The History Onion

In the first of two episodes on the subject, we investigate the United States’s role in undermining the left wing in Chilean politics throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Drawing extensively from the Senate Church Committee’s 1975 report, “Covert Action in Chile, 1963-1973,” we show just how much money, time, and effort the United States spent on Chile in order to not just incapacitate the country’s left but to bolster its right wing.

While the US’s covert actions were not enough to prevent socialist Salvador Allende’s ascension to the presidency in 1970, their work over the previous decade was not all for naught. We dig into the US’s involvement in the 1964 and 1970 presidential elections and begin to make links between US action in that time period and how it set up their role in the 1973 coup, which we will discuss at length in our next episode.

Show Notes

Allende’s final address to the people of Chile:

* Audio/video

* English transcript

The Church Committee’s report: “Covert Action in Chile, 1963-1973”

Credits

Theme music by our youngest brother Tate.

Cover art by Arthur Santoro.

This episode continues our coverage of modern Chile, focusing on the economics of the period of 1970-1973, during which Salvador Allende governed as president and his administration attempted to transition Chile towards a socialist economic system. We begin with a discussion of sources — who has written about the economics of the Allende years, and whose work will we be drawing upon. We then describe the economic performance of Chile before and during the Allende years, giving a sense of how Chile arrived to a state of economic chaos in 1973. Our next section breaks down the plausible reasons for poor economic performance in Chile under the Allende government, including some factors that were outside of the government’s control. Most of the rest of the episode centers on an analysis of the economic program of the Allende government, and why its attempt at a transition to socialism failed.

We think there’s plenty for modern leftists to learn from this remarkable attempt at a socialist transition under a democratic political system. Though a poor selection of policies contributed to the collapse of the Allende government, which ultimately fell in a coup in the fall of 1973, future democratic socialist governments are not inevitably doomed to a similar fate.

Show Notes

From Bloomberg: “Chile Has Its Own Milei, and the Libertarian Is Just as Radical”

From Tim Barker: “The Mighty Wurlitzer Plays On”

Alec Nove Wikipedia

“Macroeconomic Populism” by Dornbusch and Edwards

From the NYT: “C.I.A. Is Linked to Strikes In Chile That Beset Allende”

From the Zinn Project: “The Overthrow of Democracy in Chile — A Timeline”

From Paul Rosenstein-Rodan: “"Why Allende Failed”

From Alec Nove: “The Political Economy of the Allende Regime”

From Victor Espinosa: “The political economy of fiscal dominance: Evidence from the Chilean government of Salvador Allende”

From Sebastian Edwards: “The Debauchery of Currency and Inflation: Chile, 1970-1973”

From MIT: “Project Cybersyn: Chile's Radical Experiment in Cybernetic Socialism”

From PlasticPills (via YouTube): “Project Cybersyn & The CIA Coup in Chile (Full Documentary by Plastic Pills)”

From Sebastian Edwards: “The Chile Project: The Story of the Chicago Boys and the Downfall of Neoliberalism”

Credits

Theme music by our youngest brother Tate.

Cover art by Arthur Santoro.

On our last episode, we gave an introduction to the history of Chile and a preview of the issues and themes we will be exploring throughout this series. Episode 2 will focus on the political life and evolution of Salvador Allende, perhaps the single most important person to this story.

Allende’s legacy in Chilean politics and society is difficult to overstate, and he didn’t come out of nowhere; in fact, Allende had spent decades in Chilean politics prior to his victory in the 1970 presidential election. He learned from other left-wing movements that saw varying levels of success in Chile and developed his own theory of una vía chilena al socialismo — a Chilean road to socialism. Studying Allende, demystifying his legacy, and acknowledging his commitment to democracy is critical to understanding Chile and to digesting the key lessons this story has for any leftist political project.

Show Notes

Salvador Allende: Revolutionary Democrat by Victor Figueroa Clark

Marian Schlotterbeck interview in Jacobin Magazine

Credits

Theme music by our youngest brother Tate.

Cover art by Arthur Santoro.

