Capitalism Hits Home with Dr. Harriet Fraad

In this episode of CHH, Dr. Harriet Fraad traces back the origin of gender roles to the beginning of civilization to explore how and why certain types of work have been historically and traditionally performed by the female gender.

In this week's episode of Capitalism Hits Home, Dr. Fraad continues her discussion of the personal effects of inflation. In a country that bombards all of us, even our youngest children, with images of wealth and prosperity as a symbol of worthiness, it is humiliating to struggle to make ends meet. Our culture blames the individual for being stuck in a cycle of poverty, yet most of our policies push people further into hardship. It's easy to feel despair and want to give up hope, but, as we wake up to the reality that our government and workplaces don't have our backs, we can join together with the masses—our fellow employees—drawing inspiration from the recent wave of labor protests and unionization efforts across the US and demand better conditions.

In this episode of Capitalism Hits Home, Dr. Fraad is joined by Prof. Richard Wolff, host of Economic Update to discuss inflation and the collateral damage it has caused Americans. In the first part, Prof. Wolff explains what inflation is and the real reasons behind the rising prices. Dr. Fraad then explains what inflation means to the majority of people. She explores the personal, social and psychological effects the high cost of living has caused.

"Denial is a way the brain copes with a painful reality." In this episode of Capitalism Hits Home, Dr. Fraad continues her discussion of how Americans are coping with a falling empire: by not facing it. Human brains have the capacity to look away or shift blame when facing reality is too difficult, mainly through denial, dissociation, projection, and transference. Fraad looks at the war in Ukraine as a prime example of how America is falling and how our coping strategies are getting in the way of confronting that truth.

Welcome to Season 6! In this episode of Capitalism Hits Home, Dr. Fraad dissects a harsh reality: the American empire is falling and the signs of its decline are everywhere. High divorce rates, low wages and high unemployment, mass shootings, shortened lifespan, election denials, price gouging, and war are all side effects of this American decline. We are not the empire we once were. When will we wake up to this reality?

In this episode of Capitalism Hits Home, Dr. Fraad continues her discussion of the impact of broken social bonds on our mental health. This week she focuses on government and the ways in which our American government has failed to protect us— with huge increases in poverty, low wages, unjust workplace practices, inflation, excessive military expenditures, and more. Many Americans are feeling abandoned, but we must unite with hope and cooperation to demand better conditions.

In this episode of Capitalism Hits Home, Dr. Fraad speaks on the value of connection for our emotional, political, psychological and social lives as human beings. We're seeing more and more disconnection as the pandemic draws on, remote work increases, and our state fails to take care of our needs. Connection is what separates us from other animals, and has always been what has allowed humans to survive throughout history. Yet, Fraad argues, our capitalist system is set on driving each and every one of us apart.

In this episode of Capitalism Hits Home, Dr. Fraad traces the history of the traditional family unit and offers a class analysis of how it has shifted and evolved since the 1700s. Fraad discusses the feudal arrangement of families, the impact of the French Revolution and WWII, and how issues of family form are being disputed in the political sphere today.

In this episode of Capitalism Hits Home, Dr. Fraad argues against capitalist values like individualism and freedom. Too often those in charge, the "great male heroes," receive all the credit for achievements built on the backs of so many. Fraad suggests that freedom through connection, gratitude for those who do the work to build our lives, celebration of our common goals and interests and our power to realize them are the real motivators and values of our society.

In this episode of Capitalism Hits Home, Dr. Fraad dissects the bizarre American adoration of the British monarchy following Queen Elizabeth II's death. The monarchy symbolizes the absence of social mobility, hierarchy, and the appropriation of public money for private wealth. What do ordinary people get out of this unequal system and why are we all so comfortable with it?

