Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westerveldt. We
Speaker 1: have a new season coming for you starting June third,
Speaker 1: but in the meantime, I wanted to bring you this
Speaker 1: interview that reporter Adam Lowenstein did with journalist and author
Speaker 1: Malcolm Harris. You may have come across Harris's work in
Speaker 1: New York Magazine or his book Palo Alto. I particularly
Speaker 1: enjoyed his take on the Abundance Bros. Recently in The Baffler.
Speaker 1: Harris has a new book out now called What's Left
Speaker 1: that tackles how we can save both democracy and the planet.
Speaker 1: It's a great read, and this conversation is a great
Speaker 1: listen enjoy.
Speaker 2: Thanks for being here, Malcolm, Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: So I wanted to ask you to start. I have
Speaker 2: my own of this, but I'm curious what you see
Speaker 2: as the purpose of your book.
Speaker 3: Oh, I'll hear your theory, and I should hear it
Speaker 3: before I hear you hear my theories, and then you're
Speaker 3: going to copy me. When I set out to write
Speaker 3: this book, at first, I thought I'm going to worry
Speaker 3: about why I'm right and everyone else is wrong. Everyone
Speaker 3: who even sort of agrees with me is wrong, and
Speaker 3: they all need to completely agree to me. With me,
Speaker 3: and I have the only explanation for how we get
Speaker 3: through the climate crisis, and when people read my brilliant explanation,
Speaker 3: they'll have no choice but to agree with me in
Speaker 3: my understanding. And then I like thought about that for
Speaker 3: a second and thought like, well, that's that's not true,
Speaker 3: Like that won't happen. Even if I make a spectacular argument,
Speaker 3: I could convince you know, some people, but most people
Speaker 3: are probably doing what they're doing, even people on the left,
Speaker 3: as I'm broadly considering it, who don't agree with me
Speaker 3: on specifics or doing what they're doing for a number
Speaker 3: of reasons, not just because they're particular convinced, but because
Speaker 3: they have a like temperamental affinity with what they're doing.
Speaker 3: They have like interpersonal commitments, you know. People. We live
Speaker 3: in a society, you know, and I wasn't going to
Speaker 3: remake that society by making an argument, And so I
Speaker 3: decided the most useful thing I could do was operating
Speaker 3: from some base of shared understanding, give a sort of
Speaker 3: showcase of what I think are the relevant ideological paths
Speaker 3: that the left has opened to it right now. And
Speaker 3: this is mostly you know, like I wrote this during
Speaker 3: the Biden administration, and so we had some left wing
Speaker 3: people within some proximity to power for some period of
Speaker 3: time who were working on economic policy, and so from
Speaker 3: that the left wing of the Biden economic team all
Speaker 3: the way to insurgent communists. I think there was a
Speaker 3: certain level of agreement about some important terms, such that
Speaker 3: we could have a conversation about what everyone believes and
Speaker 3: then how we fit together. And so this book was
Speaker 3: my attempt to sort of give the strongest presentation I
Speaker 3: could of these different paths, even if even if I
Speaker 3: don't agree with everything in there, both strengths and weaknesses,
Speaker 3: and then think about the whole field in a way
Speaker 3: that's holistic and realistic. But you, as a reader, what
Speaker 3: was your take? That's more interesting to me?
Speaker 2: I will say on the you know, having written it
Speaker 2: during the Biden era, but of course readers are consuming
Speaker 2: it in the second Trump era. The mentions of Lena
Speaker 2: Khan made me somewhat wistful and nostalgic for a time
Speaker 2: that feels very far away, even though it was not
Speaker 2: that long ago. So what it felt like to me
Speaker 2: was that it was essentially a bracing bucket of cold water,
Speaker 2: which itself will be kind of a valuable commodity in
Speaker 2: the not too distant future. Like, there's no benefit to
Speaker 2: pretending that the problem is not as bad as it
Speaker 2: is and that the crisis is not as acute and
Speaker 2: real and world spanning as it is. We'll get into
Speaker 2: this a little bit later, I'm sure, but there is
Speaker 2: a sense of inertia the way that capitalism works that
Speaker 2: all of us, including those of us on the left,
Speaker 2: can get very comfortable with that. What it felt like
Speaker 2: to me was you repeatedly reminding people that it's as
Speaker 2: bad as you think, probably worse, and there is. We
Speaker 2: don't do ourselves any favors by avoiding the discomfort of
Speaker 2: that reality.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's just true. Right. So if we're talking about
Speaker 3: like foundation, I'm against deluding ourselves. I'm interested to see
Speaker 3: how much people will focus on different like think about
Speaker 3: it as an optimistic or pessimistic book or whatever, or
Speaker 3: hopeful or hopeless, And I try not to work within
Speaker 3: those boundaries. Usually I feel like they're not they don't
Speaker 3: guide us in the right directions because try to be
Speaker 3: a very dialectical thinker. Right, So there's hope even in
Speaker 3: the most hopeless moments, and then there's despair even in
Speaker 3: our best strategies. But yeah, I don't think there is
Speaker 3: any point. I think that's a premise for the project,
Speaker 3: is that there's no point scouting ourselves and that I'm
Speaker 3: not going to lie to my readers about what I
Speaker 3: understand the situation to be. And the situation is it's
Speaker 3: pretty dire, but we can also you know, people have
Speaker 3: been in dire situations for a long time. It's not
Speaker 3: We're not the first people to see the end of
Speaker 3: the world, and we can learn from other experiences with that.
Speaker 3: So for me, it's a it's a forward looking book,
Speaker 3: not a not a backward looking book or a you know,
Speaker 3: skyward despairing looking book. It's a forward looking book. I'm
Speaker 3: thinking about where we are, where you go, and to
Speaker 3: go anywhere, you have to start from where you are.
Speaker 3: You can't imagine you're somewhere else. It's not a path
Speaker 3: for movement.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you say early on that the message to me
Speaker 2: at least was it's worse than you think. But you
Speaker 2: also write pretty early in the book that I'll assume
Speaker 2: from the beginning that success is possible, which is right.
Speaker 2: It's both very pessimistic and very optimistic at the same time,
Speaker 2: which I guess maybe is just a way of describing
Speaker 2: being realism in some ways.
Speaker 3: Well, I think that the I cite the great late
Speaker 3: and great Mike Davis who says, well, we have to
Speaker 3: be realistic even about our realism, that you can look
Speaker 3: at the situation ecologically and turn to stone is what
Speaker 3: he says is like it is, it's very bad, and
Speaker 3: you can look look at the situation and see how
Speaker 3: bad it is and freeze. There's there's a real temptation
Speaker 3: to do that, and there's a temptation to ignore it right,
Speaker 3: to just not look. But I think realistic about our
Speaker 3: realism is to find a middle in between those and say, like,
Speaker 3: the situation's bad and we can still move. We are
Speaker 3: not Stone, right. We have the ability to think and
Speaker 3: we have the ability to act, and we can do
Speaker 3: both collectively.
