:00:00. > :00:00.levels of government. Syrian officials have dismissed the
:00:00. > :00:07.allegations. It is time for HARDtalk.
:00:08. > :00:18.Welcome to HARDtalk. What exactly is progressive politics? In the rich
:00:19. > :00:20.world, it is identified with the centre`left, with faith in the
:00:21. > :00:28.State's ability to ameliorate the perceived excesses of the market
:00:29. > :00:33.capitalism. My guest today has a more ambitious take on what it means
:00:34. > :00:36.to be progressive. Roberto Unger is an influential Brazilian political
:00:37. > :00:43.philosopher, who taught Barack Obama law at Harvard. He served as the
:00:44. > :00:50.former president's so`called Minister of ideas in Brazil. He
:00:51. > :00:51.calls himself a revolutionary. Is the world, rich or poor, ready for
:00:52. > :01:29.his progressive revolution? Roberto Unger. Welcome to HARDtalk.
:01:30. > :01:33.Thank you. You are a long established political thinker in the
:01:34. > :01:36.left. You seem very disillusioned with the politics of the mainstream
:01:37. > :01:42.left in the United States, and indeed in other parts of the world.
:01:43. > :01:48.Why? On the whole today, the Progressives have no project. Their
:01:49. > :01:55.projects are that projects of their conservative opponents, with a
:01:56. > :02:01.humanising discount. They seek to put a softer face on the agenda of
:02:02. > :02:08.their conservative opponents. That is not what we need. Isn't
:02:09. > :02:13.humanising politics important? It is not good enough. What the world is
:02:14. > :02:16.seeking now, restless as it is under the dictatorship of no alternatives,
:02:17. > :02:25.is an alternative that would give the opportunity and instruments to
:02:26. > :02:31.the ordinary man and woman. Sugar coating is not enough.
:02:32. > :02:33.In my introduction to you, I used the word revolutionary. Do you
:02:34. > :02:37.really see yourself as a revolutionary?
:02:38. > :02:40.Well, we used to think that any consequential change would have to
:02:41. > :02:48.come all of a sudden, in the form of a substitution of one system for
:02:49. > :02:53.another. Socialism for capitalism. I do not believe that. I believe that
:02:54. > :03:00.change can be substantial but nevertheless piecemeal, gradualist,
:03:01. > :03:08.and experimental. A great problem we have in the world now, we understand
:03:09. > :03:11.that change must be structural. It has to do with the organisation of
:03:12. > :03:18.the market economy, and of democratic politics. Unlike the
:03:19. > :03:21.Liberals and the socialists of the 19th`century, we can no longer
:03:22. > :03:27.commit ourselves to a dogmatic blueprint. How then can we think and
:03:28. > :03:39.act with regard to the structure, without subscribing to one of these
:03:40. > :03:42.dogmas? Let me pick away at history. If you are thinking that revolution
:03:43. > :03:46.does not have to be violent, that it does not have to be explosive, it
:03:47. > :03:55.can be gradual and structural, where would you lay someone like FDR, and
:03:56. > :04:02.the New Deal? That period of democratic politics in America which
:04:03. > :04:06.to many was revolutionary? Did you see that as revolutionary? The New
:04:07. > :04:08.Deal at the beginning was the last major episode of institutional
:04:09. > :04:17.experimentation in the United States. We need a lot more of that,
:04:18. > :04:21.now. For 200 years, ideological debate in the world has been
:04:22. > :04:29.dominated by a simple model. The state against the market. More
:04:30. > :04:37.state, less market, or the opposite. Or some synthesis of the two. A new
:04:38. > :04:40.contest is beginning to emerge. This is about the alternative forms of
:04:41. > :04:44.the market economy, of democratic politics, and of independent civil
:04:45. > :04:49.society. Let me pin you down to some definitions. New forms of market.
