RevolutionZ
Ep 290 NAR 7 Conceptual and Practical Foundations
In Episode 290 of RevolutionZ, the seventh in the Oral History of the Next American Revolution Sequence, Lydia Luxemburg and Bert Dellinger discuss ideas, values, self management, diversity, flexibility, and various institutional practices of Revolutionary Participatory Society including their own very personal. reactions and experiences ranging from Lydia's 1960s to Bert 2000s and into RPS's early years years. They answer Miguel Guevara who asks how various revolutionary ideas attracted them to participate in RPS and then how those ideas impacted RPS's emergence and trajectory. They are big topics of important times and perhaps they convey useful possibilities for our own future, supposing we want a new world--not only instead of this world, but more likely, instead of no world.. So, again, this is not a short session.
But why am I messing about with an oh so long fictional account of a fictional future? Well, before embarking on this episode, I shoved in this little spontaneous rant I primal screamed the day after the recent Supreme Court ruling
Before Miguel begins, I just have to ask, am I missing something? What is to now prevent Biden from, I don’t know, jailing Trump, or firing most of the Supreme Court, or nationalizing Tesla or the whole pharmaceutical industry, or, hey, shutting down fossil fuel, or doing whatever else on behalf of we who are alive now and, more so, on behalf of those who would in that case thrive rather than suffocate or melt in the future?
If there really is a God, surely at this point she’d intervene. Or perhaps her power went to her head….do gods even have heads? If the current trajectory persists, we used to have a saying dating way back to the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Bend over, put your head between your legs, and kiss your ass goodbye. Hmm, I’d prefer to win a new world—right after preventing this one from self immolating. And so, here is Miguel's first question for Lydia...
In Episode 290 of RevolutionZ, the seventh in the Oral History of the Next American Revolution Sequence, Lydia Luxemburg and Bert Dellinger discuss ideas, values, self management, diversity, flexibility, and various institutional practices of Revolutionary Participatory Society including their own very personal. reactions and experiences ranging from Lydia's 1960s to Bert 2000s and into RPS's early years years. They answer Miguel Guevara who asks how various revolutionary ideas attracted them to participate in RPS and then how those ideas impacted RPS's emergence and trajectory. They are big topics of important times and perhaps they convey useful possibilities for our own future, supposing we want a new world--not only instead of this world, but more likely, instead of no world.. So, again, this is not a short session.
But why am I messing about with an oh so long fictional account of a fictional future? Well, before embarking on this episode, I shoved in this little spontaneous rant I primal screamed the day after the recent Supreme Court ruling
Before Miguel begins, I just have to ask, am I missing something? What is to now prevent Biden from, I don’t know, jailing Trump, or firing most of the Supreme Court, or nationalizing Tesla or the whole pharmaceutical industry, or, hey, shutting down fossil fuel, or doing whatever else on behalf of we who are alive now and, more so, on behalf of those who would in that case thrive rather than suffocate or melt in the future?
If there really is a God, surely at this point she’d intervene. Or perhaps her power went to her head….do gods even have heads? If the current trajectory persists, we used to have a saying dating way back to the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Bend over, put your head between your legs, and kiss your ass goodbye. Hmm, I’d prefer to win a new world—right after preventing this one from self immolating. And so, here is Miguel's first question for Lydia...
Hello, my name is Michael Albert and I am the host of the podcast that's titled Revolution Z. Before beginning this time, I just have to ask am I missing something? What is to now prevent Biden from, I don't know, jailing Trump? Or firing most of the Supreme Court? Or nationalizing Tesla? Or the whole pharmaceutical industry? Or, hey, shutting down fossil fuel? Or doing whatever else on behalf of we who are alive now, and more so on behalf of those who would be alive and thrive in those instances, rather than suffocate or melt in the future? I know Biden's politics would prevent him, but you get my point. If there really is a God, surely at this point she'd intervene. Or perhaps her power went to her head. Do gods have heads? If the current trajectory persists, if the current trajectory persists, we used to have a saying way back when I was a teenager Bend over, put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye. Hmm, I'd prefer to win a new world right after preventing this one from self-immolating.
Speaker 1:Okay, starting this week's oral history episode over again. This is Revolution Z's 290th episode and the seventh in the Next American Revolution sequence, which will take us to the halfway point, and it is based on the seventh chapter excerpted from the work titled In Oral History of the Next American Revolution, which itself has been made available on Znet this past week. And yes, I realize that current events are threatening the synchronicity, let's call it, between our world and the interviewee's world and the issue that I may have to take up with Miguel down the road a bit, should things not get back on track. But for now, the title this time is Conceptual Foundations and the episode focuses on various revolutionary ideas and how they attracted Miguel's time, miguel's revolutionaries, to participate in RPS and how they impacted its emergence and its trajectory. And as with each new entry in this episode, this one too includes spontaneous interjections from me, which I add as I first speak and hear the material aloud to record it for you, but not many this time, as I find myself mostly cheering what I am hearing and in any case a bit shell-shocked from what's going on in our time. And in that light, I hope this episode will provoke and contribute to discussions about possible concepts, vision and especially strategy for social change. For such conversations I hope you will use the Znet Discord system that you can reach from the Znet top page at znetworkorg. So in this episode and it's likely to be another long one, I think.