**CW: This episode contains discussions of rape** In this episode of Capitalism Hits Home, Dr. Fraad takes a look at capitalist-driven loneliness. Crime is often thought of as a person breaking the law, but what about the crimes capitalism allows, and even celebrates? In our workplaces we get ripped off, monitored, and lose our humanity. Commodities are sold to us only to get recalled, addictive pain-killers destroy lives with zero accountability, powerful men get away with sexual assault, and politicians are bought out and no longer serve everyday people. Capitalism infiltrates every corner of our lives and leaves us feeling utterly alone and helpless. What is the antidote to this state-sponsored loneliness? Connection. We must join unions, movements, and connect with our fellow Americans to demand a system that supports the masses.

**CW: This episode features discussions of sexual assault and police brutality** In this episode of Capitalism Hits Home, Dr. Fraad draws on her therapeutic expertise to discuss psychological mechanisms people unconsciously rely on when facing a reality that is too much to bear. These tools—dissociation, denial, and projection—can happen in both our personal and political lives. Fraad looks at personal traumas from clients as well as societal traumas, such as war and police brutality, to explore how commonly humans rely on dissociation, denial, and projection to not face hard truths. In order to heal, both personally and as a society, however, we must learn to look at and call out these injustices. These psychological mechanisms serve an important purpose for survival, but the realities still exist and continue to take a toll.

In this episode of Capitalism Hits Home, Dr. Fraad continues her discussion of the recent Supreme Court decisions and asks: why were these decisions made when they do not align with the majority of American's beliefs? When a system fails for the mass of people, fascism can develop to ensure that system continues. As the US becomes more and more divided, Fraad argues that we must remember our commonality as the employee class. Leftist victories in countries such as Chile, Colombia, and France remind us that when people unite and form coalitions, they win. We, the mass of Americans, must unite each of our movements—climate justice, BLM, feminism, LGBTQIA+, Indigenous rights, socialism, and more—in order to build a better world that reflects our values.

In this episode of Capitalism Hits Home, Dr. Fraad looks at the recent dramatic US Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. She argues that all of the SCOTUS decisions for 2022 share a common purpose. First, they help to create a capitalist authoritarian state enforced by unaccountable police. Secondly they divide the mass of people. They antagonize divisions between people and fuel culture wars. The goal is to create hierarchical and hostile divisions that keep Americans from uniting as an employee class and winning

"We have to accept that empire and militarism is not what's going to save the world, it's what's going to destroy the planet." In this episode of Capitalism Hits Home, Dr. Fraad continues discussing America's problem with gun violence. Because the US never converted to a peacetime economy after WWII, it continues to spend billions waging wars, stockpiling military equipment, and funding overseas conflicts. This militaristic culture enables domestic terrorism and mass violence. To counteract this, we need to encourage our many separate social movements to join together and fight to redistribute the excessive military budget to universal health care, child care, affordable housing, decent wages, climate justice, and more.

In this episode of Capitalism Hits Home, Dr. Fraad looks at mass shootings in the US and in particular the most recent tragedy in Uvalde, Texas. She examines the psychological, emotional, political, and economic reasons the US is the world leader in mass murder, and suggests solutions to end this cycle of violence and death.

"Capitalism is really bad for our health." In this episode of Capitalism Hits Home, Dr. Fraad discusses mental health through the lens of a 4-legged table of connection: intimate relationships, friends, larger groups such as PTAs, work, or political groups, and connection to your country and shared humanity with the world. Under capitalism, Fraad explains, each leg of the table is made very shaky. With abuse, alcoholism, crime, and suicide all going up, as well as unemployment and illness rising, it's clear that our social fabric is breaking down. Cooperation and connection, the most important contributors to mental health, aren't protected under capitalism. In a system that allows for such deprivation, our only antidotes are to have hope and create connection through political activeness, strikes, unionizations, and more. Hope is not passive, it can be an active way to build a better world.

With rising inflation rates, mass resignations, poor working conditions, and expensive housing, it's clear that capitalism in the US is falling apart. To counter this, the right wing is working hard to repress each and every marginalized group in order to keep the working class divided. In this episode of Capitalism Hits Home, Dr. Fraad looks at that fascist push to maintain a hierarchy in family, faith, morality, and nationalism. One way the Right does this is by attacking women and LGBTQ+ rights with abortion bans and anti-trans bills. In this legal stage of early fascism in the US, we need to take cues from other countries that successfully countered right-wing attacks on body autonomy by creating coalitions and unified fronts.

