Google Murray Bookchin – Srsly Wrong Ep. 96
Shawn and special guest co-host Pete talk about Murray Bookchin, Communalism, and the task of building a left movement.
Podcast: Play in new window or Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0Z2KGudYrA
Pete: Warning. Aaron Moritz will not be joining us this episode. He has been taken out by the Reptilians in the Illuminati because he is too powerful of an organizer.
Shawn: Yeah, I was just. I was actually just. Thinking. Ironically, talking about the Illuminati is something that is an important practice.
Pete: It's certainly an enjoyable one. I'm not sure how frequent it is, but it's something that is desirable.
Shawn: Solinsky said that a a good tactic is a tactic your people like.
Pete: Well, if Solinsky said it, then it must. Be true.
Bookchin: That that world of life is profoundly affected by social developments. Now this is a very provocative notion, however simple it might seem, because what it says is that the center the locus, the target, the focus, use whatever word you want of the environmental problems that we face today exist not only in our attitudes toward nature, but in the kind of society in which we live. Our attitudes toward nature and I want to use the word nature very provisionally. That, that phenomenon that we call natural evolution, of which we are products, our evolution in the natural world can be clearly traced today. With an enormous amount of supportive paleontological material, or anthroposophical, anthropology and the like, our evolution out of the natural world, and we are still part of the natural world even as we are evolved out of the natural world to form a social evolution, has profoundly affected the natural world. And I'm. Less, however, importantly, we talk about the need to change our attitudes. The natural world, however, we seek to evolve a greater sensibility and a richer sensibility toward the world of life around us. The social relations, the economic relations, the marketplace. Have a more profound effect upon our relationship with the natural world than even our attitudes important as these attitudes may be, the very idea of dominating nation. Now let me stress the word. Idea here because I am consistently misunderstood about this. The very idea of dominating the natural world, I have argued in a very lengthy book, stems from the domination of human by human.
Shawn: So, Pete, you're a relative expert on the subject of Murray Bookchin's ideas.
Pete: I would disagree with that, but I I'm I'm well studied in them.
Shawn: You're a relative expert compared to me.
Pete: Now I have faith that one day your Jedi Powers will expand.
Shawn: Well, thank you very much. So for for someone who's Googling Murray Bookchin and has no idea who he is, what is Murray Bookchin? Who? Who is he?
Pete: Murray Bookchin helped to reinvent the left along libertarian, ethical, humanist and ecological lines. Really, with this post 1960s work and has helped influence one of the most important revolutions in the history of the human species, which is the rojavan revolution. Which consists of millions of people organizing without political and economic rulers with complex organizational processes under. Extreme conditions, which includes warfare from various different sides, everything from dealing with the authoritarianism of Assad to ISIS, and then being involved in an international quagmire in between world superpowers, they've been extremely resilient, despite the fact that they have to spend so much of their resources on basically. Self-defense and this is the longest lasting libertarian socialist. Pollution of this size and the millions that has ever existed. So it's very exciting.
Shawn: This is in northern Syria.
Pete: Yes, but there are communalist. That are not just in in northern Syria, but are also throughout the region. But yeah, Rojas in northern Syria.
Shawn: And and you said that there's millions of people participating in this right now.
Pete: Yes.
Shawn: So wait, so that seems like a lot.
Pete: It's absolutely huge, it's it's amazing. And when we, when we really look at it under the kind of context that they're dealing with, it's particularly amazing. But even without the context, what they're doing is. A rather inspiring movement.
Shawn: So, so. So you're saying that there that there's this, this anarchist writer from New York named Murray Bookchin, who created his own kind of specific Murray Bookchin special sauce anarchism. And then that has influenced a movement that's going on right now. Of millions of people in the Middle East who are organizing along direct democratic lines and fighting ISIS.
Pete: Yes.
Shawn: And then that's literally true. Like you're not pulling my leg or exaggerating in any way.
Pete: No, that's actually happening.
Pete: What? It's literally utopia happening in a place where we'd least expect it. What's interesting is that Murray's ideas have usually been critiqued as being extremely fiery, heavy, and almost like it's not practical. And it's just all abstract or in people's heads or whatnot. But this this is a very theory heavy practice that's happening in a place where. We'd least expect it.
Shawn: How did how did the Middle East? How how does that connection? Happen.
Pete: I believe while O'hanlon was in prison, the leader of the Kurdish Workers Party, Turkish feminists, wound up giving him the work of Murray Bookchin, and he wound up reading up on that as well as other various anarchist thinkers, and pretty much wanted to change his entire world view from a more Marxist Leninist position. To a libertarian socialist 1. And there were also internal divisions within the PKK. The Kurdish Workers Party itself already happening, especially among women who are fighting for a more democratic worldview. And that kind of coalesced. And eventually that was that was pretty much accepted.
Shawn: So the Workers Party was kind of brochure list until Bookchin came along.
Pete: Yeah, I I think that there were, there were. So there was some brochures and that that got on brochure.
Shawn: The thing that first kind of pulled me towards Murray Bookchin is this idea of post scarcity anarchism, which I kind of saw as a a really utopian vision of what is possible with technology. What is?
Pete: I think the post scarcity anarchism book is pretty much the height of 1960s utopian writing. It's extremely psychedelic. It's extremely beautifully written, and it's it's inherently rational. At the same time. He advocates for forms of freedom in that book that are pretty much based on policy making power being at the lowest level and freely associated organizations. And he advocates for this new content of post scarcity where we use liberatory technology, that is technology that has an ethical thrust to it that's designed to be in harmony with the ecosphere. As well as with human freedom we implement. That, uninhibited by cost, efficiency and profit, and the state which pretty much capitalism in the state have their own metrics for how they use technology, the state needs to maximize violent technical potential relative to the people it rules over, and even relative to other people external to it. Whereas the market is all about maximizing, accumulation and and capitalism about having hierarchical production to do so, and that very process pretty much makes it so we're not able to actuate the technology that is potentially available. And we see this 5 decades later. Plus, since he's written the basic text for post scarcity anarchism, we still haven't actuated some of the liberatory technology that he was discussing in the 1960s. Even rooftop solar hasn't been anything close to fully actuated, and that that's some of the most basic technology he was talking about at the time. I mean books and was talking about the potential for automating the vast majority of mechanical labor, freeing humans to have a life of leisure to do what they want and have a new, a new level and degree of self. Management. I could really free us from undesired labor and just unleash human creativity on on extremely large scales.
Shawn: So, in a way, Murray Bookchin is is kind of compatible with transhumanism.
Pete: I don't know what Murray would think about transhumanism. I'd imagine he'd think that it's. A kind of hyper extreme technology that requires a delicate approach to say. At least in regards to how we use it, but it's not something that he ever really touched upon, no. He never talked. Talked about merging with machines or using AI in any any meaningful sense. Mainly he was interested in automating mechanical labor to free us to do creative activities that we would enjoy to do uncoerced. By economic systems that force us to compete with our technologies in order to get labor in order to survive.
Shawn: He wrote about this in the 60s.
Pete: Yes, this is before Jacques fresco.
Shawn: This is before inventing the future. Which brings the critique forward that basically automation is a good thing, but that capitalism won't give us the automation that we need. It's only going to give us the capital. It's only going to give us the automation that it needs, which is sometimes going to be actually antagonistic towards working people.