Speaker 1:Lydia Luxemburg and Bert Dellinger discuss ideas, values, self-management, diversity, flexibility and institutional vision, including their own reactions and experiences in hearing about and thinking about these things. The episode chapter, if you prefer, starts with the interviewer, miguel Guevara, asking Lydia Luxemburg. Lydia, you became political in the great upheavals of the 1960s. You have held many jobs over the years, but in just a few minutes of our time together, my impression is that only some were permanent and basic to your motivations and perceptions, that of a lifelong feminist activist, organization builder, media worker, revolutionary. You are therefore one of the best RPS participants for addressing its past and future contours, including having been its first shadow government president. I hope you won't take it as ageist or otherwise offensive, but you have been a personal inspiration for me for a long time, not least due to the longevity of your focus and effectivity. You're very kind, thank you. I appreciate it and I appreciate you, and hopefully I can hang around a bit longer. Miguel responds. I've been asking all my interviewees how they first became radicalized, so I should ask you that too, though of course, there are various biographies telling your story in full.
Speaker 1:I was in college in the 1960s and, like many others, I got caught up in the culture of the times and also the politics. I became anti-war and then anti-imperialist due to the butchery my country imposed on Indochina. I became feminist in considerable part, perhaps even mainly, due to the sexism within the left itself, the assumption that women were ornaments to be paraded and servants to do tasks that men wished to avoid. I became revolutionary when my mind and heart linked in a commitment to win better. But you were in a position, by your birth ties, to be a beneficiary of wealth and power, not a victim. Why didn't you grab what you could? I'm not the best self-analyst, but I would say it was partly moral outrage and partly a sense of solidarity with others. I felt more kinship with the Vietnamese and with Mississippi blacks than with the New York jet set. I was born to join.
Speaker 1:The 60s birthed a set of communal rather than loner attitudes and desires. The wealth and power we were supposed to sell out for began to repulse me, to repulse many of us, and activism began to attract us. Imagine a vegetarian is offered a year's supply of steak to ignore the hungers that others were suffering. The bribe would be no bribe at all. The truth is, I did grab what I wanted. I wanted change. I interject.
Speaker 1:While Lydia's explanation of not selling out is rarely verbally offered, explicitly offered, I believe it was quite common. The payout offered was often not even attractive. To refuse wasn't particularly hard. Miguel continued, you were very militant, according to what I have read, angry and out front. Is that right? Do you remember your feelings from those days? I wrote a long poem I suppose you might call it as a dedication for a book I published in the early 70s. I still remember reading it aloud for some friends to test it before I decided to actually include it in the book. I think it well represented my feelings and the feelings of many others as well at that time and I can remember it if you want. Yes, please go ahead.
Speaker 1:For workers on the line, bored, tired and robbed of their creative days. For women, raped, pinched, door opened, decultured, feminized, beaten, maimed, married, asylomed. For blacks, latinos, native Americans, asians, nameless, robbed of dignity, lynched, harassed, low-paid, running jailed. For the drunks and the addicts, the worn out and the never lively. For the old and ill who should be long lived and wise. For the young, schooled and unschooled, end-running boredom, doing drugs, stealing sex and losing love, trying to escape out or trying to find a way in. For those on welfare or off, looking in or looking out, employed or unemployed, alone or in pairs, hiding their sex or flaunting it. Angry, sad, mad. For those who feel less than they could feel. For those who are less than they could be, exploited, starved, cheated, tortured, ambushed, kidnapped, death, squatted. For all the world's citizens suffering brutality and indignity, electric shocks and murdered relatives, starvation and working for pennies.
Speaker 1:The military boot and the cultural stamp For the empire's citizens and the empire's enemies Sounds a little like Dylan, says Miguel Young. Dylan, I hope it does, yes, but it isn't done. The empire's enemies came next For the strikers, saboteurs, feminists, anarchists and nationalists, the occupiers and the death defiers. For the new leftists, panthers, women's liberationists, farm workers, puerto Rican nationalists. For those of aim and their relatives who resisted and died in the past and who nonetheless live on. For the ones who dodged the draft. For those who went and disrupted and for those who went and died or lived. For the French in the streets in May and the Italians in autumn. For the Mexicans in summer and the Czech and the Chinese. For everyone who has fought fights or will fight for a better world than they were, are or are going to be bequeathed.
Speaker 1:What about the movement's enemies, wondered Miguel? And against doctors who deal in dollars, not dignity, against owners, administrators, bosses, rapists, dealers of bad hands, intellectuals who keep knowledge as if it were their private property, who enshrine their own ignorance under false halos, who can justify barbarism, their own ignorance under false aloes, who can justify barbarism or technically dissect it as their interests require, but who never shed a tear. And Lydia went on. There was more, I think, and I think that indicates what I and so many others were feeling back in the 60s and right through the 70s. Looking back, I think you can see how it was. In some ways, rps sentiments taking shape. But then in the 80s and 90s and 20 plus years into this century, too few people understood such feelings. So I buried the anger and the militancy. For me, the birth of RPS ended a long emotional coma. I became myself again. Do you remember, miguel, when the Swedish ecological activist, the then 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, told off the US Congress? I think in some ways that spurred lots of emotional awakening in me and many others. Get up, grandma, get back in the fight.
Speaker 1:I have also been asking folks offered Miguel to recount a personally moving or inspiring event or campaign from the past 20 years. Would you do that for us too, please? At Trump's inauguration, the huge outpouring of women and men, not just in Washington, which was enormous, but all around the US and understandably, given the international role of the US all around the world was for me an incredibly timely boost for what had been, by then, my somewhat precarious personal morale. From then on, it was one inspiring campaign after another, though of course there were plenty of setbacks too and also less exemplary moments. I have to admit.
