WEBVTT - Anarchism Past and Future 0:00:05.080 --> 0:00:10.920 It could happen here. Uh, it being a number of things. Uh, 0:00:11.039 --> 0:00:13.920 this is the podcast about things falling apart and also 0:00:13.960 --> 0:00:17.279 maybe putting them back together. And assuming there's not a 0:00:17.360 --> 0:00:19.919 nuclear war in the immediate future, you will probably be 0:00:19.960 --> 0:00:24.000 hearing this episode sometime in early March. I am Robert Evans, 0:00:24.480 --> 0:00:28.760 my co hosts as always well as often Chris and Garrison, 0:00:29.120 --> 0:00:30.880 and that's that's my job for the day. Done. I'm 0:00:30.920 --> 0:00:32.879 gonna I'm gonna sit back and chill. You guys want 0:00:32.880 --> 0:00:34.960 to take it from here, Yeah, I'll take it from here. 0:00:35.040 --> 0:00:38.080 We are doing one of our perennial things fall apart 0:00:38.120 --> 0:00:40.599 but also we sort of put it back together again episodes. 0:00:40.720 --> 0:00:45.240 And joining us today is j m C from Strange 0:00:45.280 --> 0:00:49.559 Matter as a new libertarian, socialist cooperative magazine. J MC 0:00:49.760 --> 0:00:52.560 great to have you here. Yeah, this is really great. 0:00:53.520 --> 0:00:56.520 So I guess we should probably explain with the magazine 0:00:56.640 --> 0:00:59.720 is not just in of itself, but also because it's 0:00:59.720 --> 0:01:03.720 a good lead in into um um into what we're 0:01:03.720 --> 0:01:06.880 gonna be talking about. So we basically, uh, there's five 0:01:06.920 --> 0:01:09.199 of us as co editors and we're all equal worker 0:01:09.280 --> 0:01:12.680 owners in it. It's a magazine called Strange Matters. And 0:01:13.200 --> 0:01:17.280 the point of it is to explore radical new ideas, 0:01:17.560 --> 0:01:20.200 not just in terms of politics and economics, which is 0:01:20.240 --> 0:01:22.160 going to be kind of half the focus is trying 0:01:22.200 --> 0:01:25.000 to figure out like you know, libertarian socialists talk a 0:01:25.040 --> 0:01:27.280 lot about dual power, which I know y'all talk about 0:01:27.319 --> 0:01:30.800 on the show a lot talk about building independent institutions 0:01:30.920 --> 0:01:32.960 under the direct democratic control of the working class to 0:01:33.000 --> 0:01:35.680 control real resources and are not the state or capitalist firms. 0:01:35.920 --> 0:01:37.760 But like, we talk a big game, but do we 0:01:37.760 --> 0:01:39.520 actually know how to do that stuff, and do we 0:01:39.560 --> 0:01:41.560 know how to do stuff like run like you know, 0:01:41.680 --> 0:01:45.000 a big company as a as a self managed democracy, 0:01:45.120 --> 0:01:46.720 or do we know how to like run a city 0:01:46.840 --> 0:01:49.480 as a as a radical democracy like rooted in neighborhood 0:01:49.480 --> 0:01:51.680 councils or anything like that. The answer kind of is 0:01:51.760 --> 0:01:54.600 not really. And there's a lot of like um open 0:01:54.680 --> 0:01:58.040 questions that we don't know yet the answers to, and 0:01:58.080 --> 0:02:00.080 that very few people are working on those answers. So 0:02:00.120 --> 0:02:05.400 Strange Matters is um partly about discovering, uh, those answers, 0:02:05.440 --> 0:02:07.720 not because we the editors have the answers, but because 0:02:07.760 --> 0:02:09.720 we need like some kind of space within which we 0:02:09.760 --> 0:02:13.200 can bring lots of different people different life experiences together uh, 0:02:13.240 --> 0:02:15.760 in order to talk about the stuff and figure it out. 0:02:16.280 --> 0:02:18.000 And then the other mission of it is to be 0:02:18.040 --> 0:02:21.200 a kind of general interest literary intellectual magazine doing the 0:02:21.280 --> 0:02:24.480 kind of journalism and philosophy and poetry and memoir and 0:02:24.560 --> 0:02:29.680 stuff like that that uh that UH perhaps gets shut 0:02:29.720 --> 0:02:32.760 out of capitalist society because it's not commercial or because 0:02:32.760 --> 0:02:36.360 it's too weird, because it's like, I don't know, historiographical 0:02:36.440 --> 0:02:38.200 essay about it's been called doon or something like that, 0:02:38.320 --> 0:02:39.880 you know. And and we think