Inflection Point Podcast

This is the March 2025 soft launch of "Inflection Point", the Berkeley Political Economy Podcast, hosted by Dylan J. Riley & J. Bradford DeLong. Here we have the brilliant John Ganz on to discuss his truly excellent book When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, & How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s. The conversation touches on the intellectual, political, and economic forces behind the rise of Trump and assays historical analogies to the current period from caeserism to fascism…Participants:* Host: Dylan Riley—Political sociologist, professor at UC Berkeley, and New Left Review stalwart author:* Read Dylan Riley…* Host: Brad DeLong – Economic historian, professor at UC Berkeley, and former Clinton administration semi-senior official* Subscribe to Brad DeLong’s Substack Grasping Reality…* Guest: John Ganz – Journalist, historian, columnist for The Nation, and author of When the Clock Broke* Subscribe to John Ganz’s SubStack Unpopular Front…"The Republican Party stopped being a governing party and became something else entirely." – John Ganz"We expected to deal with a moderate Republican opposition, but instead faced an uncompromising ideological movement." – Brad DeLong"Right-wing populism can mobilize against the state in a way that left-wing populism cannot." – Dylan RileyMOAR Notable Quotes:* John Ganz: "My book is a prehistory of Trumpism—a narrative of how unresolved tensions inside the American right ultimately laid the groundwork for today’s radical populism…"* Dylan Riley: "Trumpism is not a balancing Caesarism. It’s a movement that consolidates social forces on the right rather than navigating a coalition between classes..."* Brad DeLong: "We [Clintonites] went down [to Washington] expecting to deal with Gerald Ford's Republican Party—or at least with Richard Nixon's Republican Party... serious people in the policy sphere. That's not what we Clintonites found when we hit Washington…"* John Ganz: "What you were encountering was the post-Reagan new right... quite ideological conservatives opposed to the establishment of the Republican Party and wanting to replace it with hardcore conservatives.… Buchanan’s revolt against H.W. Bush signaled that the conservative movement’s radical wing was no longer content with Reagan's compromises…"* Brad DeLong: "By 1985, foreign policy was in the hands of George Shultz, the ultimate Ford Republican, and domestic policy was in the hands of Howard Baker, the ultimate Ford Republican."* John Ganz:"[George H.W.] Bush’s instincts were Tory... yet he still had to play ball with some very radical rightist forces that walked right up to—and often crossed—the limits of acceptable discourse…"* Dylan Riley: "Did the New Deal order unmake itself by creating the social basis for the radical right?"* Brad DeLong: "In 1978, Boston was a city of distinct ethnic enclaves. When an Italian-American from the North End married an Irish-American from South Boston, people whispered that such a mixed marriage was unlikely to last. By 1992, that was all dissolved into suburbia—a shift that eroded the sense of shared struggle that defined the New Deal order…"* John Ganz: "Sam Francis believed that Reagan’s revolution had been absorbed and defanged by hegemonic liberalism—what Francis called the cosmopolitan overclass…. Francis believed that this proletarianized Middle America was a revolutionary subject that would overthrow the managerial class and enforce its own will..."* Brad DeLong: "Francis’s vision seems like Jacksonism without the frontier—a Caesarism of the middle classes in a world where conquest-settlement expansion was no longer possible…"* John Ganz: "Francis’s project was a post-bourgeois right wing—a proletarian right that was not conservative in the traditional sense…"* Brad DeLong: "The shift from a Republican Party of strivers and entrepreneurs to one of people fearful of losing what little they have—that’s the defining change..."* John Ganz: "Francis ultimately embraced race as a political mobilization tool—a Sorelian myth—rather than out of genuine racial and racist belief…. Steve Bannon is, in many ways, the heir to Francis’s vision—a populist who wants to mobilize an alienated public against the so-called managerial elites."