Speaker 1:One particularly moving experience was that, during the community control of police campaigns, I was able to spend some time talking with what had begun to be called exonerees. These were people who had been jailed for crimes they did not commit and who were later exonerated and released. To hear their stories, particularly people who had been in prison for years and even for decades, and to hear of the incredible travail that awaited them even upon their being exonerated, due to people they knew earlier being long dead, due to their having no home, and to see their cheer and positivity despite all of that and despite all the pain in their past and that was still to come, that was for me an incredible testimony to human potential, even as it also evidenced as if I needed to hear it anew just how insanely cruel our society was, considering all the people incarcerated by plea bargain deals who, in order to avoid worse injustice, accepted lesser injustice, and all the people in jail for victimless crimes who were in turn made deadly by the deadliness of it all. Well, I saw the underside of the underside of current relations and, like the upper side of current relations, it needed nothing so much as total renovation. But I also had a very different kind of experience, far more personal yet, I thought, also political, that greatly affected me.
Speaker 1:I had decided to try to write a novel to get across the kinds of ideas and commitments I was always advocating, but in a different and hopefully more effective way. So I wrote a draft of the novel and while I had written plenty and often before, a novel was a first for me and I was quite unclear whether it had any merit and quite sure I needed reactions to guide making it better, supposing that trying to do that even made sense. So I sent a draft to a whole bunch of people who I had worked with or was friends with, and also to many family members. I knew it was a lot to ask people to take a look at a whole book, but I asked anyhow, making clear that I needed and was hoping for any reactions. People might have questions, suggestions or criticisms as a way to try to make the book better. And then came a surprise. I think five out of about 25 people I sent the draft to even bothered to acknowledge receiving it. Those five said they would get to it soon, but none did. The other 20 also didn't read it or provide comment or even acknowledge the request having occurred. Not one out of the 25 asked a single question. Not one even asked what it was like to try to write a novel. Much less did anyone ask anything about its contents.
Speaker 1:This wasn't a technical work. It was a story about matters of society and people's reactions and experiences to circumstances that were key to all our lives. Yet there was no curiosity, much less inclination to try to help. Yet each person I sent the draft to was, as a potential reader, on as firm grounds as I was, to evaluate the draft and to make suggestions about it. And I thought about this and at first, honestly, I was just hurt. It wasn't disturbing that any one person didn't reply, since there could be various reasons in any individual case. What hurt was the universality of it. I was sure that had any one of these people sent me something comparable and asked my reaction, in hopes I might provide help that might guide improvements, I would acknowledge receiving the draft, I would have questions about it and then at least I would try to provide help, or I would have reported my incapacity to do so. If I tried but failed, and when I thought about that my sadness only grew, but it also changed a bit. It seemed to me that this kind of silence was emblematic of what was then contemporary life in the United States.
Speaker 1:Everyone at that time thought it showed a degree of human solidarity, civility and sympathy to say have a nice day and to otherwise appear civil and concerned. It didn't matter if you meant it or not. It was quick, it was easy, it was good optics and, as we used to say, you got points for it More if you didn't do it. You were a self-centered bore. But to sincerely regard one another with interest about something substantive, or to say original, caring things and actually mean them well, that might be taken wrong, it might elicit criticism and it wasn't easy, since it took time. You might even get negative points for your effort, and so people didn't bother and in time, not bothering became acceptable and even, in a weird way, mandatory. It was normalized. This eventually became ghosting, where you ignored and even entirely cut off communications without a word.
Speaker 1:This was a seriously antisocial time. Surface cordiality plus below-the-surface aloofness became the US cultural order. Superficial civility was familiar, understood and accepted. Serious intent and effort to be helpful to care was unfamiliar and often misunderstood and even rejected To avoid the former as paternalistic was considered uncivil. To seek the latter as solidaritous was considered intrusive or even selfish. Social atoms bouncing around saying hi, have a nice day and moving on was what people expected and welcomed. More substantial interest struck people as strange and intrusive. We had as a people, at least in my view of it, become so insular, so focused on popular culture, the weather or consumer news as a safe way to engage, and so removed from our abilities to evaluate and think about anything social and from our abilities to actually apply ourselves beyond reflex reactions that we would act like sending around a book draft seeking advice, rather like we might see a stranger asking us to help them with something totally foreign, totally beyond us, totally lacking interest for us.
Speaker 1:Ask about a ball game, a TV show or a dinner out, and people often eagerly conversed, no risk, autopilot. Ask about some horrible event or events, some political enemy or whatever else of that sort, where there is a universal instant agreement and, again, people are at least reasonably quick to have spontaneous opinions which, however, in the circles where they are offered, are commonplace and accepted even before being uttered Autopilot. But to try to dig in and think through the cause and effect of spontaneous opinions, much less unexpected original opinions, that went too far. In that context, if you ask about a new socially aimed novel or about anything else, that would require reacting in ways that required thought beyond what was common and safe and where a comment might even be thought less than ideal and the energy for engagement dissipated. You couldn't tweet a reaction to a draft of a book, so the reaction was never produced, nor was even a simple acknowledgement. At any rate, this experience had a broad and amorphous effect on me, impacting how I related to RPS as it was emerging and affecting what acts I thought I could and could not reach people with, which is why it came to mind, I guess in reply to your question, I interject.