Pete: And Murray never thought that pretty much technology under the influence of capitalism is going to usher in a new system, or that it's going to create an inherent.
Pete: This crisis for capitalism? He thought that capitalism was extremely resilient and that all the past crisis theories of capitalism had failed and that we shouldn't assume that internal contradictions within capitalism are going to cause itself to fall, and that that thinking such things would inhibit us from doing what's necessary to actually prefigure. Movement that is gonna actually be sufficient to bring hierarchical political economic governance to a. Ends by thinking that it's just gonna fall in on itself. Or or give. Birth to communism out of capitalism, sort of. The way that mark sometimes put it.
Shawn: I love that because it's kind of a pet peeve of mine that the the politics of procrastination politics like the idea that we're going to start the revolution tomorrow, or that something needs to, that we need to wait. It's treated as a type of wisdom in a way to say, like you need to wait for the right time to have a revolution. Like revolutions won't just happen. In any conditions, there needs to be some sort of. Specific societal change that brings about the revolution and that this this is kind of touted as wise, but then is also at the same time used as an excuse against, like putting in the work of actually starting organizing for such a crisis scenario.
Pete: Spot on. Well, what's interesting is there's actually something to the idea that there are certain revolutionary moments or certain moments where there's more likely to be direct change from events. However, it's precisely what we do in between those kind of moments that is going to determine, in part, how those revolutionary moments play out. So the idea that we need to wait for such a moment in order to act. Act is going to actually inhibit our ability to act well during such a moment. There's a degree of urgency and we need to take that seriously and organize as soon as we can.
Shawn: On one hand of the the Murray Bookchin ideas, I feel like there's the post scarcity anarchism, which is this technology forward kind of utopian, a society where. Technology is in harmony with human need, and technology is not. Is not something that you know, dominates people or or takes things away from people, and then on the other hand, there's the not an incompatible idea, but at least the superficially opposite idea, which is the kind of social ecology these ecological ideas about living in balance with nature and and seeing democratic processes. Is an extension of of nature, which it feels kind of like an opposite in a way.
Pete: It's interesting because the the deep ecologists and the biocentrism who Murray opposed ideologically throughout his life, those people tried to make it seem as if human freedom and ecological resilience are incompatible with each other, so that humans need to be dominated by natural laws and sort of only forage and not use any. Applied knowledge or art or technology in any in any kind of meaning. Sense, whereas Murray said it's it's precisely the process of negating human freedom and that anti humanism through through systems that are hierarchical that wind up creating ecological problems. So ecological problems are not caused by the facts that we have Neo frontal cortexes or opposable thumbs or human biology. Nor is it caused by human society without adjectives, nor is it caused by technology without. It's caused by hierarchical political economic governance systems, which turn life into non life to the degree that they maximize power and centralized profit. Those very systems also inhibit liberatory technology and ecological technology, and Murray thought not only was it possible for our technology to be in harmony with first nature. For the non human natural world and the non social natural world, he thought it was possible for us to even enrich first nature. Through using compassionate applied arts and and and technics towards that which is not human, we can actually enrich the biosphere. We can do things like seed saving and veterinary work, and now there's new research in the myco honey, the ability to find various mycelium that's good for various bees and their immunity, and we can actually. Intervene into first nature in a way that increases the immune system of primary pollinators.
Shawn: That's really amazing and interesting and crazy, but so first nature and second nature first. Nature is, is nature. Without humans and second nature is humans and human technology, human society. It's an extension of nature that's at the same time distinct.
Pete: Yeah. So, so the best way to put it would be second nature as social nature and first nature is non social nature and all second nature is within first nature. If you will and developed out of it, but not all of first nature is second nature.
Shawn: Second nature is actually nested within first nature.
Pete: Yeah. It's part of nature, but it also has its own qualitative differences.
Shawn: If there was a, if there was a a hyper intelligent pig that we were having social relationships with then that would become part of second nature or even if human beings are interacting with something as dumb as a pig, that that is within the context of second nature because it's a social relationship is that am I understanding correctly?
Pete: Exactly how to parse out those limits and definitions is difficult. But pretty much second nature is the social world. First, nature is the non social world and 3rd nature was what he posited as a way to harmonize second nature with first nature, which was a conception of a free nature where you have humans as nature rendered self-conscious in harmony with first nature and adding to it.
Shawn: That is fascinating. Little known facts about Bookchin.
Pete: Bookchin used to getting ideological arguments with Bernie Sanders.
Shawn: Bookchin is a three foot tall woman who lives in. A shoe box.
Pete: Bookchin was very influential in People's Park in in Berkeley and the counterculture of the 60s, and informing their ideology.
Shawn: Some of Bookchin's work include the wealth of nations, the Communist Manifesto and Atlas.
Pete: Shrugged. Laurie Buchan ceased being an anarchist by the end of his life, but was still against all forms of hierarchy.
Shawn: The SpaceX rocket that blew up was named after Murray Bookchin because Elon Musk is a devout social ecologist.
Pete: Governments are different than states. Governments kind of can refer to some institution that governs, but it doesn't really have too many adjectives outside of that. And in that sense it's like tofu. It can kind of be spiced with anything, whereas the state is a specific form of. Government that's based on hierarchical policy, making bodies, hierarchical enforcement bodies, punishment, professionalized bureaucracy and a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence at the expense of non hierarchical standard of violence.
Shawn: Little known facts about Bookchin, something I see claimed by advocates of blockchain, is that his his work is objectively grounded, or is grounded in a coherent philosophical framework. What? What does that mean, as as compared to something that has an incoherent framework?
Pete: So what makes Bookchin's worldview kind of impervious to authoritarianism is the fact that he has various dimensions that help sort of answer questions you would have if they weren't there to sort of mutually be each other's safety Nets and hold up the entire worldview altogether. So, for example, it's not just direct democracy that he's for, he's. Also, for a non hierarchical social contract. That makes it so certain things are off the table. It's not just that he's against racism, he's also against sexism. It's not just that he's against sexism. He's also against capitalism. It's not that he's against capitalism. He's also against the state. It's not that he's just against capitalism. He's also against the market. It's a it's an ecological whole in the sense that. It's a very full negative program. He's not just targeting particular hierarchies, he's critiquing hierarchy as a whole, and he has a positive program as well where he advocates something that we should be for these directly democratic communes that use liberatory technology. Within a non hierarchical social contract, it's the combination of his entire worldview that makes it sort of give it its ethical thrust without certain parts of it, it might be not possible to actuate or not even desirable.
Shawn: The whole body of his work played against itself. You feel like kind of inherently defends itself against the capacity to be like Co opted or. Or or turn into like a violent authoritarian structure or something like that.
Pete: You would agree that the coherent world is actuated, it has certain defenses against sort of infiltration from authoritarianism or from 3rd positionist M for example, if you noticed in contemporary circles when you have negative single program activism. So we're against this one evil thing, it can invite a lot of people. You have very backwards view.
Shawn: Like for Wall Street, Occupy Wall Street is a great example. You're against financial corruption and then you have these communists protesting alongside these Ron Paul out at the Fed. Libertarians very little common ground to be found there. Between those people.