In this episode of Capitalism Hits Home, Dr. Fraad continues her discussion of mental health. She argues that we need to do away with the medical model of mental health that diagnoses depression as a brain disease and seeks to treat it exclusively with medication rather than acknowledging the societal and systemic conditions which lead to this chronic unhappiness. Fraad contends that human misery stems from a lack of meaningful connections to others, society and the world. Capitalism keeps people isolated and often unable to satisfy basic human needs. To truly address the mental health crisis the US faces, we need to create a system built on collective resources, collaboration, and connection.

"One out of four American women take antidepressant drugs." In this episode, Dr. Fraad addresses how mental health is diagnosed and treated in the US. Human suffering and misery have been systematically categorized as disorders for which treatment with medication is needed and prescribed by psychiatrists. She argues that the collusion of medical doctors, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and hospitals driven by their quest for profits, are to blame. *Disclaimer: d@w does not provide medical advice of any nature, specific or general, nor the suggestion of any diagnosis or treatment, nor the endorsement of any physician or medical facility mentioned herein. Nothing in this podcast is intended to or should serve as a substitute for medical advice or diagnoses rendered to you by your individual doctor or other health care provider. Only a licensed physician should evaluate your situation, provide a diagnosis, or render other medical advice to you, and you should act only upon the advice of such physician.

During its inception, the Women's Liberation Movement was rooted in anti-capitalist and anti-racist ideals, pushing for equality for all. Today, however, feminism tends to focus mainly on gender equality. In this episode of Capitalism Hits Home, Dr. Fraad discusses how that fracture happened and the deliberate forces behind it. Now more than ever we need an intersectional and collaborative approach to our social movements, with involvement from everyone.

Our nation's racism was a deliberate policy developed in response to rebellions in the 1600s when white indentured servants, free black men and women and enslaved black people rose up together against their exploitation. In this episode of Capitalism Hits Home, Dr. Fraad shares the story of this hugely important, yet often untaught, historical moment and its implications today.

**CW: RAPE, SEX TRAFFICKING** In this episode of Capitalism Hits Home, Dr. Fraad brings a Marxian class analysis to a highly controversial topic: sex work. Though illegal in the United States, sex work is all around—from brothels and sex trafficking to the sugar industry and communes. Fraad traces a brief history of sexuality and exploitation from antiquated marital expectations and slavery to the choices women make today to be single, not have children, or find a sugar daddy to fund higher education and stay independent. When looked at through a class analysis, it becomes clear that the issue of morality need not be focused on the work itself, but rather, on the level of exploitation the sex worker endures.

**CW: THIS EPISODE DISCUSSES ABORTION AND FORCED STERILIZATION** Control of women's reproduction is a common weapon in the hands of the Right Wing. In the episode of Capitalism Hits Home, Dr. Harriet Fraad breaks down the fight for reproductive rights by looking at abortion access and forced sterilization. These issues are fundamentally about class and control: forcing women to have unwanted pregnancies, denying immigrants and minorities the right to reproduce, keeping women out of the labor force and reliant on men, and dividing the masses so organization and unity is impossible.

Declining living standards, joblessness and pronounced inequality are leaving Americans feeling disconnected, helpless and depressed. In this episode, Dr. Fraad talks about the 3 Ds: depression, dissociation and denial, Americans are resorting to as coping strategies for their stark decline in health and living standards. Fraad offers examples of more productive and beneficial ways to cope and heal.

In this episode of Capitalism Hits Home, Dr. Fraad continues an ongoing critique of the for-profit health care system in the US and examines some of its deadly effects. Overdose numbers are far higher than in any other rich country and could have been avoided if it weren't for the collusion between drug companies, pharmacies, doctors, hospitals, and insurance companies. Dr. Fraad looks at what other countries have done to mitigate the effects of their own drug epidemics, and calls for a more humane and just approach to addiction and treatment in the US, if only capitalism could get out of the way.

