Speaker 1: All the media. Hello, and welcome to it could happen here,
Speaker 1: because it could. My name is Andrew Sage and I'm
Speaker 1: also Andrewism on YouTube and at time of recording, the
Speaker 1: year is still technically new, so I wanted to start
Speaker 1: it off with some refreshers on anarchism. In the first episode,
Speaker 1: we'll look at the meanings of anarchism, authority, and anarchy,
Speaker 1: and the next time we'll look at free association, mutuality,
Speaker 1: mutual aid, and throllo solidarity. And don't worry, next month
Speaker 1: I'll be getting back into the Latin American Anarchism series,
Speaker 1: as I still haven't done Uruguay and Mexico yet. Oh.
Speaker 1: By the way, I'm not talking to myself. I'm here
Speaker 1: with the one and only be along.
Speaker 2: Oh, I keep, I keep forgetting that you do an
Speaker 2: actual throws actually saying the name.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not to worry.
Speaker 3: I've only been doing this for several hundred episodes. Now
Speaker 3: you'd think you'd think, but no, now you got it.
Speaker 1: You got it.
Speaker 3: Hell, I'm excited to do this.
Speaker 2: Also excited for the Mexico episodes, because Mexican anarchism is
Speaker 2: a trip Irguaan anarchism is also a whole lot of
Speaker 2: people digging tunnels out of prisons.
Speaker 3: But we'll get we'll get We'll get to that later.
Speaker 1: We will, we will. So I'm supposed to start off
Speaker 1: with I want to find out And I asked this
Speaker 1: question with tongue in cheek, of course, how familiar but
Speaker 1: you say you are with anarchism.
Speaker 2: You know, I have a very silly like kind of
Speaker 2: like how did I like actually finally become an anarchist
Speaker 2: because I've been around anarchists for a long time, But
Speaker 2: like the thing that like actually convinced me to be
Speaker 2: an anarchist is I sat down and I got a
Speaker 2: bunch of like anarchist history books while library I started
Speaker 2: reading them, so like.
Speaker 1: Marx Nott Lao and I'm sorts of people.
Speaker 2: So specifically was a lot of like krups like how
Speaker 2: to Shooseo and Puranicism intoward Japan, which I've talked about
Speaker 2: on the show one hundred billion times. So I actually
Speaker 2: I think I've read Capaletes Anarchism Latin America around that
Speaker 2: time too.
Speaker 1: It's a very good resource.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so pretty pretty familiar with stuff.
Speaker 3: But yeah, we'll see, we'll see. I'm excited to talk
Speaker 3: about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, we'll see, is right, because let's say
Speaker 1: ippened an anarchists. But I was first introduced to anarchism,
Speaker 1: I would say somewhere around twenty seventeen twenty eighteen through
Speaker 1: Christian anarchism. Actually that was during my deconstruction. I stumbled
Speaker 1: upon Christian anarchism and briefly flated with it, but didn't
Speaker 1: really get seriously into the studying of anarchists m until
Speaker 1: like Lee twenty nineteen, Rearly twenty twenty around the time
Speaker 1: and leads in towards twenties when I started my channel.
Speaker 1: Let's say I've been studying anarchism for about five years. Seriously,
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm now getting started, you know, like
Speaker 1: I'm now sett into that grasp what it is. And
Speaker 1: I think is there's so many interpretations of anarchism, you know,
Speaker 1: so many different schools of thought. I mean, that's not
Speaker 1: to say that it can't be find or that any
Speaker 1: attempts to define anarchism is like exclusionary or on anarchist.
Speaker 1: And I see that out of that argument floating around
Speaker 1: it like, well, no, you can't define anarchism because that's
Speaker 1: actually authoritaria. But you know, there are such a thing
Speaker 1: as as definitions, but there is room, of course for
Speaker 1: a negotiation of meaning.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's a very it's a very well usually
Speaker 2: it's a very syncratic ideology. It pulls from a lot
Speaker 2: of different places, and it pulls mosts a different of
Speaker 2: its own strands.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. But let's say if you had to
Speaker 1: like define anarchism like right now, like, what would you
Speaker 1: say is a not un negotiable basic fundamental definition for you?
