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
Are Service Workers and Public Sector Employees Part of the Proletariat?
Are service workers part of the "productive" part of the working class? And what does that mean? How about public sector employees--if they're not productive workers, does that mean that their interests don't align with productive workers and socialists shouldn't support the welfare state after all?
Ben Burgis talks about what the Trotskyist leader and Marxist economist Ernest Mandel gets right and wrong in his introduction to Capital Vol. 2.
Read Ben's essay:
benburgis.substack.com/p/are-service-workers-and-public-sector
Watch the Erik Olin Wright "Understanding Class" lecture:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmiiSSMZPnE
Read his review of Jodi Dean's book:
https://unherd.com/2025/05/the-21st-century-belongs-to-marx/
Read Dean's response to Ben:
https://www.sublationmag.com/post/analogies-and-tendencies-a-response-to-ben-burgis
Read Ben's response to Dean's response:
https://www.sublationmag.com/post/service-workers-aren-t-servants-a-response-to-jodi-dean
Follow Ben on Twitter: @BenBurgis
Follow GTAA on Twitter: @Gtaa_Show
Become a GTAA Patron and receive numerous benefits ranging from occasional patron-exclusive content to access to the GTAA Discord to our undying love and gratitude for helping us keep this thing going:
patreon.com/benburgis
Read the weekly philosophy Substack:
benburgis.substack.com