Pete: Right. Bob Avakian's cult mixed with Ludwig von Mises's cult mixed with human rights activists mixed with kind of kids just getting into left politics mixed with libertarian leftists mixed. With individualist anarchists mixed with Social Democrats, and then whatever the lowest common denominator is between them is just that they're against something, I guess, which isn't sufficient to even challenge that negative program. It's it's not. It's not able to. How do I put this? It's not able to sufficiently be against what they're against through only being against what they're against and not. Positing a positive program.
Shawn: Someone, someone made the point somewhere on the Internet recently that I liked, which was that just being against things is advocating for there to be less things. You also need to have a suggestion of a replacement. So like, if you're gonna say that we can't do something anymore, you need to suggest what we're also going to do instead of doing that. And I thought that was like a really interesting argument. It sounds kind of similar to what you're talking about as far as, like, a positive. Not just having a negative platform, it's like no pipelines, but like a positive platform as well, which is like no pipelines. Instead nuclear power or instead geothermal power or whatever.
Pete: Sure, yeah, it's, it's or any negative program can be open to to a bunch of different positive programs. For example, I went to a protest against the Syrian war and, you know, people who are against the US intervening in Syria, and there were people waving Assad flags next to anarchists. I've been to BDS or Palestine. Solidarity rallies where there are open Holocaust deniers and open anti Semites. There, even though the negative program of being against U.S. military or the US states or. Against the occupation of the Palestinians, even though that negative program is necessary, it's not sufficient. It doesn't mean that you're not gonna have reactionary views such as Hamas solidarity or Assad solidarity. So you need to have a negative program that is sufficiently negative that that encompasses certain universals and not just particular hierarchies, but universal hierarchies along with the. Positive program that posits something else, because even the negative program of being against all hierarchies is open to people who are just against all institutions as well as hierarchical institutions, and all of a sudden you have people. Who are against hierarchical institutions, some of which want a primitivist society with 6 billion people dead. Other people wanting a utopian left, libertarian future who are organizing together under the ultimate negative program of non hierarchy. So it's interesting to see that even the the universal negative program can sort of be open to. The forces of reaction.
Shawn: Yeah, this is something that you'd you'd mentioned to me before, which is that you thought that only a negative platform. Is explicitly open to reactionaries, or that even attracts reactionaries?
Pete: I think so, and it goes along with crisis organizing because often there's going to be some periodic crisis which people are going to respond to, which is understandable. In fact, it's necessary. The issue is that it's not going to be sufficient to deal with problems that are institutional and not just.
Shawn: Periodic another thing that Bookchin seemed to be pretty, pretty big on advocating for is this idea of the the study group as a way to organize political action.
Pete: He did think that during times where there wasn't anything organized that that was the place to go to meet like minded people and then to move into various kind of action and organization cause he had a huge critique of the Action, Action, action, action, politics that that wasn't concerned with prefiguring a new society and organizing and building a movement.
Shawn: On on there's kind of a divide between, I guess, like prefigurative politics, like bringing the world. Do you want to see in the world today? And the alternative which is I guess working within the compromises of this world to create a revolutionary change in the future, is that is that something that book shines firmly on the side of prefigurative politics, or is there it kind of? Like a synthesis there.
Pete: He's on the side of revolutionary politics as opposed to a reformist one, however. Where he was not opposed to getting involved in in city politics at the at the most local municipal level, to then transform that into a completely bottom up kind of institution and to challenge that with Prefigurative community groups that then kind of pose the community versus. The hierarchical political bureaucracies. And as the prefigurative movements gain power, it needs to come at the expense of the power from the state, crafters and capitalists. And as that happens, there's degrees of tension and and he thought it was essential that those movements run candidates for City Council to then take power away from reaction and to kind of defang the state and demilitarize it, because the state is too militarized. To have an open conflict with and have any hopes of success. So you thought it was important to go into the vessels of city government and defect. The state and then pit confederations of communities against the state and on a large enough level that can become revolutionary, whereas on a local level it's it's more parochial. It needs to be confederated along regional lines for it to actually pose a threat to an institution as evil and powerful. As 21st century state.
Shawn: And and he he. Has this focus on the on the local level, but there is kind of also an international promise. To the ideas.
Pete: The problem with localism is that it can be parochial, so you need to combine it with. Affirm sort of internationalist anti nationalism, a sort of a global or ecological perspective on the world.
Shawn: Sorry, what does what's parochial mean?
Pete: Short sighted, only focused on the local, but at the expense of other people outside of certain boundaries, so we thought it was important for us not to be parochial. And for us. To to to stop dreaming of an idea, even of a completely autonomous commune, in the sense that it's completely self enclosed. He thought it was. Who is needed and desirable for various? Communities to all organize together to kind of pool their skills, their tools, their resources together to create greater degrees of post scarcity.
Shawn: If I hadn't heard of Murray Bookchin before. But you know it's coming from a Marxist perspective, what's what's the pitch to a communist that Bookchin is worth reading and is important? For example.
Unknown Speaker: What's the pitch?
Pete: To a communist or Marxist business that if you want to create the goal of the society where resources are distributed according to abilities and needs, that needs to be prefigured, it's not going to exist through some kind of hierarchical body that destroys a hierarchical body and then.
Unknown Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Pete: Puts itself into power and then promises one day to dissolve itself. Historically, there's no good evidence for that. It hasn't created worker ownership of the means of production or community. Ownership of the means of production. On any meaningful scale. So there's a historical argument against the authoritarian approaches, and there's also an argument that every single time that any kind of social ownership of the means of production has actually existed, it's come about through some form of prefiguration. And it's not just going to happen after the revolution. Otherwise you just have arbitrary power flowing each way until and you have a power vacuum. It needs to be filled and there needs to be some kind of decentralized and confederated power to fill that power vacuum, and that's the way that you can actually prevent counter. Solution is through having the mass community support and going outside of the the Echo chambers of of just pure activist circles and actually going into communities where people live and having them organized together with radicals and you you need to get popular support for for these ideas. Otherwise, they're not going to come about.
Shawn: So when when I when I bring up public opinion to. Calls that people will frequently quote. This marks quote where he says basically that we need to be. We need to be critical of everything despite public opinion. But I feel like there's something to like. Why? Why should why should we care about public? Opinion.
Pete: Well, if there's if there's only a minority of people who believe in something that's true or something, that should be true, that's going to be very dangerous if if anybody cares about what should be. Because if you actually want what should be to be, then you need to have a you have to have, yeah, quality of people. But you also need to have quantity of people to actually. Bring that into motion. Otherwise, one is being how do I put this naively utopian in the way that marks used the word utopia?
Shawn: Is just just to play devil's advocate for a second. Are you actually advocating that people might change their mind if they're exposed to information? It's possible to convince people of our ideas. Doing so isn't just some sort of naive utopian fantasy.
Pete: I ideology, I think certainly drives movements and drives, organizations and drives. And it's, yeah, they they can change with new information. One of one of the key things for Murray Bookchin's entire political project was deliberation at the heart of democracy. So people meeting together face to face and all talking and raising objections and debating about relevant topics in regards to political economic governance. And then coming to a decision when there's incompatible preferences through majority preference within free association.
Shawn: And he called this idea communalism, or this was a this was a term that was used before him. But it was the term that he chose to use.
