Identity Politics: Why the Left Needs to Stop Fighting Culture Wars (Ash Sarkar)

34:30It's like Robert Jenrick's trying very hard to do. But another thing that he does is that his video team don't actually come from politics at all. They're not used to making political videos. They're snazzy marketers, yeah. It's why they've got such a strong visual identity. But also, he's able to quite effectively you know, he's a Muslim socialist who supports BDS, right? That would have been impossible. What's BDS? BDS is Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Against the State of Israel. You know, the fact that he's gotten as far as he has and hasn't just been drummed out of public life is extraordinary.

35:02And I think that's because of how good he is at looping back to the things he really, really wants to talk about. And I think that there is something there for the left, which is when marginalized people are attacked, we feel morally compelled to stand up for them. And that's good and that's laudable. But every time we do that, we become associated with minorities rather than majorities. We haven't been able to loop it back into the things where we do have a majority. and like you know it's silly but you see it with um bernie sanders you know if you ask bernie sanders like what do you think about trans people you know he'd give an answer and he'd be like but the most important thing is trans people are workers and they gotta buy eggs and da da da da like he would like he's gonna leap he does it with his right hand doesn't he and trans people are part of the 99 and not the billionaire class like you know he's gonna say all this stuff um and i think that we can learn a lesson from it which is we get so sucked into like we really really want to defend these minorities.

35:54Morally, totally a legitimate and valid thing to do. Strategically, every time we do it, we're being pulled away from speaking for 99 % of people.

36:06So that is Ash Sarkar's advice for the left in Britain. If you are enjoying this conversation, if you think there's some merit in her advice, then please do subscribe to this podcast on BBC Sound so you don't miss future episodes. Also, if you do subscribe, make sure you've got push notifications turned on and that way you will get an alert whenever we publish a new episode and you'll never miss out. How wonderful would that be? A weekly episode, maybe more than one at some point. We'll come back to that anyway. How lovely would that be? Now back to Ash and I wanted to understand a bit more about where her political and philosophical views come from and that's what you're going to hear next.

36:43If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

37:24Why are you a Marxist? Why am I a Marxist? For me, when I was a teenager and I was trying to understand why the world was the way it was, I didn't really find any convincing answers in liberalism, right? Because liberalism sort of says, well, you know, the world is a product of individual choices. And I don't think that that really makes sense of why people can vote against their own interests or how there can be, you know, a huge groundswell of a mandate for a certain position that the government never takes. Like, none of these things really made sense to me. So I wanted some kind of analysis of power.

37:59And then the other bit was, I really thought that, like, if I sort of sat around reading philosophy books quite conspicuously, boys would like me. Didn't happen. I thought the same with girls. Also didn't happen. Didn't happen. Maybe we should have met 20 years ago. Damn. Just like sitting there being like... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Here's me. I'm reading Hegel. What's the critique of pure reason? Actually, the critique of practical reason. The pure reason was a huge disappointment. But anyway. But like, I then like read the Communist Manifesto and it is written in a way to grab you, right? It takes its inspiration from sort of sensationalist, Victorian, Gothic literature.

38:35And I was in. And for me, the core thing about Marxism, and I think you have to, you know, Marxism is a living tradition, right? Don't treat Karl Marx like an Old Testament prophet. it you know the core part of it is if you want to understand politics and why it is the way it is look at the balance of class forces in society and so i think that there are many politicians who aren't marxists but who took kind of a marxist strategy to achieve that what they wanted to achieve so margaret thatcher in order to achieve a neoliberal revolution where you've got deregulated markets privatization what she had to do was break down the engines of working class power which was the trade union movement, heavy industry and council housing.

39:18She quite famously said, and I took one of the chapter titles from this in an interview with the Sunday Times, economics are the method, the object is to change the heart and soul. She understood that these economic forces change who we are as people. They change how we think of ourselves and how we think of those who are around us. I'm so annoyed you said that because I was going to say it to you and then you would have said that's a title. It was funny, I said that quote to Rory Stewart and he didn't believe me that it was a Margaret Thatcher quote. What does Marxism get right that liberalism gets wrong?