Chile is a country whose history cannot be disentangled from our own; one of history’s great coincidences reminds us of this. On September 11th, 1973, 28 years before the terror attack on the United States, the democratically elected government of socialist leader Salvador Allende was overthrown in a violent coup that left Allende himself dead. The ensuing 17 years of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship led to at least 40,000 people being killed, tortured, or imprisoned. To say that the United States’s hands are not clean in these matters is an understatement.

Join us as we explore the fascinating history and politics of Chile in a multi-episode series that will span from before Allende’s election to the recent political debates and struggles of modern Chile. In this first episode, we provide some necessary background about the country’s political system and its history of democracy. We leave off with the election of Salvador Allende in 1970.

Show Notes

Salvador Allende: Revolutionary Democrat by Victor Figueroa Clark

Salvador Allende quote on moving Chile towards socialism:

We are moving towards socialism, not from an academic love for a doctrinaire system, but encouraged by the strength of our people, who know that it is an inescapable demand if we are to overcome backwardness and who feel that a socialist regime is the only way available to modern nations who want to build rationally in freedom, independence and dignity. We are moving towards socialism because the people, through their vote, have freely rejected capitalism as a system which has resulted in a crudely unequal society, a society deformed by social injustice and degraded by the deterioration of the very foundations of human solidarity.

Credits

Theme music by our youngest brother Tate.

Cover art by Arthur Santoro.

In this episode, we delve into John Maynard Keynes’s seminal essay, “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren.” Published in 1930, the essay envisioned a future of prosperity and leisure for all. We explore his predictions, his optimism for the future, and the challenges that have prevented his utopian vision from becoming reality.

Show Notes

The New Yorker: “No Time”

Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren (1930)

A favorite quote from the essay: “I see us free, therefore, to return to some of the most sure and certain principles of religion and traditional virtue—that avarice is a vice, that the exaction of usury is a misdemeanour, and the love of money is detestable, that those walk most truly in the paths of virtue and sane wisdom who take least thought for the morrow… We shall honour those who can teach us how to pluck the hour and the day virtuously and well, the delightful people who are capable of taking direct enjoyment in things, the lilies of the field who toil not, neither do they spin.”

The golden age (2012)

Keynes Predicted We Would Be Working 15-Hour Weeks. Why Was He So Wrong? (2015)

Economic Possibilities for Our Overworked Grandchildren (2024)

The Leisure Agenda (2019)

Howard Zinn quote: “An optimist isn’t necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something.”

How have Keynes’s predictions fared?

* Growth in GDP per capita from 1930 through 2022:

* US: ~5.5x

* Western Europe: ~6.5x

* World: ~6x

* Had to average the 1920 and 1940 values since 1930 was not available

* Hours worked per week from 1929 through 2017:

* US: declined from ~45 to ~34 hrs

* UK: declined from ~43 to ~32 hrs

Credits

Theme music by our youngest brother Tate.

Cover art by Arthur Santoro.

What would a world without work look like? How would we achieve that?

Legendary activist James Boggs, writing in 1963, thought that the United States already had the means to create a post-work society: “Many people in the United States are aware that, with automation, enough could be easily produced in this country so that there would be no need for the majority of Americans to work.” But that hasn’t exactly panned out the way that Boggs envisioned it would. Why not? What can we take away from Boggs’s insights in what feels like an increasingly volatile labor market? Building on our last episode about technological progress, AI, and job displacement, we investigate Boggs’s vision for a post-work world.

Show Notes

The American Revolution by James Boggs

“James Boggs, the ‘Outsiders,’ and the Challenge of Postindustrial Society,” by Cedric Johnson

Alyssa Battistoni writing in The Nation about Aaron Benanav’s book, Automation and the Future of Work.

Article critiquing the “long downturn” theory

Altman on AI

Altman changes mind on Trump

Elon Musk’s Dystopian AI Future

Credits

Theme music by our youngest brother Tate.

Cover art by Arthur Santoro.

Will AI take all of our jobs? We don’t know.

