Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it could happen here, it being a podcast
Speaker 1: hosted by myself, Christopher Wong and the minute Inimitable. Amenab
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah blah, and Andrew, Andrew High, you're
Speaker 1: in charge, Thank you, thank I almost stuck that landing.
Speaker 1: I was so not sucking it up. Are you guys?
Speaker 1: Proud the way there being consistent and I consistent? I
Speaker 1: mean that you sucked it up again, I'm proud. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't have tried to say inimitable that was that
Speaker 1: that was always going to be a disaster. Yeah, it was,
Speaker 1: it was. It was. It was like one of those
Speaker 1: gymnastics landings where it's like they landed and then both
Speaker 1: your feet go in the ground and they jump and
Speaker 1: they fall. Yeah, it's very like that when I yeah,
Speaker 1: well all right, Andrew, what do you? What do you?
Speaker 1: What do you? What do you? What do you? What
Speaker 1: do you? What do you got for us today? Right?
Speaker 1: So for this UM, this this episode's topic. UM. The
Speaker 1: story begins with Reddit. Unfortunately that's not a great sign.
Speaker 1: Well Reddit and Twitter? Yeah, the the two horsemen UM
Speaker 1: and the discourse that occurred on those sites. Uh while
Speaker 1: ago UM particularly related to like infrastructure and infrastructure and
Speaker 1: the anarchic right. I mean, we all know to be
Speaker 1: a sick. Principles society UM related to autonomy allow people
Speaker 1: to define themselves and organize themselves on their own terms.
Speaker 1: UM horizontalism. You know, people able to organize so that
Speaker 1: no one dominates anyone else and no one exercises power.
Speaker 1: UM move others. Mutual aid so people able to help
Speaker 1: one another voluntarily, their bonds of solidarity and networks of
Speaker 1: generosity that keep the social fabric together. You know. Free
Speaker 1: association allows people to cooperate with who they want to
Speaker 1: and how they see fit. And also conversely, you know,
Speaker 1: refuse and disassociate. We need to be Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: key one that people don't emphasize it. Yeah, the free
Speaker 1: disassociation definitely not be associated with certain people. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: because you can't freely associate. If you don't have the
Speaker 1: option to freely disassociate, it is like running into a
Speaker 1: cage and then you can't exit. Everyone should be able
Speaker 1: to move freely as well. Emphasize which is I think
Speaker 1: one of the things that radicalized me most was UM
Speaker 1: the existence of borders because to me, at least, like
Speaker 1: when you're born. You know, you have this spawn point,
Speaker 1: and it seems absurd to me that just spawn point
Speaker 1: should have so much control over you know, the outcome
Speaker 1: of your life. You know, what rights and stuff you enjoy,
Speaker 1: and where you can and can't go freely because none
Speaker 1: of us have a choice in that matter. You know,
Speaker 1: we can't exactly choose our parents, or choose or you know,
Speaker 1: neighborhood or where we grew up whatever. And of course
Speaker 1: borders of the national kind and the only ones I
Speaker 1: guess suppose you know, um, you also oppose borders related
Speaker 1: to gender and race and citizenship, and well that's relates
Speaker 1: to borders. But yeah, and so how anarchists proposed we
Speaker 1: get to this society is first and foremost the people
Speaker 1: liberating themselves, the concept of self liberation. So people, and
Speaker 1: not even speaking just in terms of workers, you know,
Speaker 1: speaking in terms of gender and sexual minorities, speaking to
Speaker 1: terms of racial groups, um, speaking in terms of disabled people.
Speaker 1: You know, they must at the forefront of their own libration.