Speaker 1:Lydia's account rings quite true to me, but I wonder if you, like me, think it leaves out a troubling aspect. In my quite limited perceptions, this problem seems as bad, or actually worse, on the left than elsewhere in society. I suspect it is easier to get feedback in the mainstream than on the left. I even suspect that, while perhaps for additional reasons, substantive discussion may also be less on the left than elsewhere in society, self-censorship morphed into normalizing relative silence, except when one can safely ridicule. Perhaps that's unfair. But what do you think Miguel continued?
Speaker 1:When RPS was first emerging, I guess you were already around 70, and had had a lifetime's worth of activism. As your history Did it take you by surprise? Did you feel vindicated? Honestly, I felt more like what took so damn long. I mean, I knew why so many efforts had lost, lost. Lost when measured against the norm of establishing an organization that could last right through winning a new society. But still I felt like geez. Some of us knew, at least broadly, what was needed eons ago. Why couldn't we do a better job of bringing it into being? When Black Lives Matter activism and Me Too exploded, it was incredible. But when RPF started to gel even more so. So RPF's happening didn't surprise me, but I certainly didn't feel vindicated. I was ecstatic it was happening, but I was also tormented by how many lives had been lost or made less than they could have been, by the fact that my generation hadn't done better. When we were young you really felt responsible yes, because with others I was responsible. Responsible, yes, because with others I was responsible. We knew much that if we had conveyed it better, if we had done better, could have brought on the birth of something like RPS much sooner.
Speaker 1:To my mind that was obvious, miguel says, even before the first convention, lydia, what ideas did you think distinguished RPS from many predecessor projects that hadn't taken off? What ideas attracted you back at the beginning and what do you think served as a foundation for what has emerged since? Remembering back, miguel, I would say the thing that first got me intellectually engaged was the way RPS overcame some problems with my own prior ways of thinking about society and history. Before I was attracted to RPS I was a very militant feminist. Of course I remained that, but before RPS I saw the world refracted through a lens that highlighted gender relations so heavily that much else went largely or even completely unnoticed. It wasn't that I explicitly thought everything else was unimportant, it was that my totally warranted attention to gender monopolized my perceptions and my thoughts, to the exclusion of my seeing or thinking about much else.
Speaker 1:I would go into a workplace and see the relative situation of men and women, how they related, what people were doing and why and what they got for it. But all as men and women Same for how I saw church, education and families. I saw how men and women had different circumstances and rewards and costs. I saw their connections and their disconnections To a considerable degree. I saw variance on the nuclear family ported to other realms than households, with women typically filling roles that included mother-like and housewife-like attributes and men filling roles that included father-like and husband-like attributes. And seeing all that was valid, it was real, what I was seeing was there, but I tended to miss, or at least not dwell on and realize the importance of other aspects. It's odd because I had been closer to the RPS view earlier, back in the late 60s and the early 70s, but then for a time I lost my multi-focus balance.
Speaker 1:My approach prior to RPS but post my 60s new left involvements was a bit like looking at the world through a filter that makes certain colors or shapes very intense while causing other colors or shapes to fade. In comparison, I saw male and female in high definition. The rest was less sharp and even blurry. Add to that my personal intensity and my firsthand knowledge as a woman about the situation of women, and I was highly attuned to gender and sexuality, which was good, but barely attuned to class, race and other dynamics, which was not good.
Speaker 1:I was particularly blind to interrelations among all these facets of society and especially to what pushed on kinship so much as to alter it, as compared to how kinship pushed on other facets of society sufficiently to alter them, which I was attuned to. I saw, to go back to that workplace, church or household, how sexist relations permeated each and affected their definition. But I did not see nearly so clearly how relations coming from outside permeated and affected family relations. So I was initially standoffish about how intent RPS was on adopting a holistic approach. Honestly, at first it felt like some kind of purist badgering bugging me, even though I knew that when I was in my early 20s I had had a very similar inclination.
Speaker 1:However, for whatever reasons in time, rps elevation of all central sides of social life to parallel importance began to convince me, or perhaps I should say began to reconvince me that we should not assume any hierarchy of importance among the different defining parts of life and society. But why were you initially standoffish? Why didn't the insight simply grab you right off, without resistance on your part? Resistance on your part At first. I remember that I worried that to promote the parallel importance of non-gender dynamics would lead me to discount and finally relegate kinship and gender to lower priority and attention than I was sure they deserved. I worried that if I and others stopped elevating kinship above everything else, various men with various other agendas would manage to peripheralize gender. Indeed, I so feared that prospect that it took some time for me to even hear the RPS message, much less grapple with it and finally agree with it.
Speaker 1:Another aspect of this was how I pursued feminism or, for that matter, how other people pursued their anti-racism or their anti-capitalism. Often it was a matter of us protecting against ills but not pursuing virtues, and there is a difference. The defensive mindset could yield a fortress mentality. It prioritized constantly, calling out and punishing whatever one sought to ward off in my case sexism, in someone else's case perhaps racism or classism. Our priority was to see certain ills in high definition and then to avoid them, to beat them back. We didn't conceive and advocate new positive outcomes regarding other ills. With the defensive mindset, we saw mainly how choices could yield, in my case men dominating and women yielding. We were then reflexively negative about attending to other ills. We might poo-poo union strikes or the person keyed to class might poo-poo concern with abolition, denial of abortion rights or with violence against women.