:04:50. > :04:55.Does that mean you are opposed to free`market capitalism, as we
:04:56. > :04:59.understand it today? Or not? It is not enough to regulate the
:05:00. > :05:01.market. It is not enough to compensate for the inequalities of
:05:02. > :05:10.market through retrospective tax and transfer programmes. What we need is
:05:11. > :05:14.to reshape the market in its institutional context. What does
:05:15. > :05:18.that mean? So that more people have more access
:05:19. > :05:25.to markets in more ways. What does it mean? I will give you examples of
:05:26. > :05:30.what it means in different areas. First, we now have emerging in the
:05:31. > :05:34.world a new style of production. It is characterised by permanent
:05:35. > :05:41.innovation. We associate it with high technology. This style of
:05:42. > :05:44.production is typically confined to narrow vanguards of each national
:05:45. > :05:55.economy, weakly connected with the rest. The majority are excluded from
:05:56. > :05:58.this vanguard. We need to disseminate these advanced practices
:05:59. > :06:07.to large sectors of the economy and society. Finance and the real
:06:08. > :06:11.economy. So... Let me stop you there. Important
:06:12. > :06:15.things are being said, I want to get to the heart of each one. You have
:06:16. > :06:18.cited the example of Silicon Valley, the creativity, the immense vitality
:06:19. > :06:25.of that particular corner of the US economy. You have implied that you
:06:26. > :06:27.want to see the whole of the American economy, indeed, maybe even
:06:28. > :06:36.Brazil, imbued with that element of creativity and added human value. I
:06:37. > :06:40.would put it to you that that is fantasy.
:06:41. > :06:45.No. A huge national economy could never
:06:46. > :06:48.be Silicon Valley, writ large. It would not work.
:06:49. > :06:51.Not in the form of high technology. That is not the point. The most
:06:52. > :06:59.important agents in contemporary economies are a multitude of small
:07:00. > :07:02.and medium`sized businesses. Most of these businesses throughout the
:07:03. > :07:11.world, in the US, in Brazil, are pushed back to a rear guard of
:07:12. > :07:15.relatively primitive production. What we need is to give very large
:07:16. > :07:22.parts of the labour force access to these advanced productive practices.
:07:23. > :07:27.The state will not be the vehicle for doing that. Surely, the message
:07:28. > :07:30.of Silicon Valley and the rise of people like Bill Gates and Steve
:07:31. > :07:33.Jobs, they did what they did with an element of genius, not because of
:07:34. > :07:39.state intervention or state messages, but because of something
:07:40. > :07:42.within themselves. So, we have two models of
:07:43. > :07:45.relationship between government and businesses in the world. The
:07:46. > :07:48.American model, orange length regulation of business by
:07:49. > :07:51.government. Then the north`east Asian model of imposition of a
:07:52. > :07:59.unitary trade and industrial policy by the bureaucratic apparatus of the
:08:00. > :08:02.state. What we do not have, and what we need, is the example of a
:08:03. > :08:05.decentralised partnership between governments and firms, to the end of
:08:06. > :08:13.disseminating these advanced practices through large parts of
:08:14. > :08:16.each national economy. An interesting comparison. I cannot
:08:17. > :08:20.help but reflect it. If you look at success in the global economy, much
:08:21. > :08:22.of the success lies in those very Asian economies, think South Korea
:08:23. > :08:24.or maybe even China, who are delivering incredible rates of
:08:25. > :08:27.growth and industrial development, and highly educated workforces,
:08:28. > :08:38.particularly in the case of South Korea. Temporarily. They have not
:08:39. > :08:39.solved the fundamental problem of generalising innovation and
:08:40. > :08:47.educational capability throughout the society. This change in the
:08:48. > :08:52.structure of the market economy has to run in parallel with several
:08:53. > :09:05.other changes. First, it has to be complemented by a radical change in
:09:06. > :09:09.education. We needed to be analytic. We need to deal with information
:09:10. > :09:10.only selectively, as a device of the acquisition of analytic
:09:11. > :09:12.capabilities, that is cooperative rather than individualist and
:09:13. > :09:20.authoritarian, and that is dialectical in its approach to
:09:21. > :09:22.receive knowledge. That is to say, it introduces students to ideas,
:09:23. > :09:29.always to contrasting points of view.
:09:30. > :09:32.You have laid out a vision to what you think a society can deliver,
:09:33. > :09:38.making the most of the potential of the people. Let us move away from
:09:39. > :09:41.the abstract to the deeply political. I began by asking you
:09:42. > :09:46.about the Democratic party and the left. Let us bring that up to date,
:09:47. > :09:48.and talk about Barack Obama. You welcomed his election, and that was
:09:49. > :09:55.significant, because you used to teach him at Harvard. You have since
:09:56. > :09:58.written very powerful condemnations of Barack Obama, describing him as a
:09:59. > :10:07.disaster for the Democratic party, and for progressives. Why a
:10:08. > :10:10.disaster? Because the Democratic party under
:10:11. > :10:26.his leadership has failed to come up with the sequel to results. ``
:10:27. > :10:29.Roosevelt's new deal. There is no project in the US
:10:30. > :10:31.responsive to the needs and aspirations of the broad
:10:32. > :10:32.working`class majority of the country.
