-offensive, Columbia University, and Hurricane Ernesto’s devastation of Puerto Rico, also diving into JD Vance’s continued struggle to do this thing called “campaigning.” Matt McManus then joins, diving right into this attempt to reconcile the systems of liberalism and socialism, first stepping back to unpack some of the less valuable elements of the liberal tradition, largely stemming from emphasis on possessive individualism and “natural” aristocracy, concepts incompatible with the socialist values of equality and solidarity, and working through more progressive conceptions of liberalism, like those of Wollstonecraft, Payne, and Rawls that evangelized concepts of moral equality among humans and saw economic inequality as a fundamental issue, inspiring some of the most important and influential revolutions in history, and challenging the ideas of meritocracy and aristocracy. After an expansive conversation on the compatibility and value of this strain of liberalism with socialist systems and values, McManus wraps up the interview by walking Emma through how a “liberal socialism” would work in the context of the US Constitution, and how it compares to other brands of left politics. Rebecca Burns then looks to Austin as she explores the genesis of the ongoing right-wing war on the houseless as a Trump and Tech-backed legislative backlash to the liberal enclave’s attempt to decriminalize homelessness amid a major affordability crisis. Burns next tackles the role of the Cicero Institute, headed by Joe Lonsdale, and Greg Abbott’s administration in Texas in pushing a complete turnaround on the city (and state), resulting in the passage of myriad template bills that criminalized encampments, legalized violence against unhoused folks, and completely crippled the services and communities that keep the most marginalized in society afloat, templates that would go on to take root across the US, with major impact even in blue states like California. After expanding on the recent Supreme Court ruling that affirmed the constitutionality of criminalizing the homeless without first providing a remedy, Burns wraps up with an assessment of the futile cruelty of police crackdowns on the homeless.

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