Speaker 1: Freedom cannot be given, it has to be taken. And
Speaker 1: so through direct action, which is when we directly act
Speaker 1: without the middle channels of authorities representatives, we make those
Speaker 1: changes for ourselves and through other methods we pursue the
Speaker 1: world that we wish to live in, which is the
Speaker 1: whole prefigurative process of building a new in the shell
Speaker 1: of the old. And so I think part of the
Speaker 1: issue when it comes to discussions of anarchism and infrastructure
Speaker 1: and supply lines and all these different things is that, Um,
Speaker 1: I think people have this misconception, this this real strange
Speaker 1: idea of what an archist revolution looks like. UM, where
Speaker 1: you know, we flip a switch just overnight and boom,
Speaker 1: anarchist society. We have nothing in place, we have no
Speaker 1: organization or systems or networks in places, just boom, staff
Speaker 1: of fingers and all of a sudden we are all
Speaker 1: living under anarchy. But in reality, um, you know, as
Speaker 1: Kirpotkin expressed, there's no fallacy as harmful as the fallacy
Speaker 1: the one day revolution. Obviously there's going to be a transition. UM.
Speaker 1: In fact, a lot of people like to define anarchism
Speaker 1: as an ongoing process moving further and further towards the
Speaker 1: ideal of anarchy. Um. The whole idea is not whether
Speaker 1: or not there will be a transitional society or kind
Speaker 1: of transition that will be and so in this period
Speaker 1: of transition is when we would be engaging in the
Speaker 1: different forms of social experimentation to UM manifest you know,
Speaker 1: anarchist principles in every facet of life. And of course
Speaker 1: this is a process will involves engaging with local conditions
Speaker 1: and um local people and allowing those communities, those individuals
Speaker 1: to get to go in for themselves. What structures and
Speaker 1: systems are put in place. Part of the struggle is
Speaker 1: going to involve mirroring the society that we wish to create.
Speaker 1: So for our final goal is you know, communistic and
Speaker 1: artistic society, that our methods must be as communistic as
Speaker 1: an artistic as possible. Basic you know, duality of means
Speaker 1: and ends. So when we speak of supply lines, when
Speaker 1: we speak of infrastructure, the reality is that existing infrastructure
Speaker 1: is not going to disappay overnight. Were are starting from
Speaker 1: complete scratch. This isn't a new you know, minecraft world
Speaker 1: that we have to go and punch some trees and
Speaker 1: start society all over again. Revolution is destructive, but it's
Speaker 1: also constructive and transformative. So I mean, we're not going
Speaker 1: to get rid of all experts and all expertise. We're
Speaker 1: not going to be floundering difficult, how to make penicill in.
Speaker 1: You know, people in all fields and all industries and
Speaker 1: all layers and all um you know backgrounds are going
Speaker 1: to be involved in the process, you know, adapting their
Speaker 1: work places, adapting the industries towards sustainable and anarchic ends.
Speaker 1: And it's a process that's going on now and will
Speaker 1: continue because if you know, we look at at revolution
Speaker 1: as a combination of I think Eric ollen Right he
Speaker 1: had in his book Envisioning Real Real Utopias three basic
Speaker 1: concepts of transformation. He had ruptural transformation, interstitial transformation, and
Speaker 1: symbiotic transformation. And so interstitial revolution is basically the idea
Speaker 1: um it's basically a mirror of you know, prefigurative politics
Speaker 1: as a theoretical means of societal transformation through progressively and
Speaker 1: strategically enlarging spaces of social empowerment. And ruptural transformation is
Speaker 1: of course, I guess, the dichotomy between the insurrectionists and
Speaker 1: everybody else, you know, where you have these moments of
Speaker 1: social outposts, these moments of rupture where social forms and
Speaker 1: social developments you know, undertaken and we sort of figure
Speaker 1: out how we are, or rather we directly fight back
Speaker 1: against you know, the systems are in place. I think
Speaker 1: rupture is one of the more exciting forms. It's the
Speaker 1: kind of form revolution of people tend to think of
Speaker 1: when they think of the term revolution, this idea of
Speaker 1: you know, all these this is this mass of people,
Speaker 1: this crowd of people storming the bastill or whatever. Um.