Speaker 2: I mean, the opposition to hierarchy on a basic level,
Speaker 2: the opposition to the state, to capitalism, to patriarchy, to
Speaker 2: systems of hierarchical power is I guess, like the the
Speaker 2: baseline definition. And then also in terms of what it's,
Speaker 2: you know, the replacement for that can be a lot
Speaker 2: of things. But yeah, it's it's the building of a
Speaker 2: society where we don't have power over one another. I
Speaker 2: think it's like a very baseline kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's that's pretty solid for me. I
Speaker 1: find it fairly similarly, I would say that I think
Speaker 1: the opposition to authority is the most simplant part, you know,
Speaker 1: I would say the definition I've been sort of workshopping
Speaker 1: sculpting over time and as a right. So I really
Speaker 1: like to play with words a bit and find the
Speaker 1: best ways to put things. So for me, what I've
Speaker 1: come up with is that anarchism is the political philosophy
Speaker 1: and practice that opposes all authority along with its justifying dogmas,
Speaker 1: and proposes the unending pursuit of anarchy, a world without rule,
Speaker 1: where self determination, mutuality, and free association form the basis
Speaker 1: of our society. And so basically the rest of this
Speaker 1: episode is going to be me breaking down how I
Speaker 1: came to this definition, what I'm expounded upon with this definition,
Speaker 1: So for one, just taking a look at the structure
Speaker 1: of it, we are looking at an oppositional stance and
Speaker 1: a propositional stance, opposing and proposing. You know, we're not
Speaker 1: just for the negation of all things, although there are
Speaker 1: schools of anarchisms that do lead in that direction. But also,
Speaker 1: of course, we want to be constructive. We're not as
Speaker 1: some people seem to presume, you know, obliterating the states
Speaker 1: and then leaving warlords in their weak you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Baconin sucks in a lot of ways, but the
Speaker 2: creative verge is a destructive one has the order of
Speaker 2: events correctly, where like the point is to create something.
Speaker 1: Exactly exactly, And as you know, Bikinnan is one of
Speaker 1: the rely a thinkers of anarchism, though I've never really
Speaker 1: been partial to him, you know, yeah, to me usually
Speaker 1: I've been more of a Krapotkin and Mali Testa a guy.
Speaker 1: But lately, as as you know, so problematic as he
Speaker 1: is as well, I haven't getten into a bit more.
Speaker 1: I recently got the pictures of put On Reader that
Speaker 1: Ian McKay put together for a k Press.
Speaker 3: Extremely problematic guy, oh boy, Yeah, but he.
Speaker 1: Certainly wrote a lot. And so when I think through
Speaker 1: and seecret what jim stones of his of his work
Speaker 1: I can find, you know, yeah, I think that's that's
Speaker 1: important to sift through.
Speaker 2: He's a He's a mixed and baffling figure who also
Speaker 2: was a pretty large influence on Marx if you like
Speaker 2: read him, even though Marx hates him, which is very funny.
Speaker 1: Marx also didn't always understand step Honestly, I don't think
Speaker 1: necessarily always had like a very consistent application of his ideas,
Speaker 1: hence the misogyny. Despite being an anarchiss and becoming a
Speaker 1: politician at one point in his life and all that jazz.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and people may know this who listen to this show,
Speaker 3: but the term libertarian was invented by anarchists specifically to
Speaker 3: describe how they were different from ver Dawn because they
Speaker 3: weren't sexist, Like, it's the whole.
Speaker 1: Thing actually, wasn't away of that.
Speaker 2: That's yeahs interesting, Yeah, that's why, and that's why in
Speaker 2: most parts of the world libertarian is like is a
Speaker 2: term that means anarchist. It's just it's mostly largely in
Speaker 2: the US where that's not a thing because the right
Speaker 2: libertarians like took it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, unfortunately, the US's cultural hegemony has sort of
Speaker 1: propagated that American version of the term as the popular one.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, whether you're talking about anarchists or libertarians
Speaker 1: or mutualists, you're all getting it from basically that same
Speaker 1: sort of original phool of the late nineteenth century early
Speaker 1: frankieinth century thinker and I were sort of using their
Speaker 1: sort of explorations to build something up a political philosophy.
Speaker 1: But in my definition I call it a political philosophy,
Speaker 1: but that can be a contentious way of describing it.
Speaker 1: You know, anti politics is a tilm that's used to
Speaker 1: describe opposition to or distrust in traditional politics. Social politics
Speaker 1: is usually associated with the art and science of government.
Speaker 1: So there are anarchists who would argue that anarchism is
Speaker 1: not a political philosophy, it's actually an anti political philosophy.
Speaker 3: I think these people are very okay.
Speaker 2: This is one of the things about being an anarchist, right,
Speaker 2: this is the thing thing about being a leftist, and
Speaker 2: it's something you have to be able to set aside
Speaker 2: when you have to do things. But a lot of
Speaker 2: veg A leftists is being annoyed at other leftists. And
Speaker 2: I could put together an actual, detailed theoretical critique of
Speaker 2: anti politics, but mostly the people who talk about anti
Speaker 2: politics just annoy me.
Speaker 3: It's like an affect thing.
Speaker 1: I feel you to me, It's like it's a I
Speaker 1: like to pick up, look around at, you know, play
Speaker 1: with fur little bit, put it back down kind of thing.
Speaker 1: You know, I'd like limited to it, but I think
Speaker 1: it's like it's good to look at more than one
Speaker 1: ankle of definition and an understanding. Yeah, I mean, of course,
Speaker 1: I suppose a critique that could be made of define
Speaker 1: anarchism as anti politics is a sort of a narrowing
Speaker 1: of the definition of politics suggest that sort of art
Speaker 1: and science of government when politics can also be defined
Speaker 1: really broadly as just about the relationships between people and groups,
Speaker 1: which anarchism is concerned with primarily. So, but I do
Speaker 1: find it an interesting point to wrestle with, and so
Speaker 1: other than it being a political philosophy or anti political philosophy,
Speaker 1: we could also define an anarchism as a practice. This
Speaker 1: is something that I believe Greeber did in his life.