Speaker 1:But I did finally hear and I did finally realize wait a minute my fear that kinship will be minimized if I don't maximize. It is exactly what maximizing kinship does to other parts of social life it minimizes them. There has to be a better way than to pick a focus, whether kinship or anything else, and defend it to the exclusion of properly attending to other equally critical focuses. I realized RPS was adding other critical focuses, not subtracting my also critical focus. I interject nothing, I just like it. And Lydia continued.
Speaker 1:Once that insight penetrated my defenses, I didn't have to agree that something else trumped my feminism to adopt the RPS approach. I just had to see that the economy, polity and race also played pivotal roles. I had to see that just as pressures from gender could mold other parts of society until those other parts did not violate, or would even butcher, central kinship characteristics. So too could pressure arising from economy, polity or culture mold gender-related roles. To not violate, or even to buttress cultural, political, economic characteristics was remarkable about all this was as soon as I was open to seeing such mutual relations, I saw them all over. They became high-def too.
Speaker 1:Rps revealed how dynamics in one part of life could alter the defining logic and relations of other parts. It revealed how fixating on one part could interfere with seeing interrelations. It saw class in families and schools, gender in workplaces and churches, race in government and health, and on and on. It showed how economics affected politics, how race and nationality affected economics and how gender and kinship affected both culture and economy, and also politics, but was also affected by them. It provided the basis for a project that could unify key constituencies without submerging the concerns of any one of them. It made me see that we should use concepts able to overcome all our biases and reject concepts that narrowed us to pursue only our most personal inclinations. This was the tight connection between thought and action that RPS propelled, and I liked it. Miguel asked can you give me an example or two of this insight, advancing your understanding compared to what it had been earlier. Did it change how you understood winning change?
Speaker 1:The RPS view got me to understand that you couldn't change gender relations by only focusing on the home and upbringing. It was in the home that the basic structures which define sexism were rooted, but it was not alone there. The RPS idea was that the pressures of sexist kinship roles have requirements for men and women. These requirements imprinted people with beliefs, values and habits, producing men and women with gender-specific expectations and inclinations. These attributes didn't magically disappear if a man or woman exited a living unit and entered a workplace, a ballpark, church, school or mall.
Speaker 1:Other institutions then either abided or violated the family-based expectations and inclinations. If they violated, there would be contradiction and need for resolution. If they abided, there would be mutual enforcement and stability. And this interaction could be even more profound, such that they became not just compatible with persistent sexism but sources of its reproduction. Then a movement might win important changes in households. But if that movement ignored the sexism that had become entrenched elsewhere, emanations from those other places could push back on the changed households, causing them to revert, and this same pattern holds for class and race too. We can see that class and race permeate society. They are not just active in economy and culture respectively. They are sources of class and race hierarchy, present in laws and families and not just in workplaces and cultural venues.
Speaker 1:The upshot of all this was that to change society, it would be a major error to think one should identify some single social focus, because winning in that focused realm would change everything. The incredible truth was, with a single focus approach, seemingly winning for that focus wouldn't even win just for it, because the win could be temporary and in time wiped out by unaltered relations in other parts of society. Once one had that perspective and it took time, it isn't trivial, it isn't automatic. You had to think about it. It was easy to see the need for broader movement connections. Before having that perspective, it was not so easy. In fact it was almost impossible.
Speaker 1:I interject this is oral history-like, but it's also on the lectury side, not the story side, leaving what lessons to draw to the reader. What do you think? Should Miguel have had more story, or was having his interviewees at times lecture a good choice? Miguel next asked, trying for a bit more story, I suspect. Lydia, can you give a less abstract example, perhaps one from back, near the start of RPS, that caused a different view than had been prevalent, including different actions.
Speaker 1:Hmm, the Sanders campaign and then the rise of Donald Trump. You may remember from the histories of that time that those campaigns had a profound effect in diverse ways, but there was also great controversy about the meaning of some aspects of what occurred. Many white men supported Trump, but why? Trump was rich, violent, egomaniacal, racist, sexist, steadily ever more fascist. Really, he was an abomination. Still, he undeniably had a whole lot of support, and it was often support that should have gone to Sanders and that would be needed to win any successful project for a truly new society.
Speaker 1:Okay, there were many variables, of course, and I won't rehearse everything, but here is a line of thinking which came from the kinds of insight I have been noting and that was earlier mostly absent, though later. Preponderant Women in BRACS were then, and had for a long time been fighting hard for a better situation in society. They were doing so very often as women and as blacks, watching that and hearing that, and sometimes encountering that white men had to also assess their own situations, which were horribly deteriorating due to economic losses, as well as their being marginalized by the political process, including and even especially by the Democratic Party. Okay, so what is the white guy going to think If society is mainly just a battle between genders and races and that is? Is the white guy going to think If society is mainly just a battle between genders and races and that is what the white guy thinks he is hearing said and if it is a personal fight, at that, individual by individual, then white men's worsening condition must have to do with they might deduce they're losing that battle. And along comes a thug candidate to say that, just that, precisely that, out loud and to seemingly be ready to fight against it. Many identified with that feeling. I interject. So much for seeking story. But then what did Miguel expect? His interviewees are organizers, revolutionaries, not known for fiction-like formulations, but for trying to be clear and not vague. It is oral history, not story hour by storytellers. Should he have solicited more from the latter? At any rate, linnea continued.
Speaker 1:Rps later tried to identify their views, but didn't focus on blaming white men. Sure, there was racism, sexism, fear and ignorance, but what were the roots of it? People as workers, in favor of attending to professionals and addressing people only as black, female, etc. That was true, that was important. But the RPS approach was mainly about finding what we ourselves can do to win change, not primarily about decrying what others were doing that we didn't like.