* Brad DeLong: "Peter Thiel’s vision is an attempt to build a capitalism of pure entrepreneurial creativity—divorced from markets—that ultimately feels incoherent…"* John Ganz: "Bannon’s project resembles the ‘left’ wing of fascist movements like Ernst Röhm or Gregor Strasser—populists who ultimately get sidelined by business elites…. Trump's economic vision is incoherent—robbing Peter to pay Paul while juggling contradictory promises of protectionism, tax cuts, and economic revival…"* Brad DeLong: "Napoleon III promised the preservation of the rights gained and the levelling property redistribution carried out by the Great French Revolution, and promised development, infrastructure, stability—even if he seemed corrupt and incompetent to all on a spectrum from Baron Jaime de Rothschild to Karl Marx. Trump offers no such tangible deliverables…"Noteable Takeaways:* Book Focus: When the Clock Broke examines the transformation of the Republican Party and the rise of Trumpism as a reaction to shifts in U.S. political and economic structures.* Historical Political Shift: The Clinton administration expected to face Gerald Ford-style Republicans but instead encountered a transformed Republican Party shaped by Reagan's New Right, Pat Buchanan’s revolt, and Newt Gingrich’s aggressive conservatism.* Reagan's Legacy: The Reagan administration's initially radical goals were massive tax cuts, social insurance rollback, and aggressive foreign policy. Those were absorbed into the Republican mainstream in Reagan’s second term by the likes of George Shultz and Howard Baker, even before George H.W. Bush’s pragmatic leadership.* Bush’s Concessions to the Right: Despite his Tory instincts, George H.W. Bush incorporated radical conservatives like Pat Buchanan to maintain party unity after Buchanan’s damaging primary challenge.* Rise of New Media: The emergence of talk radio figures like Rush Limbaugh amplified Buchanan’s appeal and radicalized segments of the conservative base.* Sam Francis’s Influence: Francis's ideas became foundational for the radical right. He combined elements of James Burnham’s Managerial Revolution theory with his own vision of a proletarianized middle America poised for revolution.* Francis’s Radicalism: Unlike traditional conservatives, Francis envisioned a “proletarian right” movement that rejected nostalgic conservatism and embraced authoritarianism led by a strong executive.* Francis’s Nationalism: Francis saw his movement as forging a new American nationalism distinct from both Hamiltonian merchant capitalism and Jeffersonian agrarianism.* Rising Right-Wing Populism: Gantz argues that Buchanan’s rise and Trump’s populism reflect a deep crisis within the Republican Party, where formerly upwardly mobile suburbanites became politically disenchanted and fearful of losing status.* Economic Shifts and Political Realignment: The decline of New Deal social structures left many middle-class Americans feeling economically vulnerable, pushing them toward right-wing populism as a defense mechanism.* Racial and Cultural Anxiety: A key component of this radical right surge was resentment toward perceived preferential treatment of minorities and fears of cultural displacement.* Comparisons to Jacksonian Politics: Francis’s vision mirrored Andrew Jackson’s politics — portraying the common man as besieged by corrupt elites and oligarchic power.* Francis and Trump’s Parallels: Francis’s ideas prefigured Trump’s symbolic politics — leveraging nationalist rhetoric, media manipulation, and racial grievance to mobilize voters.* Influence of Bannon and Teal: Ganz draws parallels between Francis’s ideological framework and Steve Bannon’s contemporary influence, while Peter Thiel’s vision of monopolistic, entrepreneurial capitalism reflects elements of reactionary modernism.* Fascism Analogy: Ganz sees Trumpism as paralleling early fascist movements, where radical populist wings (like Bannon) were marginalized in favor of alliances with big business interests.* Structural Parallels to the 1930s: Ganz and Riley discuss similarities between today’s geopolitical disorder and the breakdown of 1930s diplomatic order, including parallels to Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement and nationalist retrenchment.* Trump’s U.S. as a Revisionist Power: Unlike traditional great powers seeking to stabilize international order, the U.S. under Trump has behaved like a revisionist power, destabilizing alliances and institutions.* Lessons from the Book: Ganz’s book emphasizes that Trumpism’s roots predate social media’s acceleration of political disruption. By studying this slower historical build-up, readers may better understand contemporary upheavals.Recommended Readings:* Ganz, John. 2024. When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, & How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374605557/whentheclockbroke>.* DeLong, J. Bradford. 2022. Slouching Towards Utopia: The Economic History of the 20th Century. New York: Basic Books. http://bit.ly/3pP3Krk>.* Riley, Dylan. 