that there should be 0:02:39.880 --> 0:02:43.640 a place for that, um, just because it brings delight 0:02:43.680 --> 0:02:46.880 and meaning into people's lives, and it's what we're fighting 0:02:46.960 --> 0:02:49.200 for more democratic society in order to do so. That's 0:02:49.240 --> 0:02:52.600 basically our vibe UM. And the answering question is a 0:02:52.639 --> 0:02:57.040 collective editorial that we that we collectively drafted and edited uh, 0:02:57.080 --> 0:03:00.720 talking about our political views in particular and the recent 0:03:00.800 --> 0:03:04.600 history of libertarian socialism UM. And then asked for me, 0:03:04.840 --> 0:03:07.959 I'm I'm a writer who's written for a couple of 0:03:08.000 --> 0:03:11.520 other places like The Point in the Brooklyn Rail UH, 0:03:11.800 --> 0:03:14.600 and I also was involved in the d S as 0:03:14.639 --> 0:03:22.960 Libertarian Socialist Caucus and also the the Yeah yeah, right, yeah, 0:03:23.240 --> 0:03:27.000 but a lot of history there, trauma, you know, some 0:03:27.000 --> 0:03:30.760 some uh yeah, but any who, uh and also the 0:03:30.800 --> 0:03:35.560 Symbiosis Federation UM, which is a federation across Mexico, the US, 0:03:35.720 --> 0:03:39.200 and Canada that is trying to put together. It's a 0:03:39.280 --> 0:03:42.280 it's a confederation of local organizations that are trying to 0:03:42.320 --> 0:03:46.040 do this kind of direct democracy stuff. Yeah. So I guess, well, okay, 0:03:46.040 --> 0:03:49.360 so the pandemic isn't I guess the perfect jumping in 0:03:49.440 --> 0:03:52.600 point for this. But I wanna go back and I 0:03:52.640 --> 0:03:54.840 guess getting into the meat of this piece because I 0:03:54.840 --> 0:03:57.040 think it's very interesting. I wanted to sort of talk 0:03:57.080 --> 0:03:59.800 about the origins of like what's called sort of new 0:04:00.000 --> 0:04:05.320 anarchism and how it's sort of begin to decay after 0:04:06.280 --> 0:04:09.920 after the collapse of occupying After well, I guess that 0:04:10.120 --> 0:04:15.040 the sort of kind of revolutionary arc ofens so basically 0:04:15.720 --> 0:04:18.520 before you do the decline, at least is the way 0:04:18.520 --> 0:04:20.240 that we wrote it, and I kind of think that 0:04:20.400 --> 0:04:22.800 it's the way that I would tell it. Um, you 0:04:22.839 --> 0:04:25.120 have to kind of do the rise first, right, because 0:04:25.600 --> 0:04:31.800 like there was this moment from roughly the fall of 0:04:31.800 --> 0:04:39.480 the Soviets in two roughly like two thousand and even 0:04:39.600 --> 0:04:43.240 kind of lingering in an afterlife afterwards where it kind 0:04:43.279 --> 0:04:45.559 of looked like anarchism was going to take over the world. 0:04:45.760 --> 0:04:47.640 And that's a bit of a joke. But it's also 0:04:47.839 --> 0:04:50.120 not a joke because in the context of like the 0:04:50.200 --> 0:04:52.920 radical left, which is of course obviously a kind of 0:04:52.960 --> 0:04:55.800 like you know, dissidents seen in any country where it 0:04:55.839 --> 0:05:01.599 happens to exist. Um, you know, everything ing receded in 0:05:01.720 --> 0:05:04.200 terms of the traditional parties because the fall of the 0:05:04.400 --> 0:05:09.680 Soviet style uh Leninist states uh, either through their collapse 0:05:09.880 --> 0:05:12.440 as in the case of the USSR, or in the 0:05:12.480 --> 0:05:15.800 case of their transition to much more like clearly and 0:05:15.839 --> 0:05:21.320 obviously like state capitalist uh semi liberalized model like in China, 0:05:21.760 --> 0:05:27.279 like the you you basically had like this total recession, 0:05:27.320 --> 0:05:30.640 not just in Leninism interestingly, which obviously enough right, like 0:05:30.680 --> 0:05:33.120 you know, it's basically a global collapse of Leinist style 0:05:33.160 --> 0:05:37.520 of governments, but also in like social democracy, um, because 0:05:37.720 --> 0:05:39.720 it's a lot of the I mean, it's actually kind 0:05:39.720 --> 0:05:43.520 of interesting why it's it's unclear why it is. Uh. 0:05:43.600 --> 0:05:46.239 People have different theories, but they're you know, people often 0:05:46.240 --> 0:05:49.480 