Speaker 2: So in understanding the status quo, the stakes of the
Speaker 2: present moment or the state of the present moment, I
Speaker 2: guess you talk about the oil value life chain. Can
Speaker 2: you explain what that is as kind of a fundamental
Speaker 2: premise for where we are right now?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Actually, the concept for this book is really this
Speaker 3: oil is life syllogism which I awoke from a dream
Speaker 3: with I was like in to pitch a whole different book,
Speaker 3: And the night before the conversation with my agent, I
Speaker 3: woke up for a dream with this phrase, the oil
Speaker 3: is life.
Speaker 2: Fossil fuels are they're in your brain?
Speaker 3: Well they are in so many ways microplastics alone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good point literally in another.
Speaker 3: Way, literally like oil is life. So we know the
Speaker 3: phrase the water is life from the code access struggle,
Speaker 3: and that's true. Right, everyone knows that you can't literally
Speaker 3: can't live without water. We know that, and that should
Speaker 3: be decisive, right, that should, like everything should flow from
Speaker 3: that fundamental truth if we are operating rationally, one would think.
Speaker 3: And yet the assertion, the phrase, the truism of truth
Speaker 3: that water is life has not shifted our politics, It
Speaker 3: has not shifted our state behavior, It hasn't affected the
Speaker 3: path we're on that much, except in this insurgent way.
Speaker 3: And so the question is why there has to be
Speaker 3: something truer than at least in our society. Water is life.
Speaker 3: And the more you think about it, or the more
Speaker 3: I thought about it, once I had this phrase, whatever
Speaker 3: wouldn't leave me alone? It's true that oil is people's lives.
Speaker 3: People's lives are tied up very very very literally in
Speaker 3: the fossil fuel system, and not just the gas that
Speaker 3: they put in their car, although certainly the gas that
Speaker 3: they put in the car, or the polyester clothes that
Speaker 3: they used to put on their children, but also you know,
Speaker 3: the dividends from the Exxon check that is going into
Speaker 3: their pension fund. You know that people's lives are really
Speaker 3: really tied up in these systems, and not just in
Speaker 3: their need for consumable energy that can be replaced with
Speaker 3: a solar panel. And until we're realistic about that, unless
Speaker 3: we acknowledge that, we can't change it. And that's to
Speaker 3: me explains why every group, every agency, every state, every commune,
Speaker 3: unity that has tried to address this imminent crisis is
Speaker 3: currently a lapsing crisis of climate change has found itself
Speaker 3: really totally unable to do it, not at the scale
Speaker 3: is necessary. Even when we talk about and I'd write
Speaker 3: in the book, and when we think about China, which
Speaker 3: is as a state maybe done the most to address
Speaker 3: the exigencies of climate change at scale, it's not there.
Speaker 3: It's not a reasonable reaction to what's happening in the world.
Speaker 3: Were not able to do that. And it's because oil
Speaker 3: makes our life for everyone in the world almost that
Speaker 3: we face this block. And you need value as that
Speaker 3: center term to explain why it's not just oil itself
Speaker 3: that shapes our lives, but the fact that oil is
Speaker 3: valuable and valuable is the structure that explains and organizes
Speaker 3: the entire social metabolism. Means neither of these things are
Speaker 3: easy to cut off from each other. Right, It's not
Speaker 3: that we just use so much oil in our household production.
Speaker 3: We don't necessarily even for like it's heating and driving
Speaker 3: is mostly what people use fossil fuels directly for. I
Speaker 3: mean some cooking too. But it's not like you can
Speaker 3: get an ev and get an induction stove and the
Speaker 3: whole problem is solved. It is a problem at the
Speaker 3: level of value. And as long as fossil fuels have value,
Speaker 3: which they do because you can use them to accomplish
Speaker 3: a whole number of things, And as long as value
Speaker 3: is the term that structures our whole world, we're going
Speaker 3: to find ourselves unable to control our social situation, to
Speaker 3: control our ecological situation. I'm able to control what I
Speaker 3: call our social metabolism.
Speaker 2: I think one of the main points that I took
Speaker 2: from this, or I found clarifying about this, was the
Speaker 2: idea that our entire society is structured around the idea
Speaker 2: of value for value sake or value production for value
Speaker 2: production sake is an Inherit aren't good on its own.
Speaker 2: That's the kind of the basis for this whole system
Speaker 2: we live in. And as long as that's the case
Speaker 2: and oil is valuable, then that chain will be unbroken.
Speaker 2: Is that a reasonable interpretation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And we can see the implications very simply. And
Speaker 3: I start with the story of going to the Shell
Speaker 3: conference where they wanted me to speak and talking to
Speaker 3: this engineer slash finance guy for a Shell who's explaining that, well,
Speaker 3: when we stop using a well because of climate pressure
Speaker 3: or whatever, we sell it to somebody else and they're
Speaker 3: going to use it, and so the oil in that
Speaker 3: whale is still going to get used, even though we're
Speaker 3: complying with our climate commitments or whatever. We'll just sell
Speaker 3: it to some gangster, like literally, just like some gangster
Speaker 3: who can operate it at a lower cost because they're
Speaker 3: evading the safety responsibilities that have been foisted upon shell.
Speaker 3: They're avoiding the labor responsibilities they have been foisted upon
Speaker 3: shell because that oil is valuable, Like you could still
Speaker 3: use that, and it's like, well, if you get replaced.
Speaker 3: You know, two hundred million gas powered internal combustion engine
Speaker 3: personal vehicles in the United States. With electric vehicles, those
Speaker 3: cars don't just disappear. They're going to be sold somewhere
Speaker 3: where they don't have as many cars because suddenly you
Speaker 3: can get a car for way cheaper. And then those
Speaker 3: cars are still they need to be powered with gasoline.
Speaker 3: That's still going to power the car that someone will
Speaker 3: find money in being able to supply. That person who's
Speaker 3: able to sell the gasoline for that car is going
Speaker 3: to be able to live, right, They're going to be
Speaker 3: able to reproduce their lives. Maybe they're going to be
Speaker 3: able to improve their lives and the lives of people
Speaker 3: around them and their loved ones. And I'm not going
Speaker 3: to be able to convince them not to do that.