Speaker 1: He saw anarchism. In one interview he said, code it's
Speaker 1: possible to act like an anarchist, to behave in ways
Speaker 1: that will work without bureaucratic structures of coatient to enforce them,
Speaker 1: without calling yourself an anarchist or anything. In fact, to
Speaker 1: us act like anarchists, even communists a lot of the time.
Speaker 1: To be an anarchist for me is to that self
Speaker 1: consciously as a way of gradually bringing a world entirely
Speaker 1: based on those principles into being and good. So this
Speaker 1: is basically the idea that anarchism is not just something
Speaker 1: you think in ahead. It's a method of change or
Speaker 1: something that you practice. It's something that the facts anarchists
Speaker 1: don't even want to call themselves anarchists because they see
Speaker 1: anarchist about something that you do rather than something that
Speaker 1: you are.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was a graverline.
Speaker 2: I think Cala Gwynn kind of had a similar relationship
Speaker 2: towards calling yourself an anarchist.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's possible. That that sounds really, really familiar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I think a line was like, she
Speaker 2: didn't feel like she could because you had to do it.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's a it's a pretty common way of
Speaker 2: thinking about anarchism that I like a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. Another part of the definition of anarchism
Speaker 1: that I put forward is the opposition to all authority,
Speaker 1: and that a statement could actually get me some pushback,
Speaker 1: getting in some trouble with some anarchists. Surprisingly, and I'm
Speaker 1: sorry I blame Nome Chomsky, Oh my god, as a historian,
Speaker 1: as a linguist, okay, whatever. Sure, but it was not
Speaker 1: historically controversial among anarchists to say that you were opposed
Speaker 1: to all hierarchy and all authority.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, the definitions of those terms do get confused
Speaker 1: often because, like a lot of words in the English language,
Speaker 1: they do have multiple meanings. You know, you don't want
Speaker 1: to fall into the equivocation fallacy, where you use a
Speaker 1: word or phrase in one way and then you use
Speaker 1: it in another way in the same argument. So someone
Speaker 1: might say, for example, anarchism opposing authority is stupid because
Speaker 1: authority just means having a difference in expertise or a
Speaker 1: difference in influence, or that hierarchy opposition to hierarchy is
Speaker 1: stupid because you know food chains or you know the
Speaker 1: hierarchy of needs. But as you know, anarchists will focused
Speaker 1: on very specific things or we use these terms, so
Speaker 1: arguing against it with other definitions doesn't make sense. And
Speaker 1: by hierarchy is anarchists are French as stratification of society,
Speaker 1: which gives some individuals, groups, or institutions authority of others.
Speaker 1: An authority refuses to recognized right above others in a
Speaker 1: social relationship, to give commands, enforced obedia to control, property,
Speaker 1: to exploit, and so on. And I really don't see
Speaker 1: the benefit in Chomsky's sort of unjust authorities or unjust
Speaker 1: hierarchy is approach to define him anarchism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I mean the thing about hierarchies is that
Speaker 2: every hierarchy argues it's just like you would get slave owners,
Speaker 2: like doing these whole speeches about like the inherent morality
Speaker 2: of slavery, like it's not actually a it's not actually
Speaker 2: like an ethical position that leads you to like the
Speaker 2: opposition to hierarchy, because again, every every hierarchy is self justice,
Speaker 2: is self justifying.
Speaker 1: Exactly, which is why I say oppositions all authorities and
Speaker 1: they're justifying dogmas because all of them have dogmuds, including
Speaker 1: the example that Chomsky uses, which is typically of the
Speaker 1: parent pulling their child away from traffic. That is not
Speaker 1: an exercise of authority. And the relationship between a parents
Speaker 1: and a child is something that kind of should be interrogated,
Speaker 1: you know, that is a KaiA taking relationship primarily a
Speaker 1: relationship of responsibility. It does not have to be a
Speaker 1: relationship of authority, and the sense and I suppose yeah,
Speaker 1: and the way.
Speaker 2: That it turns into a relationship of ownership is something
Speaker 2: that genuinely can and should be opposed. But it's also
Speaker 2: something that like gets a lot harder to oppose when
Speaker 2: you're sort of stuck up on this like, well, actually, no,
Speaker 2: it's good because this is authority or whatever. So I
Speaker 2: think the way that Chomsky obfuscates the stuff makes it
Speaker 2: harder to actually do politics.
Speaker 1: That's useful exactly because then it also makes it its
Speaker 1: hard of people to set a question. The authority the
Speaker 1: more comfortable with, or the hierarchy is the more comfortable with.