Pete: At various times he's called that exact program a couple of different things. But yeah, towards the end of his life, he started calling that communalism, or or libertarian municipalism, which he considered to be the political thrust to communalism.
Shawn: So like if, if if someone's coming from like an American libertarian perspective is there's there's something. Tasty. They can bite into with book chain. If someone's like a market libertarian.
Pete: So if someone is a market libertarian, the chances are their end goal is individual freedom, and if they care about individual freedom, then they should care about individuals being freed from mechanical labor and free to express creative faculties in a way that they are not under capitalism. In fact, the Constitutionalist dimension to his later work. Also might be a good bridging point because a lot of people have a strong man of democracy where they say ohh democracy. That's just two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner. For Murray, there is a non hierarchical constitution that makes it so the the means and ends of ruling classes are completely off the table. That's not what's being decided upon, and there's certain rights and obligations that form a matrix that enable for a kind of freedom. For the individual as well.
Shawn: He he advocates not like the American Constitution is the best thing in the world, but that the theory of a constitution is what makes democracy work.
Pete: It was one of the many parts of the coherent whole of what would make democracy work. It wasn't just that he also thought, for example, one thing that was required was a degree of technology that would free people to participate, right. But going back to that initial point about a a social contract or a constitution, yeah, he thought it was important that there were rules. They were. They seemed to be made. Nationally and ethically, and that way we couldn't, we're not vote. It's not like people are going to be voting on on who's going to rule over somebody else. That that's a kind of anti democratic content. So for democracy to both be a means and an ends of form and of contents. There needs to be no ruling classes throughout the process.
Shawn: I was in an in a debate about this subject around this recently where someone was saying that democracy by itself means the the rule by the uninformed like that, that democracy inherently is people who don't know. All the details are voting on things that don't affect them any ways and causing horrible trouble, like voting for Trump. And it shows how uninformed people shouldn't be able to vote or. Like and I was suggesting that it's actually. It was actually the opposite that uninformed people voting is undemocratic and that it would be democratic if the people were informed and then they voted like it would be. Democratic democracy doesn't start and stop at the electoral system in place, but it's actually kind of like a holistic. A wider cultural thing like democracy involves access to information and also access to ideology, access to conflicting worldviews, and so that that reminds me of that same type of thrust which is like that the these these democracy, straw man, I I feel like need to be torn apart because they're ridiculous.
Pete: Yeah, sophistry never went away. I agree with you. You need to have an educated populace if you want to have educated contents. And that doesn't mean that you have a less free form because the content isn't perfect. The content is never going to be perfect, but it's if you have, if you have a population that has general knowledge and places the burden of proof. On claims April. Accurately and applies a precautionary principle when they're too ignorant to know. Then you can kind of check for people voting on technology that isn't liberatory, for example, but it's certainly true. You need to have an educated populace as of one of the many factors that would make democracy actually functioning.
Shawn: And and within the books. Utopia. There would be a lot of free time because of all of the the Labour being saved by the automation and. There be a lot of time to enrich oneself, be creative, do research, participate in public life, and so on. This is very kind of central to his idea of democracy.
Pete: While at the very same time the very process of deliberation is itself an education process in regards to the questions of what is reality, what reality should be, how we know what we know. And how to get validity, soundness, prudence, cogency, etcetera. So the very process of voting becomes an education. Process have.
Unknown Speaker: I had entered the Communist children's movement in 1930 in New York City. I was only 9 years of age and had gone through the entire 30s as a Stalinist initially, and then increasingly, as someone who is more and more sympathetic to Trotskyism. And by 1939, after having seen Hitler rise the. Power the Austrian workers revolt of 1934 and almost completely forgotten episode in labor history. The Spanish Revolution, by which I mean the so-called Spanish Civil War. I finally became utterly disillusioned with Stalinism and drifted increasingly toward Trotskyism. And by 1945, I finally also became disillusioned with Trotskyism. And I would say now increasingly with Marxism and Leninism, but the essential things, so far as I'm concerned, as I reflect upon all of this now. Is that I had gone through a period of Marxism. Which is almost unknown today to many American radicals, a period when Marxism was a workers movement to a very great extent, and when it, when it was a movement in the streets. In which hundreds of thousands of people at times could be brought out in massive demonstrations throughout the country under red flags, whether it be communist or socialist. And by the end of the Second World War, in particularly by the end of the 1940s, I literally saw this movement disappear and disappear from history, at least as far as the United States is concerned. And I have no belief whatever that it will come back again, namely what I'm saying is I saw the end of the classical workers movement, and I had to ask myself, why had this come about? What did this mean? And the conclusion I came to is this. The workers movement never really had a revolutionary. That the factories and I had worked in factories for 10 years and have worked in factories, partly as a labor organizer and the old CIO that this workers movement had never really had the revolutionary potentialities that Marx attributed to it. Then, and point the fact the factory which is supposed to organize the workers in Marxist. Language mobilize them and instill in them the class consciousness that is the stem out of a conflict between wage labor and capital. In fact, have created habits of mind and the worker. That serve to regiment. That served, in fact, to assimilate the worker to the work ethic, to the industrial routine, to hierarchical forms of organization. And that no matter. How compellingly Marx had argued that such a movement could have revolutionary consequences. In fact, such a movement could have nothing but a purely adaptive fun. And adjunct to the capitalist system itself. And I began to try to explore what were movements and ideologies. If you like, that really were liberatory, that really freed people of this hierarchical sensibility and mentality of this authoritarian outlook of this assimilation by the work ethic. And I now began to turn. Very consciously to an anarchist views because anarchism posed the question not simply of a struggle between classes. Based upon economic exploitation, anarchism really was posing a much broader historical question that even goes beyond our industrial civilization. Not just classes, but hierarchy hierarchies that exist in the family hierarchy as it exists in the school hierarchy as it exists in sexual relationships hierarchy as it exists between. Ethnic groups not only class divisions based upon economic exploitation, and it was concerned not only with economic exploitation. It was concerned with domination, domination, which may not even have any economic. Meaning at all. The domination of women by men in which women are not economically exploited, the domination of ordinary people by bureaucrats in which you may even have a welfare, so-called socialist type of state domination as it exists today in China. Even when you're supposed to have a classless society nomination, even as it exists in Russia, where you are supposed to have a classless society, you see so these are the things that I noted in anarchism and increasingly I came to the conclusion. That if we were to avoid or if we are to avoid. The mistakes that were made over 100 years of proletarian socialism, if we ought to really achieve a liberatory movement, not simply in terms of economic questions but in terms of every aspect of life, we would have to turn to anarchism because it alone posed the problem not merely of class domination but hierarchical domination. And it will all pose the question not simply of economic exploitation, but exploitation in every sphere of life.
Shawn: And who was this guy as a person? Was he kind of an *******?
Pete: I have no clue who he was personally. He seems like a really groovy person. There's there's a lot of the the primitivists and lifestylist who like to frame him as a grumpy old man, whining about everything.
Shawn: Well, that's cool. I. Like grumpy old man, as long as they've got really coherent theories on how to save humanity from eco apocalypse, you can be as grumpy as you want.