describe it in in um you know, Fisher's term the 0:05:49.680 --> 0:05:53.800 the writer Mark Fisher capitalist realism. The attitude in the 0:05:53.880 --> 0:05:58.159 nineties was that, uh, you know, there's there's only one 0:05:58.240 --> 0:06:00.800 world that's possible, and it's the best of all possible worlds, 0:06:00.800 --> 0:06:03.400 and that's the capitalist world, where everybody's gonna have McDonald's 0:06:03.400 --> 0:06:05.480 in every country, and two countries that have the same 0:06:05.560 --> 0:06:08.560 McDonald's are never going to go to war, which we 0:06:08.680 --> 0:06:10.160 kind of found out the hard way this week that 0:06:10.200 --> 0:06:13.880 that's not really the case. Well, and if people had 0:06:14.320 --> 0:06:16.680 paid attention more to other parts of the world, they 0:06:16.720 --> 0:06:18.560 would know that, like, well, there were civil wars in 0:06:18.600 --> 0:06:20.960 a bunch of countries that had McDonald's. It didn't stop 0:06:20.960 --> 0:06:26.039 people from shooting each other, as as the United States 0:06:26.040 --> 0:06:28.360 should tell you, people will kill each other whether or 0:06:28.400 --> 0:06:31.159 not they have access to chicken McNuggets. Yeah, you know, 0:06:31.200 --> 0:06:32.719 I mean I think like that, that's that's a period 0:06:32.760 --> 0:06:35.280 that has it's full of the most wrong anyone has 0:06:35.320 --> 0:06:38.480 ever been, Like you got Franchis Fukiyama, like the most 0:06:38.560 --> 0:06:42.520 wrong person ever You've got. Yeah, You've you've got a 0:06:42.560 --> 0:06:46.360 lot of sertif idealogues you like, have sort of deluded 0:06:46.400 --> 0:06:49.840 themselves into thinking this stuff is over. And yeah, I 0:06:49.880 --> 0:06:51.600 think you're right. That that that sort of plays into this, 0:06:52.680 --> 0:06:54.960 you know, into sort of the collapse of of of 0:06:56.080 --> 0:06:59.200 I guess, the party state left, and then the way 0:06:59.240 --> 0:07:02.640 in which that at, you know, the alternative to that, 0:07:02.760 --> 0:07:06.680 I guess becomes new anarchism, and anarchists practice, even if 0:07:06.720 --> 0:07:09.000 it's not necessarily ideology with all the groups, kind of 0:07:09.960 --> 0:07:13.840 seeps its way into the rest of the activist scene. Yeah. 0:07:14.000 --> 0:07:17.800 So basically the story that we tell is that there's 0:07:17.920 --> 0:07:23.280 some you know, the sepathist of rebellion in triggers these Uh. 0:07:23.320 --> 0:07:25.640 It's not just that the stufferthiasts are able to create 0:07:25.640 --> 0:07:28.720 their autonomous territory and chap us, but they it triggers 0:07:28.760 --> 0:07:32.600 this wave uh that UM. We use a term that 0:07:32.680 --> 0:07:36.960 sometimes it's used in academia called neo anarchism for this. UM. 0:07:37.000 --> 0:07:40.760 You know, there's an anarchist revival in the nineties UM 0:07:40.800 --> 0:07:44.640 around the world, and it's not just people calling themselves anarchists. 0:07:44.640 --> 0:07:48.160 It's all these movements that were inspired by the libertarian 0:07:48.280 --> 0:07:53.720 socialist broadly speaking UM sabathistas UM adopting kind of similar 0:07:53.760 --> 0:07:57.720 methods in their local contexts in different countries, fighting against 0:07:58.120 --> 0:08:00.800 I mean a lot of things. Initially it's against like 0:08:00.920 --> 0:08:03.640 you know, neoliberal trade deals, but it also ends up 0:08:03.680 --> 0:08:06.040 being against like sweatshops, because that's basically what a lot 0:08:06.080 --> 0:08:08.480 of outsourcing is is. You know, if if they have 0:08:08.640 --> 0:08:11.240 unions in this country from the social democratic period, they 0:08:11.280 --> 0:08:13.720 shut down the factory fire, everybody moved it to someplace 0:08:13.720 --> 0:08:16.360 where some dictatorship is going to shoot anybody who tries 0:08:16.400 --> 0:08:19.000 to do a union. Uh. And then that you know 0:08:19.120 --> 0:08:23.400 that lowers Uh. Logistics has gotten sophisticated enough by this 0:08:23.440 --> 0:08:25.560 point that you know, it ends up being cheaper for 0:08:25.560 --> 0:08:27.360 the company even though they have to