Speaker 1: Also media welcome TOI could out here the podcast being
Speaker 1: recorded to were pays of pain killers.
Speaker 2: I'm your host to be a wong I'm fucking dying. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it would be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, phantomal episode even waiting for it here it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And the other thing that's dying was dying has
Speaker 2: died sort of was a bunch of French colonists in Algeria. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the French Empire as a whole.
Speaker 2: One could say, yeah, thank God Jesus Christ, why did
Speaker 2: you let these people have an empire? Terrible idea?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, what's not an empire? The abroad France? Right,
Speaker 3: like like the little parts of France which just happened
Speaker 3: to be in Africa, totally a normal thing. Which particular
Speaker 3: part of the French Empire? Are we talking about it?
Speaker 3: Many many such cases of French French empire taking L's
Speaker 3: not that that's unique to be also a British empire
Speaker 3: to the load of els.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So today we're talking about Algeria, and I think
Speaker 2: one of the things that I sort of realized about
Speaker 2: how the Algerian Revolution is you remembered in the West
Speaker 2: is okay, So there's there's the kind of the Frank
Speaker 2: Herbert reaction where they saw people who were Muslim in
Speaker 2: the streets and were like, holy shit, it went insane
Speaker 2: for seventy years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, to.
Speaker 2: Be fair, to be fair, that was also poorly partly
Speaker 2: being driven mad by the Portland Dunes, which, like you know,
Speaker 2: like I get sometimes sometimes you're driven you're driven completely
Speaker 2: insane by dunes. But you know, so there's that's there's
Speaker 2: there's a sort of reactionary memory of it. There's a
Speaker 2: sort of memory that functions in inside of like the
Speaker 2: American military where you know, Algeria's you remember it is
Speaker 2: one of the sort of like examples of failed kind
Speaker 2: of insurgency.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then there's the memory inside of the American left,
Speaker 2: which is largely confined to Finon and the movie The
Speaker 2: Battle of Algiers. Yep, classic movie, to be fair, Yeah,
Speaker 2: great movie, like nothing nothing, a good good movie. However, coma,
Speaker 2: this is a real issue because the Battle of Algiers again,
Speaker 2: great movie ends in nineteen fifty seven. Finan, great theorist,
Speaker 2: dies in nineteen sixty one. Now notably, Algeria gains independence
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty two. So okay. The issue with this is
Speaker 2: that people kind of broadly know the outlines of the
Speaker 2: first Algerian Revolution, but the second Algerian Revolution, the one
Speaker 2: where the Algerian working class season is the control of
Speaker 2: the means of production, attempts to run them autonomous league,
Speaker 2: is just has completely faded into the mist of history.
Speaker 2: I talk about it, no one has any idea what
Speaker 2: the fuck I'm talking about. And this is kind of startling,
Speaker 2: because you know, up until there's probably like there's like
Speaker 2: a four year span where the Algerian Revolution is the
Speaker 2: sort of like capital S capital R social revolution, like
Speaker 2: it's the big one, is the one people all over
Speaker 2: the world taking inspiration from, and then it kind of,
Speaker 2: you know, it flounders out for reasons that we're going
Speaker 2: to talk about, and also the culture revolution starts and
Speaker 2: everyone lashes onto that. But it's sort of fascinating to
Speaker 2: me that this the second part of the revolution, and
Speaker 2: the part that everyone was really excited about, which is
Speaker 2: the core of the revolution being workers self management, and
Speaker 2: that being the sort of great theoretical innovation of Algeria
Speaker 2: and socialism, that has just completely faded for memory. It's
Speaker 2: just gone. And so today we're talking about that revolution. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: one of the most detailed studies on this I'm gonna
Speaker 2: be citing from a lot is in Clegg's Worker Self
Speaker 2: Management and AIA. Now this is a good book. However,
Speaker 2: Comma Clegg is uh, he's he's a very specific kind
Speaker 2: of Crimogeny Marxist guy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm familiar with that kind of guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so like the back third of this book
Speaker 2: is him engaged in a protracted ideological war with phenomen
Speaker 2: over the nature nature of revolutionary consciousness, which is largely
Speaker 2: pointless and goes nowhere. So you know, but it is
Speaker 2: a very very detailed and very useful account of what
Speaker 2: actually happened after the First Revolution, like after the French
Speaker 2: are forced to Pulo out of Algeria, and what happens
Speaker 2: effectively is well, if we need to go back a
Speaker 2: little tiny bit, so there are you know, there is
Speaker 2: a a staggering slaughter of people who attempt to resist
Speaker 2: French colonialism. Like a lot of the sort of techniques
Speaker 2: that are going to be used in Vietnam, they are
Speaker 2: going to be used all over the world, and kind
Speaker 2: of insurgencies are developed in Algeria in this period. I'm
Speaker 2: going to read a quote from Clagg about what they
Speaker 2: were doing the use of air power in napalm to
Speaker 2: clear cover made movement inside the country almost impossible. The
Speaker 2: construction of mind and electrified barriers along the border with
Speaker 2: Tunisia and Morocco kept the better trained and armed elements
Speaker 2: of the army Deliberation Nationale from coming to support the
Speaker 2: gorillas and moving in supplies. One of the most successful
Speaker 2: moves encounter in gerrilla activity was the policy of regroupment,
Speaker 2: initiated by General Chalet. This strategy, learned from their British
Speaker 2: and Malaysia, involved moving the rural population out of areas
Speaker 2: favorable to the gorillas and resettling them in camps under
Speaker 2: military guard, and estimated two million peasants were treated this way,
Speaker 2: creating vast social and economic problems for the future. So,
Speaker 2: like they put two million people in concentration camps.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, according it a very group more is a
Speaker 3: fucking exercise in like and marketing. Rarely have I seen
Speaker 3: something so Nefario he named like, we're regrouping them parentheses
Speaker 3: in a fucking concentration camp.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is this is a strategy that you know.