Speaker 1:Two things emerged as reasons for Trump's support that had to do with our choices as people who understood and fought against social injustice. First it began to seem like us, like we were undeniably horrible at communicating about class to, ironically, the working class If they didn't see their worsening situation as a function of corporate policies and structures, of which Trump was a prime emissary. Where was the cause of that that we could address rather than just moan about Answer? It was in ourselves. We had to pay attention to why we weren't being heard, why our words weren't resonating with working people. The upshot was realizing that overall, we didn't respect, understand, relate to, hear and learn sufficiently from working people's concerns, which included our own concerns, and so working people didn't see reason to listen to us. And perhaps more than anything, we didn't address the divide between workers and professionals or what RPS took to calling the coordinator class.
Speaker 1:And the second awareness to emerge and later greatly impact RPS was about our approach to race and gender, to fight over improving the conditions of constituencies in ways that polarized others into becoming resistant to and even hostile to change beyond what their actual situation provoked was counterproductive. We had to learn to fight racism, fight sexism and fight homophobia and transphobia, but simultaneously support working people and yes, white male working people, not as some throwaway line, but because doing so was right as well as prerequisite to winning a new world. And this was all hard for you to accept. I mean now, just what? I guess, 25 years later, it is all second nature. It is hard to see why it would have been so difficult, lydia.
Speaker 1:Well, miguel, when these notions surfaced and spread, or arguably resurfaced and respread, we all had to overcome our long-held narrow prioritizations. Some had prioritized economy and class. Some, like myself, had prioritized kinship, sexuality and gender. Some had prioritized culture and race, or politics and power or, for that matter, war and peace, or ecology and sustainability. At the extreme, people very self-consciously prioritized one area above all others, less drastically and more often people didn't explicitly do that, but nonetheless, in difficult circumstances and difficult situations, they would fall back into that bias by way of the narrowing effect of the concepts they had forefront in their minds.
Speaker 1:I was in that second camp To hear someone say that part of the fault for white men moving to the right was radicals doing a crappy job of communicating about class and particularly about coordinator class working class relations felt like an assault on them to those who had been working so hard to confront capitalist owners. And to hear that part of the fault also rested with how blacks and women pursued their thoughtful anti-racist and anti-sexist agendas felt to many, including me, like that assertion itself was racist and sexist. So it was very hard to navigate these tensions. Still, the more I thought about all this, the more I saw, with many other people who became early adherents to RPS, that there were actually two problems with over-prioritizing one key focus as compared to others. Neither problem was that we might each personally focus our personal attention and activism more on one area than another. That's both inevitable and sensible. We can't each do everything.
Speaker 1:The first problem was that we would be active in ways diminishing our capacity for relating to phenomena beyond what we were focusing on, or even diminishing our ability to best focus on the full complexity of what we were ourselves addressing. Elevating a particular side of life to conceptual priority above all else misled our efforts to understand society as a whole. Each effort to prioritize a particular area didn't so much attribute too much importance to the preferred area as it attributed too little importance to other areas and in so doing missed much about critically important and mutually intersecting social relations and possibilities, sometimes not even noticing their presence. Approaches that elevated one priority say gender, above the rest, say economy, polity and culture tended to see the world through a single set of lenses feminist rather than utilizing a conceptual toolbox that had a number of sets of lenses. But the second reason why prioritization was a serious problem was that it pitted constituencies that needed to work together against one another. Each narrowly focused approach would declare, or at least often act, as if its own focus was paramount. Its adherents would often pursue their focus blind to the implications for other dynamics and relations. They wouldn't say we have to address race, class and gender and whatever, but only in ways consistent with, and even comparably addressing the other focuses.
Speaker 1:It was like there was a slippery, heavy object that we had to move and there were various teams ready to work on doing so. Each team had a part of the whole that they knew best, a part that they most wanted to move and a part that, given their inclinations and dispositions. They could grab and hold and tug better than they could grab, hold and tug any other part, hold and tug better than they could grab, hold and tug any other part. So each team grabbed their part and then exerted courageously and unrelentingly, but also without noticing what the other teams were doing with their parts. So instead of all the teams moving all the parts in concert, so the whole object got where they intended, the teams were pulling and pushing their focus parts in ways that at times conflicted with each other. So the whole object was just moving a bit here and a bit there, but never very far in any one direction.
Speaker 1:Rps said hold on Each part is critical. There is no denying that. But unless we address all of them in mutually enhancing ways, none of them are going to alter much. When adherence of different approaches are out of touch with each other, much less hostile to each other, it produces opposition and competition instead of mutual aid. So even though I had found it hard to adopt the new view aid. So even though I had found it hard to adopt the new view, what finally resonated most for me was RPS's explicit recognition of multiple key sources of influence for how society works and for how we need to change it. It was not easy for me to express, much less to act on, that encompassing view, and there were many ups and downs along the way, but these conceptual commitments were a big part of what attracted and held me. I realized these views traced back to the 1960s at least, but for me I really fully understood and was affected by the message by way of RPS.
Speaker 1:Rps found better ways and more lasting ways to convey the insights than those who had had similar views decades before, including, ironically, myself, I interject so. Did Lydia's account seem familiar from your own experience? Did her take on all this ring valid to you, or like she was not only from a future time but from a wholly different universe? I'd interject some questions or criticisms or doubts, but I find I can't, because to me Lydia's account does ring true and the insights do sound. Sound. Miguel followed up. Was this basically the debate between advocates of what were called identity politics and class politics? Yes and no. That debate had raged for a long time and surfaced anew after Trump's victory. The RPS approach was to think outside both boxes in ways that allowed each of the prior two polls of debate to participate positively and without any rancor toward the other.