Speaker 1: But the real work of transformission is the stuff that
Speaker 1: because you know, prior to and post those wounds of rupture. Well,
Speaker 1: I I one of the terms I tend to like
Speaker 1: that I've been thinking and reading about a lot is
Speaker 1: is shatter zones. And these are this is like the
Speaker 1: post rupture, right, these are the areas where state power
Speaker 1: kind of collapses, or at least pieces of state power collapse.
Speaker 1: And it's you know, the the shatter zones where kind
Speaker 1: of you you see the state retreat in the wake
Speaker 1: of a rupture, are where very terrible things tend to happen.
Speaker 1: But there are also these zones of possibility. You know.
Speaker 1: It's the places it's the kind of place where you
Speaker 1: you can get an ethnic cleansing, and it's the kind
Speaker 1: of place where you can get um rojava, you know,
Speaker 1: like it's it's there they're these kind of zones of
Speaker 1: possibility in the wake of of rupture. And I think
Speaker 1: that's you know, a lot of the a lot of
Speaker 1: the revolutionary kind of um imagery focuses on on the rupture,
Speaker 1: but the future is decided in the shatter zones, you know. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think what people miss as well is the
Speaker 1: stuff that builds up to those you know, shatter zoons,
Speaker 1: which is that their organizations, their affinity groups, their networks
Speaker 1: and structures in place that are able to support those
Speaker 1: zoons that are able to you know, when those ruptures ore,
Speaker 1: could support the people taking part in those fights and
Speaker 1: expand you know, those zoons of possibilities. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is the kind of thing where like, if you're
Speaker 1: looking at what what causes the difference between you know,
Speaker 1: these disastrous, uh like disasters that happened kind of in
Speaker 1: the wake of a rupture, horrible crimes against humanity, and
Speaker 1: situations where something better gets built like it again, to
Speaker 1: use the example of Rajava. The reason why that happened
Speaker 1: there and why isis didn't win in that terrain is
Speaker 1: that groups of activists had been organizing in a variety
Speaker 1: of ways for years in that and so when the
Speaker 1: state collapsed, there were armed groups, and those armed groups
Speaker 1: were supported by farming cooperatives and groups of people who
Speaker 1: had been organizing to provide supplies to each other and
Speaker 1: um like community organizations like focused on social like development
Speaker 1: and aid like there was. It's it's yeah, there's an
Speaker 1: exists in place exactly exactly and that's that's what you know,
Speaker 1: and you could catch ye yeah. And I think that's
Speaker 1: also because there's another way this can go to where
Speaker 1: it's like you get a lot of moments where you know,
Speaker 1: like like May sixty eight in France looks like this
Speaker 1: right where like like the like the prime minister at
Speaker 1: the president, I forget what was at that time. That's
Speaker 1: like you like literally like the country's leaders are flying
Speaker 1: out of the country on helicopters because I think everything
Speaker 1: is going to collapse and then it just sort of doesn't.
Speaker 1: And I think one of one of the way as
Speaker 1: you get you get this period that looks like rupture,
Speaker 1: but then everything sort of closes back up in on
Speaker 1: itself is if those networks aren't strong enough and you
Speaker 1: don't have some kind of sufficient level of organization, like
Speaker 1: there there isn't there isn't anything. It's like it's like
Speaker 1: you have these moments where the state is discredited but
Speaker 1: there's nothing to replace it, and then the and the
Speaker 1: sort of void, the void isn't strong enough to just
Speaker 1: sort of like have the state collapsed entirely. And so
Speaker 1: what you guys this moment where it looks like everything
Speaker 1: is going to change and then there's nothing happens. And
Speaker 1: I think that's also a product of essentially the same thing.
Speaker 1: It's just depending on the strength of the state, you
Speaker 1: can get very different sort of outcomes from these moments
Speaker 1: where sometimes it's able to restabilize itself, sometimes it isn't. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think we kind of saw that in a
Speaker 1: way with protests where you had this massive, massive rupture
Speaker 1: probably the largest one of the largest American history. Um
Speaker 1: yet people in the streets and cities all over the country.