Pete: That's the way I feel, but I also don't think he was that grumpy. I think he he seemed like a pretty groovy person, actually. He was. He was known as a counterculture elder. That's what Janet Beale called him in the biography she wrote about him and during the 60s, he was one of the few people over 40. I think that the kids would talk to.
Shawn: Oh yeah, because he's a he was. A red diaper baby.
Pete: He was also a red diaper baby, which is probably why he was such a good counterculture elder. You know, it's it's a natural progression, I guess.
Shawn: Being a red diaper baby means that you're raised by Communist parents, which I didn't know until Pete taught me the other day.
Pete: Murray was raised by the Communist Party. Yeah, Murray's Murray didn't have a father in the household and was pretty much partially raised by the Communist Party as a child.
Shawn: And then he and then he grew up, he grew up to write up a pamphlet called Listen Marxist. That's about how Marxists should join him in sectarianism.
Pete: And revisionism.
Unknown Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Pete: Of the highest. Degree and and and that pamphlets really interesting it's it's a great critique and it just shows his his amazing ability for polemics which he had later on in his career to an even crazier degree when it came to his polemics against deep ecology and and lifestylism.
Shawn: Yeah, he, he, he. He kind of picked beefs at different points. And tore into his his ideological enemies.
Pete: I think he's usually. Correct. Sure. What he does so.
Shawn: Yeah, it's not. It's not just him flying off the handle and being wrong. It's like. He's got a a good point to make.
Pete: But there's a certain tone and intensity that comes with his writing on those subjects that can easily turn people away.
Shawn: It was mentioned deep ecology before and and what what was his problem with deep ecology?
Pete: They pretty much posed human freedom to ecological integrity and said that humans pretty much have to submit themselves to first nature, and pretty much do the bare minimum in regards to survival uptake and not really advanced technology in a meaningful sense, which is by extension anti democratic. Because it's precisely technology that gives us the free time that allows us to have democratic processes.
Shawn: Unless you still have slaves. Oh, yeah. Sorry.
Pete: You say there's something really cruel about the way that Deepak, Cology and Biocentrism views the world is it sees all life as having inherently like equal value. So it poses a mosquito to a human. As as viewed as equal, there's no, there's no difference. It's one thing to say that we should give life consideration unless there's a good reason not to that that that's fine, and that there's if there's not a good reason to harm something that there's not a good reason to do so, that's fine as well. One can even have a vegan ethics while saying that they don't think that a human is the same as a mosquito. Because it's precisely human capacity for, for imagination, for virtue, and not merely pleasure and pain. And for intentionality of extremely high orders, where we're able to desire things that we desire and desire, and and then act upon them. There's certain things about humans that are special, and it's precisely through. Anti humanist interactions that we actually create devices that then make it so we try. The the biosphere in such cruel ways. So if we are actually serious about caring about non human life, we need to focus on its social roots, which deal yes with the hierarchical systems, but also the vices produced by irrational or authoritarian relationships.
Shawn: The domination of nature is rooted in the domination of human beings. Over one another.
Pete: And if that's true, then that needs to be a central focus point. If we're serious about caring for the non human world, whereas deep ecology will often talk about some kind of how do I put this, a kind of the the problem is the way humans treat the non human world, not the way that humans interact with each other, which by extension makes it so we treat the non human world and. Cruel or irrational ways?
Shawn: The deep ecologists are kind of like a a brochure list, being like we'll worry about microaggressions after the revolution, sweetie. Except with ecology, we'll we'll worry about interpersonal human domination after we figure this ecology stuff out.
Pete: I think you're on to something. I'm not sure if the metaphor is perfect. But you're right about the. Way that the deep ecologists view such things, yeah. They, they, they, they kind of see humans sometimes as an oppressor class. And then they treat them accordingly according to like an identitarian social justice worldview.
Shawn: Oh yeah, it's almost like a third world is an except just applied to all human beings, even in the third world.
Pete: I think you're correct that is exactly what it is, and they think that such ideology is going to then allow us to treat each other in the way that's required to then treat the environment with any degree of care.
Shawn: What do you what do you like about? Action like what? Do you what attracted you to to his ideas?
Pete: Post scarcity anarchism was a way of me. Pretty much. Taking a 21st century technical understanding and trying to merge it with anarchism. And when I found that it was pretty much what I've been looking for, which was a way of taking sort of that kind of like transhumanist, even zeitgeist movement, Jacques fresco esque worldview, but then mixing it with the traditional libertarian left. While at the same time doing something qualitatively different in regards to talking, really fleshing out the forms of freedom, for example, Kropotkin never really came up with a specific decision making process. He just said it should be based on free. Agreement and some kind of bottom up way. Whereas Buchan came up with a a fuller form to democracy.
Shawn: And it's something that he he described in detail enough that it's now being practiced by. How many people in the middle?
Pete: E 1,000,000 / 3 million at least.
Shawn: Like I I don't know. How? I hadn't heard that number because I like reading about Rojava, but 3 million seems like a lot of people. If you interpret me as like some sort of blind book gin idea log, it's so much like a infomercial like. Wow, what is it? What is Marie done next? 3 million, huh? No, but I'm. I am legitimately surprised by that number, which I haven't heard before. Are you sick and tired of your social movements being ineffectual and unequal? Logical.
Bookchin: You should snort meth.
Shawn: Did Buckskin ever talk about drug use? Did he ever talk about respectability policy? The the critique of lifestyle anarchism is kind of a. Critique of that hey.
Pete: Not necessarily. I think he's more critiquing the idea that drug use should be normative or that it's it's revolutionary. He always thought that drug use should be like a personal choice. He even talks about how he used to use cannabis sometimes in a couple interviews, and I know he used to to drink during some points in his life as well he was. He never did psychedelics, for example, and he didn't really, and I don't think he was a fan of them in any meaningful sense. He thought that a lot of the times, the epiphanies people were having from these substances were not informed by reason and. He thought that he worked really hard for his brain and didn't want to gamble with it in any kind of way, but he just thought that there was an issue with conflating these lifestyle choices with some conception of of the political should and overemphasizing these sort of personal choices as as revolutionary.
Shawn: So that he's saying **** drugs so much as he's. Saying when you do drugs, you're not overthrowing hierarchical dominations of human beings.
Pete: And and even in even that the over obsession with them within a movement can be at the expense of of greater ideals. And what's interesting is, look, I actually came into anarchism through punk music. It was bands like Crass that got me into Noam Chomsky and I used cannabis very frequently. So I'm somebody who's coming from, I guess. Some kind of countercultural world or what? Not, and I think his critiques of Lifestylism still hold true when you when you have people who are more obsessed with the subjective aesthetic than the good. I think there's huge problems with that, or just like the the individuals absolute autonomy to be unbounded as opposed to some conception of social responsibility. And social freedom, which actually gives more individuality. I think that those.
Shawn: Those were.
Pete: Good critiques he made of countercultural movement.
Shawn: Have you participated in any kind of communalist organizing or book groups? Is this something that you've tried yourself?
Pete: Yes and no. It hasn't been sufficiently booked tonight for me to call it communalists, but I've participated in a lot of, I'd say, more broad libertarian socialist book clubs and organizing and popular education.
Shawn: Do you see the consciousness getting raised or my? My point is I'm I'm asking about your personal experiences because I want to know what to do. I don't know what. To do to make the world better. How do I make the world better?