Speaker 3: You're not going to be able to convince them not
Speaker 3: to do that. State regulations aren't going to be able
Speaker 3: to convince them not to do that. You know, I
Speaker 3: compared it to the War on drugs. There's theoretically a
Speaker 3: war between every government in the world, and like drug
Speaker 3: dealers and drug dealers are winning that war and have
Speaker 3: been winning that war for decades. And it's not because
Speaker 3: they have bigger armies or whatever. It's because there's drugs
Speaker 3: are valuable, and value is the way that we find
Speaker 3: our way to life.
Speaker 2: So you organize this book around three collective strategies, as
Speaker 2: you call them, and I actually don't want to spend
Speaker 2: a ton of time on each one of them, because
Speaker 2: that's what the book is for, and there's so much
Speaker 2: nuance in each of these that people should just go
Speaker 2: read the book for that. But just as a little
Speaker 2: bit of scene setting, can you just give a bit
Speaker 2: of an overview of what the three different strategies are
Speaker 2: that you outline in the book.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I describe them as and I use the strategies
Speaker 3: as the names and the organizing principle rather than like
Speaker 3: identity ideology thing. So not socialism in the middle term,
Speaker 3: it's public power. I describe it as public power because
Speaker 3: I want to keep focused on the strategies themselves rather
Speaker 3: than these kind of political identifications or identities. So the strategies,
Speaker 3: as I describe them our market craft, which is using
Speaker 3: the states to intervene to break the connection between fossil fuels,
Speaker 3: oil and value by building a clean energy economy and
Speaker 3: by regulating fossil fuels out of existence. And so I
Speaker 3: call that market craft. It's a term designed by the
Speaker 3: political scientist Stephen Vogel that I really like. But it's
Speaker 3: a pretty broad spectrum of policies even within this chapter.
Speaker 3: The second one is called public power, which people might
Speaker 3: understand as like democratic socialism or just socialism, which is
Speaker 3: where the state is actually doing the green transition itself.
Speaker 3: It's loosening both the connections between value and life and
Speaker 3: between fossil fuels and value by building a clean energy
Speaker 3: economy and providing a basic quality of life for all
Speaker 3: people independent of their relation to the value system, such
Speaker 3: that fossil fuel can't make the same demand on us
Speaker 3: that they make now for us to ruin our lives
Speaker 3: and ruin the collective life life. And that'sized through organized
Speaker 3: labor developing itself in the interests of the entire society
Speaker 3: and taking control in that collective interest.
Speaker 2: And we saw some of those first and second, the
Speaker 2: market craft and public power strategies during the Biden years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you could point to examples for sure, more
Speaker 3: market craft than public power. I think you can definitely
Speaker 3: definitely point to examples. And then the third one is
Speaker 3: what I call communism, which is breaking that connection between
Speaker 3: value and life and organizing life itself around different principles,
Speaker 3: specifically to each according to their needs, from each according
Speaker 3: to their abilities, rather than according to their ability to
Speaker 3: produce value.
Speaker 2: And you talk in the book about choosing the word
Speaker 2: or settling on the word communism rather than something more
Speaker 2: complicated that might have this not have the same political baggage.
Speaker 3: I guess, yeah, I'm not scared of the word communism,
Speaker 3: and maybe I should be, and I would be now
Speaker 3: more if I read it again now. But for me,
Speaker 3: I think having an honest relationship with my readers is
Speaker 3: really important that I'm never going to try and dumb
Speaker 3: things down. I'm never going to try and like handle
Speaker 3: my reader strategically in that way with regard to the
Speaker 3: truth or what I think. I'm not going to give
Speaker 3: the reader or anything less than what I think. And
Speaker 3: that's a pretty pretty firm commitment from me as a writer,
Speaker 3: which becomes difficult in these kind of situations where I'm
Speaker 3: taking something that's pretty I don't want to say theoretically dense,
Speaker 3: but definitely fraud that's very important for my thought, and
Speaker 3: then I have to find a way to share it
Speaker 3: with a broad audience. And the best way I've found
Speaker 3: to do that is pretty straight up, and sometimes I
Speaker 3: need a note to explain to the reader, like, look,
Speaker 3: this is what I'm doing. I trust you to trust
Speaker 3: me to get us where we're going, and not need
Speaker 3: just call it like communism or like communalism or whatever
Speaker 3: something else. If I'm talking about to each according to
Speaker 3: their needs, from each according to their abilities, I'm talking
Speaker 3: about communism Like I'm a Marxist. I'm not afraid of that.
Speaker 3: I think society should be less afraid of that, and
Speaker 3: it's my duty to make society less afraid of that.
Speaker 3: In some ways, so I trust, I trust my readers,
Speaker 3: maybe to my own detriment or downfall, but I can't
Speaker 3: help myself.
Speaker 2: I feel like it's just a good operating principle for
Speaker 2: a writer and just for a human being in the
Speaker 2: world of just to trust people, give them the benefit
Speaker 2: of the doubt.
Speaker 3: I think so, but I find a lot of writers
Speaker 3: don't feel the same way necessarily. A phenomenon I see
Speaker 3: a lot is writers trying to write down to their
Speaker 3: reader from a place that's not very high to start with. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and so people who are assuming they're like, you know,
Speaker 3: too clever, too informed for their broad readership, and they're
Speaker 3: taking something that's already not first rate and diluting it
Speaker 3: down further to the point where like the readership can't
Speaker 3: really get anything out of it, and there's there's just
Speaker 3: not much there. And so I'd rather like look straight
Speaker 3: across the table at my reader, because that's where I
Speaker 3: that's where I will always think they are right. I'm
Speaker 3: always writing for curious, thoughtful readers the best I can.
Speaker 2: Unless we get diverted into the conversation just about the
Speaker 2: writing process, which I would love to have but is
Speaker 2: probably not what people signed up for. I do have
Speaker 2: a note written on a sticky note tape to my
Speaker 2: monitor here that says, respect your reader, trust them to
Speaker 2: get it, don't hit them over the head with it.
Speaker 2: And I don't always succeed in that. I probably usually don't,
Speaker 2: but I at least try to remind myself that people
Speaker 2: are smart.
Speaker 3: I've had a lot of luck, I've had a lot
Speaker 3: of luck respecting my reader and respecting readers in general.
Speaker 3: And I think there are there are a lot of
Speaker 3: smart readers out there, way more than people think there are,
Speaker 3: way more than a lot of writers think there are.
Speaker 2: So coming back to the book, there is an interesting
Speaker 2: theme throughout, which is this idea of class conflict. And
Speaker 2: there's a lot of points in each of the three strategies,
Speaker 2: and then the book more broadly where you make the
Speaker 2: point that whatever you think or have convinced yourself that
Speaker 2: this fight taking on climate change is about at its core,
Speaker 2: any sort of realistic, long term solution involves class conflict.
Speaker 2: Can you explain a little bit about why that is?
