Hey folks, it's Amber here. We got another vegetables episode for you. I am joined by Vivek Chibbert,

professor of sociology at NYU, an editor in chief of catalyst, and he has just put out a pamphlet

series with Jacob and magazine called the ABCs of Capitalism. Welcome Vivek. Thank you for joining us.

Thanks for having me, Amber. Good to be here. Okay, let's start out talking a little bit about the

project. So there's a book from Jacob and called the ABCs of Socialism, which is a short little series

of essays. And now you have this pamphlet series that's the ABCs of Capitalism. Why,

what's the difference and why'd you go with the pamphlet structure? Well, they share a kind of

the title, but they're quite their distinct projects. And the difference between them is the ABCs

of Socialism was really kind of a very, very short introduction to a whole series of topics that

the left needs to know about when they are introduced to Socialist politics, about how capitalism works,

about what Socialism will be like, about why you should be a Socialist. And they're extremely

short essays of like 500 words each. And that has its place. These pamphlets came about actually

independently of that, which is I was involved and I have been involved in a number of educational

efforts, special schools for trade unionists and for militants. Actually, most of it was being done

in India. And I realized that when we have these schools, we don't really have any literature to

give to people introducing them to how capitalism works, how the state works, about what the history of

the left has been, things like that. And in my head, I'd had a project for a long time, which is that

ever since the 1930s and 40s, there hasn't been a lot of really popular writing on the basics

of what Socialist politics is. The 30s was a time when the Communist Party was trying to really

create a mass base for itself and popularize Socialist politics and Marxism. With the decline

of the left, all these projects kind of fell by the wayside. Now with the wave around Bernie Sanders

and the rise of left-wing politics, again, there's a whole generation of people coming to left

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