Pete: There's pretty much. There's pretty much 4 basic spheres. I'll break this into categorically to make this just easier, but there's probably other nuances that one can go into. You have communitarian work, you have popular education, you have direct action, and then you have dual power and all four of those need to exist in a mosaic with a libertarian. Socialist thrust communitarianism deals with pretty much. The work and meeting people's needs direct action deals with people directly taking action against hierarchical institutions and to create non hierarchical ones. When you have that institutionalized sufficiently, you can have a dual power system where you actually build a third sector to the market in the state that builds power, takes it away from the market in the state, and eventually pits itself against it while it hollows it out. Then you have popular education, which is the work done. To then educate and then those ideas have effects in regards to action. In regards to movements in regards to work that's done or or things that are not done etcetera. So I think that we're we're very driven by the theory and I I I can't help but stress how important it is that we have good theories. So we have good action, people who understate the importance of theory are it's going to be at the expense of their action ironically. So I would say it's it's a mosaic of those kind of four spheres.
Shawn: Do you think it's fair to call that the the ecology of tactic?
Pete: It's anthology of tactics, that's for sure. I don't know if it's the. I think someone could probably flesh that out a lot better. I think it's very crude, but I think it's a good framework to to look at things from.
Shawn: Someday it will be once it's refined by reading groups, and once it's refined by through popular consciousness raising and collaboration and face to face democracy, then we can confidently call it the ecology. But until then, it's just an ecology.
Pete: Well, I don't think there's an. I don't think there's an end to it. I think we're gonna. We're gonna probably consistently develop new and better tactics for moving the world forward. Different points in time and space. I don't think there's an end to tactics to achieve the good. I think that's a developmental thing. I think the end will exist when society ends. If society ends, hopefully not. Although the I'm sure the biocentrism in the audience are applauding.
Shawn: Yeah. If human beings all die, then then cows can run free.
Unknown Speaker: Welcome to keyboard Warrior Radio center.
Shawn: I just got back from a camping trip and it was so fun to be in the wilderness with my other friends from deep ecology when we were out there, we all decided that we think that 6 billion people should die to save the earth because the earth is good and. Humans are bad, the.
Pete: Very antihumanism that you're prescribing as a solution to the ecological problems is that it's very root.
Shawn: Who is this grumpy old man? What a curmudgeon.
Pete: The process of killing 6 billion people would be so brutal, so extreme, it it would be an ecological device. Relation and it's. And it's precisely humans who have the ability to fix a lot of the problems hierarchy has caused. We have the potential to actually use liberatory technology to remedy those issues instead of not intervening positively, which would be ecocidal relative to our potential.
Shawn: OK, well, maybe we won't. Kill 6 billion people. But can we at least kill the bourgeoisie?
Unknown Speaker: How about we?
Pete: Restrain the bourgeoisie from being the bourgeoisie and use self-defense appropriately only to the degree that it makes sense to accomplish expropriation.
Shawn: Reading your posts. Is giving me cancer, which is like all posts I read which are all made by humans and because humans are cancer.
Unknown Speaker: Totally.
Shawn: Wild yourself. I think I'm gonna rewild this comment section by deleting your comments and blocking you because you are the imposing voice of technology on this pristine wilderness of my Facebook comments section. Which was untouched and pure until you, a human, came and ruined it all with your original sin because you bit the apple by starting to organize and pass information down generations, and you have things like cars and technology which is bad and and there's no difference between you and animals. Except for you're bad. So you're.
Unknown Speaker: Blocked.
Pete: Nothing is worse than a digital primitivist echo chamber.
Unknown Speaker: And we'll see you next time for another episode of Keyboard Warrior Radio Theater.
Shawn: Digital printed with Echo chamber.
Pete: I think that should be like the name of our. E-mail band.
Shawn: Sad songs about how it's very implausible to leave society. So, Pete, I was wondering if do you feel like the left is like really successful, right. Now, like, are we killing it?
Pete: I don't know if the left exists right now.
Shawn: What does that mean?
Pete: I'm very skeptical if there's something that exists right now in the United States that we can call the left as a as a as a serious, succinct movement of any meaningful kind.
Shawn: So you're you're like, a a. You're like a leftist truth. Sure. You like? Like you think that you think that this whole thing it's it's not even it doesn't even exist.
Pete: We have fragments. I don't think it's. I don't think it's a coherent movement of any meaningful kind right now.
Shawn: Do you think of it as a as a meaningful as a meaningful category like left versus right or or?
Pete: Oh, it's one of the most important. Categorical distinctions. I can think of in the political universe.
Shawn: What does it mean?
Pete: During the French Revolution, the people who sat on the left to rope spear wanted more direct to governance and the people who sat on the right of ropes fear wanted more conservatism. So it's the general 3. Rest of a more directly managed society is within the left. It's it's inherently the more anti authoritarian. The more Pro equality wing of politics, whereas the right represents reaction, something to the right of robes, fear even, and has a very rich tradition. From 1793 Paris, Paris sections to the 1871 Paris comma. To Spain in 1936, to the Zapatistas in the 90s to Rojava in the 21st century, and various other movements against fascism that have fought for the most basic rights within hierarchical governance systems that have allowed people to have. More safety Nets and more freedom within such horrible systems. It's a very rich history that we need to recover and find the best of while taking out the worst. And build on top of it. Otherwise I think we're we're doomed to reinvent a wheel in a funny way that the zeitgeist movement kind of did where it claimed to neither be rights nor left, and sort of, since it didn't have any of this left tradition and it didn't take the best parts from it, it wasn't sufficiently. Political it didn't have a sufficient dual power program and and a sufficient positive program, even or political one, and any kind of just merely an. Comic 1. So it's when people lose that entire tradition and throw the baby out with the bath water that they're unable to sort of decipher history. For all the gems.
Shawn: The importance of the the left categorization for you is the historical legacy of the left that your you conceive of being on the left is redeeming the historical struggles of past leftist movements and bringing them to fruition.
Unknown Speaker: Collection.
Pete: Much more than. That though cause I think it also represents a general thrust against authoritarianism for equality and for self management. And for democracy, for greater democratization.
Shawn: But why left and right, rather than something like to and fro?
Pete: Or a a 23 dimensional political compass that's impossible to read, yeah.
Shawn: I want one of those.
Pete: There's many different categorical schemes that one could use to describe various political views. The left, right one happens to encompass this broad range of more conservatism, more authoritarianism, less democracy versus its antithesis, which is the left.
Unknown Speaker: The basic problem I really have is that whenever I make leftists and the socialist the Marxist movements and called the visual individualist. I'm supposed to shrink on the those visual and called the prodigal individualists by students. And by account emissions, we've never done a base work off from their their entire biographer, who was all have spent years in factories and trade unions, in foundries on an auto plants. So after I have to swallow the word putty bourgeois, I don't mind the way the religion. I believe in individual freedom. It's my property. I'm complete commitment and individual liberty. That's what it's all about. What's what socialism is supposed to be about. Anarchism was supposed to be about and tragically has been betrayed. When I normally encounter my so-called colleagues on the left socialist maps, Communists, they coming left in the revolution, they're going to shoot me. That is said with unusual consistency. They're going to stand there and Carl up against the wall and get rid of us real fast. I feel much safer. What company?