Speaker 2: Because I feel like, especially a lot of us on
Speaker 2: the left, or maybe more of the like liberal progressive
Speaker 2: left rather than the capital l left we've been taught
Speaker 2: and we're still very hesitant to say the class word.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you have to go to the mode
Speaker 3: of production because capitalism is a mode of production, and
Speaker 3: you have to look at what are the conditions and
Speaker 3: relations of that mode of production. And that's what we
Speaker 3: do as Marxists, is we look at the capitalist mode
Speaker 3: of production, which is the mode of production we live
Speaker 3: under it's the most motive production nee mode of production. Right,
Speaker 3: it's the archetype for all other understandings of motive production.
Speaker 3: And we look at are what are its relations? Right? Well,
Speaker 3: we see a relation between a capitalist class and a
Speaker 3: working class. There's a class that produces value and there's
Speaker 3: a class that receives that value. It's a funny inversion, right,
Speaker 3: because the capitalist class creates the work and the working
Speaker 3: class creates the capital. That's at a little Mario Trante
Speaker 3: for our p our warning, and so that that is
Speaker 3: the basis for this production system, production for production's sake,
Speaker 3: that organizes our entire global society, and that which we
Speaker 3: find ourselves unable to control. So it's ultimately a relationship
Speaker 3: that we're unable to control. It's not the machines themselves, right,
Speaker 3: we can't fetishize the objects that are produced by the
Speaker 3: system of production. It's this relationship that we're unable to control.
Speaker 3: And that's true for emissions, right, That's true just at
Speaker 3: the very like basic level. It's that it's not like
Speaker 3: the machines are dragging us into this situation or whatever.
Speaker 3: It's our social relation and on our individual social relations.
Speaker 3: But the social relations at the class level, which is
Speaker 3: what enables production in the first place, and so without
Speaker 3: disturbing that, and I don't necessarily claim that you have
Speaker 3: to abolish it in order to have a path through, right,
Speaker 3: that's what I think. I'm an anti capitalist. I think
Speaker 3: we need to abolish capitalism, but from a market craft perspective,
Speaker 3: you can change the way that capitalism works, and I
Speaker 3: think it's worth acknowledging that and trying to understand that
Speaker 3: perspective as well. But to do that, do you still
Speaker 3: have to understand the class relation as an obstacle to
Speaker 3: any sort of control over the social metabolism. And so
Speaker 3: whether you have to like absolutely destroy capitalist production or
Speaker 3: not is a question that this book leaves open because
Speaker 3: I think it's a question that's on the left. But
Speaker 3: if the premise is that the oil value life chain
Speaker 3: is wrapped around the gate to positive future and we
Speaker 3: need to find some way to break it or to
Speaker 3: bend it to slip through that gate, then we're going
Speaker 3: to have to change the production mode that we have,
Speaker 3: at least such that it's unrecognizable. And that is a
Speaker 3: class conflict. That's a relation between two classes of people,
Speaker 3: not a relation of objects.
Speaker 2: One of the challenging parts of the book I found
Speaker 2: was the reminder that this is not as simple as
Speaker 2: if we can provide some sort of organizing force for
Speaker 2: workers to unite around, then everyone will be naturally drawn
Speaker 2: to that, and workers of the world will unite and
Speaker 2: rise up. It's there are a lot of people and
Speaker 2: a lot of institutions of organized labor more broadly, that
Speaker 2: have a lot invested in quite literally jobs, but also
Speaker 2: the broader economic and political status quo, which I feel
Speaker 2: like it's already hard enough just to organize all the
Speaker 2: workers if all we had to do is create a
Speaker 2: platform for people to gather and rise up. But actually
Speaker 2: it's not as simple as that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, honestly, I don't think it becomes easier by
Speaker 3: pretending it is easier, and I think some people run
Speaker 3: into you run into that problem with some of the
Speaker 3: more vulgar public power advocates, where if we focus on
Speaker 3: the easy solution, then it will actually become that easy.
Speaker 3: But the truth is that there are striations and huge
Speaker 3: conflicts within the working class. You see that domestically, and
Speaker 3: you see it absolutely, you see it internationally, and we
Speaker 3: have to be really serious about that. You know, we're
Speaker 3: really serious about our situation, and if we pretend that
Speaker 3: all workers in the world have the same sets of
Speaker 3: interest and American workers are not advantaged by the exploitation
Speaker 3: of workers in Brazil in any way, shape or form,
Speaker 3: because we're all members of the working class. Like, that's
Speaker 3: that's true from one perspective. There's an important perspective from
Speaker 3: where that's true, but it's not the whole truth. It's
Speaker 3: not realistic enough, and so we need to map the
Speaker 3: conflicts within the working class in order to build the
Speaker 3: working class as a real force. We can't just pretend
Speaker 3: that like, oh no, there's no issues with gender within
Speaker 3: the working class, which doesn't mean that like working class
Speaker 3: people or sexist or whatever. It's about the structure of
Speaker 3: these abstractions in really impersonal ways. Obviously there are personal,
Speaker 3: you know, interpersonal personal ways as well, but what I'm
Speaker 3: talking about is the impersonal structures of these things. And
Speaker 3: so you have situations where you have like construction workers
Speaker 3: lobbying in favor of gas powered crypto minds is one
Speaker 3: of the examples that I use, and like, well, that's terrible,
Speaker 3: that's bad planning. That's in your own like very very
Speaker 3: narrow interests that isn't in the interest of the like
Speaker 3: global working class at all, and so we need to
Speaker 3: we need to be serious about what the composition of
Speaker 3: the working class is and not just treated as some
Speaker 3: self evident abstraction.
Speaker 2: How do you think about the fact that for a
Speaker 2: lot of people, and I include myself in this, I
Speaker 2: think none of us are immune to it, but many
Speaker 2: of our beliefs, including for a lot of people all
Speaker 2: things climate and environment, they seem to be downstream from
Speaker 2: our political identity. These days, if you are a Republican,
Speaker 2: you know, self identified, and that's part of your identity,
Speaker 2: you are probably not going to be, to put it,
Speaker 2: mildly enthusiastic about democratic efforts to tackle climate change. And
Speaker 2: that seems like a you know, overcoming kind of entrenched
Speaker 2: political identities, or maybe loosening them a little bit. And
Speaker 2: so people can vote Republican while also believing in climate change.
Speaker 2: And obviously this is a little bit of a kind
Speaker 2: of a micro example, but of a broader phenomenon of
Speaker 2: what people believe being downstream from how they see their identity.