Speaker 1: Um because the vast majority of them were just peaceful marches.
Speaker 1: But you also did have some like serious moments of rupture,
Speaker 1: like in Minneapolis and stuff. And I mean look at us,
Speaker 1: you know, two years later, and while they are you know,
Speaker 1: more community organizations, I think they're more people who are
Speaker 1: a bit more conscious, with more whale who are you know,
Speaker 1: radicalized and expanded their knowledge. Through that rupture, things basically
Speaker 1: went back to the way they were in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways, and other ways, you know, police budgets were
Speaker 1: just increased. I think there was a current with the analogy,
Speaker 1: but I'll just go to the analogy of like a hydro,
Speaker 1: where you know, the state, whenever it's attacked and stuff,
Speaker 1: it's able to just restore itself, just able to recover
Speaker 1: itself and able to like adapt to those sorts of attacks.
Speaker 1: I remember reading in Tone of Everything where the David's
Speaker 1: were talking about how the state they're using example, the
Speaker 1: American state. They were saying, you know, the American state
Speaker 1: of right is completely different in a lot of ways
Speaker 1: from the American state of the two thous you know,
Speaker 1: because the the state and statecraft is constantly evolving, constantly expanding,
Speaker 1: constantly responding to you know, the conditions that they face.
Speaker 1: We saw what happened in the twentieth century, you know,
Speaker 1: the different movements that I could in that time, the
Speaker 1: state was able to respond to those movements and adjust
Speaker 1: itself accordingly. And so obviously when we have these ruptures,
Speaker 1: we have these you know, moments of struggle and obviously
Speaker 1: the times in between where we yuh pre figuring um
Speaker 1: robust systems and alternative institutions that can support people those
Speaker 1: womans of rupture um. Part of that isn't going to involve,
Speaker 1: you know, defense, and the sue is not, oh, well,
Speaker 1: how you defend revolution, because you want to defend revolution,
Speaker 1: they don't know how to defend a revolution. But rather
Speaker 1: parts of defending it is defending it from people's attempts
Speaker 1: to seize power away from the masses, from the waking
Speaker 1: class too, you know, cipher and that energy and use
Speaker 1: it for the ends of smaller group, smaller class of
Speaker 1: you know, whether it be parties or whatever the case
Speaker 1: may be. Yeah, there's something there. I think you're going
Speaker 1: back to, like thinking about borders and freedom of movement,
Speaker 1: because if you look at like both the uss are
Speaker 1: and China do this very quickly, which is that okay,
Speaker 1: so you you you have the communist revolution, okay, and
Speaker 1: theoretically class and power and then like the first thing
Speaker 1: they do is set up in turnal border controls and
Speaker 1: these like like I mean in China, they they're technically
Speaker 1: like the the prohibition on movement is like technically over,
Speaker 1: but the like the the household registration system still exists,
Speaker 1: and it still determines whether you where you can get
Speaker 1: benefits and how you get benefits, and whether you can
Speaker 1: live in a city, and like what like how what's
Speaker 1: the security you can access? Can you buy houses? Things
Speaker 1: like that, like that kind of stuff. If if you're
Speaker 1: not if if what you're doing is just putting a
Speaker 1: group of people in power and not actually putting you know,
Speaker 1: like if you want to talk about it in class terms, right,
Speaker 1: it's like, okay, either the actual working class governs itself,
Speaker 1: like the class in the hiredy collectively makes decisions, or
Speaker 1: you've just created to do like baruacrat class and if
Speaker 1: you wind up with a new barracract classes, like yeah,
Speaker 1: immediately look at what happens. It's like, oh, hey, a
Speaker 1: bunch of people have now decided that like you can't
Speaker 1: leave your home province because you don't have the right
Speaker 1: registration and it's right, Okay, It's like that kind of
Speaker 1: reminds me what you were saying about, you know, if
Speaker 1: all the working classes was meant with the state. Reminds
Speaker 1: you of the video is watching last night actually from
Speaker 1: this YouTuber anarch Daniel Barrian UM. And he was talking
Speaker 1: about I believe how the state is necessarily um exclusive.