:10:33. > :10:38.Obama and his collaborators have mistaken conformism for realism.
:10:39. > :10:41.They think they have grown up. In fact, they have fallen down.
:10:42. > :10:44.Isn't this the difference between a USA political theorist and
:10:45. > :10:49.philosopher, and Barack Obama, who lives in the real world of
:10:50. > :10:54.Washington politics? He has done what he can to drive a liberal
:10:55. > :10:56.agenda. He passed through the investment of massive political
:10:57. > :11:05.capital in his affordable healthcare act, he put stimulus into the
:11:06. > :11:09.economy to keep America working. And he bailed out the auto industry,
:11:10. > :11:12.maintaining American jobs. Those are all things he did because of his
:11:13. > :11:17.vision of what government can do to help ordinary people. That is
:11:18. > :11:21.progressive politics, isn't it? You are very limited. No challenge
:11:22. > :11:28.to the dominant economic structure of a country. No attempt to
:11:29. > :11:34.reorganise the relation... America does not want revolution, it
:11:35. > :11:37.is not a revolutionary country. It is conservatism writ large in its
:11:38. > :11:43.DNA. It is an experimental country. It is
:11:44. > :11:48.a country, the central idea of which is faith in the constructive genius
:11:49. > :11:56.of ordinary men and women. This faith has lived under the burden of
:11:57. > :11:59.an institutional idolatry. The sin of the public culture of the United
:12:00. > :12:02.States is the tendency to believe that the country discovered at the
:12:03. > :12:09.time of its foundation is the definitive formula of a free
:12:10. > :12:12.society. That the rest of humanity must either subscribe to that
:12:13. > :12:16.formula, or will continue to languish in poverty and despotism.
:12:17. > :12:19.Now the US needs institutional innovation to give opportunity and
:12:20. > :12:26.equipment to the ordinary man and woman.
:12:27. > :12:29.The point for you is whether what you are saying is realistic, in the
:12:30. > :12:36.context of today's America, with today's Congress, the balance of
:12:37. > :12:39.powers as it exists in America. Every transformation worth thinking
:12:40. > :12:46.about can be translated into steps right now.
:12:47. > :12:50.You have talked to Barack Obama, you communicated with him long after he
:12:51. > :12:54.left Harvard. You have stayed broadly in touch with him. Why do
:12:55. > :13:00.you believe he has failed to fulfil your hopes for him? Is it because he
:13:01. > :13:04.is not prepared to show leadership, that he is not prepared to go up
:13:05. > :13:09.against the forces that you say are working against the sort of change
:13:10. > :13:12.you want? What is it? The most important attributes of a
:13:13. > :13:17.statesman are tenacity, courage, hope and vision. His collaborators
:13:18. > :13:23.have demonstrated only the first of the four. They have proved deficient
:13:24. > :13:38.in the other three, while being prodigal in words that exalt the
:13:39. > :13:42.virtues they are lacking. I'm looking at the words of Stephen
:13:43. > :13:44.Holmes. He is looking at what America needs in terms of a
:13:45. > :13:50.progressive policy. He says he constantly toy with the idea that
:13:51. > :14:04.America needs a new age of conflict. It needs some catastrophe,
:14:05. > :14:11.some serious moment. Just the opposite! A limited reforms of
:14:12. > :14:17.democratic politics that we now have in the world are forms that require
:14:18. > :14:23.crisis to make change possible. Do you want the crisis to come? No, I
:14:24. > :14:29.want just the opposite. I want us to organise politics and democracy so
:14:30. > :14:36.that you do not need former as the condition of transformation. Let me,
:14:37. > :14:42.if I may, to now focused to Brazil. Away from the rich world and an
:14:43. > :14:46.important developing economy and look at what happened when you were
:14:47. > :14:50.invited inside the system in Brazil. The president, who you once
:14:51. > :14:57.criticised... I agree to work with him. For the redirection of the
:14:58. > :15:01.country. Do you think when you were brought inside the system and you
:15:02. > :15:05.became minister for strategic affairs, some cooled you his
:15:06. > :15:14.minister for ideas, do you think you really made a difference? There were
:15:15. > :15:17.two great achievements in that President 's time in charge of the
:15:18. > :15:28.country. Brazil democratised a great deal. Increasing wage, social
:15:29. > :15:30.programmes... Those sort of entitlement programmes that in
:15:31. > :15:37.America you say are not dealing with... Popularisation of access to
:15:38. > :15:43.services. That was a real achievement. The second achievement
:15:44. > :15:46.was an imaginary achievement. When the Brazilian people accepted the
:15:47. > :15:53.President, one of them, as their leader, they accepted themselves and
:15:54. > :15:57.that was a revolutionary change in the spiritual life of the people.