transport goods all 0:08:27.400 --> 0:08:29.360 across the world and do just in time delivering that 0:08:29.440 --> 0:08:34.359 kind of thing. So um. The a lot of the 0:08:34.360 --> 0:08:38.320 the the anti globalization movement that sprouted up around the 0:08:38.320 --> 0:08:42.560 two thousands was like, um, against all these things and 0:08:42.640 --> 0:08:46.040 usually using the kinds of direct actions, which is when 0:08:46.080 --> 0:08:48.560 you act kind of independent of the state and not 0:08:48.640 --> 0:08:52.040 trying to like, you know, convince politician to do something, 0:08:52.120 --> 0:08:56.360 but taking direct action to get your results, your desired result. Um. 0:08:56.440 --> 0:08:58.800 You know, and all this kind of stuff uh that 0:08:58.840 --> 0:09:03.080 we're at using direct democratic consensus methods uh in the 0:09:03.120 --> 0:09:06.480 way that they organized stuff. Uh. That that was that 0:09:06.520 --> 0:09:08.720 was all basically an artistic and so there was this 0:09:08.760 --> 0:09:13.040 way in which anarchist methods, anarchist tactics, anarchists like attitudes 0:09:13.120 --> 0:09:17.000 towards what activism even is, started filtering into all these 0:09:17.040 --> 0:09:18.960 other movements. And this has been happening a little bit 0:09:18.960 --> 0:09:20.280 in the eighties too. So there was like the anti 0:09:20.360 --> 0:09:23.520 nuclear movement had a lot of this, the feminist movement 0:09:23.520 --> 0:09:26.480 had a lot of this. Um there was a whole 0:09:26.559 --> 0:09:30.520 um stream of single other ecological movements were actually like 0:09:30.600 --> 0:09:33.280 pioneered in a lot of ways by anarchists in the nineties, 0:09:33.640 --> 0:09:37.720 um so, as well as indigenous movements in places like Mexico, Bolivia, etcetera. 0:09:38.000 --> 0:09:41.920 So the this is the kind of like rise of 0:09:41.960 --> 0:09:44.280 this neo anarchist movie that we're talking about, which is 0:09:44.320 --> 0:09:48.680 not just about anarchists, it's about people who act and 0:09:48.800 --> 0:09:53.040 think like anarchists without necessarily identifying as it. Yeah, I 0:09:53.040 --> 0:09:55.079 mean that's the kind of thing that I hope we 0:09:55.080 --> 0:09:57.040 can kind of more encourage as well in the next 0:09:57.600 --> 0:10:02.040 few decades as those types of ideas can be I 0:10:02.400 --> 0:10:04.160 want I want to make sure that we can take 0:10:04.200 --> 0:10:06.800 these ideas and make them very approachable for people, even 0:10:06.840 --> 0:10:09.480 if they don't use the terms that we might use. 0:10:10.040 --> 0:10:15.199 You can still kind of suggest these types of thoughts, 0:10:15.240 --> 0:10:22.280 and this suggests these types of kind of lenses and viewpoints. HM. 0:10:28.679 --> 0:10:30.040 As much as we're about to get to how this 0:10:30.080 --> 0:10:33.559 sort of goes wrong fails in substence, Like, I think 0:10:33.600 --> 0:10:35.800 that was the strength of this movement was that it 0:10:35.920 --> 0:10:43.280 was its tactics were really easy to spread, and that 0:10:43.360 --> 0:10:44.840 led to a lot of people adopting me. It led 0:10:44.880 --> 0:10:49.679 to it sort of becoming this I guess activist consensus 0:10:49.679 --> 0:10:52.040 that you know, like you use in consensus process. You 0:10:52.040 --> 0:10:54.880 you know, you have hozontal organizations, you have you do 0:10:54.960 --> 0:10:57.680 direct actions, you mobilize people. You don't have these sort 0:10:57.679 --> 0:11:01.839 of like article parties. But that yeah, And I think 0:11:01.840 --> 0:11:03.959 I think the next part of the story that you 0:11:04.000 --> 0:11:06.400 want to tell us about, I guess how that fell 0:11:06.440 --> 0:11:12.440 apart and the consequences of that. Basically what ends up 0:11:12.600 --> 0:11:18.920 happening is that like there was this moment of our ascent, 0:11:18.960 --> 0:11:22.720 because I would identify myself as being definitely like part 0:11:22.800 --> 0:11:25.640 of these uh, the this general of you. I mean, 0:11:25.679 --> 0:11:27.640 I came I hopped aboard a lot later with like 0:11:27.640 --> 0:11:30.240 Occupy Wall Street, but