Speaker 2: I just wonder how you think about that that dilemma.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I'm not a liberal, so I don't like
Speaker 3: get my marching orders from polling and stuff, and there's
Speaker 3: a lot of contradictory pulling or like, you know, election results,
Speaker 3: which sounds kind of silly because election results obviously play
Speaker 3: a really important role in like structuring the field in
Speaker 3: which we operate. But I don't think that like those
Speaker 3: votes are the truth or something about anxiety. And if
Speaker 3: you look at polling for like, oh, do you think
Speaker 3: we should focus more on like economic growth or the environment.
Speaker 3: The way we talk about people, you'd think people would
Speaker 3: say everyone says growth or whatever. It's not true, totally
Speaker 3: not true. Americans are when they're polled and asked to
Speaker 3: like how important the environment is, say, the environment's very important.
Speaker 3: I think people believe in climate change. I think people
Speaker 3: walk outside and believe in climate change in mind the
Speaker 3: like apocalyptic floods and fires and stuff that are unavoidable. Like, yeah,
Speaker 3: we have a very like polarized partisan political environment electorally
Speaker 3: in the United States. I don't think that has any
Speaker 3: or very much bearing on the actual truth of our
Speaker 3: historical situation, and I try not to let it in.
Speaker 3: One's how I think about these questions, because I think
Speaker 3: then you end up looking like you know, two inches
Speaker 3: in front of your face, often at some like reflection
Speaker 3: in some mirror or something. I find it very hard
Speaker 3: for people who orient themselves that way to get a
Speaker 3: historical understanding, and I think that's the kind of understanding
Speaker 3: we need.
Speaker 2: I felt like there were a few different concrete messages
Speaker 2: for progressives, mainstream progressives who are left of the Democratic
Speaker 2: Party but might not be again capital L or might
Speaker 2: not think of themselves as capital L left yet.
Speaker 3: I sure hope, So tell me what they are.
Speaker 2: I mean, one of them, you say, very explicitly at
Speaker 2: one point, is you know, essentially break up with the
Speaker 2: Democrats capital D Democrats, which I have to imagine after
Speaker 2: the last few weeks there's a lot more openness to
Speaker 2: maybe after the last couple of years, there's a lot
Speaker 2: more openness too among folks on the left that the
Speaker 2: you know, the Democratic Party as an institution is not
Speaker 2: is not the vehicle for change people might have anticipated
Speaker 2: it to be. Again, to put it very mildly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I cite Kim Moody is maybe the
Speaker 3: book I'm talking about, because that's really his argument is
Speaker 3: that people we need a United States Labor Party in
Speaker 3: order to pursue the interests of workers. I think that's
Speaker 3: an important perspective. I'm not one hundred percent convinced that's true.
Speaker 3: I think the like, as far as I'm concerned, the
Speaker 3: Democratic Party, and like even parallel institutions like the New
Speaker 3: York Times or something are much like the United States
Speaker 3: State itself, where I think the perspective that like, oh,
Speaker 3: we need to this is a force for historical evil
Speaker 3: in the world, and we need to like distance ourselves
Speaker 3: from it, and there can be no progress through these things.
Speaker 3: I think there's a strong argument for that perspective. I
Speaker 3: think it's an argument worth hearing out, and we're thinking
Speaker 3: through and sometimes conceding to. At the same time, I
Speaker 3: think that these are internally contradictory structures. I don't think
Speaker 3: everyone who works for the US US government is a
Speaker 3: butcher of Gaza, right, even though the US government is
Speaker 3: itself a butcher of Gaza. And so do those contradictions
Speaker 3: within these institutions allow us to move in a positive direction.
Speaker 3: I think it's possible. I'm not saying everyone who thinks
Speaker 3: that is wrong certainly has that perspective like taken a
Speaker 3: blow in the past months. Yeah, I think probably but
Speaker 3: I think these are conversations we need to have and
Speaker 3: like topics we need to think about. But what are
Speaker 3: the other ones?
Speaker 2: I'd say, the the other one, which is a little
Speaker 2: bit less direct, but not much so, that emerged to
Speaker 2: me while reading the book was this idea that you know,
Speaker 2: as you put it, breaking the situation into ostensibly manageable
Speaker 2: chunks is essentially a form of denial. And that's a
Speaker 2: pretty bracing argument, I think, because I feel like a
Speaker 2: lot of us realize that to some extent, Like if
Speaker 2: you ask us very concretely map out how we get
Speaker 2: from here to saving the planet and its creatures in
Speaker 2: those little manageable chunks, we admit pretty quickly that it
Speaker 2: can't be done. And yet it's such a comforting way
Speaker 2: to see the crisis as something you can just break
Speaker 2: up into small chunks and tackle sequentially.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, and it's something that is like broadly and
Speaker 3: impersonally distributed, that's distributed by a collective logic that we
Speaker 3: don't have to operate. That would be really nice because
Speaker 3: then we could just like do our part. Everyone could
Speaker 3: just do their part and it would get done and
Speaker 3: we wouldn't have to like figure out what we're actually doing.
Speaker 3: And that's how capitalism works, right, So that's actually not
Speaker 3: how solving our problems works. That's how causing our problems works.
Speaker 3: Is everyone just goes out, they're doing their little part
Speaker 3: one day to the next, and we don't have to
Speaker 3: try and get together and actually think of what we're
Speaker 3: doing and decide what we're doing. Everyone can just worry
Speaker 3: about their household size share. That's not going to work.
Speaker 3: It doesn't work, it's not working. Really, do have to
Speaker 3: make collective decisions organized to make collective decisions. I don't
Speaker 3: see any other way through. So, yeah, I'm glad that
Speaker 3: came through because I think that's that's the ground for
Speaker 3: this project. Right. If that weren't true, then we wouldn't
Speaker 3: need this book. But I think it is true, and
Speaker 3: so I do think this book. We need ways, auspices,
Speaker 3: you know, common understandings under which we don't have to
Speaker 3: necessarily come all together and work in one organization. I
Speaker 3: don't think that's going to happen. I don't think it's
Speaker 3: very realistic. But we need some kind of what I
Speaker 3: call coherence to these efforts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to I think you put it at one point too,
Speaker 2: that's the only way to actually tackle it at the
Speaker 2: scale of what the problem is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and what's the point of tackling it at another scale, right.
Speaker 2: Besides making us feel better in the moment.
Speaker 3: It doesn't make us feel better because we're not stupid,
Speaker 3: like we.
Speaker 2: Know that that's not going to do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You, I don't think you even say trump in or
Speaker 2: use that the letters in that order in the book,
Speaker 2: But I have to assume that you wrote it with
Speaker 2: the possibility of a second Trump term in mind.
Speaker 3: Trump gets a couple of mentions, it's four. I'm looking
Speaker 3: at the index. But yeah, I mean, I try to
Speaker 3: write all of my books that way. I try not
Speaker 3: to not be dependent on what's happening that week, month, year.