Shawn: It happened to me recently where a someone on the communist spectrum in the same conversation was like imploring me to consider their ideology and read these texts and was saying that if the revolution happened they would kill me.
Pete: Oh, I've had many states, socialists and tankies tell this to me. I get it. I've got. I've gotten it pretty frequently. It's a thing that happens. They're relatively consistent about that, in particular about saying that they'll kill dissenters in actual left. This so yeah, there on one level there is a ruling class and they need to be stopped from being the ruling class. And there is obviously some form of community and self-defense that makes sense and is is necessary for meaningful freedom while at the same time it's also important to note that the problems are not like just like some ruling class, but it's actually an overall political.
Unknown Speaker: Well.
Pete: Economic hierarchical system. That can take various forms and that can have many different people in those positions overtime. And we have to actually deal with that system and not just individuals and not just the ruling class, but ideologies and social systems that allow for ruling classes.
Shawn: And do you think that this type of this type of violent threat is indicative of being a real leftist being? The leftist leftist around?
Pete: What you're talking about the violent threat towards you? Yeah.
Shawn: Because if you're insufficiently revolutionary, you are murdered.
Pete: Absolutely insane. The kind of elitism that comes with that mentality is as gross as fascist ones, honestly.
Shawn: It's that horseshoe theory coming to compare them to fascists.
Pete: Ultimately, if if we're dealing with the the craziest kind of state socialists who are pedal to the metal authoritarian, it's it's very similar. It's fascism with the left mask and has nothing to do with the left. In my opinion, it's it's a betrayal to all of the anti authoritarian and democratic. Principles of the.
Shawn: Left, it's very much located firmly in the right as far as I'm concerned. It's not that it's not that it's went so far left that it's become right. It's just that it's right with some left posturing. Yeah, it's right with the left mask. There are certainly overlap movements. And when that happens, it's there's some very dangerous stuff.
Pete: And it's usually due to incoherence, a negative program rather than a a sufficiently negative and sufficiently +1.
Shawn: That if the left doesn't currently exist, do you think we got some impostors around people who claim to be the left but can't meaningfully take up that title?
Pete: I think so. I think when you have extremely authoritarian worldviews and organizations that claim to be left, well, they can choose to call themselves whatever they want to, although they're going to be wrong. And I think. That I think they should correct themselves. But yeah, I think there's a lot of authoritarian movements and ideologies that claim to be left as well as certain stuff that claims to be left that doesn't really have to do with its general thrust in a meaningful sense. Or does that doesn't properly take the best parts from it from the past and move it into the present.
Unknown Speaker: Proper.
Pete: And then transcend it by adding on top of. The Identitarians claim to be left, but their project has more to do with reducing an individual's epistemology, ontology and even ethical potential to various unchosen identity characteristics, and then treating people accordingly. And it doesn't really have much to do with stopping. Things that they might be trying to stop, even in fact, it often takes away from from serious movements against various particular issues that affect particular people more than others by creating a completely incoherent post modern world. View that pretty much treats people in really terrible ways and really can't build a serious movement of quality of thoughts and quantity of numbers.
Shawn: Like I know what you're talking about, which is this kind of. The. Just say it, Sean. You're talking about social justice warriors.
Pete: The inversion of the Alt right warrior not it's negation, it's inverse. It uses the fallacy of division and composition, so inappropriately applies from the pattern to the individual and from the individual to the pattern, and it's rooted in that and ad hominem, circumstantial, and the circumstantial becomes the unchosen identity character. Stick. And you have you have this throughout the history of revolutionary subjectivity of of various groups that are are pretty much able to have it because of unchosen positionality as opposed to shared ideals and perhaps even a negative positionality in the sense of including people who don't cross certain moral red lines. Like people who aren't cops or capitalists or state crafters, for example. As a kind of negative positionality that then allows for people to have revolutionary potential, who who don't cross those certain moral red lines as opposed to conceptions of ethics and revolutionary potential as rooted in the unchosen. So it's it's in instead of organizing around identity groupings, I think it's important to organize around common ideals. Which by extension the universalistic ideals by extension contain the particular issues that a serious anti racism and feminism would take into consideration.
Shawn: So humanity is a cancer on the earth and we need to kill like a million or maybe a billion, or several billion people in order to save Earth, which is good away from humans that are bad. Do you agree or?
Pete: I disagree vehemently.
Shawn: Wait, which part? Because you're saying that Earth isn't good. Earth is great. I I I disagree with. And therefore the thing that destroys Earth humans is.
Bookchin: And therefore.
Shawn: Bad.
Pete: The thing that destroys Earth is or I should say the biosphere is hierarchy at this point in time and that's bad. It needs to be abolished.
Unknown Speaker: Human.
Shawn: But isn't it human nature to be hierarchical?
Pete: According to right wing social theorists in the the late 1700s and early 1800s, but.
Shawn: It's just the way of the world, like the gorillas or the landlords of the jungle, there's nothing more natural than paying rent every month. That's just the way of the world.
Pete: And everything that is natural should be right.
Shawn: Yeah, yeah. Because because like in the same way that a big fish would eat a small fish. In that same way, poor people don't deserve housing.
Pete: All right, and here's what's so gross about that. They take a periodic thing in in nature, right, which is a fish eating a fish, maybe. Or what? What? That's the example you're giving. Yeah. OK, so that's periodic. That's not institutional problem. It's it's a, it's a periodic.
Unknown Speaker: I think the the.
Shawn: Fish Community needs to have a conversation about all this fish. Impression. Violence.
Pete: There's no hierarchy there. You have a predator prey relationship. Hierarchy requires an institutional arrangement that that is then authoritarian and top down and that kind of arrangement.
Shawn: That's like the capitalists and the pearls baby predators prey. No institution, no hierarchy. Human beings, we have these. These completely irrational counter to our shared interests, systems of hierarchy that in order to justify, we look at nature and try to like find examples of things that are almost like the way we're ****** ** and we like collectively. I mean we we like very selectively try to find these tiny little parts of nature. That tell us that the way that we heard each other is fine. In so we like project our inhumanity onto nature and then use it as evidence that our inhumanity is fine all along, which is not really like it's not a scientific perspective to to to not notice that lions aren't actually the king of the jungle. They don't. They they don't get to. Decide what all the other. Animals do or collect taxes or anything like that. The queen bee, is it a queen?
Pete: But I think it's important to to. To note that there's there's. Gradations of intentional community within natural evolution humans happening to be social and institutional. But you you find grades of that throughout nature, but you don't find anything that is an actual institutional arrangement until we're dealing with homeo sapiens. Champions. Yeah, it emerged out of first nature, but it's qualitatively different and institutions. We're talking about like. Formal rules, formal intentionality. It's communicated. That's designed to continue onwards and not just be periodic and that that's that's very special about that humans. That gives us a certain importance in regards to the way we treat each other cause because we. Have that institutional ability. We could potentially. It cause a a ton of harm or do a ton of good. We can potentially save first nature and second nature from the next non artificial environmental catastrophe. We can. We can do a lot of good with our institutions and we can also do a lot of horrible things. It allows and with with greater technology, plus hierarchical institutions. We have a greater capacity to use mass destruction and that's inherently anti ecological. There's some very inherently anti ecological about States and arms races and the entire military apparatus.