a lot of the kind of 0:11:30.440 --> 0:11:33.760 explosion of movements that happened around the world in again 0:11:33.920 --> 0:11:35.880 not always right. It started with the Arab Spring, which 0:11:35.920 --> 0:11:38.559 started with somebody seeing themselves on fire in Tunisia and 0:11:38.679 --> 0:11:41.640 like you know, and then that spreads to um other 0:11:41.679 --> 0:11:44.400 countries in the Middle East and um, you know, protest 0:11:44.440 --> 0:11:47.640 against dictatorships and so on. But it starts getting kind 0:11:47.679 --> 0:11:51.160 of like transported beyond its initial Middle Eastern context. And 0:11:51.200 --> 0:11:53.319 what a lot of people don't know is that the uh, 0:11:54.360 --> 0:11:58.920 the Occupy Wall Street movement in North America and like 0:11:59.160 --> 0:12:01.480 other movements that you know, some of them were called 0:12:01.520 --> 0:12:03.400 occupy some of them, I'm one of them was my 0:12:03.480 --> 0:12:06.320 Don in Ukraine as a matter of fact, um, and 0:12:06.520 --> 0:12:09.880 other like you know, the the Hong Kong, the the 0:12:09.880 --> 0:12:13.480 the umbrella movements, yeah, the and all these kind of 0:12:13.520 --> 0:12:17.080 movements that that proceeded from after twenty eleven. A lot 0:12:17.120 --> 0:12:20.400 of them were basically in a single kind of wave, 0:12:21.040 --> 0:12:24.640 a protracted wave of copycat movements. Uh that we're trying 0:12:24.679 --> 0:12:26.800 to adopt the same kind of tactics of like occupying 0:12:26.840 --> 0:12:30.840 public squares, uh, declaring them basically autonomous and doing like 0:12:30.880 --> 0:12:33.560 direct democracy in those squares, modeling the kind of society 0:12:33.600 --> 0:12:37.000 that they that people wanted to create, um, you know, 0:12:37.160 --> 0:12:39.920 in this moment where it seemed like you could have 0:12:40.160 --> 0:12:45.079 these direct democratic, uh sorts of movements the the end. 0:12:45.200 --> 0:12:47.640 In the US, there's like a direct line of succession 0:12:47.720 --> 0:12:50.240 from like Occupy Wall Street through to like Black Lives 0:12:50.280 --> 0:12:54.120 Matter through to like the anti pipeline Indigenous protests. There's 0:12:54.160 --> 0:12:56.880 a lot of like shared movement experience, a lot of 0:12:56.880 --> 0:12:59.120 the same people showing up to it or teaching the 0:12:59.160 --> 0:13:02.480 next generation UM in those movements. And I think this 0:13:02.520 --> 0:13:05.480 is something I mean, uh, it's difficult to find like 0:13:05.600 --> 0:13:07.840 sources on this, but I mean, y'all are involved in 0:13:07.880 --> 0:13:10.520 social movements. I think that that's like a rough that's 0:13:10.640 --> 0:13:14.160 roughly a description of of what's happened, right unless unless 0:13:14.160 --> 0:13:20.400 we're crazy. Yeah, I think, you know, I think I 0:13:20.400 --> 0:13:22.360 guess what you call the last wave that is occupied 0:13:22.400 --> 0:13:27.280 ice In Yeah, yeah, you know, like I remember, like 0:13:27.440 --> 0:13:30.520 that was the sort of mix of I guess two crowds. 0:13:30.600 --> 0:13:33.360 One is you know, I mean, like I remember it 0:13:33.400 --> 0:13:35.120 was a bunch of you know, people who'd been an 0:13:35.120 --> 0:13:37.480 occupy and then also it was a lot of people 0:13:37.520 --> 0:13:40.960 who radicalized essentially about Trump. Yeah, there was there was 0:13:41.000 --> 0:13:44.160 a pretty big new wave of people, yeah, around around 0:13:44.160 --> 0:13:47.199 just sixteen and that, you know, and I guess I 0:13:47.200 --> 0:13:49.640 guess the other thing that that that's going on through 0:13:49.679 --> 0:13:56.360 this period is the the the ascension of consession of 0:13:56.400 --> 0:14:00.160 the right and the return also not just of you know, 0:14:00.200 --> 0:14:02.920 not just a sort of the fascist right, but of 0:14:03.240 --> 0:14:08.040 Leninism and social democracy as well. Yeah. Um lapped around 0:14:08.040 --> 0:14:10.560 like when Bernie Sanders was getting more popular. Yeah, yeah, 0:14:10.559 --> 0:14:12.280 And I think I think I think there's there's you know, 0:14:12.320 --> 0:14:13.920 there's a couple of