Speaker 1:The class-focused side had its roots in anti-capitalism, which tended to cause adherents to think that class was so centrally important to social change that analyzing events, forming agendas and having goals had to prioritize class and economy. Forming agendas and having goals had to prioritize class and economy, even at the expense of everything else. The idea was that the tools for being attuned to class had to be constantly in hand and utilized, but the rest not so much. The rest was even a distraction. Of course there were all kinds of nuances, for example the rest. Yes, all right, that too, but always in service of class conceptions.
Speaker 1:The identity politics side had its roots in feminist and anti-racist organizing and in considerable part had reacted to the mainly class approach and its effects. It chose at first and for some adherents until long after a new priority focus, either kinship or culture-race, and treated this alternative focus more or less as the class-over-everything folks had treated the economy. But as the years passed and the debates bounced about, eventually the race, gender and sexuality folks began to unite, creating what some called identity politics. Identity here meant, for those who highlighted class, everything other than class. The anger at identity politics was that it attended to more than issues of income, material relations, workplace power, when ironically that was actually a good inclination those elevating economy needed to incorporate, even to get economy right. The anger in the other direction toward class politics was that it dismissed, or at least seriously underplayed, the extra-economic interpersonal dimensions of race and gender. An additional dispute was that the class-first folks had always prioritized institutional dynamics. Their discussions of class and economy only rarely ventured into the day-to-day injuries, hidden injuries often called of class at the personal level For identity politics. Attention instead went mainly to the attitudes, behavior patterns and personalities of both advocates and opponents of the focused oppressions.
Speaker 1:In some ways the debate was like a flexible, complex tug-of-war. First it would shift a bit one way, then the other. Every so often each side would alter a bit as well. Each side had two lines of argument in favor of its stance, one seen as objective, the other subjective or operational. So the class side would argue in one form or another that economy is fundamental and class is paramount, because economy is unavoidable and constrains and impacts all else. But the advocates of race, sex or gender, or all of them together, made precisely the same case, with essentially the same logic and equally validly, but in reverse. They each are unavoidable and constrain and impact all else. On this axis of argument, there really was no logical reason for the divide. You could hold both stances simultaneously and there was no reason in the underlying logic to do otherwise. The same was true for paying priority attention to both institutions and mindsets' behaviors. You could elevate both, not one or the other. In truth, I don't think the objective side of the debate had much to do with why people lined up as they did, but the operational side pushed the contending opponents into opposition.
Speaker 1:The class folks worried that giving comparable priority attention to race, gender or sexuality as the class would diminish attention to class at great loss. The race, gender and sexuality folks worried that giving priority attention to class would diminish attention to their areas at great loss. All that was required, as with the objective logical difference, was for both sides to see that both claims were correct. It was certainly possible, though not inevitable, that to give central attention to one focus would come at the expense of others, but the only solution, other than dropping attention to something that ought to be getting attention, was to give attention to all the focuses in ways that didn't inhibit giving attention to the rest. It's not rocket science.
Speaker 1:So RPS brought to all this a reiteration of views that had certainly existed a long time and even been repeatedly, but pretty unsuccessfully, proposed earlier. Rps said basically the class folks are right about institutions being critical and they are right that class is critical. The identity folks are right that the mindsets and behavior patterns of people are critical and that gender, race and sexuality are critical More. There is no contradiction between these many views as soon as each side acknowledges not only that its own views have merit, but so do the seemingly contrary but actually completely compatible views of the other side. Rps said simply institutions and what is in people's minds and habits are each important and mutually impact one another. Race, gender, sex and class are each important and mutually impact one another. We should come as a society giving forefront priority attention to institutions and to mentalities and behaviors, and likewise to race, gender, class and to sexuality, and we should not try to prioritize among these intersecting focuses. We should prioritize them all and pay attention to how each contours and even reproduces the rest.
Speaker 1:I interject First. There's a lot of repetition going on. I think it's occurring because, well, after all, it took a long time to get all this stuff across in the first place, in the future situation of the future world, future revolution, and people repeat it, partly from habit, partly from the feeling that it needs to be repeated, but also second, dare I say it, a lot of false binaries at work. Lydia's world, miguel's world, not exactly ours, but is it close enough? So what birthed their RPS could do likewise for us. What do you think? Isn't either rejecting or welcoming their experiences, lessons worth our attention? Miguel went on. You said two innovations played a major role in attracting you. What was the second? It was something so simple that nowadays it may seem silly to even utter. Even at the time it was a very simple idea, one that had long been understood and asserted, but that in actual daily situations didn't seem to drive many people's thinking, or mine anyhow, until RPS came along.
Speaker 1:This view refined one aspect from the class side of the debate that I just mentioned. It asserted that institutions affect outcomes overwhelmingly by the roles they make people fill if people are to gain the institution's associated social benefits. It was a simple observation, almost self-evident. If you want to be in the economy, you have to work someplace, consume via markets and so on. To be in a religion, you have to relate to its church or other structures. To be in a family, you have to be a mother, father, brother or sister.