Welcome to Season 5 of Capitalism Hits Home! In this episode, Dr. Fraad explores identity politics by looking into the many facets of her own identity. 99% of us share an identity as exploited, oppressed people. We have different experiences and extents of exploitation. How can we honor our identities while remaining unified as a human race? Can we reclaim identity politics to include a human identity that connects everyone in order to create a safer, freer, and more inclusive world?

In this episode of Capitalism Hits Home, Dr. Fraad looks at the epidemic of deaths in the United States. She examines the five interlocking forces of our for-profit health care system—pharmaceutical companies, pharmacy chains, hospitals, insurance companies, and doctors—that have colluded to bring on the flood of both Covid-19 and overdose deaths. Fraad argues that the solution to this crisis lies outside of the capitalist, profit-based system.

The UN released its 2021 World Happiness Report. In this episode of CHH, Dr. Fraad answers why as world's richest nation, the US is not even one of the happiest. What do Americans need to do to be happier people? Fraad believes it can be done and tells us how.

In this episode of CHH, Dr. Fraad talks about the strikes sweeping the nation. The mass resignations, demonstrations and work stoppages reveal a huge worker dissatisfaction with American capitalism.

In this episode of CHH, Dr. Fraad talks about the 40 Million Americans face eviction after Oct. 31, 2021. What kind of society treats the right to shelter, and with that the right to life as a commodity? Should that kind of society exist? Eviction raises just that question.

Rape is a hate crime. This podcast analyses the forces that shape US rape in gender, culture, psychology and capitalism.

Capitalism is a class system of a small employer class making profit from the labor of a huge class of employees, who depend on employers for survival. Patriarchy is a system in which men are entitled to appropriate services from women who are considered less than fully human. Both systems interact to shape rampant sexual abuse. In this episode of CHH, Dr. Fraad explores expressions of patriarchy and capitalism in the much publicized cases of Cuomo, Cosby, Weinstein, and Epstein.

In the episode of CHH, Dr. Fraad talks about the importance of celebrating Labor, which is essential to life. But she argues that we need to go beyond and learn what our labor history is - something which is absent from our education.

In this episode of CHH, Dr. Fraad addresses the "labor shortage" in the US today. 9.2 million jobs remain open. Republicans and Democrats differ on what to do about this supposed shortage. 44% of US workers are low pay workers constantly struggling to survive. Maybe they just won't stand for it!

In this episode of CHH, Dr. Fraad explores the concept of cruel optimism from Lauren Berlant's book. American culture teaches us to look on the bright side. Nonetheless, the blight side of US life is emerging. The media, corporate advertisement-driven as it is, hides the reasons why pandemic and recession blight spreads. People, and particularly men, are driven mad. They reach for their guns to reassert their supremacy. Reflexive optimism turns cruel.

On this week's CHH, Dr. Fraad is joined by psychotherapist and author Tess Fraad-Wolff to talk about celebrity pop artist Britney Spears. Spears' plight captures our attention because she personifies American suffering. Her exploited, adolescent, coy, sugary sexuality presents her as an object of men's desire without her own desire. Spears represents the gender regression of the Right Wing. Her state of exploitation, earning millions that her boss-father-slavemaster appropriates. We identify because Britney's father's strategy is the strategy of US capitalism to control the American people: isolate, medicate, and appropriate. No wonder we are riveted.

In this episode of CHH, Dr. Fraad talks about the revolutionary class transformation experienced n the household from feudalism to other class forms, the independent household and the communist or communal household. She argues that many current political struggles such as struggles over abortion rights, birth control, and LGBTQ rights are in large part struggles over the conditions of existence for household feudalism and other household class formations.

