Tibor Rutar on Capitalism, Inequality, and Exploitation

To what extent has income inequality worsened over the past few years and decades? Have the rich been getting richer and the poor poorer? Has capitalism led to a rise in worker exploitation? Is neoliberalism responsible for the rise in democratic backsliding throughout the world?

Tibor Rutar is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Maribor and the writer behind the Substack "Political Economy, Stats, and Society." And his biography makes this conversation immediately more interesting: he used to be a serious Marxist. In the aftermath of the Great Recession, the appeal of big structural explanations gave him the sense that Marxism could diagnose what was wrong with capitalism and propose something better.

And then, over time, he started changing his mind.

In this episode, I got a chance to speak with him about why he shifted away from Marxism, the difference between neoliberal capitalism and social democratic capitalism, and the effect that globalism has had on working-class Americans.

Show Notes

"The China Syndrome: Local Labor Market Effects of Import Competition in the United States" from the American Economic Review

"27. Tibor Rutar - Capitalism for Realists" from Ideas Having Sex

"The quiet vindication of Fukuyama" by Tibor Rutar, Political Economy, Stats, and Society