Speaker 1: If everybody holds power, then the state necessarily um must
Speaker 1: be wiped out. Must he wipe to it? If not,
Speaker 1: it's going to try to reclaim it's monopoly on power,
Speaker 1: it's monopoly on violence. UM. It cannot exist without people
Speaker 1: under it, you know. And so as you know, we
Speaker 1: are engaging in this as we are, you know, organizing strikes,
Speaker 1: creating networks of activists, creating assemblies, UM, creating you know,
Speaker 1: self finance schools and social centers and cooperatives and all
Speaker 1: these different forms of infrastructure that can weather and exists
Speaker 1: under capitalism, but serve as prefigurations of all potential beyond capitalisms.
Speaker 1: And so I guess the pivot um back to the
Speaker 1: topic I was speaking of in the beginning. With regard
Speaker 1: to infrastructure. You know, all of history books and stuf
Speaker 1: general history books tend to speak of the government, centralized
Speaker 1: government states souf arising also the new to build and
Speaker 1: maintain like these big infrastructure projects. They then to use
Speaker 1: example of irrigation. It's taken for granted, you know, staken
Speaker 1: as a given that bureaucracies and such were necessary for
Speaker 1: organizing these large populations. And while you know, the Galter
Speaker 1: and principles may thrive in a small scale, they just
Speaker 1: cannot scale up when populations get any bigger than like
Speaker 1: a small band of people. But what we do know
Speaker 1: is that complex rural irrigation systems and the Galter and
Speaker 1: urban decision making systems have oc could in you know,
Speaker 1: human history, that our answers were able to organize those
Speaker 1: those institutions without the state, without a centralized body with
Speaker 1: a with with with cosive, you know, authority. There's also
Speaker 1: like this implicit assumption, you know, when people make these assolutions,
Speaker 1: that societies must necessarily grow and endlessly grow, and that
Speaker 1: we cannot choose to limit our scale in any way
Speaker 1: to avoid centralization, to enhance eqalitarianism. You know, we can't
Speaker 1: steal ourselves down to all manageable levels a d growth um.
Speaker 1: And as you've see, that's just not true. You know,
Speaker 1: we are capable of making those shifts. You know, large
Speaker 1: scale projects like irrigation or or you know, supply lines
Speaker 1: and stuff. They do require coordination, but coordination is not
Speaker 1: synonymous with the state. Coordination is not synonymous with hierarchy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's something that's interest It's interesting to me the
Speaker 1: way people, like how badly people think about that because
Speaker 1: like even even even in terms of sort of like
Speaker 1: mercantile is trade right, like that kind of like long
Speaker 1: range coordination, long range like moving goods across the world
Speaker 1: has like it's but mostly not been states doing that.
Speaker 1: Like it's you know, and you can talk about like okay, whatever,
Speaker 1: it's like it's however you sort of want to think
Speaker 1: about the market mechanisms here, but like, yeah, like people
Speaker 1: have been people. People have been moving stuff from one
Speaker 1: side of the world to the other, like essentially without
Speaker 1: the state having anything to do with it, for like
Speaker 1: as long as there have been people exactly. I think
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that frustrates me most about
Speaker 1: the discourse about like any kind of post capitalism is
Speaker 1: this um this purposefully. I think in a lot of
Speaker 1: cases like malignant ly um inaccurate um attitude that like
Speaker 1: the idea of people like exchanging goods and services is
Speaker 1: fundamentally capitalist. That the idea of people like organizing that
Speaker 1: the that like a factory right is something that has
Speaker 1: to be has to be either organized under capitalist models
Speaker 1: or under state socialist models as exactly as if people
Speaker 1: haven't done it in other ways. Right, this is not theoretical.