2019. The Civic Foundations of Fascism in Europe: Italy, Spain, & Romania, 1870–1945. New York: Verso. https://www.versobooks.com/products/1493-the-civic-foundations-of-fascism-in-europe>.* Riley, Dylan, & Robert Brenner. 2022. "Seven Theses on American Politics." New Left Review, II/138. https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii142/articles/dylan-riley-robert-brenner-seven-theses>.* Riley, Dylan. 2017. "American Brumaire?" New Left Review, 103. https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii103/articles/dylan-riley-american-brumaire>.Plus:* Wolf, Martin. 2023. The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism. New York: Penguin Press. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/554951/the-crisis-of-democratic-capitalism-by-martin-wolf>.* Jackson, Trevor. 2025. "Never Too Much." The New York Review of Books, January 16. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2025/01/16/never-too-much-the-crisis-of-democratic-capitalism-wolf/>.* Riley, Dylan. 2023. "Sermons for Princes." New Left Review, II/143. https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii143/articles/dylan-riley-sermons-for-princes>.And:Podcast Show Prenotes:1. John Ganz’s When the Clock Broke—The 1990s Right-Wing Revolt* Initially, a revolt against the Republican Party establishment…* The radical transformation of American conservatism in the 1990s…* The rise of Newt Gingrich and the paleo revolt of Pat Buchanan, Sam Francis, & Murray Rothbard…* The role of what were then “new media” (talk radio, Rush Limbaugh, & c.)* Why on the right in the 1990s? The purge of Bush Sr. & the rejection of Reaganite conservatism; Buchanan’s “America First” & reaction against globalization; Perot and the outsider challenge…* How did Newt Gingrich capitalize? War on institutional governance; hyper-partisanship & the end of deliberative politics; Frank Luntz and the strategic use of political chaos…* How to compare & contrast? How did this movement anticipate Trumpism?; the shift away from a gentry establishment-based right; the shift to a plebiscitary populism…Transition: “The 1990s saw the breakdown of political representation on the right. But what happens when entire societies feel unrepresented by their political institutions?”2. Crises of Representation & Political Breakdown* Patterns of political representation failing:* Athens in the -500s…* Spain and Romania in the 1930s…* America today…* What happens when representatives no longer represent? The Gingrichian Congress & the death of compromise; the hollowing out of the Democratic Party; interest-group fragmentation vs. right-wing unity; the failure of Clinton-era governance to resolve political alienation…* The erosion of public reason & rise of plebiscitary politics: Spectacle over policy; media and “disintermediation” as accelerants of public distrust; limited institutional checks on power…* How to compare & contrast? How does this compare to the breakdown of liberal democracy in the 1930s? Are we witnessing a permanent shift toward authoritarian populism?Transition: “If the 1990s set the stage for today’s crisis, what is the economic foundation of this transformation?”3. “Late Capitalist” Modes of Production (& Distribution, Communication, & Domination)* Shifts in political-economy orders since the 1970s: From through the Globalized Value-Chain to the Attention Info-Bio Tech Economy – * Mass-production society and the New Deal social-democratic order * Globalized value-chain society, the Neoliberal order, & the rise of globalization & financialization…* Attention info-bio tech society & a shift toward patrimonial-plutocratic neofascism?…* How did the economy shape the political transformation? The decline of labor unions and the regulatory state; the shift from industrial capitalism to finance-driven neoliberalism; a role for economic insecurity in fueling right-wing populism?* Why did the left fail to produce an equivalent populist movement? Structural weakness and dependency on institutions; failure to articulate a coherent alternative to neoliberalism; constraints of governing within the neoliberal framework…* What might the future hold? A new economic order emerging? what comes after neoliberalism? Digital pluto-oligarchy?… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit inflectionpointpodcast.substack.com