What we do know is that smart people have repeatedly claimed throughout history that technological progress will create long-run mass unemployment, and yet that has never become become reality. In this episode, we dig into the debate over technological unemployment and the history of this concept. We conclude by providing users with a toolkit for better assessing claims about whether technological progress will cause mass unemployment.

Show Notes

CNN clip: “AI company's CEO issues warning about mass unemployment”

Dario Amodei fearmongering in Axios article: “Behind the Curtain: A white-collar bloodbath”

Other Media:

* The Majority Report is warning about an AI Job Crisis

* The New York Times is discussing a possible AI Job Apocalypse

* Meanwhile, the Economist is saying “any jobs-pocalypse seems a long way off” and the WSJ just ran an op-ed titled “No, AI Robots Won’t Take All Our Jobs”

NYT: “Job Market Is Getting Tougher for College Graduates”

NY Fed: The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates

BLS Projections

"A world without work: technology, automation and how we should respond" with Daniel Susskind

Wikipedia entry on “technological unemployment”

Paul Krugman on Technological Unemployment

A graph of the unemployment rate over time:

“The fear of technology-driven unemployment and its empirical base,” from the Centre for Economic Policy Research

Change in Occupational Structure, 1860 to 2015

The Rise of Services

“Hours of Work in U.S. History”, from the Economic History Association

How many workers are there in the US?

* 163 million

Number of unemployed workers?

* 7 million

How many layoffs and discharges were there in April?

* 1.8 million layoffs and discharges

Also:

* 5.6 million hires

* 3.2 million quits

Mass Layoffs

Credits

Theme music by our youngest brother Tate.

Cover art by Arthur Santoro.

In this episode, we discuss the neoliberal order, its rise and whether it has fallen. Our discussion is geared towards understanding the present moment and whether it represents a break with neoliberalism. However, to ground our analysis, we take a long detour through the history of neoliberalism, with a focus on a seminal neoliberal figure: Milton Friedman.

Show Notes

“The Rise and Fall of Neoliberalism,” by Louis Menand

“The Levels and Trends in Deep and Extreme Poverty in the United States, 1993-2016,” by David Brady and Zachary Parolin

“Has Neoliberalism Really Come to an End?” — an interview with Gary Gerstle in The Nation

The Chile Project, by Sebastian Edwards

Capitalism and Freedom, by Milton Friedman

Econlib blogpost about Friedman’s views on segregation

Abundance, by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

Credits

Theme music by our youngest brother Tate.

Cover art by Arthur Santoro.

Editing by Martin Fischer.

Is Trump the new FDR? Rich Lowry, in his recent article for the National Review, certainly thinks so. In this episode, we discuss whether Lowry’s arguments hold any water (spoiler alert: they don’t) and consider whether the Democrats need to embrace the legacy of FDR more strongly (spoiler alert: they do).

Show Notes

Nathan Robinson’s article about FDR is titled “Do We Need a Second New Deal?” in the online edition; the print edition title is “Do We Need a New FDR?” as referenced in the show.

For our discussion on Roosevelt’s Purge, click here.

Click here to visit the Living New Deal website and explore their resources about the New Deal. This link will take you directly to the national map of New Deal sites.

Credits

Theme music by our youngest brother Tate.

Cover art by Arthur Santoro.

Editing by Martin Fischer.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, one of the leading public intellectuals in America, found himself in a media firestorm after the release of his book, The Message, in the fall of 2024. Once a darling of the liberal elite—though perhaps more because of who they wanted him to be than because of who he really was—Coates received scorn from many in the media for daring to question, in particular, America’s perception of Palestine and the Palestinian struggle.

Coates has gifted us an incredible piece of writing and scholarship as he bears witness to some of the most prevalent myths plaguing our world today. We break down what makes this book controversial—and why its controversies are, in reality, its greatest strengths.

Show Notes

Watch Coates’s full interview with Tony Dokoupil here.

Credits

Theme music by our youngest brother Tate.

Cover art by Arthur Santoro.

Editing by Martin Fischer.

Audio production by Nate Nakshian Ward.