Speaker 3: And so even with like my pal Alto book, when
Speaker 3: it came out, people are like, well, why didn't you
Speaker 3: write about crypto? There's all this crypto stuff happening right now,
Speaker 3: Why didn't you write a whole chapter about crypto? And
Speaker 3: it's like, well, that's not what I'm trying to do here.
Speaker 3: This is a like trying to take a historical view
Speaker 3: on the situation. And so my hope was that this
Speaker 3: book works no matter who got elected president, and no
Speaker 3: matter who gets elected president the next time around. Right,
Speaker 3: that the truths that I try and unfold in this
Speaker 3: book are larger than control over the White House.
Speaker 2: Do you think that the return of at least return
Speaker 2: to the White House and the government of MAGA types
Speaker 2: changes any of the arguments you make in the book
Speaker 2: or shifts the priorities for some of the different strategies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think there are paths that seem
Speaker 3: more or less open depending on what the political system
Speaker 3: looks like and who's in control and the Again, it's
Speaker 3: like the MAGA rise or the rise of Donald Trump
Speaker 3: is not an isolated event globally, right, this is part
Speaker 3: of a global right word shift in reaction. That is
Speaker 3: absolutely one of the not just possibilities that I lay
Speaker 3: out in the book. But one of the challenges, one
Speaker 3: of the sort of inevitable challenges, is that there be
Speaker 3: there's a reactionary movement you're actually pro fossil fuel movement
Speaker 3: that you're going to have to confront as part of
Speaker 3: any of these strategies. And one of the reasons we
Speaker 3: need coherence between them is that we're all vulnerable. But
Speaker 3: also I don't think that necessarily any one strategy is
Speaker 3: particularly worse off under Trump because you could look at,
Speaker 3: you know, market craft and say, well, Donald Trump like
Speaker 3: destroyed the IRA, the Inflation Reduction Act, He's like destroyed
Speaker 3: Biden's all. Biden's climate work has been destroyed like with
Speaker 3: the wave of a hand, which then salts the earth
Speaker 3: for this kind of policy in the future, because capital
Speaker 3: won't commit to doing these kinds of investments if they
Speaker 3: know that there's a coin flip that the next president's
Speaker 3: going to just dismantle it all in one second. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's that's pretty devastating for market craft. But like public power,
Speaker 3: if he shuts down the Department of Education, then then
Speaker 3: he's able to shut down whatever like Public Power Agency
Speaker 3: that Biden should have set up instead, or whatever, like,
Speaker 3: all of that would have been destroyed as well. Not
Speaker 3: to mention his attack on organized labor, It's not like
Speaker 3: he couldn't attack those things from the same position. And
Speaker 3: communists as well. One of the major dangers of the
Speaker 3: communist strategy, as I describe it, is susceptibility to governments.
Speaker 3: And we've already seen that, right, We've already seen a
Speaker 3: real qualitative jump in the kind of repression we're getting
Speaker 3: from the Trump administration focused on the left and like
Speaker 3: in a way that people should be seriously alarmed about,
Speaker 3: you know, like first they came for the communists kind
Speaker 3: of way. And so all three we're all reeling, Like
Speaker 3: everyone the entire left is obviously reeling. And anyone who
Speaker 3: looks at the situation and says like, haha, you know
Speaker 3: this is good for me and bad for you, I
Speaker 3: think is wrong.
Speaker 2: There is a series of two questions from the z
Speaker 2: Kin collective. Is that right? Am I saying that right
Speaker 2: that you cite at the end, And they're obviously somewhat rhetorical,
Speaker 2: but they are will fossil capital defend itself to the
Speaker 2: bitter end? And will it draw on the unique resources
Speaker 2: of the far right to do so? And I feel
Speaker 2: like those questions are being answered quite clearly in the
Speaker 2: moment that we're living in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's pretty obvious when they put it that way, right, Like,
Speaker 3: I think that's a good phrasing of the question. Their questions, right,
Speaker 3: because it's like, well, of course they're going to fight
Speaker 3: for their own existence, and like, well, okay, they're going
Speaker 3: to fight in the political sphere. They're going to have
Speaker 3: to pick an avatar or whatever. Even putting aside to
Speaker 3: our history of their relationship with the far right, it's like, well,
Speaker 3: they're not going to pick the far left. I probably
Speaker 3: pick the center at this point, Like the far right
Speaker 3: is their best bet, like by a long shot, for
Speaker 3: a number of reasons that are described in that book,
Speaker 3: which people should definitely check out. So, yeah, that has
Speaker 3: come to pass, right, And it seems obvious when we
Speaker 3: think about it, and a clear problem with the sort
Speaker 3: of climate policy by compromise that even I think the
Speaker 3: left levels have been pursuing for a little while with
Speaker 3: the hope that like will give capital and capitalists enough
Speaker 3: so that this transition will be smooth enough for them
Speaker 3: that they can agree to it while they also think
Speaker 3: about all the things that they can lose in a
Speaker 3: storm or whatever. And that's that's obviously not happening. That
Speaker 3: can't be the only solution, right, that can be the
Speaker 3: only tool we have. And one of the hopefully one
Speaker 3: of the virtues of the structure of this book is
Speaker 3: that then we've got a whole at least a small
Speaker 3: set of different tools strategically, rather than just one perspective
Speaker 3: that is blocked.
Speaker 2: I was actually surprised to find just because of the
Speaker 2: way the book is structured, it didn't seem like it
Speaker 2: was leading toward an ABCD this is what we need
Speaker 2: to do, kind of a solutions type of book, and
Speaker 2: then the world will be solved and everyone will feel better.
Speaker 2: But there was a very kind of a very clear,
Speaker 2: very concrete proposal that you offer at the end. You
Speaker 2: write that the left should lead the formation of community
Speaker 2: disaster councils, and I feel like the value lowercase V
Speaker 2: value of that suggestion, that proposal feels even clearer given
Speaker 2: what we've seen over just the last couple of months.
Speaker 2: Can you just talk a bit about what those what
Speaker 2: that means, because I feel like it's the kind of
Speaker 2: concrete saying that many people are yearning for right now,
Speaker 2: and it's again lowercase V. Value feels very real right
Speaker 2: now as something people can do.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, And I think it's funny. I've had some
Speaker 3: conversations about this where people I'm talking to have tried
Speaker 3: to figure out if there's something that they're not understanding
Speaker 3: about what I'm saying because it seems so simple, and
Speaker 3: I'm saying, like, no, no, it really is as simple
Speaker 3: as I'm saying. It's that the institutions and individuals with
Speaker 3: which we compose our communities needs to collectively study and
Speaker 3: prepare for the social and climate disasters that we know
Speaker 3: are upon us. Right So within wherever you live, you
Speaker 3: can figure out what extreme weather events are likely to happen,
Speaker 3: and you can figure out what responses to those are
Speaker 3: most likely to keep people safe, and we can organize those.