Speaker 1: We're not like trying to pose it like well maybe
Speaker 1: it could work this way. It's like, no motherfucker's have
Speaker 1: done this. Yeah, we have practical examples even on the capitalism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: stuff like the mon Dragon Corporation and whatnot, Like it's
Speaker 1: not um, it's like it's this is not like theoretical
Speaker 1: stuff that we're talking about. I was thinking more long
Speaker 1: lines of what happened in Argentina. Yeah. Yeah, you don't
Speaker 1: even something going with food of the back as you know,
Speaker 1: like the CNT which getting into yeah a little bit. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: like that's something. Well, I mean I think I think
Speaker 1: part of what's happening there is it's like, yeah, like
Speaker 1: people have run factories in other ways, and every single
Speaker 1: time they try to do it, every other political faction
Speaker 1: on Earth sets out, set aside all the political differences
Speaker 1: and goes and tries to kill them, and it's like
Speaker 1: this is not that's that's true. That's true. I'm also
Speaker 1: reminded of the fact that you know parts of what happened,
Speaker 1: and how do the assue that you know it could
Speaker 1: in Argentina and as I could elsewhere. Um is this
Speaker 1: concept that I think my call Albert Um talks about
Speaker 1: a lot, this idea how they coordinator class and the
Speaker 1: issues that arise out of that sort of coordinates a class.
Speaker 1: And so I think part of that sort of organization
Speaker 1: is going to involve confronting that, you know, we tend
Speaker 1: to think of it in terms of, you know, the
Speaker 1: capitalist ownership and getting rid of the capitalists, but there's
Speaker 1: you know, a lot more play than than just just
Speaker 1: the capitalist kind of the firm is the firm? I
Speaker 1: think it's also like this sort of assumption that people
Speaker 1: aren't capable of like taking any kind of you know.
Speaker 1: I think there's this kind of way, the submistion that
Speaker 1: people aren't capable of taking initiative that people aren't capable
Speaker 1: of of, you know, um, seeing the needs around them
Speaker 1: and organizing to fulfill them. So when people end up,
Speaker 1: you know, trying to do these sculches and stuff with
Speaker 1: anarchists like, oh, well, how are you going to do
Speaker 1: with garbage? It's like people don't like arbage around them,
Speaker 1: you know, which is why we have a sanitation system,
Speaker 1: which is why we have garbage disposal systems in place.
Speaker 1: But you know, under this system, because everything is all
Speaker 1: the costs of you know, our consumption and stuff are
Speaker 1: externalized and hidden. People don't have to think about the
Speaker 1: ways that you know, our actions are affecting our local
Speaker 1: um you know ecosystem. You know, we see that we
Speaker 1: pay other countries to or at least one like I say,
Speaker 1: a week, um, the US, the USPS, other countries. I mean,
Speaker 1: we have a problem and in turn out as well,
Speaker 1: where all of our waste um just gets dumped like
Speaker 1: right next to them out groove And there's a community
Speaker 1: right opposite the highway where the dump is located. And
Speaker 1: you know they booon garbage day and it's like the
Speaker 1: boont garbage is like a constant smell of boont coarbage
Speaker 1: around that community. And it's of course the most improverished
Speaker 1: community in the country and US. It's a whole thing. Um.
Speaker 1: But I digress. You know, when we aren't able to
Speaker 1: just you know, externalize the costs of you know, how
Speaker 1: we live, communities are able to you know, notice how
Speaker 1: to you know, who notice the problem and figure out
Speaker 1: who used to handle it, you know, whether it be
Speaker 1: um small rewards, people who volunteer to you know, deal
Speaker 1: with trash um or you know, just there's people who
Speaker 1: enjoy doing that as well, you know, um and the
Speaker 1: same goes for other undesirable jobs or you know, people
Speaker 1: have decided to go on like a routa and basis
Speaker 1: and the reality is, you know, we don't have to
Speaker 1: like define our lives around a career, so you know,
Speaker 1: a person doesn't have to be entirely like a garbage collector.