Shawn: There are there are arms races in the animal Kingdom. It's it's natural as can be.
Pete: The absurd conceptions of evolution as only being competitive and brutal, and that being the only major factor in evolution and in the the biosphere, is just so false. There's so much mutualism and commensalism and commensalism and complicated mutualistic. Arrangements where you have keystone species that allow hundreds of other species to then exist there, and they're interesting little arrangements. There's a there's an extreme imperative. More than ever, just in regards to global warming and and and species extinction and law. And other just ecocidal catastrophes that are constantly happening, and the degree of weaponization on the planet, the combination of all of the above makes ecological and political ethics more relevant than ever before in in an interesting way, more urgent, more important to very to to deal with very seriously.
Shawn: What is the self crit that the left needs to receive? If you can only pick? 1.
Pete: To focus on universalism that contain the particulars that they're trying to focus on, rather than particularism at the expense of universalism, I think it's impossible to focus on every particular proportionally to how much we should focus on them. I think that's impossible. I think given. That it's impossible. To do so. It's also important to just focus on the universal issues, like for example by by understanding hierarchy itself and being against hierarchy itself. By extension, you're against the particular forms. If you're being consistent, and that leads you with a broader negative. Program and also it's often true that by focusing on certain universal issues, are you able to deal with certain particulars appropriately or to deal with them in a way where there's the good by the end of it and not merely just the dealing of 1 branch of a problem while the root remains and is growing branches. Perhaps as fast as they're being chopped down the the more universalistic humanist perspective looks at a metric of all this, and by extension, deals with particular problems appropriately.
Shawn: So, as as Karl Marx said, to be radicals to grasp things. By the root. And you advocate for a universalist root to be grasped instead of fighting off branches.
Unknown Speaker: As well as a.
Pete: Universalist positive program to put it in its place that is able to deal with every particular problem that we can possibly deal. With.
Shawn: Universal human liberation.
Pete: Absolutely from hierarchy.
Shawn: I'm just trying to think of how to respond critically to what what you've said, which I believe is factually bulletproof, like you described, the perfect idea that has no weak points. Even the smartest devil's advocate for this idea is a straw man, because no one would dare speak against such yourself. Evident idea there's.
Pete: You're you're treating everything is is extremely.
Shawn: Biblical. That's how I that's how I. Feel like I need to. Like I'm a doctrinaire convert, like I'm not interested in what I'm looking for is to create systems of social exclusion along the lines of of the the the new books and religion. And create a culture around Murray Bookchin that is able to compete against other leftist cultures, but with ideas that refute their stupidest ideas. So my interest is more about like figuring out how can I make people afraid to not be a book tonight? How can I? How can I make sure that if someone doesn't know their Bookchin that they're being laughed out of any? That's what I'm more interested in.
Unknown Speaker: Oh, no. Oh, no, that's horrible.
Shawn: Yeah, I want to use this knowledge to bully people. That's what's that's that's, that's what leftism is about, right? Is like, when you hear a new idea, you and you're like, this is great. I know exactly how to bludgeon people with. It.
Pete: Now.
Shawn: Yeah, it's and it's prefigurative because after, after, after the revolution, when we live in a communalist utopia, we're going to have all day for sectarianism and infight.
Pete: I hope so. Hey, what happens when you get 2 anarchists in a room 3 faction splits?
Shawn: Did you hear about the the leftist comedians?
Pete: No, I haven't heard about them.
Shawn: So far, they've had 10 meetings and written 0 jokes.
Pete: Well, that's, that's because they were probably using unanimity as a process instead of some kind of social contract based democracy with free association.
Unknown Speaker: Seriously.
Shawn: Next time on the Seriously Wrong podcast, what's going to happen? Pete's spotlight moves to Pete. Will you come back for the Kombucha show?
Unknown Speaker: No.
Shawn: But you're the you're the only kombucha expert I know.
Pete: I don't know about kombucha, where it's located historically, it seems like a Whole Foods trend. It seems uniquely located towards the Whole Foods population.
Shawn: Yeah, I don't know if kombucha is white or if it's something that we've culturally appropriated.
Pete: I don't think it started with white people, but I don't think cultural appropriation is a problem. I think I think it's just it's.
Unknown Speaker: Just.
Pete: It's just something that happens. I don't know why people drip. On it, I don't think. Culture has a blood quota. I think people who think culture. Has a blood quota are are extremely reactionary? I think that's a good example of authoritarian with a left mask kind of stuff is the idea that that needs to be even socially sanctioned in regards to. Culture and blood quotas. Ohh, that's so gross and regressive. It's interesting cuz you have the alt right who are telling white people to segregate themselves culturally and then you have the the cultural appropriation, the anti cultural appropriation warriors telling everyone to culturally segregate.
Shawn: Oh yeah, we're still in the warning, right? Yeah.
Pete: I'm just. I'm just trying, talking about the good.
Shawn: Warning next episode, we learned more about the good.
Unknown Speaker: That's a great topic.
Shawn: According to Wikipedia, at least, there's little or no evidence to support the the positive health claims of kombucha, and there's a lot of documented cases of the diverse effects, including fatalities. So. Burch, Burch. That's why I'm kind of like a I'm an insurrectionary anarchist, and I advocate feeding kombucha to the the the bourgeoisie.
Pete: Kombucha wasi.
Shawn: The conclusion was the. The geographic origin of kombucha is unknown.
Pete: You know why it's unknown Illuminati cultural appropriation.
Bookchin: That with the breakup of tribal societies and to the extent that these societies were egalitarian to the extent that these societies viewed at least their own members. Not those outside in most cases, but at least their own members in various tribes as Co equals to the extent that men regarded themselves as Co equals with women to the extent that elderly people regarded themselves as Co equals with younger people, that the break up of that sense. Of complementarity of Co equality leading to hierarchies and which the most striking that are known to us are patriarchy, and more precisely patrol centricity. Gerontocracy uses the rule of the young by the. Cold, by the way, the most widespread. Along with paper centricity, the most widespread form of rule that existed long before economic classes emerged, E age groups and the basic idea that certain individuals such as shamans had mysterious powers of their own, not only over the natural world. But over human beings, ultimately leading Caprice and ultimately leading to deities with priestly corporations supporting them. Conditioned our attitude toward the natural world. Nobody would have thought that you could dominate the natural world without first bringing domination into society. The very idea of domination wouldn't have appeared. Hence the idea of dominating the natural world, which can only be an idea. We can't dominate the natural world. It's an absurd statement. You can't dominate a chair. You can't dominate a tree. You can't even dominate an animal. It doesn't know that it's being dominated. You have to have an inter subjectivity, an interaction between two subjects who know what domination means. Before domination can emerge that that domination which exists among human beings gave rise as men began to dominate women, as age groups began to dominate the older age groups began to dominate younger ones. As you began to see warrior groups dominating the rest of the community. And forming a state all the way through that whole system of domination which people internalize. Which they make part of their psychic mechanisms accepting submission, and women have done that for thousands of years, as you know, and many subject people have done that for thousands of years. Internalizing it extend it out into the natural world leads to the idea that the natural world can be, and should be dominated.