Speaker 2: So the British sort of start doing this in Malaysia.
Speaker 2: A lot of it's derived from attempts to counter you know,
Speaker 2: and this isn't really an episode about that utter and revolution,
Speaker 2: but I won't talk about this a little bit. It's
Speaker 2: it's it's designed as a way to counter sort of
Speaker 2: MAOIs insurgency campaigns, which is the sort of you know,
Speaker 2: the becomes the new template for like thees. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: it's because it works really well, and you know, like
Speaker 2: the key thing of MAOIs like well, I mean there's
Speaker 2: a couple of things obviously, but like one of the
Speaker 2: key elements of it is this is this line from Mao.
Speaker 2: Is it like the gorilla moves to the people like
Speaker 2: a fish moves through the sea. Right, So it's about
Speaker 2: like it's about building social basis such that you know,
Speaker 2: gorillas can move in and out of communities and not
Speaker 2: get turned in and stuff and use them as terrain.
Speaker 3: I've had that particular Mao phrase paraphrase to me. I
Speaker 3: think sometimes why people are where it comes from outs
Speaker 3: and people who probably have just sort of come to
Speaker 3: it through their own understanding or or heard it but
Speaker 3: not realize the source of it. People who are not
Speaker 3: certainly not Maoists all over the world, like I've I've
Speaker 3: heard it in in the Middle East. I've heard it
Speaker 3: in Africa, I've heard it in Asia. It's it's it
Speaker 3: is a very important thing, and like it. Yeah, it
Speaker 3: does make Garrida war esier if you can rely on
Speaker 3: the population.
Speaker 2: This is something that's propagated through because because of the
Speaker 2: success of sort of Mao's like gorilla insurgency, there's something
Speaker 2: that's propagated through I mean through through obviously, like through
Speaker 2: through communist parties, but I mean like a lot of
Speaker 2: Islamist groups also pick it, like pick up a lot
Speaker 2: of elements of it, because a lot of those groups
Speaker 2: are trained in the Plos camps in the valley in Jordan,
Speaker 2: and so like a lot of groups like all over
Speaker 2: the world of completely unrelated ideologies all sort of picked
Speaker 2: this stuff up. And the British response to this is
Speaker 2: the British are fighting a communist insurgency in Malaysia and
Speaker 2: they're like, okay, we're gonna do conscer ration camps for
Speaker 2: our purposes. So obviously this is a you know, this
Speaker 2: is an unfathomable atrocity, but it has enormous effects even
Speaker 2: after the war ends, because suddenly, you know, okay, like
Speaker 2: the war ends, the French are gone. But you know,
Speaker 2: two million people have been taken from their homes and
Speaker 2: locked in and locked in camps. And this has enormous
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, this is this is enormous economic effects.
Speaker 2: And the second thing that has really sort of stunning
Speaker 2: economic effects are the Sore. There's been a class of
Speaker 2: people in Algeria called the Colognes who are basically there
Speaker 2: the colonists. They're not actually all French, a lot of
Speaker 2: them are from other European countries, but they come to
Speaker 2: be this sort of hardcore French ultranationalist, sort of fascist
Speaker 2: turbo racists. I guess they're they're they're not quite the Rhodesians,
Speaker 2: but they're they're only not quite the Rhodesians because they
Speaker 2: didn't stay to fight it out. And when when the
Speaker 2: French lose the war and when the French pull out,
Speaker 2: these people just flee, like all of them were talking,
Speaker 2: hundreds of thousands of people just are gone. I'm going
Speaker 2: to read another quote from Cleig, because you know, if
Speaker 2: these people had merely left, I think a lot of
Speaker 2: what's going to happen in this revolution goes a lot better.
Speaker 2: But they didn't just leave. Quote in June, a policy
Speaker 2: of scorched earth was declared, inaugurating an orgy of destruction.