there's like two threats there. There 0:14:13.920 --> 0:14:17.480 there's the sort of Bernie Sanders thread, and then there's 0:14:18.040 --> 0:14:20.240 you know, the the rise of the rise of the tankies, 0:14:20.360 --> 0:14:23.000 which has to do with Syria and has to do 0:14:23.080 --> 0:14:27.920 with sort of this backlash against the justin eleven revolutions 0:14:27.960 --> 0:14:30.360 that you know, like some some of that backlash turns 0:14:30.400 --> 0:14:34.520 into like just you know, like aired ones like hard 0:14:34.600 --> 0:14:38.200 right bobbing. It's never like not a right wing but 0:14:38.280 --> 0:14:40.400 like air to wance turn into just like fire bombing 0:14:40.440 --> 0:14:47.240 cities and um and literally barrel bombing, you know, the 0:14:47.280 --> 0:14:52.520 peaceful protests stuff. Um can overthrow governments if the government 0:14:52.640 --> 0:14:56.560 is not willing to bomb and shoot people who gather 0:14:56.640 --> 0:14:59.360 on mass in the central Square because they're afraid of 0:14:59.400 --> 0:15:01.320 what the world response would be if they did start 0:15:01.400 --> 0:15:04.000 doing that. But you know when Bashar Alasad did that 0:15:04.040 --> 0:15:07.880 in Syria against the Democratic opposition movements, Um, you know, 0:15:08.400 --> 0:15:11.920 that basically sent the signal nothing, I mean nothing happened 0:15:11.920 --> 0:15:14.440 to us side, right, So that basically sent the signal 0:15:14.520 --> 0:15:18.640 that like oh he had a stress of years. But yeah, yeah, 0:15:18.800 --> 0:15:22.240 right right, yeah, like like you can you can just 0:15:22.520 --> 0:15:25.720 shoot people and bomb them and like it. And that 0:15:26.120 --> 0:15:29.840 basically defanged the kind of central tactic that a lot 0:15:29.880 --> 0:15:31.440 of these movements were trying to do, which is to 0:15:31.480 --> 0:15:35.040 have like large numbers of people do nonviolent civil disobedience 0:15:35.080 --> 0:15:38.360 and then through those like direct actions, cultivate this culture 0:15:38.400 --> 0:15:41.840 of like direct democracy in the hopes that, um, you know, 0:15:41.880 --> 0:15:43.960 the assemblies that are created in that space could in 0:15:44.000 --> 0:15:46.240 some way become the germ of the organs that could 0:15:46.320 --> 0:15:48.120 run society, or at least that's like when it's taken 0:15:48.120 --> 0:15:50.960 to its logical conclusion. Because usually people who are involved 0:15:50.960 --> 0:15:52.640 in this, they get involved in it, they think the 0:15:52.640 --> 0:15:55.840 assembly stuff is really cool, they start learning more about it, 0:15:55.920 --> 0:15:58.640 they get radicalized by being in the assembly because like 0:15:58.720 --> 0:16:01.160 when you're in a direct democratic something you're actually making 0:16:01.240 --> 0:16:03.520 the decisions like together, and then you come to an 0:16:03.560 --> 0:16:06.320 agreement and you execute the decision. You start asking yourself 0:16:06.320 --> 0:16:10.240 like why can't we do everything like this? Um? And 0:16:10.280 --> 0:16:13.320 then um, you know all that that's what directs a 0:16:13.360 --> 0:16:16.840 lot of people in this kind of anarchistic direction. But yeah, 0:16:16.920 --> 0:16:18.880 one of the reasons why these movements starts to decline 0:16:19.000 --> 0:16:23.600 is because they get smashed um the But I think 0:16:23.600 --> 0:16:28.440 that there's always this other thing going on, which and 0:16:28.480 --> 0:16:31.680 I wonder how y'all felt about this, like reading it, 0:16:31.840 --> 0:16:37.760 like you know, there's there was this kind of both 0:16:37.880 --> 0:16:41.200 like an external critique at first from people like you know, 0:16:41.280 --> 0:16:44.400 Boskar Sencrove, Jacobin and things like that, but then also 0:16:44.480 --> 0:16:48.520 like this increasingly over the years in the last half 0:16:48.560 --> 0:16:53.480 of the internal critiques of anarchism coming from anarchists themselves. 