39:46So I think the first thing is that Marx says, if you want to understand society, look at the balance of class forces. That is, I think, the most important thing. The second thing is what he called a science of history. So he was saying, OK, well, why is it you get the French Revolution when you do? Why is it that you get the American Revolution when you do? Why do these things shift from feudalism to capitalism? and he says well it's when you get a class which is big enough and strong enough to overturn the one above it so you know the sort of merchant class the bourgeoisie class um you know these people who are like deeply frustrated and under colonial america or you know under the you know ancien regime in france they get big enough they get bad enough to overturn the next one and i think what people get wrong about marx and i think this is one of the things that the modern left gets wrong about Marx is that he's not really a moralizer.

40:40He's not saying, and it should be like this, and these people are virtuous and these people aren't. He's saying, no, no, no, this is the group of people who are strong enough to do it. Whereas the modern left, they go, we go, okay, well, we're going to organize the most marginalized people because that's the morally correct thing to do. It might be the morally correct thing to do, but I think Marx might say, well, that's unstrategic. I mean, he came up with the word lumpenproletariat for people like that, which wasn't very nice. So that was, again, something which liberals, they only understand it as one idea, one out against another idea.

41:10And I think it misses that sort of brute force class element. I'm going to mention some books. And Lewis is not going to cut these book references out at all, are you, Lewis? First thing in passing, you mentioned The Testament Prophet. My favourite non-fiction book is Francis Ween's biography of Karl Marx. It is an absolutely extraordinary and brilliant book. and Francis Ween is one of the best writers. And you mentioned the Testament prophets. There's a lovely line in Francis Ween's biography where he points out that Karl Marx, like the carpenter of Nazareth, Jesus, was a Jewish outcast who says, the poor you will always have with thee.

41:45And there's this weird sort of symmetry between Jesus and Marx in one respect. They also had, well, Marx had a bigger beard. But I also think there's something about that, you know, very Jewish tradition of argument and contestation that you see in Marx. Public argument as a way of kind of proceeding. One of the early bits of pushback I want to put to the idea of Marxism is one that John Gray, the kind of conservative realist philosopher would come up with, which is that he would say that Marxism, Hegel's thinking, Christianity, they're all basically, and the delusions of progress, they're all basically based on the same illusion, which is the illusion that history has a direction and a purpose.

42:24and actually we're just clumps of matter caught up in this mad Darwinian struggle who are sitting like, you know, adrift on history. Chimps with anxiety is how I thought about it. Why do you think that history does have a direction? See, I'm not always sure that history does have a direction. I mean, you know, Marx sort of lays it out, which is inevitably, you know, one class will get big enough and strong enough to overthrow the one above it. And from his, you know, stance in 1852, he's like, that's going to be the industrial proletariat. Spoiler alert, that doesn't happen. And actually, where you do have revolutions, really interestingly, is in these peasant economies in Russia, in China.

43:05You know, so that is in itself this rebuke to Marxist theory. Can I just put to you, from some of our listeners who are screaming and others who are saying, yes, finally, we've got a Marxist on the airwaves. Can I put to you in the spirit of Reithian in Parshadzi some objections to Marxism? and see what you say. The first is that there's an objection which says that Marxism is impossible to reconcile with human freedom and the yearning to be free. And obviously how you define freedom and liberty is very, very varied and complex. But what do you say to people who say that ultimately any Marxist system is going to impose on people limits to their autonomy and ability to pursue their own ends, their own goals for them and their families, which will make it unworkable?

43:48Well, look, there's a balance to be struck here. I think that the nature of living in human society means that there are limits to your autonomy and to your freedom all the time. We can't do exactly what we want because we've got to consider the good of the people around us. All right. We already have to live with that in some way. The thing I would say is that the tradition of Marxism I come from, libertarian Marxism, very influenced by Franco Berardi, the autonomists in Italy, it takes those what you might call liberal freedoms, freedom of expression, freedom of conscience, freedom of publication, freedom of assembly really, really seriously and goes like, you know, yes, we can have Marxism and collective responsibilities, but these what you might call liberal freedoms have to be also central to it.

44:31They're really, really important. And the last thing I'd say is that we have a very limited kind of freedom in this society. All right. Currently. I think we've got a really limited kind of freedom. I'm not even going to go into all of the clampdowns on freedom of speech that we see. All right. Because I think that that's obvious. In your book, which is interesting. But also we think of consumerism as a form of freedom. But actually it takes away other kinds of freedom and other kinds of choice. you know the existence of consumerism means that I can choose between infinite pairs of trainers you know made in a sweatshop somewhere but I can't choose to live in a world where you don't have like the great pacific garbage patch you know I can't choose to live in a world where the cleanliness of air and of water you know is is sacred I can choose myself not to look at porn I don't have the choice to live in a world which isn't shaped by porn or the expectations set by porn.