Speaker 2: With his dream crumbling, the colonist's response was to destroy
Speaker 2: this world, which I think is a really sort of elegant.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that's you very well written
Speaker 3: and it's funny. It's this thing that again, like you
Speaker 3: see replicated so often. There was this slogan that they
Speaker 3: used at the start, the serience of a war like
Speaker 3: asado wee been in the country.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and it's it's this real you know. So,
Speaker 2: so what the what the colins end up doing is
Speaker 2: they end up just destroying, Yes, everything they can get
Speaker 2: their hands on. They're destroying houses, They're especially destroying any
Speaker 2: kind of sort of factory of technical equipment, anything they
Speaker 2: can find. They're burning their lighting on fire. And the
Speaker 2: other thing about Okay, so Auxuria is a colonial economy, right,
Speaker 2: and the structure of the colonial economy is such that
Speaker 2: you know, if you are a anyone who has any
Speaker 2: kind of technical or manager gerial experience are all colonists, right.
Speaker 2: Everyone else in the country is either doing subsistence farming
Speaker 2: or has been fed as like these this sort of
Speaker 2: like seasonal workers or really really badly paid sort of
Speaker 2: contract workers on the on these sort of like cash
Speaker 2: crap agricultural farms, a lot of orange production and stuff
Speaker 2: like that. And so when the colonists flee the country,
Speaker 2: suddenly like the entire technical managerial class, everyone with technical experience,
Speaker 2: and also all of the bosses and the entire bourgeoisie
Speaker 2: are just gone. And this takes everyone by surprise. The
Speaker 2: Ethelen had assumed the Ethlens the the kind of like
Speaker 2: umbrella organization that carried out the revolution. They it kind
Speaker 2: of falls apart very quickly because it's it's not really
Speaker 2: a coherent ideological group. It's just the sort of banner
Speaker 2: that everyone who was fighting kind of attaches themselves to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is quite common, right, like national friends, ye,
Speaker 3: or like popular friends very often do this post fore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and these are disintegrated. But they had all expected
Speaker 2: that the colonists were going to stick around, and they
Speaker 2: don't because they're turbo racists, right, And the thought of
Speaker 2: having to live in an Algeria world by Algeria, this
Speaker 2: was like nope, I will fucking literally light the world
Speaker 2: on fire and flee to France. You know what else
Speaker 2: is going to light the world on fire and cause
Speaker 2: people to flee to France.
Speaker 3: The products, products and services it's supporting to show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so how how fucking good they are. It's gonna
Speaker 2: it's going to cause the world to burn and make
Speaker 2: people flee to France.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I have to think about that. When I think about,
Speaker 3: like how big my pile of gold is, I think
Speaker 3: that that match it's too small. I better just bend
Speaker 3: all down and moved to France.
Speaker 2: And we are back now enter enter here. The heroes
Speaker 2: of this episode, the workers Council, or very specifically, so
Speaker 2: this is this is a French this is a French colony.
Speaker 2: So in France and in Spain and in sort of
Speaker 2: I guess the Romance languages. There, there was a concept
Speaker 2: called autogiion. I'm pronouncing it really badly because I'm reading
Speaker 2: the French version of it and trying to pronounce it
Speaker 2: half in Spanish, the only one of these languages I
Speaker 2: can even sort of speak. But it so it means
Speaker 2: self management, and it basically it has this context of
Speaker 2: of sort of like workers democratic self management. Right, if
Speaker 2: you're if you're doing atostone, you're like the workers of
Speaker 2: a factory have taken the factory and not running it themselves.