Speaker 1: So you'll see that way. So gold On you can say,
Speaker 1: although we don't actually oppose all hierarchities, you know, your
Speaker 1: parents thing, and you really you see in ground in
Speaker 1: a sense, because you make it harder to identify and
Speaker 1: really question those things, because you're you're shutting down that
Speaker 1: avenue of questioned it, you know. And so when we
Speaker 1: speak of authority, we're really speaking about that right, the
Speaker 1: right the authority that gives to certain people over other people,
Speaker 1: you know, privileges that are recognized and enforced, and a
Speaker 1: right being a sort of a priority that is above others.
Speaker 1: You know, the right of authority is a guarantee to
Speaker 1: actions or resources that absolve the individual holding that right
Speaker 1: of consequences. The right of authority compels and supporting the
Speaker 1: desires and needs of those below that authority. So you know,
Speaker 1: authorities have the right to command recognized and enforced by
Speaker 1: the underlings. You know, they're the right to enforce the
Speaker 1: obedience of the underlings are the right to control all
Speaker 1: the properties the earth has been carved into. You know.
Speaker 1: The right absorbs them of certain consequences and sort of
Speaker 1: goes in one direction. It's a unilateral sort of thing.
Speaker 1: So the authority can take your house, you know, the bank,
Speaker 1: the government, the landlord. They can take your house, but
Speaker 1: you can't take theirs. You know. An authority can assault you,
Speaker 1: whether be a soldier, police officer, whatever, you cannot assault them.
Speaker 1: An authority can take the fruits of your labor. They
Speaker 1: could take from these wealth of what you produce, but
Speaker 1: you can't take from them. That's theft, right. An authority
Speaker 1: cannot be an authority by themselves. They have to have
Speaker 1: authority over They have to have a hierarchical social relationship
Speaker 1: that deprives some their benefit. An Anarchists oppose authority because,
Speaker 1: you know, among other reasons, those subjects of authority become controlled,
Speaker 1: They become dependent, exploited, prevented from accessing their full potential
Speaker 1: and even their bare necessities. A really that prevented from
Speaker 1: accessing their full potential is why a lot of anarchists
Speaker 1: have spent a lot of time targeting or approached to
Speaker 1: pearance in an approach to entry heat. You know, just
Speaker 1: this morning I was reading a bit of Emma Goldmun
Speaker 1: as she was talking about Phaer's schools. The way that
Speaker 1: she speaks also she was an excellent rights and excellent speaker,
Speaker 1: but the way that she did so, and the way
Speaker 1: she approached and recognize this need to tap into our potential,
Speaker 1: particularly from young to prevent it from being limited by
Speaker 1: the impositions of authority. It's just extremely profound. It's necessary,
Speaker 1: acessary to start at particularly at that age, but really
Speaker 1: at any age, to break away from that condition that
Speaker 1: that recognizes and enforces and obeys and accepts authority and
Speaker 1: the right of authority. You know, if everybody, if everybody,
Speaker 1: including their underlings, decided tomorrow not to recognize and enforce
Speaker 1: the authority of presidents, of kings, of capitalists, that freight
Speaker 1: would be gone in an instant. Also, when he starts
Speaker 1: with us being able to actually question, to challenge, to
Speaker 1: resist authority, and that's something that has existed since humans
Speaker 1: have been in humans throughout history, we see this sort
Speaker 1: of compulsion to resist authority, and that sort of seed
Speaker 1: of resistance is what anarchists hope to have thresh.
Speaker 3: Fortunately, we have to go to ads.
Speaker 2: Disaster fiasco, your principles in shambles.
Speaker 3: But here here's ads.
Speaker 1: We are back. So, like I said before, authority gets
Speaker 1: confused with a lot of different things. Force and violence
Speaker 1: is the main one. It's one that Marxists in particular love,
Speaker 1: that sort of conflation of authority with any use of force.
Speaker 1: You know, the slave resistant a slave owner is actually
Speaker 1: an example of authority.
Speaker 2: Incredibly silly people who are otherwise reasonably intelligent will just
Speaker 2: say this stuff. It's like, really, what are we doing here?
Speaker 1: Just come on? Yeah, yeah, I mean force and violence
Speaker 1: associated with authority, and there they can be a mechanism
Speaker 1: of defending an authority. But they're not in and of
Speaker 1: themselves authority. They're not the source of authority. They don't
Speaker 1: cost you authority, and you could just as easily use
Speaker 1: them to resist authority. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I want to go back to the slavery thing specifically
Speaker 2: about authority, because the argument that it's an imposition of
Speaker 2: authority for slaves to free themselves is an argument that
Speaker 2: was specifically made by the Southern plantation class. Like that
Speaker 2: was that was their argument about federal tyranny, was that
Speaker 2: specific argument. So it's probably not a good theoretical basis
Speaker 2: for understanding what authority is. If if if you're if
Speaker 2: you're making the same argument as the Southern plantation class,
Speaker 2: it's gonna just just cause it's gonna leave the.
Speaker 1: One out there exactly exactly. And really we have to
Speaker 1: understand violence. Forces are things that are used by authorities.
Speaker 1: But if I punch somebody in the face, that doesn't
Speaker 1: make me an authority over them. You know, if I
Speaker 1: defend myself from me in a punch, that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: me in authority of the person trying to punish me.