2021-02-04 :: by Leighton Woodhouse https://web.archive.org/web/20210422124242/https://n2pe.berkeley.edu/podcast/robert-brenner-and-dylan-riley/>Inflection Point is a podcast that asks whether the neoliberal economic order is done, and explores what might come to replace it. This is the third and last part of a conversation between UC Berkeley sociologist Dylan Riley and UCLA sociologist Robert Brenner. Here, Brenner describes the trajectory that capitalism is on today, in the 21st century.* Tags: capitalism, Dylan Riley, neoliberalism, Robert BrennerNotable Quotes:* This marks the culmination of two trends: ever-weakening investment, employment, GDP, and productivity—and a response that's explicitly not about fixing it…* The response isn't about getting employment back, or investment back, or output back—it's about using political power to turn income to the top 1%, or rather the top 0.01%…* The Fed's intervention ensured that corporations could borrow, not to invest or innovate, but to fund stock buybacks and dividends…. We've seen an almost beyond-belief separation of the process of upward redistribution from the process of production….* The politically driven upward redistribution that began in 1980 is often misnamed ‘neoliberalism’—but in fact, it's anything but liberal…* Both major parties in the U.S. are now deeply tied to this politically driven upward redistribution—neither offers a real alternative for working people…* Globalization was always central to American capitalism…. The true shift was the emergence of politically driven upward redistribution* We're seeing a hybrid economic form—capitalism hasn't disappeared, but its core dynamic has shifted toward predation and wealth extraction….. What we're witnessing is closer to pre-capitalist feudal forms of privilege and take, rather than a functioning capitalist economy…* The elite's wealth gains have nothing to do with productive investment—they're sustained by financial speculation and political connections…* The irony is that neoliberalism has created a huge political vacuum—and that's what right-wing populism has moved to fill… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit inflectionpointpodcast.substack.com

2021-02-04 :: by Leighton Woodhouse https://web.archive.org/web/20210422124511/https://n2pe.berkeley.edu/podcast/robert-brenner-and-dylan-riley-continued/>Inflection Point is a podcast that asks whether the neoliberal economic order is over, and if so, what comes next? This is the second of three parts of a conversation between UC Berkeley sociologist Dylan Riley and UCLA sociologist Robert Brenner. In this episode, Brenner discusses his ideas about the evolution of capitalism in the postwar period.* Tags: capitalism, Dylan Riley, neoliberalism, Robert BrennerNotable Quotes:* On the long downturn and decline in profitability…. Since the end of the '60s and early '70s, there has been a more or less continuous decline…. I never would have thought that there would not have been some sort of recovery, some sort of regaining of dynamism…. You have overcapacity leading to falling profitability, which is discouraging investment…* One after another, economies were able to use the technologies of the leading economies and combine them with cheaper labor to enter the world market. Germany, Japan, the East Asian Tigers, and then the big one—China—all followed this pattern…* The response has to be cutting investment, cutting costs to stay competitive, and finally getting the state to cut spending…. By 1980, they'd tried everything—and they were now hitting the worst recession of the post-war period…* The turn to finance can only be understood as part of a broader reorientation. Policymakers effectively gave up on the idea that policy could improve profitability through traditional means…. Neither party would ever consider industrial policy again…. Instead of nurturing capital accumulation by improving profitability, the new policy was about directly giving profits flat out…* As productive investment declined, finance shifted to more speculative activities and politically driven redistribution…. Finance became about borrowing to pay dividends, fund stock buybacks, and enrich executives—not about investment in production… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit inflectionpointpodcast.substack.com