Speaker 2: The most prominent example and at this point of self
Speaker 2: management is Yugoslavia. Now this it's very the Uslavian version
Speaker 2: is very, very weird, but as a way basically to
Speaker 2: tell the Soviets to fuck off, Yugoslavia adopts a very
Speaker 2: different kind of model of socialism than everyone else's. So
Speaker 2: they're models based on the quote unquote the withering away
Speaker 2: of the state. So they're you know, you have basically
Speaker 2: these like reasonably democratic, like workers co ops that are
Speaker 2: the sort of that are sort of their productive basis
Speaker 2: of society. And these these co ops sort of compete
Speaker 2: against each other on the market. But other hand, there
Speaker 2: is a like a very large level of workers control
Speaker 2: that's different from you know, like the US, which is
Speaker 2: just a pure dictatorship of your boss in the workplace,
Speaker 2: tells you what to do, and if you don't do what,
Speaker 2: you get fired. Yeah, And so Algeria that's there, has
Speaker 2: their own version of of self management. But unlike Algeria,
Speaker 2: which is sort of effectively imposed by the top down
Speaker 2: from the Comnist party. In Algeria, what happens is you
Speaker 2: have this this enormous mass of workers who used to
Speaker 2: work on these plantations, used to work in factories. There's
Speaker 2: these huge colonial agricultural estates. And what happens is with
Speaker 2: with the entire ruling class gone. And when I say
Speaker 2: the entire ruling class, we're we're talking from all the
Speaker 2: way up from you know, the highest level government officials,
Speaker 2: through all all of your sort of capitalist bosses, right
Speaker 2: down to sort of the middle management guys are gone. Yeah,
Speaker 2: all those people just have disappeared. So what happens is
Speaker 2: workers start taking over all of their all of their workplaces,
Speaker 2: and they start forming workers councils. Right now, this is
Speaker 2: this is driven largely by I mean, there's there's there's
Speaker 2: there's a few different drivers. There's we'll get to the
Speaker 2: ideological aspect. A lot of it is that these people
Speaker 2: have no money and no one else is going to
Speaker 2: run it. So there the workers who have now sees
Speaker 2: all of this stuff are like, Okay, well we're gonna
Speaker 2: we're gonna get the money we need to survive by
Speaker 2: running by running all the stuff ourselves.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And so this sort of starts in nineteen sixty two
Speaker 2: and it sweeps across the country very quickly. I mean
Speaker 2: there's a lot of real regions where it never really
Speaker 2: takes hold. But largely what's happening is that permanent workers
Speaker 2: who had been who had been workers at these firms
Speaker 2: seize control of them. This has benefits and downsize. The
Speaker 2: benefit of it is so there's an attempt by the
Speaker 2: sort of the new Algerian sort of bushwise either the
Speaker 2: sort of like small faction of Algerian capitalists to buy
Speaker 2: up all this land. And there's a bunch of really
Speaker 2: funny stories of these guys buying these estates and showing
Speaker 2: up and the Workers Committee just kicking them out. Yeah, yes, eternities,
Speaker 2: this is extremely funny. Yeah, there's also issues. So part
Speaker 2: of what's going on is this is this is the
Speaker 2: sort of this is the permanent workers taking over the
Speaker 2: stuff with their people, right, and so a lot of
Speaker 2: times like they'll they'll kick out seasonal workers because yeah,
Speaker 2: so it's not it's not perfect, and there's a lot
Speaker 2: of issues with it, right because this is this is
Speaker 2: all being formed effectively, spontaneously about a bunch of extremely
Speaker 2: desperate people.
Speaker 3: That's what I'm just so obviously like because it's me
Speaker 3: the point of comparison, and I'm thinking of is the
Speaker 3: Spanish Civil War, right yeah, and work is self management.
Speaker 3: But there you have a workforce which is which has
Speaker 3: been working towards collectivization for more than a decade in
Speaker 3: some cases. And also, like this is the point actually
Speaker 3: gets missed a lot in online discourse about the Spanish
Speaker 3: Civil War, perhaps because people don't know as much as
Speaker 3: they think they do that like there were anarchists in
Speaker 3: all kinds of roles, Like when people talk about their
Speaker 3: rooty column or whatever, like, there were absolutely anarchists, non
Speaker 3: com missioned officers from the military who they relied on
Speaker 3: heavily for advice. And the same is true with the
Speaker 3: collectivized workplaces, right that there were anarchists in many roles,
Speaker 3: you know, in shop stewards and things like that. Obviously
Speaker 3: not in like the higher management roles. I think, yeah,
Speaker 3: doing that is kind of incompatible with anarchism, and obviously
Speaker 3: what we're dealing here with is anarchosyndicalism. For the most
Speaker 3: part of the fire was more of a purest anarchist group,
Speaker 3: but there you had people who'd been working towards us
Speaker 3: for a long time, who have been planning for it,
Speaker 3: and who did have people with a variety of experiences
Speaker 3: in I think oversight might be a better word than
Speaker 3: the management preps or like sort of organization. But they
Speaker 3: were very successful. But that didn't just happen overnight. It
Speaker 3: often gets presented as if it did, as if on
Speaker 3: the eighteenth of July these people were just sort of
Speaker 3: going to work and by the twentieth they were fully
Speaker 3: formed anarchists running their own workplaces. But that's absolutely not
Speaker 3: the case.
Speaker 2: And jury is the exact opposite of this, which is, yeah,
Speaker 2: there's there's a very low level of political consciousness. There's
Speaker 2: organization is almost non existent, because so I mean the
Speaker 2: kinds of organizations that it existed are you know, you
Speaker 2: have these sort of vanguard cells, but those are largely rural.
Speaker 2: And then you have there there are some unions, but
Speaker 2: they're not very they're not very large because they've been outlawed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, break ground, Yeah, like unbelievableression. Colonial context is extremely important.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, obviously Native mayor is blaming Algerian workers for not
Speaker 3: being Catalanic.