Speaker 1: The source of authority is really about that that right,
Speaker 1: that position, that recognized right above others, that position, that
Speaker 1: social relationship above others. That's what grants authority. It's recognition.
Speaker 1: The general of an army is not an authority because
Speaker 1: he's holding a gun to the heads of all the
Speaker 1: other soldiers and making them do things. The generals here
Speaker 1: is to be a recognizing authority because of his position
Speaker 1: and the privileges and rights and powers that that position
Speaker 1: gives him. If tomorrow all the soldiers decided to till
Speaker 1: in on their general, as has happened historically, that is
Speaker 1: one hundred percent possible. That is an instance of four
Speaker 1: sort of violence being used to resist authority rather than
Speaker 1: being used to, you know, be authority. Another thing that
Speaker 1: gets confused with authority is influence or or respect. So
Speaker 1: influence is really something I mean, I might find somebody's
Speaker 1: a ees or qualities or achievements admirable, right, so I
Speaker 1: respect that about them. That does mean they have an
Speaker 1: authority over me. I might be inspired by someone in
Speaker 1: a way that affects my character or development, will behavior.
Speaker 1: But again that isn't that influence doesn't automatically trust into authority.
Speaker 1: You'll find that a lot of the anarchists think because
Speaker 1: of the late nineteenth twentieth century, they were very influential.
Speaker 1: They were not authorities, but they had a profound impact
Speaker 1: on the people around them, and they were profound inspiration
Speaker 1: to us even to today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's there's a paper I always think about where
Speaker 2: I found it, like a kind of liberal, well like
Speaker 2: a maybe center lefty academic writing about Mela Tessa, who
Speaker 2: we've we've talked about a lot on this show. There's
Speaker 2: an Italian anarchists did a whole bunch of stuff. So
Speaker 2: when the Italian revolutions are happening in nineteen eighteen, nineteen nineteen,
Speaker 2: like Baltesa comes back to Italy because he'd been all
Speaker 2: over the world doing a whole bunch of other stuff,
Speaker 2: and he gets called like like Italy's Lenin.
Speaker 1: For those who listened to some of my Anarchists History episodes,
Speaker 1: you know that he kind of shows up sometimes. You
Speaker 1: know that he shows up an easier literally everywhere. He
Speaker 1: shows up all over the place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all for Latin America is in the US, and
Speaker 2: you know, and so he gets called like the Leadin
Speaker 2: of Italy. And this paper was about like was he
Speaker 2: act Did he actually act like Lenin? And the conclusion
Speaker 2: that they came to was like, well, no, he didn't
Speaker 2: try to. He didn't come back to Italy to type,
Speaker 2: to seize control of the country like he simply did
Speaker 2: not because he was an anarchist, because that's what it
Speaker 2: means to sort of, you know, have influence, but not.
Speaker 1: Like rule exactly exactly. And that really gets into some
Speaker 1: of the interesting conversation around anarchism and leadership and the
Speaker 1: different ways ad can sort of interpret the concept of leadership.
Speaker 1: But I'll see that for another discussion. There are two
Speaker 1: other things that authority gets confused with that. I want
Speaker 1: to address the first is coordination. And what's interesting with
Speaker 1: coordination is that it's very much tied to authority a lot.
Speaker 1: In the present day. You know, a lot of the
Speaker 1: rules we have in the current system, coordination authority get
Speaker 1: tied up together. So you have a manager of an enterprise,
Speaker 1: and that manager coordinates all of the workers in that enterprise,
Speaker 1: but the manager also has authority over those workers, you know,
Speaker 1: to fire, to discipline, to go all these sorts of things.
Speaker 1: Or a general in an army might have a coordination
Speaker 1: role of ensurance that there's communication between various militias or
Speaker 1: you know, various regiments, and that the soldiers within that
Speaker 1: regiment know exactly what their goal is, what their task is,
Speaker 1: and how they can go about to accomplishing it. That
Speaker 1: there's in many ways a coordinating role, but it's also
Speaker 1: tied up with the authority of the general, as in
Speaker 1: the right above the soldiers, you know, to command them,
Speaker 1: to enforce, obeliens, to punish, and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: So we get tied up between a coordination and authority
Speaker 1: a lot. But coordination does not have to be ties
Speaker 1: of authority in its simplest form of coordination can just
Speaker 1: be the communication of information between parties to ensure they
Speaker 1: work together smoothly and effectively. That can and already does
Speaker 1: take place between equals. So, okay, here's a good example.
Speaker 1: You know, you're trying to move a couch into a
Speaker 1: house or an apartment. And for those of you who
Speaker 1: have had to squeeze a couch and through a doorway,
Speaker 1: you kind of know what I'm talking about is already
Speaker 1: because you have to kind of come at this at
Speaker 1: a certain angle. You know, the the size of our
Speaker 1: doorway and the dimensions of a coach require very particular approach.
Speaker 1: So you might have somebody who stands to this side
Speaker 1: and the talent person okay, all right. So it's likely
Speaker 1: in this way because when you lift in a heavy coach,
Speaker 1: you kind of just want to put it down. You know,
Speaker 1: you can't really think, okay, what anger should take it out?