2021-02-01 :: by Leighton Woodhouse https://web.archive.org/web/20210422124242/https://n2pe.berkeley.edu/podcast/robert-brenner-and-dylan-riley/> Hi, welcome to the inaugural episode of Inflection Point, a brand new podcast about a very big question: What comes next?As the name of the podcast would suggest, our show presupposes that we live in a time of transition. For decades, there was, roughly, a thing you could call a global economic order. During the Cold War, of course, there were, broadly speaking, two orders: the one aligned with Soviet-led communism, and the one aligned with U.S.-led capitalism. Back then, that form of capitalism was roughly comparable to today’s European social democratic capitalism: high taxes, a big welfare state, lots of regulation over corporations. Then, as the Cold War receded, that form of capitalism was dismantled and replaced with a rawer, purer kind — one that eschewed restrictions on corporate behavior and shrank the role of the state. Call it market fundamentalism, or neoliberalism.Since the 2008 financial meltdown, however, neoliberalism has been in crisis. We’ve seen that in the discrediting of free trade as a bipartisan policy objective, in the rising opposition to Wall Street across the political spectrum, in the distrust of elites, in the ascent of Bernie Sanders on the left and Donald Trump on the right.That doesn’t mean neoliberalism is gone for good, or even that it won’t be ascendant again. On the other hand, it might not. It could be replaced by a different economic order, or myriad economic orders, be they socialist upheavals or right wing ethno-nationalist regimes or something else entirely. That’s the question behind this podcast: what comes next?Our inaugural episode is a discussion with the renowned Marxist historian and historical-sociologist Robert Brenner, at UCLA. UC Berkeley sociologist Dylan Riley had a long, penetrating conversation with Professor Brenner, and we’ve broken it up into three episodes. In this episode, we hear about Professor Brenner’s personal biography and his political education. In the next two episodes, respectively, we’ll hear about capitalism in the postwar period, and the trajectory that capitalism is on today.Welcome to Inflection Point.* Tags: capitalism, Dylan Riley, neoliberalism, Robert BrennerNotable Quotes:* For decades, there was, roughly, a thing you could call a global economic order… roughly comparable to today's European social democratic capitalism—high taxes, a big welfare state, lots of regulation over corporations. Since the 2008 financial meltdown, however, that neoliberalism has been in crisis. That doesn't mean neoliberalism is gone for good, or even that it won't be ascendant again…. It could be replaced by a different economic order -- or myriad economic orders…* We've seen [neoliberalism's crisis] in the discrediting of free trade as a bipartisan policy objective. We've seen it in the rising opposition to Wall Street across the political spectrum. We've seen it in the ascent of Bernie Sanders on the left and Donald Trump on the right…* I grew up in faraway Queens, a kind of lower middle class, working class suburb…. My mom was an organizer of the library union in New York…. My dad lost his job with the government and was propelled into becoming a TV writer—which was one of the best things that ever happened to him…* I grew up in a communist family... Both my parents had been party members. The Rosenberg case... their being executed on the front page of the Daily News... that was one of the biggest things in that part of my life…* I personally left my parents' politics behind in a superficial way... I was no longer wanting to be part of that orthodoxy, which also had a conservative character at that point…* Reed College was kind of communism, atheism, and free love—rather than sex, drugs, and rock and roll…* I believed in ideas for ideas' sake, which put me at somewhat of a variance with the generation of the '60s…* I grew up with a profound, mechanical Marxism—totally mechanical—but I was completely embedded within it… a techno-determinism: that man masters nature bit by bit through the development of ever more powerful means of production…* To me, what was Marxist politics was communist politics -- the idea of a Trotskyist or anarchist seemed kind of silly…* The most important theoretical break for me was encountering the International Socialists in England.… They were very working-class oriented, very Marxist, with a kind of libertarian interpretation of Trotskyism…* The founding of SDS at Princeton was the most important political experience I had.… SDS was my favorite organization in my life…. It was a real movement—a huge mass movement—successful even in places like Oklahoma, Kansas, and Minnesota…. To be involved with that was very liberating. It was a very anti-Orthodox, anti-Stalinist movement…* In 1970, the student mass movement shut down UCLA... and at the same time, there was a wildcat strike of Teamsters in LA…. We organized really hundreds of students to come down to support that strike, to stand on the lines, and so on…* Capitalism has failed—failed ever more completely.… The crisis has become deeper... And so then what next?… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit inflectionpointpodcast.substack.com