Speaker 2: No, yeah, like this is this is this is the
Speaker 2: French's fault and and you know, but but any such cases. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but this seizure really takes everyone by surprise, because all
Speaker 2: of the sort of leaders of fl and all leaders
Speaker 2: of the various factions that assumed that either they were
Speaker 2: going to sort of do I don't know, there's a
Speaker 2: ideological conflict, but they they they always assume that they're
Speaker 2: going to do some kind of like giant state light
Speaker 2: industrialization project, right, whether it's a socialist one, whether it's
Speaker 2: more Islamist one. And then suddenly they are they are
Speaker 2: now all you know, it's like, okay, well your economy
Speaker 2: is now on the Yugoslavian uh self management model because
Speaker 2: all of these workers have just seized all their workplaces.
Speaker 2: Now that there are there are a few organizations that
Speaker 2: are are politically very supportive of this. The the UGTA,
Speaker 2: which is Algeria's big sort of trade union, are very
Speaker 2: politically socialist and they they are really the only people
Speaker 2: in this entire country who are who are an organized
Speaker 2: political body who actually want to see this thing work.
Speaker 2: And so they do a lot of work helping me,
Speaker 2: helping workers set up their their committees and spreading the revolution.
Speaker 2: Their plan is to use this against any attempt to
Speaker 2: set up basically a dictatorship by uh, you know, it's okay,
Speaker 2: and this is where it gets sort of interesting because
Speaker 2: very explicitly they are trying to stave off sort of
Speaker 2: Soviet style socialisticatorship, right they are, And their plan is
Speaker 2: we're going to use We're going to use the workers
Speaker 2: councils as the as the basis of of an actual
Speaker 2: sort of workers democracy against again against the sort of
Speaker 2: orthodox like Marcus Leninist stuff. And this is another thing
Speaker 2: that's going on too, is the army is a lot
Speaker 2: more orthodox Marxist Leninists than either the workers committees or
Speaker 2: the unions, and so a lot in a lot of
Speaker 2: parts of the countries in the West, the army just
Speaker 2: sort of rolls through, knocks off the workers committees and
Speaker 2: seizes the land for itself. And that's a fiasco. But
Speaker 2: now now pretty very quickly Ben Bella, who emerges as
Speaker 2: as the sort of as the leader of Algeria after
Speaker 2: a set of political maneuvering that we're not going to
Speaker 2: get into here, is basically forced to and in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty three set a bunch of decrees saying that yeah,
Speaker 2: these guys are people who run the economy, et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera, but there's there are I want to talk
Speaker 2: I want to actually get into something that is really
Speaker 2: not talked about in ninety nine percent of the accounts
Speaker 2: of this stuff, which is how do these councils actually work?
Speaker 2: Because spoiler alert, this whole thing is going to fail
Speaker 2: and all these people are going to be crushed, And
Speaker 2: a lot of that has to do with how this
Speaker 2: thing's set up, which is very badly because it is
Speaker 2: a system designed by Marxists, and they're very sympathetic Marxist
Speaker 2: to a broad extent. But unfortunately the way that these
Speaker 2: that this is set up is that, Okay, so there's
Speaker 2: an assembly, right, that's like all the workers in the
Speaker 2: firm are in this assembly. The assembly elects this worker's council,
Speaker 2: which has like ten people, and then that council elects
Speaker 2: the management committee, which is the people who actually do
Speaker 2: the management. So it has a president and there's also
Speaker 2: a director supposed to represent the interest of the state
Speaker 2: or whatever. And the issue with this is that it's
Speaker 2: designed specifically to keep power out of the hands of
Speaker 2: workers directly, right that that giant assembly it can't actually
Speaker 2: make policy. The only thing they can do is approve
Speaker 2: plans or disapproved plans set down by the management committee.
Speaker 3: Got it, okay. And these people at the management committee
Speaker 3: wire presumably like representatives as opposed to delegates.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, yeah, they're the representatives. They also have three
Speaker 2: year terms and it may not I think they can,
Speaker 2: but it's really hard. And and the other thing that
Speaker 2: that that sort of destroys this is that they those
Speaker 2: they there's a lot of sort of like election rigging
Speaker 2: by the state who doesn't want these things to be
Speaker 2: actual sort of democratic and the the and that this
Speaker 2: leads into the bigger issue, which is state control. And
Speaker 2: this is this is where I think, really this is
Speaker 2: something that Clegg doesn't get into much because Clegg is
Speaker 2: a Marxist, but this is where the Marxism of it
Speaker 2: all really comes into play. But first, do you know
Speaker 2: who's not a Marxist?
Speaker 3: Oh yes, almost certainly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not Marxists. I think we I think we can
Speaker 2: say not Marxists. All right, we are back. So the
Speaker 2: biggest issue here, and this is something that was kind
Speaker 2: of true in both Algeria and in the others kind
Speaker 2: of big Marxist self management experiments in Chile, which is
Speaker 2: that these the self managing firms don't have control over
Speaker 2: a lot of the things that they need right, So
Speaker 2: in Algeria, when when when the state essentially tries to
Speaker 2: absorb all of this stuff, when it when it gets
Speaker 2: sort of legitimized under under these decrees U there are
Speaker 2: a lot of issues. One is that these self managing
Speaker 2: organizations don't have control over their own money. So they're yeah,
Speaker 2: you're paid, You're getting paid by the state, right and
Speaker 2: you so you give the state your money and then
Speaker 2: they they pay you. And this becomes a real issue
Speaker 2: because the state goes, oh will the people in these
Speaker 2: self managing things are act like privileged workers, so they
Speaker 2: have permanent pay freezers. And also you can't reinvest your
Speaker 2: profits back into the firm, which is a real issue.