In this episode of CHH, Dr. Fraad defines what class is and explores where it has hit in America. America has included 4 class formations: slavery, feudalism, capitalism, and communism. Except for the brief period of the New Deal, we have not experienced socialism, where a strong state regulates capitalism to provide crucial public support for its citizens. Dr. Fraad argues that, surprisingly, we have practiced feudalism in the household for most of our history.

We are back with a new season of CHH! In this episode of CHH, Dr. Fraad explores the question of identity politics. Identity politics can be liberating for those who identify as women, people of color, or GLBTQ members. Those identities need to be called out and claimed with pride. But Fraad asks why is our class identity excluded? Why limit and divide human beings when alliances can be made to create a powerful class identity movement that honors all of our identities?

In this episode of CHH, Dr. Fraad discusses the most virulent examples of American violence: our world dominance in mass shootings and rape. She argues that violence converts the connection of people from their mutually acknowledged need for each other into a relationship of inequality, dominance and submission. Our goal is to break all arbitrary and hierarchical divisions between people. That equality and mutuality will save America.

America's Children are the source of omnipresent sentimental solicitude. At the same time, they are in fact massively neglected and in trouble. Dr. Fraad explores the suffering of American children and what can be done to change that trouble and restore joy to children, and their parents as well.

Where did our family form come from and how is it doing now? This episode of Capitalism Hits Home looks at what is happening in America's families. As Americans, we present ourselves as a family centered nation. However, our families are certainly not the center of our economic, political, or legal support systems. In fact, they are in deep trouble.Supports are needed and possible.

On this week's CHH, Dr. Fraad and Prof. Forlano take on the NRA and militarism. The massive well funded lobbying of the NRA, disguised as a non-profit, has paid for friendly lawmakers.We can change that and enact and enforce laws to spur connection and fight male violence. We can change the culture of violence from gun shows to the glorification of violence in the media. We can join the rest of the world in emphasizing peace and negotiation on every level. We know how to do it!

On this week's CHH, Dr. Fraad and Prof. Forlano talk about the intersection of capitalism with mass shootings. Why has the US had more than one mass shooting every day for a month? We are outliers. No other developed nation has had more than 18 mass shootings in the last 50 years. The shooters are overwhelmingly male. Fraad and Forlano look at the mutually shaping influences of capitalism, the NRA and guns sales, along with mass outsourcing of well paid male jobs, gender dislocation for men, and American retreat from connection with others in unions, bowling leagues, community organizations, and families. These combine with and feed narcissism, a capitalist affliction which hides our mutual connection with one another.

The movement to impeach New York's Governor Cuomo raises complex issues. Cuomo's sexually inappropriate gestures towards 10 of the women he employed, does not match the rape and sexual assault cases against Trump. While Cuomo's behavior is inappropriate and sexist, is it criminal? Dr. Fraad and Prof. Forlano talk about this, the corruption in US politics and the polarization of America.

Biden's 2 trillion dollar "American Jobs Plan" includes a $400 billion dollar commitment to support America's care economy. This plan lifts the salaries of America's badly underpaid domestic workers, home health aides, nurses aides, children's daycare workers, preschool teachers, caretakers for the elderly and disabled, food providers, and many others in essential but low paid jobs. What these crucial workers share is that they are overwhelmingly women and women of color. Capitalists have exploited women's inferior gender position to profit from their unpaid and poorly paid labor. This plan addresses those class/gender issues.

This is part 4 of the 8-part series on capitalist commodification, Fraad and Forlano talk about shelter as a basic human need. 500,000 Americans are homeless, countless others face impossibly high rents.

In this part 3 of the 8-part series on capitalist commodification, Fraad and Forlano talk about the need for healthy food for basic human survival. Making food a capitalist commodity for profit is leaving our rich nation's citizens, and especially our children, hungry. How do other nations feed their people? What can we do about America's hungry people? Fraad and Forlano explore the answers to these questions.

In this second episode of the 8-part series on capitalist commodification, Fraad and Forlano discuss water rights. 8.8 million people in Texas are still having issues with their water supply. Capitalists have taken control of and privatized a basic human right and need, the access to a safe and clean water supply.