Speaker 1: On top of that, you know, as we scale down
Speaker 1: the amount of all which we produce, that task would
Speaker 1: become you know, less and less necessary. Yes, so you
Speaker 1: know what waste infrastructure, people are able to take care
Speaker 1: of that. You know, we can't externalize those sorts of issues. Um.
Speaker 1: With food infrastructure, you know, we're able to like for example,
Speaker 1: in in the Title Hills region of what is now Kenya,
Speaker 1: you know, people were able to create these complex irrigation
Speaker 1: systems that you know lasted hundreds of years before you know,
Speaker 1: colonial states moved in and ended these agricultural practices. You
Speaker 1: know the back then, you know, the households would share
Speaker 1: the day to day mains and the uns of that
Speaker 1: irrigation infrastructure. You know, everyone would take care of the
Speaker 1: part of the infrastructure that was closest where they lived.
Speaker 1: And you know, as it was commons, people enjoyed it
Speaker 1: in common people maintained it in common people benefited in common.
Speaker 1: People would also come together UM periodically for like major repairs,
Speaker 1: and it was a form of collective, socially motivated rule
Speaker 1: work that we see in many other you know, essentialized societies.
Speaker 1: You know often he had UM conversations whether I often
Speaker 1: read about you know, these different societies. And even on
Speaker 1: the capitalism you have communities that you know, when someone
Speaker 1: needs somewhere to live, the whole community gets together and
Speaker 1: helps them build their house. And when someone else needs
Speaker 1: somewhere to live, you know, everyone gets together and builds
Speaker 1: their houps and so on and so forth. You know,
Speaker 1: people already doing this in parts of the world, These
Speaker 1: systems already in place in parts of the world, these
Speaker 1: sort of reciprocal networks of of of support UM. And
Speaker 1: I mean whether you're talking transportation or power, or communications,
Speaker 1: or housing or food or healthcare, there's a precedent set.
Speaker 1: You know, these precedents may have certain flaws, but we
Speaker 1: could study them, we can learn from them, and we
Speaker 1: could establish something better you know, for example, like as
Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier in Anarchist Spain Right and Felt. During
Speaker 1: the Spanish Civil War, Barcelona's Medical Syndicate, which is organized
Speaker 1: largely by anarchists, managed eighteen hospitals, six of which they
Speaker 1: had created, seventeen sanatoriums, twenty two clinics, six psychiatric established ones,
Speaker 1: three nurseries, and one motility hospital. Whenever they had a request,
Speaker 1: the syndicate would send doctors to places in need, because
Speaker 1: medicine was considered to be in suits of the community,
Speaker 1: not the other way around. You know. Funds of these
Speaker 1: clinics would come from the contributions of like local municipalities,
Speaker 1: and this syndicate UM had a health workers union that
Speaker 1: included eight thousand unhealth workers during operated threety six health
Speaker 1: centers and distributed through Catalonia and Pride Health get to
Speaker 1: everyone in the region. And these sndicates would send delicates
Speaker 1: you know, UM to Barcelona and they would be able
Speaker 1: to deal with common problems and implement common plans. But
Speaker 1: every department was both autonomous but also not isolated, so
Speaker 1: they supported one another where needs to be and under
Speaker 1: the CNT you know, we also see like lands being
Speaker 1: taken by peasants syndicates um who would organize properties and
Speaker 1: allow equal community to take care of you know, their
Speaker 1: land and their animals and you know, their crops as
Speaker 1: needs be. Yeah, there was something I've been the more
Speaker 1: I've read about it, the more impressed I've been with
Speaker 1: the way that I guess you would call it, like
Speaker 1: the like the anarchists in Spain liked basically did a
Speaker 1: universal healthcare program in one year in the middle of
Speaker 1: a civil war, and like you know, and like I
Speaker 1: think everything about it that that was important is it.
