[Speaker 1]

Good evening, everyone, and welcome to tonight's debate between professors Andrew Kleiman and Per Bieland on what makes a free society. Andrew Kleiman is professor emeritus of economics at Pace University in New York, author of The Failure of Capitalist Production, Underlying Causes of the Great Recession, and Reclaiming Marx's Capital, a refutation of the myth of inconsistency.

Per Bieland is Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship and Records Johnson's Professor of Free Enterprise School of Entrepreneurship, Oklahoma State University. Author of The Seen, The Unseen, and The Unrealized, How Regulations Affect Our Everyday Lives and the Problem of Production, a New Theory of the Firm, as well as a regular contributor of articles and op-eds for the Mises Institute.

the leading source for Austrian and free market economics worldwide. We're very happy and honored to have such a huge turnout, both physically and online. So if you're not here, but instead see me on YouTube, please remember to click like and subscribe. Since you're going to be watching this for about two hours, you might as well do so right away.

Thank you. This event is a joint collaboration between Marxist Humanist Initiative and Bubla. Marxist Humanist Initiative is an international organization based on the philosophy of Karl Marx as further developed by Raya Dinaevskaya's Marxist Humanism. It holds that working people's emancipation from capitalist exploitation and oppression must be their own act.

It works to forge a new unity of philosophy and organization in which mass movements striving for freedom lay hold of Marxist philosophy of revolution and recreate society on its basis. For more information on MHI and Marxist humanism, approach Ravi over there at the book table during the break or after the debate or on our website at marxisthumanistinitiative.org.

Bubbla is an alternative media outlet run by libertarians. The goal of the project is to be a counterweight of statist and left-wing bias in mainstream media. Among other things, Bubbla runs several news aggregators and a popular news commentary podcast, Radio Bubbla. Founded in 2014, bubbla is created by hundreds of volunteers, and since 2016 has an English language sibling project called Corax.

For more information, please talk to Martin, which... Where are you? He's over there. So, talk to him also at the break or after the debate. The proceedings will be as follows. Each speaker will be given 15 minutes for opening remarks. The speakers will then receive 10 minutes each for responses. We will then take a short 10-minute break, after which we will take questions from the audience for a total of 30 minutes.

Our speakers will then get 7 and 1 1 minutes each for closing statements. The first part of the debate will be moderated by me. My name is Emmanuel Kamlin and I'm the co-organizer for this event. And the second will be moderated by Sofia Arkistall, co-organizer and co-founder of bubbla. So, without further ado, we will now begin the debate.