Speaker 1: So you might have somebody in a position to say,
Speaker 1: all right, back up, okay, come forward, okay, So it's
Speaker 1: slightly into the left, that kind of thing. That's a
Speaker 1: coordinative rule. But that person there's an an authority over
Speaker 1: anybody there. It's just communicating information to ensure the shared
Speaker 1: task that the people involved have can be executed effectively.
Speaker 1: So that's a long way of saying that we can't
Speaker 1: have coordination and organization in our It doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be or it doesn't have to involve authority. Finally, one
Speaker 1: of the pet favorites of confusion is the confusion between
Speaker 1: authority and expertise. Authority and expertise really example of the
Speaker 1: equivocation I was talking about earlier, because authority is a
Speaker 1: synonym for expertise by certain definitions, but the kind of
Speaker 1: authority and I suppose has nothing to do with expertise,
Speaker 1: which is what Baquen was talking about with his authority
Speaker 1: the book maker argument. Now, if I could go back
Speaker 1: in time, I would just go and tell the quien listen,
Speaker 1: A lot of people are not going to read this
Speaker 1: in full. I understand the full context. So maybe don't
Speaker 1: use the word authority here. Maybe be more specific and
Speaker 1: use the word expertise or something so people don't get confused,
Speaker 1: because I mean reac in context, it becomes very clear.
Speaker 1: But they are people who take the title of that article,
Speaker 1: or they take one quote or one passage just taken
Speaker 1: out too context from the whole, or they take like,
Speaker 1: for example, it's a version of that article that is
Speaker 1: cut off from the entire thing on on Marxist dot org.
Speaker 1: I think so it's like an incomplete version of that
Speaker 1: text available in one page, and then the full versions
Speaker 1: of yourble in the anarchists life very incredible. See have
Speaker 1: people who basically use that article to argue that actually,
Speaker 1: you know, vi Cutan wasn't against authority, but in context
Speaker 1: it makes sense what he's talking about authority. They he's
Speaker 1: specifically talking about expertise, and he still says that in
Speaker 1: the end he's not going to be commanded by that
Speaker 1: expert He's just going to take their perspective into account
Speaker 1: because he understands the incompleteness of his own perspective. That
Speaker 1: is a very different relationship from the sort of commander
Speaker 1: in support nation that we see in an authoritarian relationship.
Speaker 1: And while expertise often gets conflated with authority in positions
Speaker 1: in the current system, that often is damaging to authority itself.
Speaker 1: If you think about the relationship people have, for example,
Speaker 1: with and this is a sort of a contentious one,
Speaker 1: but even if the relationship people have with like their
Speaker 1: own like poostyl doctor, the family doctor, wh is the
Speaker 1: relationship that they might have with a public health professional.
Speaker 1: When people go into the postel doctor, it's very easy
Speaker 1: for them to sort of, you know, accept that sort
Speaker 1: of expertise. They have a relationship with them, they understand them,
Speaker 1: they trust them. One of the case maybe of course
Speaker 1: their places where because healthcare is and accessible, people don't
Speaker 1: have that relationship with the doctor. But you know, so
Speaker 1: I'm speaking internationally here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Also I need to put the trans note here,
Speaker 2: which is that like it is very hard if you're
Speaker 2: trands to find a doctor that you personally trust, because
Speaker 2: oh boy.
Speaker 1: That is true.
Speaker 3: That that is a time, that is true.
Speaker 1: That's that's the influence of you know, CISTA a patriarchy,
Speaker 1: and it's its impact.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so it's also it's also an example of
Speaker 2: why you can't just sort of blindly accept the authority.
Speaker 2: You can't accept the authority of people who have expertise
Speaker 2: because it's like sometimes they don't exactly exactly like a
Speaker 2: lot of times, in fact, the credentials don't actually meant
Speaker 2: that this person knows anything about trans health care, like
Speaker 2: the ASCO exactly.
Speaker 1: It often just me and said the police. Sun has
Speaker 1: been given the stuff of approval by an institution that
Speaker 1: has been granted authority. Yeah, but the institution being granted
Speaker 1: authority does not necessarily or should not have a monopoly
Speaker 1: on expertise and often does not in practice have the
Speaker 1: full of the sun, and the people who produced by
Speaker 1: that institution don't necessarily have that full of crafts and
Speaker 1: everything to see that you know, they can be treated
Speaker 1: as an unquestioned authority all expert.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's something that you have to have a
Speaker 2: kind of balance between what you know, kind of like
Speaker 2: neoliberal like technocracy where you get like we put the
Speaker 2: experts in charge and the quote unquote experts running the economy,
Speaker 2: like did two thousand and.