45:32So all of these things are quite limited. It's saying, well, you've got freedom over kind of what you do as a little atomized individual. But in terms of collective freedoms, the sort of freedom to shape what kinds of conditions you live in, that is highly, highly, highly curtailed. So what about the argument that actually the system of economics that has given that to the most people is global capitalism over the last 25 to 30 years? If you look at the mass movement of tens, hundreds of millions of rural, dare I say it, peasant Chinese to urban conturbations, or if you look at what happened in India.

46:07In 1991, Manmohan Singh, who's finance minister of India, later the extraordinary Sikh prime minister of India, he basically liberalised India, opened it up to global markets, plugged in hundreds of millions of workers and saw an extraordinary rise in not just GDP across India, but GDP per capita and transformed the lives of almost more than any other leader in modern history through capitalism. So, I mean, there's an interesting thing there about at what cost? And Marx talks about this. What cost? Well, for hundreds of millions of people in China and India over the last 20 years. Just on this, like very, very quickly, what I mean is Marx himself talks about capitalism as being one of the most generative, creative, revolutionising forces that has ever existed in human history, right?

46:49So I completely accept these things that you're saying, but there are also costs with it. One is a huge ecological cost, right? That we as a human species don't seem to be able to get a grip on. We are slowly and ever more quickly killing ourselves with climate change because we've unleashed this force that we can't seem to put back. And it is largely, just in terms of carbon, it is largely rich pollutants and poor people pay the price. Right. So I think that's one thing, which is like, yes, you have seen this huge reduction in absolute poverty, but there is an ecological cost. There is another one which is about, I suppose, when you have these huge waves of urbanization, you also have loss of kinship, loss of family life, loss of support, increases in anime, in depression, in feelings of separation from your fellow man.

47:45Marx puts it as all that is solid melts into where all these things that you think you value sort of evaporates into the ether. That is also an element of capitalism. And I also think that there is something which is Jodie Dean writes about very, very well, which is, yes, the history of the Soviet Union is the history of the gulags and purges and the security state. It's also the history of going from serfdom to outer space and the course of a single lifetime or a lifetime in a bit, which is one of the things which is rarely looked at. Or the history of the Soviet Union in terms of economic development and infrastructure projects in the global south.

48:25And this was, of course, the role of the non-aligned movement to sort of play off Washington and Moscow to get the best sort of deal in the 20th century. So I think there are aspects of the history of development where we don't look at the role of communism and communist powers. And also, I think we need to look at the sort of unleashing of potential that capitalism does in its fullest context as well and take into account the ecological price. and you mentioned that Marxism is this living instrument so it's absurd to apply 1848 was actually Communist Manifesto was 1848 it was just after the revolutions of 1848 and it's absurd to apply Marx writing then he wrote often living in Dean Street in Soto as Francis Ween's brilliant also off his face most of the time like can we just appreciate Carbuncles on his bottom pissed all the time him and Engels he lived most of his life in terrible debt to Engels who's his benefactor.

49:22And he would go up and down the Tottenham Court Road off his nuts, basically. He would have loved Twitter. I always think Karl Marx would have loved Twitter so much. He would have loved it, yeah. So do you go along with the idea, it sounds maybe banal and obvious given how you started out, but do you go along with the idea that we just need to begin with this sense, if you're thinking about the future of the left, that the working class ain't what it used to be? Oh, 100%. And one of the sociologists who I cite in the book is a guy called Dan Evans. And he wrote a book called Nation of Shopkeepers, The Rise of the Petit Bourgeoisie.

49:51And one of the things that he starts with, because he's a Marxist sociologist, he's from Porthcourt in Wales. And he was starting from the position of thinking about what his sort of like urban graduate left-wing comrades were saying about class and the kinds of people that he grew up with, like what their actual conditions and working lives were like and seeing that there was this big gap. And what he says is that Marx predicted that the artisan class, right, the self-employed class, that they would diminish and sort of fall into the ranks of the industrialised proletariat. That's not what's happened in this country.