Speaker 3: It's like a horrible combination of like and cap and
Speaker 3: like styalinists like it without Yeah, I don't, I don't
Speaker 3: want to like derail us too much. But this again,
Speaker 3: like it's it's.
Speaker 2: So much worse than the Spanish system. It's so much worse,
Speaker 2: Like every part of it is set up to fail.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think this should always get This is
Speaker 3: the sort of discourse I am now going to derail that.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry. This is the kind of like the online
Speaker 3: like hammer and sickle in bio discourse that we that
Speaker 3: we see so often, right, and you don't have to
Speaker 3: pay attention to these people, and like you probably shouldn't,
Speaker 3: but just just to like put it out there, I
Speaker 3: think like an archao syndiclysm is right there. And it
Speaker 3: allows for the like unions and syndicate which over overlook
Speaker 3: a whole industry to coordinate between work it's committees and
Speaker 3: ensure that you know, things get done and people get
Speaker 3: treated with dignity, and and they also make enough money
Speaker 3: or have access to the resources that they need to survive.
Speaker 3: And when we try and like cut the corners off
Speaker 3: this or kind of make a little college between this
Speaker 3: and and barkist Leninism or state socialism, like neither thing
Speaker 3: works and we just end up with this kind of
Speaker 3: terrible hodge podge in which it doesn't it doesn't function, right,
Speaker 3: But that that doesn't necessarily mean that work is self
Speaker 3: management itself is invalid as a concept.
Speaker 2: It Yeah, and and and there's there's a lot of
Speaker 2: things here that you know.
Speaker 1: So the.
Speaker 2: One of the big criticisms of this at the time
Speaker 2: by by social intellectuals is people are going, well, there's
Speaker 2: not coordination uh, you know, the firms competing against each other.
Speaker 2: There's not broad economic coordination. It's like, well, yeah, that's
Speaker 2: because that's because the state controls all their finances. They
Speaker 2: don't they don't have the ability to do coordination with
Speaker 2: each other. And yeah. The big thing, and this is
Speaker 2: the thing that really actually kills this is that so
Speaker 2: Cleig calls it marketing is controlled by the state. But
Speaker 2: that's not quite what's going on. The other thing that's
Speaker 2: controlled by the state is the state isn't has the
Speaker 2: responsibility or and is the people who are in charge
Speaker 2: of selling the products. And they just fucked this up completely.
Speaker 2: They can't they can't figure out how to get like
Speaker 2: the fruit that's being produced sold, right. The problem here
Speaker 2: isn't is an output. Is that the the state is
Speaker 2: doing things like I mean sometimes sometimes they they'll have
Speaker 2: all these oranges. So a lot of the the Algeria
Speaker 2: and agricultural economy is set up as a cash crop
Speaker 2: economy and you're supposed to fight you so okay, and
Speaker 2: it's it's never really worked very well. But the Algerian
Speaker 2: state just completely shits the bed. And there's I mean,
Speaker 2: this is like i mean, we're talking like tons of
Speaker 2: fruit is just sitting there rotting a lot of the time.
Speaker 2: What they do is they just dump in onto the
Speaker 2: French market and for like basically zero cost and so
Speaker 2: and you know, and so you get these things, and
Speaker 2: you look at the sort of profit lost thing, and
Speaker 2: you know, the sort of like right wing parts of
Speaker 2: the state and this, Oh, I guess you like, I
Speaker 2: guess they are right one. But the the sort of
Speaker 2: anti self manager parts of theysteria going oh, well, look
Speaker 2: at these these firms. They're hemorrhaging all this money. It's like, well, yeah,
Speaker 2: they're hemorrhaging money because instead of actually selling the goods,
Speaker 2: you guys are throwing all of their goods into a dumpster.
Speaker 2: Like yeah, of course it's not working, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: And it's a struggle of like post colonial economies. If
Speaker 3: you in the French colonial system, like they've decided that
Speaker 3: Algeria is going to be the place that makes oranges
Speaker 3: for the entirety of the French I'm just sort of
Speaker 3: manufacturing example empire here. Then evidently what once you once
Speaker 3: you secede from that empire, you now have a fuck
Speaker 3: ton more oranges than you need for Algerias. You're now
Speaker 3: going to have to navigate and you might not have
Speaker 3: enough well.
