Can The Left Deal With America's Mental Health Crisis?
Capitalism Hits Home with Dr. Harriet Fraad
Release Date: 05/16/2025
The Violent Crimes of Lost, Angry Men
Capitalism Hits Home with Dr. Harriet Fraad
In this episode of Capitalism Hits Home, Dr. Harriet Fraad explores how rape and mass murder become some men's reactions to their reduced status as providers for dependent women and children. Men who never recognized the life-sustaining care they received from women are lost and angry. Vulnerability and emotional need are inaccessible for many men. Anger and violence seem like socially accepted masculine ways to reestablish lost economic power and an emotional outlet for loneliness. As this epidemic continues to crescendo with the current administration in power, we must understand the...
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Today’s Family Structure Extolled and Endangered
Capitalism Hits Home with Dr. Harriet Fraad
In this episode of Capitalism Hits Home, Dr. Harriet Fraad explores the repressed history of the family structure we know today. It explores the forces that laud the family unit, and those that endanger it. She highlights the failures of American society to support the family structure and children by juxtaposing them with the more successful efforts of other nations. Learn more about CHH: We make it a point to provide the show free of ads. Your contributions help keep this content free and accessible to all. If you would like to simply donate one time, you can do so by visiting...
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The State of Women in the U.S. in 2025
Capitalism Hits Home with Dr. Harriet Fraad
Women in the U.S. are under political, economic, social, and reproductive siege. The rights we fought for, like abortion rights, are now fully available in only nine states. The Trump regime has attacked diversity, equity, and inclusion programs as well as the employers offering such programs. As an illustration of the effects of these attacks, more than 300,000 African American women in the U.S. have lost their jobs. At the same time, women are joining their sisters worldwide in opting out of both marriage and childbearing despite the pressures of the Trump administration for women to return...
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If Children Are Our Future, Americans Are out of Luck
Capitalism Hits Home with Dr. Harriet Fraad
The UN’s latest assessment of children in the developed world puts children in the U.S. at the bottom in intellectual achievement, physical health, mental health, and basic well-being. America’s children are being neglected, and that is endangering our future. Learn more about CHH: We make it a point to provide the show free of ads. Your contributions help keep this content free and accessible to all. If you would like to simply donate one time, you can do so by visiting us at http://www.democracyatwork.info/donate. Become a monthly donor:...
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Labors of Love
Capitalism Hits Home with Dr. Harriet Fraad
Women labor intensively and extensively to create and maintain human life. Women's labor in Creating and raising children, establishing order and cleanliness, providing emotional care for our families, and maintaining all of this is more than substantial. However, it has been devalued in American society and often dismissed as instinct or pure emotional expression. Women’s labor in the home is not focused on creating a marketable service or commodity, and capitalists who cannot directly profit from that labor are to blame for its devaluation and societal degradation. We need to recognize,...
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A Different Kind of Power
Capitalism Hits Home with Dr. Harriet Fraad
Jacinda Ardern was the Socialist Labor Party Prime Minister of New Zealand for 8 years. She led with a politics of empathy, delivering her nation from COVID with just 25 deaths. In a horrific white nationalist attack by an Australian, masses of Muslims were killed and wounded while at prayer. She fostered deep solidarity between New Zealand and its Muslim community, conveying the message that they are one unified nation. In the words of Mohammed, she declared that an injury to one limb is an injury to the whole body. She is a model of a very different and badly needed kind of power. In this...
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Epstein — A Marriage of Capitalist Corruption and Misogyny
Capitalism Hits Home with Dr. Harriet Fraad
Jeffrey Epstein, who was arrested and charged with sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors in New York in 2019, was also accused of sexually assaulting underage girls for nearly two decades. Because he died in jail while awaiting trial, we may never know the extent of his sex trafficking ring or exactly who else may have participated in those heinous acts. Instead, we are left wondering whether or not he also provided blackmail opportunities for the U.S. and Israeli governments, as it appears he likely did precisely that. It also seems as if Donald Trump...
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Social Reproduction Theory Illuminates the Issues of Our Time
Capitalism Hits Home with Dr. Harriet Fraad
There has been an extensive study of workers and the commodities they produce. When it comes to who produces those workers, or who produces people, gives birth to them, raises them, and socializes them, there is a lot less material that examines that type of work. Social Reproduction Theory examines the aspects of capitalism and bridges the gap between feminism and Marxism by incorporating variables such as race and gender. In this week’s episode of Capitalism Hits Home, Dr. Fraad provides her insights on the latter, as part of Social Reproduction Theory. Learn more about CHH:...
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Out With The Old, In With The New: Mamdani’s Win is for All
Capitalism Hits Home with Dr. Harriet Fraad
Zohran Mamdani’s recent victory in the Democratic primary for New York City’s mayor has shaken up the old establishment and is becoming a symbol of progress and real, meaningful change for younger generations, and everyone else, whether or not they like it. With over 40k volunteers and a meter $1.7 million raised, Mamdani’s margin of victory against Andrew Cuomo, the establishment candidate who amassed over $25 million, is a message to the core establishment that change is coming, and it’s coming soon. Learn more about CHH: We make it a point to provide the show free of...
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Social Reproduction Theory: A Tool for Changing U.S. Society
Capitalism Hits Home with Dr. Harriet Fraad
It examines the types of labor that shape human beings outside of waged work, both before and after they enter the waged workforce. Social Reproduction Theory complements Marxist theories of labor at the workplace by introducing the labor that shapes human beings outside of waged work. Learn more about CHH: We make it a point to provide the show free of ads. Your contributions help keep this content free and accessible to all. If you would like to simply donate one time, you can do so by visiting us at http://www.democracyatwork.info/donate. Become a monthly donor:...
info_outlineIn this episode of Capitalism Hits Home, Dr. Fraad examines loneliness as a major driver of America’s mental health crisis. We explore how socialist and leftist organizing in the past has tackled this issue—and how present-day "12-Step" programs might offer the Left new strategies for reaching and mobilizing Americans.
Learn more about CHH: We make it a point to provide the show free of ads. Your contributions help keep this content free and accessible to all. If you would like to simply donate one time, you can do so by visiting us at http://www.democracyatwork.info/donate. Become a monthly donor: http://www.patreon.com/democracyatwork