50:25We've seen this huge rise in the number of people who are classed as self-employed. And what's interesting about that, Dan Evans says, is that you can sort of separate it into two groups. So on the one group, you've got your kitchen fitters, your scaffolders, your nail techs, you know, hairdressers, brickies, electricians, all of that kind of thing and then on the other hand you've got um you know downwardly mobile graduates living in cities um you know they've got laptop jobs right so it could be graphic design could be freelance copy editing could be something like that like picture the sort of um fixed gear bicycle in your head and you've got that person what's interesting is that both of these people are self-employed they occupy part of the same economic class but culturally geographically politically you know dispositionally they're really really really different um and i think that the left if you're again if you're a proper marxist and you're like all right i need to look at class conditions in this society you have to look at um you know what what dan evans calls the rise of the new petty bourgeoisie right you have to really examine like who these people are how they live the sort of texture of their lives i mean this is an idea from bordeaux right the habitus the life world that they live in um habitus is about the idea of cultural capital isn't it well so cultural capital um is sort of separate but related right so habitus is your life world it's like all the things that you do so one of the things that um dan evansides is part of the habitus of of you know your sort of plumber taxi driver electrician is carry cash everywhere carry cash right an urban graduate doesn't carry cash right everything's on card like these like little things now on the phone yeah do you think there's a playoff between solidarity and diversity it is really difficult to do what the left has done for the last 15 years and say we're going to take the most marginalized person right so um you know you're female queer immigrant muslim disabled, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and say, because you're so marginalized by all these points of your identity, we're going to make you, by virtue of those identity characteristics alone, we're going to make you the center of our movement.

52:45Because that person is a legitimate part of the coalition, right? They're a legitimate political actor, but by their very nature, they're not going to be representative of most people, right? And there's also a bit about how this relates to marxism which is do you want to defend the weakest in society or do you want to organize those with the best chance of transforming society so the belgian workers party for instance they've they came out of a communist party in the 1950s um they do really interesting work um like as a party they run health clinics because their thinking is we've got to demonstrate our usefulness to the community before we ask for their vote one of the things that Peter Merton says, who's their leader, is, look, you kind of have to organise around the strongest part of the working class and not the weakest.

53:36Just like strategically, that's the thing you've got to do. Peter Singer's view of Marx, and I wonder if it's yours, is that Marx was better at description than prescription. Oh, yeah. He said, I won't write recipes for the cookshops of the future. People in the world of politics would say, I mean, one of them would say you're having a cake and eating it too, which is, I guess, not, I mean, and he wasn't a Marxist, but people would say that's where Marxism falls short, which is in its confrontation with reality. I mean, I know you're not a huge fan of David Lammy and Keir Starmer and David Lammy's kind of idea of progressive realism, but they would say that real politics, which is the politics not of the seminar room and the podcast, but the politics of the messy compromises of the street and democratic coalitions requires yes compromise but also requires a kind of engagement with the fact that lots of people disagree with you and you have to try and mobilize them as well as your own supporters and look i i think that um you know they've got maybe perhaps a sort of weberian view of politics right the low slow you know the long slow drilling they need a reading list aren't we gonna need a reading list lewis a reading list there'll be a reading list at the end of this podcast for our listeners um you know max weber we're talking yeah he writes about in politics as a vocation right that he was he was very skeptical of the sort of romance of revolutionaries um and i think you're right that marx gives you very few instructions for applied politics but luckily we're not only reading marx and we don't live in 1848 and we don't live in 1848 i mean there's a really interesting thing if you sort of think about the bibliographies of different writers right Marx is in conversation with economists but Lenin is in conversation with um Clausewitz and he's sort of applying military tactics.

55:24Carl von Clausewitz a military famous military theorist. And so what what Lenin is doing is that he's taking um the sort of framework the intellectual framework of military strategy and applying it to politics um and I think that we can all agree Lenin got the job done that he was that he set out to do so I think that you know you're right in terms of thinking that Marx isn't isn't prescriptive really he's not prescriptive but there are other Marxists and Marxist inflected writers and thinkers and figures who are I just want to put to you not because it's my view I want to put to you the argument that lots of people who see themselves as champions of the working class, people who have very different politics to you, Tommy Robinson perhaps.