Speaker 2: And they can't even figure how to sell to other
Speaker 2: Algerians too. That that that's that's the that's the problem
Speaker 2: with the sort of state control of the market is
Speaker 2: they can't they can't do either because they're completely because
Speaker 2: the bureaucrats that are running this are completely incompetent.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, man, I mean one can ague to states
Speaker 3: incapable of at eating resorts is equally orfairly. But yes,
Speaker 3: even so they've they've done a bad job even by
Speaker 3: state standards.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and and and the and the and the subsequent
Speaker 2: issue too is is because all of the finances are
Speaker 2: controlled by this state, even the firms that are profitable,
Speaker 2: and there are firms that are very profitable, they can't
Speaker 2: reinvest their profit back into you know, improving efficiency or
Speaker 2: do or doing the basic things that workers need, which
Speaker 2: is having money to eat, because that money is that
Speaker 2: all of that sort of capital is just being eaten
Speaker 2: by the state. And so you know, there's an quote
Speaker 2: Clay again, as the president of a self managed farm
Speaker 2: said to me in nineteen sixty five, in this situation,
Speaker 2: how can we persuade the worker that he is no
Speaker 2: longer working for a capitalistic exploiter and like, well, yeah,
Speaker 2: he objectively is right, he is, like the state is
Speaker 2: stealing all of his money and then doing some stupid
Speaker 2: bullshit with it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I love that. They're like they're not quite joining
Speaker 3: the dots there, like, yeah, these guys don't seem to
Speaker 3: be getting it. Like maybe maybe they do get it.
Speaker 2: And this is this is one of these things where
Speaker 2: you know, like I I Cleig, Cleig doesn't really draw
Speaker 2: this line because he just I mean Cleig just refuses
Speaker 2: to talk about either Hungary or the Spanish Revolution at all.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, and.
Speaker 2: Well he's a mouth, like that's the thing. He he
Speaker 2: he is a he is a pro worker self management guy, right,
Speaker 2: but he's a Marxist pro worker self management guy. So
Speaker 2: she's distributing the failure this largely to like, well, there
Speaker 2: wasn't sufficient consciousness. So it's like, well, no, like this system,
Speaker 2: even if everyone wanted it to work, this system couldn't
Speaker 2: have worked because it was set up in such a
Speaker 2: way that it was. And this is something you know,
Speaker 2: this is the part of why I want to talk
Speaker 2: to you about. This was that if you look at
Speaker 2: the way that the that the Spanish system is set up, right,
Speaker 2: It's it's built off of coordination, like basically like sectoral
Speaker 2: coordination between everyone who's doing a thing. Right, It's built
Speaker 2: on resource sharing. If I'm remembering my stuff, I mean
Speaker 2: they have basically they have a banking union, and people
Speaker 2: put their profits into the into the banking union, and
Speaker 2: then people can get money from the banking union to
Speaker 2: reinvest in other places.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's correct. It's also like, yeah, this,
Speaker 3: I guess would that be called vertical integration if it's
Speaker 3: the whole sector, even if it's.
Speaker 2: They do this thing which takes advantage of both of
Speaker 2: the advantages of self management gives you, which is one
Speaker 2: like and like sort of you know, and it's like
Speaker 2: socialist self management.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: You have the advantage of scale, which is that you're
Speaker 2: now instead of competing as each other, you're now coordinating
Speaker 2: an entire sector, right, and you're you're producing stuff that
Speaker 2: you're producing stuff for need. And then on the other hand,
Speaker 2: you have the other thing that's supposed to be the
Speaker 2: advantage of self management, which is that the workers themselves,
Speaker 2: who are the people who are supposed to understand the
Speaker 2: production process the best, can make decisions over how they're
Speaker 2: going to do things. But then if you look at
Speaker 2: the Algerian system, because it's because it's set up by Marxists,
Speaker 2: it's specifly designed such that basically like you're you're, you're
Speaker 2: instead of you actually managing yourself, you're you're just electing
Speaker 2: your boss and then your boss manages, right, Yeah, and
Speaker 2: that's not actually good. This is and it's weird because
Speaker 2: looking at this, right, this is actually a worst system
Speaker 2: in terms of self management, I think in a lot
Speaker 2: of senses than the Chinese one, because the Chinese system
Speaker 2: is not designed for self management. But you can't fire people.
Speaker 2: So because because you can't fire people, you have to
Speaker 2: listen to what people think and what people sort of do.
Speaker 2: Is this system, I don't know. It pisces me off
Speaker 2: because this is a revolution that very very easily could
Speaker 2: have worked, but it was you know, there's there's intentional
Speaker 2: sabotage by the state because most of the sectors of
Speaker 2: the state don't want this to work.
Speaker 3: And then.
