Give Them An Argument
Give Them An Argument is a YouTube show and podcast dedicated to building a smarter, funnier and more strategic Left. New episodes are live on YouTube on Monday nights with an exclusive postgame for GTAA patrons after the main show. (To become a patron, go to patreon.com/benburgis and sign up for the monthly cost of a milkshake at a 50s nostalgia diner in 1994.) Past guests have included Slavoj Žižek, Richard Wolff, David Pizarro, Gregory Sadler, Glenn Greenwald, Krystal Ball, Bhaskar Sunkara, Sam Seder, Ana Kasparian, Emma Vigeland, Matt Christman, and Amber Frost. The show has also featured debates between host Ben Burgis and opponents ranging from Walter Block to Charlie Kirk.Ben is a philosophy professor, Jacobin columnist, and frequent debater. He did a regular "Debunk" segment on the Michael Brooks Show until 2020. He's appeared on the Debate Night with Charlie Kirk, System Update with Glenn Greenwald, Rising, Krystal, Kyle & Friends, the Majority Report w/Sam Seder & the Joe Rogan Experience.benburgis.compatreon.com/benburgis
Give Them An Argument
Season 5 Episode 30: Debate with Tibor Rutar on Marx's Theory of History + Nordic Model vs Socialism
Tibor Rutar is the author of a book called "Capitalism for Realists: Virtues and Vices of the Modern Economy" in which he argues that the best system is a moderate, social democratic form of capitalism. In making that case, he heavily relies on "economic freedom" rankings. In the book, Rutar criticizes an article Ben Burgis wrote for Jacobin arguing that such rankings are worthless and tell us nothing:
https://jacobin.com/2021/10/economic-freedom-rankings-frasier-institute-peter-leeson-socialism-capitalism
Rutar also wrote an article for Areo magazine called "Marxism: The Idea that Refuses to Die":
https://areomagazine.com/2023/06/27/marxism-the-idea-that-refuses-to-die/
....which Ben wrote about in last Sunday's Substack essay, "Why I"m Still a Marxist: A Response to Tibor Rutar":
https://benburgis.substack.com/p/tibor-rutars-flawed-critique-of-marx
In this episode, they finally sit down to. talk out the differences in their worldviews! Before that, Ben and the crew play a new Billy Bragg song (responding to "Rich Men North of Richmond"), and play a bit of Ben's recent appearance on the Left Reckoning postgame where he talked to Matt Lech and David Griscom about Marxism. In the postgame for GTAA patrons, they preview an in-person debate that Ben is going to be doing in-person in Los Angeles and watch a bubbly conservative pundit who seems to be deeply confused about how, as a conservative, she's supposed to feel about the French Revolution.
Check out Tibor's book:
https://www.routledge.com/Capitalism-for-Realists-Virtues-and-Vices-of-the-Modern-Economy/Rutar/p/book/9781032305929
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