56:08But their argument is that what has really destroyed the working class in many, many parts of our cities is the mass influx of people from different cultures, some of them really, many of them law-abiding, wonderful people, but different people from different ethnic minorities who essentially have undermined the social solidarity of the old working class. So I think on that, I think there are elements of truth and I think there's elements of bullshit. So the first thing is that if you want to look at things strictly through a class lens, you have to acknowledge that immigrants coming to this country are working class themselves.

56:44What does Marx say? The working class has no nation. All right. So you also have to look at the sort of exploitation of labor on a global scale. And he's sort of saying, you know, this is the this is the train of politics. It's huge. It's a class terrain, not just a national one. but accepting that we have to work within the polity we have the polity we have is the nation state um i think that there are you know certainly elements of truth that when you have lots of people coming you know lots of different languages lots of different cultural perspectives that work of going how do we create a shared political point of view solidarity to organize is difficult right You know, it's not necessarily difficult, but this is a challenge in it.

57:26It's a challenge in it. And I think that's totally fair enough. The thing is, is that, you know, the history of the trade union movement in this country is really contested, right? It wasn't as if the trade union movement were like, brown people, great, join. There were fights, but black and brown people did participate. You know, you think about, you know, Bristol bus drivers, for instance. You think about the Grunwick strike, who are these, you know, little Asian ladies who are, you know, going on strike in a photo development factory. Then you had Scargill and the National Union of Mine Workers coming down from Yorkshire.

58:02You know, you've got lesbians and gay support, the miners, right? Very different kinds of people joining in solidarity. You know, the thing about solidarity and diversity is that, you know, solidarity is the tool we have as leftists to overcome human differences. You wouldn't need solidarity if you're all the same. You'd just be the same. But differences, whether it's sexuality, geography, culture, ethnicity, solidarity is the tool that we have to bridge those gaps. And I suppose this is where I am a humanist. John Gray, who doesn't like humanism, would say that it's an article of faith that you believe you can, through solidarity, overcome human differences.

58:41That human differences is such a fundamental, irreversible, tangible fact of our existence. Not just human differences, but the differences in our aims, goals, desires, ambitions. That the attempt to overcome it through solidarity was always fanciful, but is now utterly implausible given mass demographic change. Well, look, the thing is, is that I don't think you can necessarily overcome all human difference, right? It's about where can you have a state of rubbing along and healthy contestation. I'm with Aristotle. He thinks man is inherently a political animal. I'm with Aristotle on almost all things.

59:17The Nicomachean Ethics and my communist manifesto for you, I think the Nicomachean Ethics and the idea of virtue is my secular morality. I just think that man is a political animal. Because we're so social, because we depend on each other for our survival, we have to contest things. and it can be really difficult. And I just think it's part of who we are. But I don't think that race or ethnicity has to be the dividing line of difference. I mean, firstly, the fastest growing ethnic group in this country is mixed race people. What does that tell you, right? Like my children. Right? I mean, like, yeah, I'm in a family where everyone has had a marriage which is mixed either by religion, race or both.

59:57Every single person. And I just, my theory is that we just want all the cuisines. We're like, we just want all the cuisines of the family. I've got two final questions. One is, what does it mean to you to be radical? I don't know. I don't really think about it that much. You've described yourself as radical several times. And I don't think you do that just because you're on a podcast called Radical. I'm trying to think about it. I think a lot of other people would describe you as radical. I'm interested in... You know, Angela Davis says that... One for the book, one for the list. Stick it on the list.

1:00:26Stick it on the list. She describes being radical as to grasp at the root of something. That's where it comes from. It comes from Latin for the root, yeah. And that's what I try to do in my writing and my thinking. And I don't always get it right. I think that just like everyone else, I can be prone to distraction or looking at something at the surface level. But the thing that I really strive to do in every aspect of my work, whether it's writing or whether it's, you know, steering Novara Media to what it could be, it's about getting to the root of something. Why is it good to be radical? Why is it good to be radical?

1:00:56Because I think all of us know that the way things are, it's not the best way it could be. And I think there is a restlessness about being human, this restlessness about us, this striving for something more, for something better, for the widening of horizons. and I think that to be radical and to think about, you know, what are ways in which we can transform our social conditions and use our agency to flourish. I think that's how we tap into the essence of our species. Such a pleasure chatting to you. It's really nice talking to you. It's really nice talking to you and the book is called Minority Rule, Adventures in the Culture War.