Speaker 2: Just structurally from the way it's set up, it's it's
Speaker 2: it's doomed to fail from the beginning. And the consequence
Speaker 2: of this is that in Nice sixty five ben Bella
Speaker 2: gets overthrown in a coup by another sort of but
Speaker 2: basically the army, a sort of state socialist faction of
Speaker 2: the army, and they hold on to power by basically
Speaker 2: turning Algeria into an oil economy. Yeah, and dismantling this
Speaker 2: entire thing. And it, I don't know, it makes me
Speaker 2: really angry because the the the like the actual Algerian
Speaker 2: ruling class had the right idea and then they just
Speaker 2: got completely fucked by everyone who was supposed to be
Speaker 2: leading them or you know, the people who were supposed
Speaker 2: to be selling the stuff that they made, people who
Speaker 2: are supposed to be reinvesting, all the people who ended
Speaker 2: up with the financial control just completely screwed them. And yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know, it's it's it's really it's it's it's
Speaker 2: really depressing in a lot of ways. But on the
Speaker 2: other hand, right, like it does, it doesn't. It doesn't
Speaker 2: have to go like this, Right, you don't have to
Speaker 2: hand control of your workplace over to some fucking guy
Speaker 2: in the Department of Agricultural Waste Management or whatever so
Speaker 2: he can use your origines for fertilizer. Like you can
Speaker 2: simply not do this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I don't know the exact situation that
Speaker 3: these workers found themselves in, and maybe there was you know,
Speaker 3: like a degree of sort of need to get reproducing
Speaker 3: in order to solve hunger issues.
Speaker 2: But yeah, you simply do not have to do that.
Speaker 3: As many examples, I'm thinking of the collectivized farms in
Speaker 3: Spain as well, because perhaps they would have been a
Speaker 3: better example, right, I guess there it was slightly different
Speaker 3: because it was somewhat of a collectivized community that in
Speaker 3: turn collectivized the land as opposed to collectivizing the agricultural labor.
Speaker 3: And then you have this sort of source of labor
Speaker 3: which is not inherently tied to the land in that
Speaker 3: like you know, when when there was a need, like
Speaker 3: for instance, I'm writing a book right now and then
Speaker 3: writing about the Druti column, and like they would because
Speaker 3: they had less rifles than they had fighters, they would
Speaker 3: rotate their fighters off the front line during the harvest
Speaker 3: time and have people help with the harvest, and then
Speaker 3: they didn't like need those people the rest of the year. Right,
Speaker 3: So they were able to incorporate like temporary surgeries in
Speaker 3: labor without it being like destructive to their model, because
Speaker 3: it was the idea was like a collective community as
Speaker 3: opposed to a collective as opposed to like just the
Speaker 3: workplace being this island of a pseudo collectivization, like like
Speaker 3: you're saying in Algeria. Also, shout out to the Iron
Speaker 3: column who I've been writing about recently, who solved their
Speaker 3: supply side issues by leaving the front line and raiding
Speaker 3: the cops because they didn't have enough guns either, so
Speaker 3: they simply took them from the cops. Yeah. Incredibly based, Yeah,
Speaker 3: very big.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I think that's it's kind of the
Speaker 2: point that I want to end this on, which is that,
Speaker 2: you know, this is something that that contributes to the
Speaker 2: collapse of Yugoslavia too, is that if you know, the
Speaker 2: the dichotomy that got forced on people in the twentieth
Speaker 2: century was you can either choose two. Okay, so your
Speaker 2: choices are you get a you get a sort of
Speaker 2: you get a stalinist planned economy completely run by the state,
Speaker 2: or you get a bunch of workers cooperatives competing against
Speaker 2: each other. And those are, like you're those are your
Speaker 2: two models of socialism, and those both suck and both
Speaker 2: are set up to fail from the beginning because they're
Speaker 2: not actually you know, you're you're, you're, you're, you're not
Speaker 2: actually doing the thing, You're not actually having the entire
Speaker 2: the entire class as a class, you know, abolishing itself
Speaker 2: and then also managing managing production in such a way
Speaker 2: that people are cooperating to produce what people need instead
Speaker 2: of everyone fighting over like either well, instead of either
Speaker 2: the state setting a steel quota and having that be
Speaker 2: the entire goal of the economy, or like seventeen co
Speaker 2: ops and the like both producing all producing the exact
Speaker 2: same kind of coffee. Try to figure out who can
Speaker 2: produce it more cheaply.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we we can do better, Yes we can, and
Speaker 3: we have. And what we should describe for I guess
Speaker 3: I know. If people want to read about the Spanish Revolution,
Speaker 3: there's a ship ton of books on libcom. I would
Speaker 3: say's book is pretty good in a Spanish Revolution. Mary
Speaker 3: Bookchin has a book that the heroic he is of
Speaker 3: Spanish anarchism. Able Paz has many books. Yes, you can
Speaker 3: spend time on libcom and read a lot about collective
Speaker 3: production in the Spanish Revolution, and for free, which is nice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this's been tickel happen here, go take over your
Speaker 2: workplace and then also help everyone else take over theirs
Speaker 2: and coordinate with each other.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that would be very nice, and then we'll turn
Speaker 3: an interview with you on the podcast Yay.
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