0:16:53.800 --> 0:16:57.440 Are people in this general kind of you libertarian socialism 0:16:57.440 --> 0:17:03.560 talking about how like anarchists didn't have solutions to the 0:17:03.600 --> 0:17:07.000 most pressing crises in the twenty century. Like if you like, 0:17:07.040 --> 0:17:09.080 if you guys had to say, I know it's like 0:17:09.200 --> 0:17:11.400 kind of pretentious, but like, what is the most pressing 0:17:11.400 --> 0:17:13.600 crisis of the century, What are like the top three 0:17:13.840 --> 0:17:15.880 just off the top of your heads without thinking, what 0:17:15.920 --> 0:17:17.640 would you list if you have to list three, two 0:17:17.720 --> 0:17:23.160 or three separate things? Climate change, creeping authoritarianism, and rampant 0:17:23.320 --> 0:17:27.920 disinformation about basic facts of reality. Sweet? Okay, so let's 0:17:27.920 --> 0:17:32.840 tackle each one of those, right, Like, what's what's an 0:17:32.840 --> 0:17:35.879 anarchist got to say about climate change? Well? Okay, disrupt 0:17:35.920 --> 0:17:40.080 the pipelines, like you know, do uh, Like, you can't 0:17:40.080 --> 0:17:42.199 have infinite growth on a finite planet, so you have 0:17:42.240 --> 0:17:44.719 to have like, you know, we we have all the slogans, right, 0:17:44.760 --> 0:17:46.680 I mean we've all heard them like a million times. Yeah, 0:17:46.720 --> 0:17:50.080 you have the diagnoses of the problem. But yeah, yeah, 0:17:50.080 --> 0:17:52.960 But then like, okay, so how are we going to 0:17:53.640 --> 0:17:55.919 like you know, I guess we're gonna build some co 0:17:56.000 --> 0:17:59.840 ops and then the co ops are gonna democratized per 0:18:00.000 --> 0:18:03.240 auction and then we can do d growth somehow, but 0:18:03.480 --> 0:18:06.840 like also disrupting existing production. But there's like a missing 0:18:06.880 --> 0:18:09.320 step here, right, because like, you know, the reason why 0:18:09.320 --> 0:18:11.480 we have all this production in certain ways, because the 0:18:11.560 --> 0:18:14.520 entire economy depends on it's been set up that way. Uh. 0:18:14.840 --> 0:18:17.800 So you implied in the idea that we're going to 0:18:17.880 --> 0:18:19.600 do de growth somehows that we need some way of 0:18:19.640 --> 0:18:22.399 constructing a different economy, and how do you construct a 0:18:22.400 --> 0:18:25.359 different economy right through some kind of planning? So really 0:18:25.400 --> 0:18:29.000 the question is like how do you do economic planning? Uh? 0:18:29.080 --> 0:18:32.560 Second one, um, I got a skip creeping authoritarianism for now, 0:18:32.560 --> 0:18:35.000 because that's actually like feeding into the more the ending 0:18:35.000 --> 0:18:37.720 of the essay. But the but the other one, right, disinformation? 0:18:37.760 --> 0:18:41.399 Another great question, right, like what do you do with 0:18:41.480 --> 0:18:45.959 social media? Like? Okay, again, anarchists talked in general a 0:18:46.000 --> 0:18:49.280 lot about like, okay, we're gonna democratize all the companies 0:18:49.560 --> 0:18:53.000 because we're democratizing everything. We're democratizing neighborhoods or democratizing cities. 0:18:53.040 --> 0:18:55.040 So it's kind of the same thing, turning everything into 0:18:55.040 --> 0:19:00.160 like a radical direct democracy. Okay, but if we're going 0:19:00.240 --> 0:19:02.760 to have social media, first of all, should we like 0:19:02.880 --> 0:19:06.080 was it a mistake to invent a centralized system instead 0:19:06.119 --> 0:19:09.240 of the more decentralized internet that created that existed before 0:19:09.359 --> 0:19:12.159 social media? Right? That's kind of an interesting question. But 0:19:12.200 --> 0:19:15.560 then assuming that we do, how do we restructure it? 0:19:15.840 --> 0:19:17.760 Not just in terms of how it's managed, but like, okay, 0:19:17.800 --> 0:19:20.240 we have the democracy of Facebook or whatever, and let's 0:19:20.240 --> 0:19:24.080 say that we're the workers at Facebook, what do we do, Like, 0:19:24.400 --> 0:19:27.119 how do we structure it so that it's not a 0:19:27.240 --> 0:19:31.080 giant misinformation engine? Right? Like once once you actually have 0:19:31.359 --> 0:19:33.800 like the responsibility and the power of being in the saddle, 0:19:33.840 --> 0:19:35.320 which is what we spend so much of our time 0:19:35.440 --> 0:19:37.480 kind of just trying to do. You have to actually 0:19:37.480 --> 0:19:40.960 make decisions about what to do. And honestly, there aren't 0:19:41.000 --> 0:19:42.199 that many. I mean, what do you what do you 0:19:42.200 --> 0:19:45.199 do with with the within with the utility like that? Like, 0:19:45.240 --> 0:19:47.960 for example, who ought to be in control of the 0:19:48.040 --> 0:19:51.520 utility like that? Is it really just the workers of Facebook? 