Speaker 3: And we need to do that not at the level
Speaker 3: of like necessarily just government disaster response, which now we're
Speaker 3: seeing undermined obviously by conservatives. But even if that weren't
Speaker 3: the case, we need to organize ourselves, not just rely
Speaker 3: on the state to organize our response to what are
Speaker 3: social wide problems. This partly because the state is unable
Speaker 3: to and unwilling to solve that at the level that
Speaker 3: we need. And I think the left, as I outline,
Speaker 3: it is in a particular position to lead this kind
Speaker 3: of structure that society as a whole is in desperate
Speaker 3: need of. That's something that we all can do, and
Speaker 3: something we all can do collaboratively. Whether you are a
Speaker 3: staffer for a state senator who believes in market craft,
Speaker 3: or whether you're a shop steward who believes that labor
Speaker 3: should be directing the entire thing, or you're someone who
Speaker 3: knows the forests around where you live very well, right, Like,
Speaker 3: we need the resources of all of those kinds of
Speaker 3: people as well as the institutions and social networks that
Speaker 3: they represent, and we need ways for them to cohere,
Speaker 3: to work together to respond to these things that we
Speaker 3: already know are happening. Right, So, disasters are organizing us already,
Speaker 3: whether they organize us, whether we organize in advance of them,
Speaker 3: in response to them, or we organize in a disorganized
Speaker 3: way after they have occurred to us. Disasters are organizing
Speaker 3: us regardless. And so I think a community, disaster councils
Speaker 3: and community, as I write and think, can also be
Speaker 3: like global. Right, if you're climatologists, let's say working the IPCC,
Speaker 3: that's a community. It's a community of people working together
Speaker 3: on this project. And I think local communities need to
Speaker 3: find ways to work with those international communities, global communities
Speaker 3: of experts to inform our efforts as well. But that's
Speaker 3: not crazy, right, Like the idea that we should have
Speaker 3: like civil structures that are responding to these like big
Speaker 3: things that we know are coming and that will upend
Speaker 3: all of our lives collectively in a similar way, or
Speaker 3: in a at least a shared way, like let's get
Speaker 3: ahead of that. You know, we can't. I don't think
Speaker 3: we can just rely on There's this line that we
Speaker 3: can rely on the generosity of other people in terms
Speaker 3: of crisis, and we should let that sort of like
Speaker 3: guide us into a new future or whatever. And I've
Speaker 3: been sympathetic to that line, and I think it's true
Speaker 3: to a certain degree, but I don't think it's sufficiently
Speaker 3: responsive to our current situation. I think we need to
Speaker 3: like think in advance and plan in advance and organize
Speaker 3: in advance for these problems that are absolutely knowable.
Speaker 2: I think there's something remarkably empowering about that type of
Speaker 2: work too, at a time when a lot of people
Speaker 2: feel like things are out of control and that we
Speaker 2: don't have any agency and we're all just doomscrolling and
Speaker 2: watching democracies collapse in the world. Burn gives you a
Speaker 2: sense of agency empowerment, and then, as you note in
Speaker 2: the book, it also can provide kind of a use
Speaker 2: case for this different world that we're hoping to build
Speaker 2: that if if the Left can lead these you know,
Speaker 2: this this broader response to these disasters, which is you
Speaker 2: you note are happening already and are inevitable that they're
Speaker 2: going to continue happening. We are, you know, potentially proving
Speaker 2: that another way of organizing a society works, because you can't,
Speaker 2: just as we were talking about earlier, you can't just
Speaker 2: tell people give up the way you've experienced society the
Speaker 2: only world that any of us have ever known, and
Speaker 2: trust us that this other one will be better. That
Speaker 2: involves huge sacrifice from you and your family, potentially much
Speaker 2: easier if you have a demonstrable evidence that you can
Speaker 2: point to that like, this is another way to organize
Speaker 2: a society, and we showed that it works.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I think people even if it's risky. I
Speaker 3: think people are willing to take the risk of the
Speaker 3: unknown if it's when it's offered to them. At this moment,
Speaker 3: I feel like that we don't have enough, We don't
Speaker 3: do enough recruiting on the left in some ways into
Speaker 3: these conversations and into these efforts, and that can't just
Speaker 3: be like, oh, we have the right idea or whatever.
Speaker 3: Necessarily ask to be like, how are we going to
Speaker 3: solve these collective problems? And how are we going to
Speaker 3: solve these collective problems. How are we going to make
Speaker 3: sure that the people in our community, if there's a
Speaker 3: flood or a fire, have access to the life saving
Speaker 3: medication that they need next week. Well, where's the medication held? Well,
Speaker 3: there are seven pharmacies in our city. There are pharmacists
Speaker 3: who work at those seven pharmacies, So we can talk
Speaker 3: to them. We can talk to those pharmacies. We can
Speaker 3: organize the pharmacists of our city such that we will
Speaker 3: have a disaster plan and we'll be ready to enact it.
Speaker 3: And we're not going to go check with CBS Corporate
Speaker 3: and follow their plan or whatever. And we're not going
Speaker 3: to wait for the National Guard to give us a
Speaker 3: plan because somebody needs their heart pills next week. In fact,
Speaker 3: we know how many people need their heart pills next week.
Speaker 3: We have a list of and we know where they live,
Speaker 3: and we have pharmacists who are ready to fulfill those
Speaker 3: needs in the event of a disaster. Like that's not
Speaker 3: an illusory sense of control, right, that's actual control over
Speaker 3: your circumstances. Right, You're organizing actual community control over your
Speaker 3: circumit stance. It's not right now, but in the event
Speaker 3: of these disasters that we know are going to ellapse,
Speaker 3: that are ellapsing, and so I think that's really a
Speaker 3: place for left wing leadership, our place that we can
Speaker 3: build the cohesion and use it at the same time.
Speaker 3: Among this really a pretty diverse swath of people, but
Speaker 3: people who all share, I think, are a common interest
Speaker 3: and belief and desire for a better world.