1:01:35It is. There's a paperback edition coming out as well. Wonderful. Thank you for coming. It's wonderful to chat to you. Thank you.

1:01:45Well, what a pleasure and privilege to talk to someone who's so engaging, thinks so hard about the past, the present and the future of our country, and who's a Marxist with the humility to accept that she doesn't have all the answers. You know, there's a couple of ironies in what Ash Sarkar was saying, I think. The first is that it's often been one of the criticisms of Karl Marx. If you read what Peter Singer, the Australian philosopher, says about him, for instance, that he was much better, Marx was much better at description than prescription. Much better at his sort of critique of where capitalism was going wrong than in really explaining in detail what an alternative to capitalism would look like.

1:02:26Obviously, he was an advocate for communism, but there is a sense in which lots of people have criticised Marx for being better at the detailed failings of capitalism than providing a really detailed picture of what an alternative to capitalism would look like. And I suppose there is a sense in which Ash, being a proper Marxist, goes along the same train of thought. So she said that, you know, she was very honest and humble about it. And she said that she too, like Marx, is better at description than prescription. She doesn't have all the answers about what a future Britain would look like, though she advocates a libertarian form of communism.

1:03:01And I thought that was kind of attractively humble. And yet the irony is she does have a particular position that she advocates, at least for those on the left of British politics. She does prescribe to them where they think where she thinks they ought to go. And that is away from identity politics. I think it's so interesting, not because Ash is a young Muslim woman of Asian heritage, but because she's a thoughtful and smart thinker about the left. It's so interesting that in her view, identity politics has been a dead end. And the reason it's been a dead end is because in advocating, for often compassionate, for often good reasons, the interests of various minority groups, the left has been distracted.

1:03:41It's turned its head away from the fundamental mission in politics, which is to mobilize the majority. Certainly if you're not an anarchist and you believe in democratic government, as she does. So I just thought that was so interesting. It's one of the central arguments of her book that in the end, minority rule or identity politics, this tendency to encourage a sense of victimhood or low agency, perhaps a culture of grievance among some groups, often though it is motivated by a compassionate feeling of making sure they're not excluded. That has been a problem for the left in her view. And if they're going to get into government, if a more radical leftish government is going to be formed in Britain, it needs to remember what the majority of Britons want rather than what different groups of minorities want.

1:04:24And actually, look, I just want to offer a little clarification about something that Ash said about Keir Starmer and Thornberry. She said that in separate interviews, in the pretty immediate aftermath of October 7th, 2023, in separate interviews, they had basically indicated their view that Netanyahu, Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, has the right to cut off food, fuel, and water. Now, I just think it's important to be really clear and to clarify for your benefit what actually happened. So in an interview with LBC on the 11th of October, 2023, so this is four days after those horrific, horrific attacks on the 7th of October, Starmer was asked if cutting off power and water was an appropriate response from Israel.

1:05:04And he said, and I quote, Israel does have that right. It is an ongoing situation. Obviously, everything should be done within international law, but I don't want to step away from the core principles that Israel has a right to defend herself and Hamas bears responsibility for these terrorist acts. And after facing criticism, Starmer denied that he said Israel had the right to cut off power and water and said he was actually referring to Israel's right to defend itself. And then in a separate interview the following day, I'm just doing this because I really want you to have all the facts. I want us to be very, very clear about what actually happened.

1:05:34You can make up your own mind. But in an interview the following day on the 12th of October on Newsnight, Thornberry was asked if cutting off food, water and electricity is within international law. And she said, and I quote, I think that Israel has an absolute right to defend itself against terrorism. My colleague at the BBC, Victoria Derbyshire, the presenter said, that's not the question I asked. And she said, Emily Thornberry said, it is an answer to the question that you've asked. And I think it's an appropriate one at this time. So just a little clarification there on what Keir Starmer and Thornberry said when talking about Benjamin Netanyahu in separate interviews in the wake of the 7th of October 2023.