0:19:51.680 --> 0:19:53.640 Aren't all the people who are users of it? Don't 0:19:53.640 --> 0:19:57.240 they have a right to be making decisions about it too? 0:19:57.440 --> 0:19:59.840 And is it just an American institution just because it's 0:19:59.840 --> 0:20:02.720 an American LLC? Or is it like a global institution 0:20:02.720 --> 0:20:06.760 because everybody on the planets on it? Um is there? 0:20:06.800 --> 0:20:09.840 You know, are are there ways that it could be reconfigured, 0:20:09.880 --> 0:20:13.000 like fundamentally in terms of how users use it that 0:20:13.040 --> 0:20:16.320 would change the experience in some way to actually make it, uh, 0:20:16.600 --> 0:20:19.119 make you less liable to misinformation. But on the other hand, 0:20:19.160 --> 0:20:22.480 if you try to manipulate people in order to UM 0:20:22.560 --> 0:20:25.840 you know, not see something that's going to be misinformation, 0:20:26.040 --> 0:20:31.399 isn't that well, you know, like censorship or or or 0:20:31.480 --> 0:20:34.320 some other thing that we generally would oppose, right, like 0:20:34.720 --> 0:20:38.800 the tool of centralized social control. So they like, these 0:20:38.840 --> 0:20:42.480 are really deep questions, and again this is generally a 0:20:42.560 --> 0:20:45.320 kind of silence, and of course, you know in that case, 0:20:45.359 --> 0:20:48.040 there's silence from the social democrats too, and there's silence 0:20:48.040 --> 0:20:49.919 from the Leninist I mean, well, the Lennis just kind 0:20:49.920 --> 0:20:52.800 of fantasize about turning Facebook into the tool of the 0:20:52.840 --> 0:20:56.440 central party state uses in order to crush dissent forever 0:20:56.520 --> 0:20:58.920 or whatever. But you know, social democrats are like less 0:20:58.960 --> 0:21:03.840 nationalized Facebook, and it's like, you know, yeah, sure we could, 0:21:03.880 --> 0:21:05.680 we could do that. And then you know the n 0:21:05.760 --> 0:21:09.160 S s A owns on Facebook. I'm sure that that's 0:21:09.200 --> 0:21:12.480 a that's a better scenario. Yeah. I mean, I tend 0:21:12.520 --> 0:21:16.199 to think somewhat differently about what it means to have 0:21:16.240 --> 0:21:18.760 an anarchist solution to those problems. Like, for example, I 0:21:18.760 --> 0:21:22.240 don't I don't see anarchists or social democrats or Leninists 0:21:22.320 --> 0:21:26.800 having any kind of stopping climate change solution um, because 0:21:26.920 --> 0:21:32.199 I don't I don't realistically see the organizing potential um 0:21:32.600 --> 0:21:36.600 capable of actually stopping what's going on in any kind 0:21:36.640 --> 0:21:38.840 of reasonable time frame. And I certainly don't think that 0:21:38.880 --> 0:21:43.080 the existing you know, neoliberal structures or the authoritarian structures 0:21:43.080 --> 0:21:45.520 that exist in you know, other countries or in this 0:21:45.600 --> 0:21:48.240 country are going to stop it either. So when I 0:21:48.280 --> 0:21:51.359 think about solutions to climate change from an anarchist perspective, 0:21:51.359 --> 0:21:55.440 I think about how can anarchist organizing help people deal 0:21:55.760 --> 0:22:00.200 with the consequences of climate change, And I see to 0:22:00.359 --> 0:22:05.000 see the potential for actually like mitigating climate change coming 0:22:05.000 --> 0:22:09.960 more from there's as the consequences of this become more 0:22:10.040 --> 0:22:13.320 dire to people, if anarchists are better, are good at 0:22:13.520 --> 0:22:16.920 providing relief and helping people and organizing through that, and 0:22:17.040 --> 0:22:19.919 eventually there's some potential to actually get people organized to 0:22:19.920 --> 0:22:24.080