Speaker 1: Like they were able to like they had this whole
Speaker 1: program that was about like sending like sending doctoration to
Speaker 1: the countryside to get to like into committees that have
Speaker 1: never actually had regular access to medical care before. And
Speaker 1: they're able to do this extremely quickly and had a
Speaker 1: system the benefits of which are like enormously better than
Speaker 1: like basically like if you can go find I'm forgetting
Speaker 1: the exactly, but like you can go find like their
Speaker 1: their their policy for like how much time off you
Speaker 1: can get for like an injury and stuff, and it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can take you can get like six months eight
Speaker 1: months off at like full pay. Like people like your
Speaker 1: family will be provided for. Like they had all of
Speaker 1: this just like incredible, like healthcare infstructure they they're able
Speaker 1: to set up like really really fast. Yeah, because they
Speaker 1: also had you know, these regional federations of different collectives
Speaker 1: and they were able to basically you know, distributes surplus
Speaker 1: goods and distribute as you said, health care, and you know,
Speaker 1: basically pool infrastructure so that everybody are the pool resources
Speaker 1: so that everybody was able to benefit. You know, they
Speaker 1: often pooled resources for things where you know areas well
Speaker 1: unevenly developed, you know, so that you know, more um
Speaker 1: developed regions able to help other regions improve their infrastructure,
Speaker 1: you know, build roads and canals and hospitals as this.
Speaker 1: When I read about, you know, what happened in Catlonia,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying they were perfect. They definitely had a
Speaker 1: lot of issues. When I read what what happened there,
Speaker 1: you know, in the midst of a civil war, um,
Speaker 1: the possibilities that room present and what could have potentially
Speaker 1: happened further along, um, you know, it's it's it's very inspiring. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think it goes back to the sort of
Speaker 1: the the point we've been we've been talking about which
Speaker 1: is that like the capacity to provide care for people
Speaker 1: and the capacity to do stuff like this exists in
Speaker 1: our society, right, It's not something that has to be
Speaker 1: just sort of just like completely manufactured from the ground up.
Speaker 1: It's just that the capacity is not being used to
Speaker 1: actually like give to benefits of people what they need.
Speaker 1: Is like, well, okay, it's not a it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's less like a process of just completely reconstructing the
Speaker 1: society and more a process of like, hey, why don't
Speaker 1: we use the resources we already have to do the
Speaker 1: things that are like actually useful. And people for some
Speaker 1: reason think that like is being true if you don't
Speaker 1: have a state, and it's no like the state disappearing
Speaker 1: to every single doctor suddenly vanishes from the face of
Speaker 1: the earth. Like, yeah, it doesn't mean every single sanitation
Speaker 1: we certainly disappears, every single construction we because certainly disappears
Speaker 1: every single like every everything teachers and disappears every Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like I said, we're not started from like a new
Speaker 1: minecraft food. You know, you're not to go and kill
Speaker 1: the end of dragon and all that. But um, I
Speaker 1: mean I guess that's a that's a good place to
Speaker 1: wrap up, Basically, we have these possibilities, we always have,
Speaker 1: UM and in a lot of ways, the state and
Speaker 1: you know, capitalism and all these other um manifestations of
Speaker 1: hierarchy holding us back. They're preventing us from reaching all
Speaker 1: full creative the full unleashing of our creative potential as people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we should do that instead of this. Yeah, we should
Speaker 1: do this instead of that, you know, rather we should
Speaker 1: do that instead of this. Yeah. Well, Andrew, thank you
Speaker 1: so much. Where can where can people follow you? I
Speaker 1: believe I believe you just put out a new a
Speaker 1: new video this week. If I'm remembering correctly, Yes, I
Speaker 1: don't know if they will hear this episode before my
Speaker 1: next video is out. Um but um. You can find
Speaker 1: me on YouTube dot com slash andrewis um and you
Speaker 1: can find me on Twitter at under school saying true. Awesome. Alright,
Speaker 1: well go start a hospital. Look, it could happen years
Speaker 1: production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com,
Speaker 1: or check us out on the I Heart radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
Speaker 1: find sources for it could Happen here update in month.
Speaker 1: Lee at cool Zone media dot com slash sources, thanks
Speaker 1: for listening.