1:06:16To tell us what you think about Ash Sarkar's radical ideas or to suggest some of your own or indeed your guests, potential future guests for this podcast, you can WhatsApp us on 0330 123 9480 or email us on radical at bbc.co .uk. OK, here are some messages that we've had about the episode we did last week with Dario Amadei. He is the co-founder and CEO of the AI company, the AI giant called Anthropic. And I'm really grateful to everyone who has sent in messages. Here are a couple of absolute crackers. So Tim in Sheffield says, I love not knowing whether what I'm about to hear is going to delight or infuriate me or both.

1:06:51Thank you, Tim. You've absolutely bought into the mission of this podcast. Wonderful. Tim goes on. Yesterday, I listened to Amal's conversation with Dario Amadei and it was fascinating. One point in particular raised a question for me, and that was his suggestion that LLMs, that's large language models, may come to replace a large proportion of entry-level white-collar jobs. I get the point that LLMs can likely perform sophisticated but largely similar numerate tasks or those involving significant volumes of broadly similar information, and that they may be less prone to fatigue or unforced error than humans, as well as be cheaper at point of use.

1:07:24So far, it's not radically different from replacing manual tasks with machines. There was some pain and anguish at the start of the Industrial Revolution, but I think received wisdom is that we're better off for it. Certainly is true on that point, Tim. My concern, Tim says, with replacing jobs that are currently deemed to require brainpower is that we will be reducing the talent pool for recruitment or promotion to the next level. So Dario Amadei, for those who didn't hear him, by the way, please go back and listen. It's a really, I mean, it's a really extraordinary conversation with someone who is literally designing and building the future we're all stumbling into.

1:07:56Darryl Amadei said that half of entry-level white-collar jobs in fields like finance or consulting or law could be replaced because AI would do it faster, better, cheaper without being prone to fatigue. But of course, Tim, you're right. If you don't have entry-level jobs being done by people in their 20s for, I don't know, 10 years before they go on to management and leadership roles, whatever, how do you know they're ready for those management and leadership roles? That's a fantastic point, Tim. Thank you very much indeed. Peter has also been in touch and he says,

1:08:52those most at risk right now. And with governments who appear totally beguiled by AI also seem blind to the fact that the resulting fewer jobs will mean a lesser tax take and an even greater strain on our human support services. Some will say that's an overreaction. It's just like the internet and we survived that, but it clearly is not. AI is a very real threat, maybe not in the way movies have portrayed, but more the economic impacts of almost a third of all jobs either being severely diminished or disappearing altogether. Peter, thank you so much. It sounds to me, Peter, like you accept the premise of what Dario Amadei is saying, which is a kind of twin-faceted thing.

1:09:28Amadei said he thinks we could see explosive economic growth of up to 5%. He put that number out there. And that would mostly come from amazing productivity gains. In this country and many other Western democracies, we've had very low productivity. Lots of disputes about whether or not we're measuring it correctly, but set them aside. We've had low productivity for around 20 years, lots of people think that we could get explosive economic growth through better productivity, which just means output per worker, if you have fantastic AI operating, but that that explosive growth will be unevenly distributed.

1:09:58And it is a fundamental question about this era of agentic AI that we're stumbling into, which is if you have work done without workers, where do the tax receipts come from? And that's exactly the point you're getting at, Peter I think it's a very important one I do I've got to say honestly I'll get trouble saying it I love the idea that in the seven days between episodes on this podcast particularly over the weekend there are people all around this country all around the world who are listening to Radical engaging with our great thinkers encountering dangerous and difficult ideas and who are sending us messages and I love that idea particularly because last weekend I was not listening to Radical I mean in a way I don't need to listen to it because I've already recorded it but I was Exactly.

1:10:41So two of my daughters, Jamaica, who's just turned six and Love Day, who's just turned four, have the same birthday two years apart. And so last weekend for me was, how can I put this, an avalanche of kids' birthday parties. And if I don't want to be rude because I'm very blessed and I love them unconditionally. But I will say this, if I never see another unicorn-themed bouncy castle again in my life, I'll be quite happy for it. That is it for this episode of Radical with Amol Rajan. This week on political thinking, Nick is speaking to the man who replaced Angela Rayner as Housing Secretary, Steve Reid.

1:11:20That should be a real good one. You can hear that conversation when it drops on Friday by searching for Political Thinking with Nick Robinson on BBC Sounds, which is also where you can, of course, find this marvellous podcast, Radical with Amol Rajan. Thank you so much for listening and speak to you next week. Goodbye.

1:11:46If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.