Speaker 2: I wanted to come back to this idea because I
Speaker 2: feel like it has been pervading this conversation and certainly
Speaker 2: the book as well. That recognizing, acknowledging, accepting, even I guess,
Speaker 2: embracing in some ways the scale of the problem, the
Speaker 2: scale of the crisis, can feel to me at least,
Speaker 2: it feels kind of liberating because you can kind of
Speaker 2: drop all the artifice of like we're just going to
Speaker 2: hack our way out of this crisis or something. And
Speaker 2: once you let that go and you realize, I should say,
Speaker 2: once I in my mind let that go. I don't
Speaker 2: want to speak for anybody else, but except that, yeah,
Speaker 2: things are potentially going to get really bad. I realized
Speaker 2: how much work it was taking to create these false, soothing,
Speaker 2: comforting futures in my mind, and all of a sudden
Speaker 2: it kind of freeze up all this energy in brain
Speaker 2: space to think about actually tackling it rather than existing
Speaker 2: in sort of a comforting world of my own making.
Speaker 2: So I'm just wondering how you think about that, you know,
Speaker 2: the idea that it is painful to see it for
Speaker 2: what it is, but it's also kind of liberating in
Speaker 2: a way that all of a sudden it frees you
Speaker 2: up to get after it, I guess, instead of convincing
Speaker 2: yourself it's not so bad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think that's one of the real
Speaker 3: benefits of the radical imagination. And so that's a lens
Speaker 3: that I've used to think about the world since I
Speaker 3: was a kid. That's how I've always thought. Not always,
Speaker 3: but you know, since I took hold intentionally of the
Speaker 3: way I thought about the world. That's about the world.
Speaker 3: There's some downsides that in terms of communicating with people
Speaker 3: who are thinking about the world differently. You know, it
Speaker 3: can be the part you can get, as I read
Speaker 3: in the book, you can get really obsessed with the
Speaker 3: complicity of everyone who doesn't see it the same way
Speaker 3: as you get really like isolated and angry. And I
Speaker 3: spent a lot long time, particularly when I was young,
Speaker 3: being angry all the time at the whole rest of
Speaker 3: the world, and so there are perils to thinking that way,
Speaker 3: but I think there are also real benefits, and that
Speaker 3: something that I try to share with my readers is
Speaker 3: the benefits of that sort of radical imagination that when
Speaker 3: you think about the world historically and in its actual shape,
Speaker 3: it is freeing. Absolutely should be freeing. The truth is freeing, right,
Speaker 3: trying to tell yourself that what is happening isn't happening
Speaker 3: and constantly recalibrating, right, It's like the frog in the
Speaker 3: pot being like, well, this isn't this isn't that hot,
Speaker 3: but it's getting hotter, And so you have to constantly, constantly,
Speaker 3: constantly tell yourself this is fine, this is fine. Well
Speaker 3: it's much worse than it was two weeks ago. Well
Speaker 3: they did overturn row, Like, but this is fine now,
Speaker 3: Like this is how it will be fine. That can
Speaker 3: take up your whole mental space. Right. There are people
Speaker 3: who spend all of their mental effort constantly reassuring themselves
Speaker 3: that things are still fine. And the fact that things aren't,
Speaker 3: the fact that things are very bad, it doesn't mean
Speaker 3: that you give up. It doesn't mean that then you
Speaker 3: are relieved from having to do stuff, or that you
Speaker 3: then can just spend your time wallowing in despair, at
Speaker 3: least not for me. Like I said, I think there's
Speaker 3: a whole spectrum of middle activity where we say, all right,
Speaker 3: you look at the world and say things are bad,
Speaker 3: and then you say, all right, what are we going
Speaker 3: to do about it? Some people talk about that as
Speaker 3: pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will, and that's
Speaker 3: one of the things that the Marxist tradition has to offer.
Speaker 3: Having lost a number of times, right, where the people
Speaker 3: who are like losing adds up to something is the idea,
Speaker 3: and I think that's true. I believe that I'm a radical,
Speaker 3: and I want to share what I think of the
Speaker 3: benefits of that perspective with as many people as possible
Speaker 3: in a way that I hope it's not alienating, right,
Speaker 3: that doesn't make them feel like this person has thinly
Speaker 3: veiled disgust for me, or is not willing to see
Speaker 3: things from my perspective, or like thinks I'm an idiot
Speaker 3: or whatever, because I don't think those things, and I
Speaker 3: think there is this space for coherence among people with
Speaker 3: different beliefs.
Speaker 2: Last question for you. You cite reference a lot of different
Speaker 2: books and films and pieces of art in this book,
Speaker 2: and I'm wondering if there are any pieces of art
Speaker 2: or content that are giving you or bringing you clarity
Speaker 2: or comfort in this current moment.
Speaker 3: Ooh, that's a really good question. Let me pull up
Speaker 3: the answer. It's a series that the Streamer movie has
Speaker 3: been doing called Self Portrait as a Coffee Pot by
Speaker 3: the South African artist William Kentridge. And it's a nine
Speaker 3: part video series. Yeah, a nine part visual series in
Speaker 3: the studio of this artist, William Kentridge. It's done was
Speaker 3: filmed during the most intense lockdown periods of COVID. Amazing.
Speaker 3: I mean, he's an amazing artist in general, but it's
Speaker 3: an amazing view of his mind, of his techniques, but
Speaker 3: also his perspective on history. And he does this great
Speaker 3: thing where he doubles himself and so he's constantly talking
Speaker 3: back and forth with himself. There are two of him,
Speaker 3: and they create this amazing dialectic between a lot of like,
Speaker 3: you know, different positions. Right now, because there are a
Speaker 3: lot of contradictory truths antonomies, I guess that we have
Speaker 3: to hold in this historical moment, and one of the
Speaker 3: ways he does that is by splitting himself and arguing
Speaker 3: with himself. Fantastic, fantastic series. Ultimately, I think hopeful in
Speaker 3: the useful ways and despairing in the useful ways that
Speaker 3: you can be hopeful sparing at the same time, if
Speaker 3: you're dialectical enough, you can be hopeful and de sparing
Speaker 3: at the same time. And that's definitely a piece that
Speaker 3: really lately captured it for me. It's fantastic. Strongly, I
Speaker 3: beseech readers to go check that out.
Speaker 2: Amazing. I feel like in this moment in particular, being
Speaker 2: hopeful and despairing in useful ways is a pretty worthy
Speaker 2: aspiration for all of us.
Speaker 3: I think so. I think people are trying to trying
Speaker 3: to figure that stuff out. It's hard, it's a hard
Speaker 3: environment in which to think. And I don't fault anyone
Speaker 3: who feels completely overwhelmed by even just the task of
Speaker 3: thinking critically in this moment. Oh, we got to do it.
Speaker 3: I don't think that there's no other choice.
Speaker 2: Well, congratulations on the book, Malcolm, and thanks so much
Speaker 2: for this conversation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks so much for reading it. And this has
Speaker 3: been really great.
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Speaker 1: episode was reported and hosted by Adam Lowenstein and produced
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