Speaker 1: Eight all come out to that right wing think down?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's and then on the other hand, the
Speaker 2: kind of like reflexive contrianism and desire to build a
Speaker 2: new expert that gets you like RFK Junior as the
Speaker 2: future like secretary of Health and Human Services. So you know,
Speaker 2: you have to sort of like Jesus, yes, you have
Speaker 2: to sort of like balance between sometimes these people fuck
Speaker 2: up and also, vaccines are good. This is not a
Speaker 2: problem that requires us to like fly through the pin
Speaker 2: of a needle. We do have to have a little
Speaker 2: bit of I don't know, it's not that difficult of
Speaker 2: a problem to deal with, but but the way that
Speaker 2: the authority is construed has created a sort of backlash
Speaker 2: to it that has been used to sort of delegitimate, genuine,
Speaker 2: useful expertise and create sort of like false expertise.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's exactly the points I was going to
Speaker 1: make to the institution of authority and the fact that
Speaker 1: authorities so frequently, you know, mess up and so frequently
Speaker 1: like abuse the trust of people, increase the sense of mistrust,
Speaker 1: a rightful and valid mistrust in authorities that it can
Speaker 1: often be misdirected or exploited towards ends that are not
Speaker 1: necessarily equivalent. So, because these people in public health positions
Speaker 1: are tied up with the government, people already don't trust
Speaker 1: any legitimate expertise that they may have gets solid essentially
Speaker 1: by that person of authority, poisoned by their association with
Speaker 1: a government that has clearly proven itself to not have
Speaker 1: the best interests of people in mind. All right, So,
Speaker 1: just to get back to the definition again, anarchism as
Speaker 1: a political philosophy and practice that opposes all authority along
Speaker 1: with its justifying dogmas, and proposes the unending pursuit of anarchy,
Speaker 1: a world without rule, where self determination, free association, and
Speaker 1: mutuality form the basis of our society. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: I've spoken a bit about that. Those justified dogmas came
Speaker 1: at Stromsky a little bit, and we spoke about how
Speaker 1: that's sort of incoherent because every ideology opposes unjust hierarchies.
Speaker 1: So I think it's important that anarchism calls out all
Speaker 1: the justifications. I'm sure you could think of some of
Speaker 1: the main justifications that tend to be used. One of
Speaker 1: the oldest justifications is, of course, the divine rights of kings.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that one's mostly been broken. Hopefully we don't have
Speaker 2: to deal with that shit any war. But I you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know, I have I have eternal cynicism.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe the maybe the American people you
Speaker 1: in for the Trump dynasty, Yeah, we're going to create
Speaker 1: their god king. Oh yeah, as imperial presidency. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean in more liberal circles, the justification for authority
Speaker 1: is usually the social contract theory that individuals implicitly consent
Speaker 1: to authority. But I don't know about umia. Nobody asked
Speaker 1: for my consent, and also I don't have any way
Speaker 1: of relinquishing my consent. Yeah, so is it really consensual?
Speaker 2: No, Like some some fucking assholes at Philadelphia like two
Speaker 2: hundred years ago were like, we're going to set up
Speaker 2: a thing, and also slavery is good.
Speaker 3: It's like, really, like, what do we doing here?
Speaker 2: How?
Speaker 3: What meaningful way did I agree to this?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Exactly. And it's not like I can step out
Speaker 1: of it. I mean, you hold the monopoly on literally
Speaker 1: every inch of territory on earth, some stately some claim
Speaker 1: to some part of the world. There's no escape, So
Speaker 1: it's not a contract that you can opt out of.
Speaker 1: You know. You know. Another justification that authorities tend to
Speaker 1: use as an idea of meritocracy and economic darwin itsell
Speaker 1: that the best of the best, they rise to the top,
Speaker 1: that they are not really any systemic inequalities or structural barriers.
Speaker 1: That this is a survival to the fittest, and the
Speaker 1: fittest win, and the losers are losers, and they fail
Speaker 1: because they're losers. That's a very cynical sort of take
Speaker 1: that I don't think many people openly espouse outside of
Speaker 1: like right wing circles, but it's definitely one of the
Speaker 1: justifications for authority that gets used. Another one is also
Speaker 1: in conservative circles, the idea of natural hierarchy. The idea
Speaker 1: is that hierarchies are part of the natural ordel. You know,
Speaker 1: people will use avolutionary biology or the just texts or
Speaker 1: pseuo scientific claims to justify the inequality between genders or
Speaker 1: races or classes. Colonial and imperialists Poulos, for example, would
Speaker 1: justify their dominance by claim and cultural superiority. The these
Speaker 1: ideas have the white man's buddhen and civilizing missions to
Speaker 1: enforce the authority over other people's and their lands, and
Speaker 1: that justification, while questioned and challenged to be, still is
Speaker 1: at the basis at the root of almost every institution
Speaker 1: in our modern rogue.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's something I think is going to become increasingly
Speaker 2: visible in the US over the next few years, coming
Speaker 2: out of a period where it was like slightly more offiscated.