:15:58. > :16:01.What we have failed to achieve so far is the transition to the
:16:02. > :16:08.achievement of another, much more difficult and important task, which
:16:09. > :16:13.is democratising on the supply side. On access to the resources and
:16:14. > :16:19.opportunities of healthcare and education. That democratising of the
:16:20. > :16:22.market economy will in turn require a deeply... That is what I fought
:16:23. > :16:27.for in the government and that's what I failed to achieve. Again, it
:16:28. > :16:30.comes down to the divide between the philosopher and practical
:16:31. > :16:34.politician. The workers party is still in power. Lula effectively and
:16:35. > :16:40.picked his successor, Dilma Rousseff. She says she is sticking
:16:41. > :16:45.by the Lula agenda and what we see in Brazil today is, frankly, a
:16:46. > :16:49.stuttering economy. Riots and protests from poor people on the
:16:50. > :16:56.streets of Brazil 's big cities. The corporate economy is in big trouble
:16:57. > :16:58.with companies going bust. You were part of a government and
:16:59. > :17:03.philosophical approach to changing Brazil, which with all due respect,
:17:04. > :17:11.does not seem to have worked. I opposed the dominant... I opposed it
:17:12. > :17:15.in opposition and in government. It easier to be a realist if you accept
:17:16. > :17:22.everything and it's easy to be a visionary if you consult nothing.
:17:23. > :17:29.What you have to do is accept and confront a great deal. That is when
:17:30. > :17:36.many in Brazil will disagree with you. One analyst wrote in the New
:17:37. > :17:39.York Times while you were in the administration that the problem with
:17:40. > :17:45.you is that you were to mess ionic for Brazil. You had very big ideas
:17:46. > :17:51.about complete and radical reorganisation of the country but it
:17:52. > :17:54.was not practical. Brazil is very open to the alternative message.
:17:55. > :18:03.That was my experience throughout. We lack the institutions. The road
:18:04. > :18:07.has to begin in consciousness. You cannot change the world without
:18:08. > :18:15.ideas. And the experience of Obama and his people confirms once again
:18:16. > :18:21.the truth that the world cannot be changed by the wealthy. One word we
:18:22. > :18:27.have not altered between us is the word socialism. Just north of Brazil
:18:28. > :18:32.is Venezuela. Not very long ago, I went to Caracas to talk with the
:18:33. > :18:35.late Hugo Chavez. He is gone but President Nicolas Maduro is there
:18:36. > :18:41.and he says he is sticking by the Bolivar in socialist revolution. You
:18:42. > :18:45.have a lot of contacts in Latin America and beyond. Is there any
:18:46. > :18:48.future in socialism in your view as a way of restructuring and
:18:49. > :18:54.reordering the economy to achieve what you want, the full potential of
:18:55. > :18:58.every individual human being? No one knows today what socialism means. So
:18:59. > :19:04.why be hung up on these abstractions? When you go to
:19:05. > :19:08.Venezuela and talk to your friends and they tell you that our
:19:09. > :19:11.revolution, our socialism... I will say they have no feasible strategy
:19:12. > :19:17.of economic growth and no lasting institution. What we need is to open
:19:18. > :19:22.the gateways of access to the advanced sectors, to enlist finance
:19:23. > :19:28.in the service of the real economy, because it can be a good servant but
:19:29. > :19:34.is a bad master. You want to work with the big banks? The most massive
:19:35. > :19:38.corporate entities in the world? I don't want finance to serve itself,
:19:39. > :19:46.I wanted to serve production. Why wouldn't they? By changes in the tax
:19:47. > :19:50.and regulatory structure that... Unrelated to real production. The
:19:51. > :19:58.danger is you have to nationalise. Not at all. So heavily... No, not
:19:59. > :20:02.all. It's not stable is against the market, it's the real market. It's
:20:03. > :20:11.the reinvention of the market. And then comes a third element, which is
:20:12. > :20:15.that we cannot have an inclusive market economy based on universal
:20:16. > :20:19.precariousness of economic insecurity for the working person.
