Hello everybody, welcome back to Rev Left Radio.

All right, I want to say some things up front for this episode because I think this episode

is incredibly important.

The reason why it might be dry at first is because we have to get some definitions out of

the way.

Like what is unequal exchange?

You know, what is the base work that Torkel is operating off of?

We kind of got to set the table a little bit, and that can come across perhaps as sort of dry and jargony.

But I promise if you stick with it and you get those sort of that table setting, you know, internalized, the middle and end

of this conversation is invaluable from a Marxist perspective to understand what is happening

in the world right now. What is the deepest possible Marxist analysis of the 21st century

that you could possibly have in, you know,

granted an hour and a half conversation. Starting with unequal exchange, which is the mechanism

by which the imperial core siphons wealth and resources out of the imperial periphery, the Global

South in particular, and makes concessions

to its working classes in the core through robust welfare states in the case of Europe, through

mass consumerism in the case of the United States. This mechanism is essential to understand,

to understand the global economy, and to understand the mechanism of imperialism globally.

Once you understand that, we get into this fascinating conversation about the next mode of

production already manifesting itself, about what the actual material basis of the decline of the U.S.

Empire is and why it is ultimately inevitable,

the literal choice we often hear sloganeered, socialism or barbarism, right, the common ruin

...