Speaker 2: But you know, all of the people who are about
Speaker 2: to be coming into power, if you if you spend
Speaker 2: like even the tiniest amount of time, you will see
Speaker 2: them start talking about like fucking racial IQ shit, and
Speaker 2: like all of this really pretty pretty explicit ideology that
Speaker 2: they have that like of this sort of like racial
Speaker 2: superiority that they think they have. That's like, you know,
Speaker 2: there's like motivating ideological factor and also the thing of
Speaker 2: the users sort of justify their power.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's unfortunately become in more and more open and
Speaker 1: common and to see that sort of discourse on mainstream
Speaker 1: platforms like Twitter. The necessity of order an efficiency tends
Speaker 1: to also be used as a justification for authority, you know,
Speaker 1: the idea that authority is needed to maintain order, to
Speaker 1: keep things in place, to make decisions. And this is
Speaker 1: really ignoring the capacity that people have already proven historically
Speaker 1: and presently to organize cooperatively, to organize without authority, to
Speaker 1: take on horizontal and decentralized approaches, because it's something that
Speaker 1: is treating complexity as synonymous with hierarchy, that you have
Speaker 1: to organize this way, you know, it ignores all the
Speaker 1: inefficiencies hybureaucratic systems, It ignores all the harm caused by
Speaker 1: authoritarian systems. That just says that you know, we need
Speaker 1: this thing, these things function, but we don't.
Speaker 2: One of the weirder artifacts of the twenty tens was
Speaker 2: David Raber had an argument with Pure Teel where like
Speaker 2: they like did a debate and what a Raber's arguments
Speaker 2: is like, well, what do you mean, like our technical
Speaker 2: or technological systems mean that we have to organize society
Speaker 2: in a way like it like it is is the
Speaker 2: argument that you're making that technological possibility makes us less free.
Speaker 3: It's like, no, sucks, what are you talking about?
Speaker 1: And you know this is all people like who make
Speaker 1: these arguments don't necessarily have an understanding of our systems.
Speaker 1: The Internet is not organized by one central body. The
Speaker 1: Internet is already fairly the yes centralized. It's become more
Speaker 1: centralized upon platforms. But as an infrastructure, the Internet is
Speaker 1: really a network of nodes that are all over the
Speaker 1: world and all over space. Or we could take for example,
Speaker 1: the International Postal system. All the mail that gets distributed
Speaker 1: around the world internationally is one central global body that's
Speaker 1: in charge of that. It's multiple organizations that coordinate their
Speaker 1: activities to ensure that you know, you get your mail.
Speaker 1: Or we look at even basic supply genes of goods
Speaker 1: and resources, it's not all handled by one central industrial body.
Speaker 1: It's not all handled by the government or by one corporation.
Speaker 1: It's a set of relationships between groups, between companies, between
Speaker 1: mining companies and resource exstruction companies, and shipping companies and
Speaker 1: processing plants and factories and toys. All these networks already
Speaker 1: not undertaken entirely by one central body. They may be
Speaker 1: organized internally hierarchically, but that can very easily change. Finally,
Speaker 1: final justification I want to get into is this idea
Speaker 1: that that authority is the lesser evil. That authority might
Speaker 1: be imperfect, but it's preferable to boost alternatives like total anarchy.
Speaker 1: And of course some people say anarchy here that the
Speaker 1: means in the pejorative sense, or mean like actual anarchy
Speaker 1: in the sense of the political philosophy, means in the
Speaker 1: sense of instead of having one central authority, they have
Speaker 1: one to compete in authorityre in poem, it's a bunch
Speaker 1: of warlow its fights in full power. That is not
Speaker 1: anarchy in the sense of anarchists pursue that is, you know,
Speaker 1: patsy authority fighting predominance, which is if you think about
Speaker 1: really how historically states came in.
Speaker 2: To be in Yeah, I was like, what do you
Speaker 2: think we have now, like, what do you think that
Speaker 2: like one hundred and ninety something states are doing? Like
Speaker 2: I I don't know, and I feel like a lot
Speaker 2: of these arguments are just describing the current state of
Speaker 2: affairs and going well, it could be like that. It's like, oh,
Speaker 2: what if how would like communes deal with war? It's
Speaker 2: like when't the Communists are going to war with each other?
Speaker 2: It's like, well, okay, like what look at the world
Speaker 2: right now and ask yourself the question, how are states
Speaker 2: dealing with the problem of war?
Speaker 3: And the answer is they're dealing with a problem of
Speaker 3: war by going to war with each other? Like what
Speaker 3: are we doing here?
Speaker 1: Exactly? Exactly. So the more positive side of the definition
Speaker 1: of anarchy is one that I haven't quite gotten into yet,
Speaker 1: and I haven't broken down the ideas of mutuality and
Speaker 1: free association. But I'll save all that for the next episode.
Speaker 1: If you can't wait until then, my videos on how
Speaker 1: anarchy works and what ANARCHI needs should whet your appetite.
Speaker 1: But until then, I've an Andrew sage. You can find
Speaker 1: our YouTube at Andrewism and feature not seeing true this
Speaker 1: is it could happen here the show where we chronicle
Speaker 1: collapse as it happens and explore how do I build
Speaker 1: a better future, and in my case ocasion, I take
Speaker 1: a look at the past as well. And that's it.
Speaker 1: All power to all the people.
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