:20:20. > :20:25.There is a new form of production emerging in the world on the basis
:20:26. > :20:29.of decentralised networks of contractual relations, a new putting
:20:30. > :20:35.out system. We need a new regime to protect, represent and organise that
:20:36. > :20:38.worker. We need to associate the state with civil society in the
:20:39. > :20:45.competitive and experimental provision of public services. In so
:20:46. > :20:50.many of your prescriptions, you use the phrase we need. I understand
:20:51. > :20:52.that with all your learning and many years of political philosophising
:20:53. > :20:57.that you have very strong views about what we need. The question is,
:20:58. > :21:04.who is the way you are talking about? The Wii is humanity. Let me
:21:05. > :21:08.finish my point. You have two decide how your ideas, some of them frankly
:21:09. > :21:13.pretty complex, can be turned into something that appeals to ordinary
:21:14. > :21:18.men and women in the US and Brazil and here in Europe as well. How do
:21:19. > :21:23.we do that? `` how do you do that? Before we persuade others, we have
:21:24. > :21:28.to persuade ourselves. We need unity of direction. As the philosopher
:21:29. > :21:33.says, no wind helped the man who does not know what port he is
:21:34. > :21:36.failing to. Then we have to identify the particular circumstance the
:21:37. > :21:40.first steps in which to move in that direction. I wonder if you believe
:21:41. > :21:46.you can move in that direction with democracy as it is currently part
:21:47. > :21:50.dust in the US or UK or wherever? Because frankly, democracy is not
:21:51. > :21:55.throwing out the sorts of ideas you are trading in. It's not. White back
:21:56. > :22:02.so who is that the fault of? Is it the fault of the people? It's
:22:03. > :22:04.everyone 's fault. The problem is not the assignment of
:22:05. > :22:09.responsibility. The problem is throwing ourselves into this
:22:10. > :22:12.structure in order, radically, to expand the sense of collective
:22:13. > :22:17.possibility. We have this very restrict different repertoire of
:22:18. > :22:22.living options in the world. And the world is restless under the yoke of
:22:23. > :22:25.this regime of no alternative. You say that the world is restless. I
:22:26. > :22:30.come back to this idea of revolution. There is an interesting
:22:31. > :22:36.debate in the UK right now and actually, funnily enough, it was
:22:37. > :22:39.generated by a comedian who also styles himself as a revolutionary,
:22:40. > :22:43.called Russell Brand, who the other day said in a high`profile interview
:22:44. > :22:47.that he did not want to vote and did not want anyone else to vote. He
:22:48. > :22:51.said voting in a democratic system that we have today is rendering
:22:52. > :22:55.yourself complicit in a system that will never truly represent the
:22:56. > :23:01.interests of the ordinary people. Do you agree with that? Is voting in
:23:02. > :23:04.our system a waste of time? No, what we need is the opposite. To be
:23:05. > :23:09.disillusioned with the solution. What we need is to act and through
:23:10. > :23:13.our actions to create alternative political institutions. Do you mean
:23:14. > :23:18.acting outside the framework of politics? Revolutionary action? Or
:23:19. > :23:24.just going to be voting and exposing an opinion? Acting in every domain.
:23:25. > :23:28.In the institutions that exist and outside of those institutions. Now
:23:29. > :23:33.we have throughout the world a form of democratic life that continues to
:23:34. > :23:40.depend on crisis to make change possible. Well, here we are in
:23:41. > :23:46.Britain. And there is a movement of devolution of the creation of local
:23:47. > :23:50.alternatives and it can only be fertile in the creation of national
:23:51. > :23:55.alternatives if it is then combined with a style of high energy politics
:23:56. > :24:00.at the centre. That is what I want. You believe change can happen. The
:24:01. > :24:05.system even as it is constituted today can deliver change. We can
:24:06. > :24:08.only work within the world that exists. We have to meet the world on
:24:09. > :24:14.its own terms and transform the world from within. Thank you for
:24:15. > :24:42.joining us today. Thank you very much. The weather is set to remain
:24:43. > :24:49.relatively settled before things turn much windier and much colder
:24:50. > :24:50.for the end of the week. Dense patches of fog as we head for the
:24:51. > :24:52.course of this