Speaker 1:If you want benefits from some institution, brother or sister, if you want benefits from some institution, you have to comply with whatever roles you chose or were chosen to fill in that institution. Your roles in turn determine your range of acceptable actions. If you are a nurse, congressperson, doctor, builder, driver, teacher, police officer, lawyer, judge, assembler, waiter, ballplayer, singer, actor, mother, father, child parishioner, priest or whatever else, to gain benefits you have to behave consistent with your roles and with the other related roles in the institutions that you navigate. There had long been a kind of vernacular slogan for it you have to learn to play the game. You have to learn to fit in Meaning. You have to learn to abide the accepted norms of your situation and adopt the behaviors required by your roles.
Speaker 1:Once I became self-consciously aware of this, I could feel it operating all over my life. I could see it in novels, movies and even TV shows. We become what we do and we do what our situations make us do. This is true no less in a corporation, a family, shopping center or shirts than it is true in a prison, government, the military or a criminal cartel. And the observation has three major implications. First, to evaluate a workplace church, family, government or whatever we have to reveal the roles people relate to in that institution to successfully engage with it. Having determined those roles, we have to reveal what the roles demand of people and thus who the roles cause people to become. Second, to move from understanding an institution to changing it, we have to decide what new roles could accomplish whatever social functions were needed from the institution more consistently with our preferences for social life. What is our goal for the institution in question? What roles block that goal? What new roles would accomplish that goal? Third, given our circumstances and resources, we have to determine what we can fight for at any moment which will move us in the desired direction. What changes in our ways of organizing ourselves can move us nearer our goals and also prepare us to win further goals? Likewise, for that matter, what roles characterize our movements? We have to ensure they are consistent with our aims rather than contrary to those aims.
Speaker 1:For me, these aspects of RPS ideas were central attractions. They were simple but they were powerful, and they made RPS what it is. I interject Lydia lecturer again, but then again, she was just answering Miguel's questions, wasn't she? And next Miguel asked, looking for a story. I bet can you give an example of what kind of experience made you elevate the simple insight about roles and institutions to a centrally guiding norm of your thinking and doing?
Speaker 1:Early in my time with RPS, I was visiting an occupied workplace in the Midwest. I was talking with workers there about their situation and they were surprisingly despondent about their new circumstances deteriorating back toward what they had known before they took over. All the old crap is coming back, they reported, and they felt crushed by that fact because to them, it said, there was no alternative to the capitalist drudgery and poverty they thought they were escaping. They had set up a workers' assembly in order to have democratic decision-making by everyone involved. They told me. We took over and we set up a workers' council to have decision-making by everyone involved. We equalized wages, we practiced mutual support. It was exciting and it felt wonderful. A year had passed and they reported that in recent weeks few have attended council meetings. Wage differences have returned.
Speaker 1:Engaging work was reverting to being a debilitating, alienating chore. The workers got steadily more upset the more they described their deteriorating plight and, most disturbingly, they attributed their worsening situation to their bosses and managers having been correct back when they had told the workers who first took over the plant. You are naive. The inequalities and hierarchies you rebel against are part and parcel of being human. That is who we are. It is who you are. There is no alternative. That is who we are. It is who you are. There is no alternative. Your joy at taking over this workplace will evaporate into failure. Then the worker who was telling me this said Back then I laughed at him, but now, just a year later, I fear he may have been right. The worker felt crushed that his prior boss's depressing prediction was coming true. Another worker said all the old crap is coming back. It feels like there is no alternative to enduring the drudgery we thought we were escaping.
Speaker 1:I had become, not long before, an RPS organizer and I knew that in taking over their workplace, these workers had kept the old division of labor from the past. They had retained the same old jobs In their new plant. Like previously, some people were doing overwhelmingly rote, repetitive and otherwise disempowering work, while other people were doing mainly empowering tasks. I asked when you took over your workplace, did you leave most people doing overwhelmingly rote, repetitive and disempowering tasks, while others took over mostly empowering tasks that managers and accountants and so on had been doing before. They said of course we had to get production levels back up.
Speaker 1:The workers throughout this plant were from similar backgrounds. They had all been workers in this plant, were from similar backgrounds. They had all been workers in the plant earlier. They had all also grown up in working-class homes and neighborhoods. They had all had little formal education. They were not elitist, they were leftist, especially at the moment of taking over, and at that moment they were mutually respectful on a shared mission. But upon occupying their factory, most of them wound up with assembly work, while about a fifth wound up with daily decision-making and other empowering responsibilities. They knew that was so how could they not? But they didn't register its importance. For them it was just how things are. It was how to get work done.
Speaker 1:I remember saying human nature isn't bringing back the old crap. An unchanged division of labor is the culprit. You all grew up in working class neighborhoods. You had little formal education. Upon occupying your factory, most of you wound up with assembly work, while a few wound up with daily decision making and other empowering tasks. Due to that arrangement, some of you became more confident and knowledgeable. Each day you had access to decision making levers and you had to act on all that to get jobs done. You became rulers, while others remained ruled. Some newly became coordinator class, while others remained working class. That result wasn't written in your blood or your brains. It flowed from retaining the old roles.
Speaker 1:As time passed, the folks who got empowering tasks saw themselves as more worthy. They started to feel they deserved more income and better-edged conditions. They felt indispensable. Folks who instead got, or actually retained, disempowering tasks felt like cogs in a machine. They became resigned to less income and worse conditions. That's the old crap coming back, isn't it? But it wasn't some inevitable rot coming back because it is built into being human. It was just the old division of labor which was never replaced, reasserting its perverse logic.
Speaker 1:We talked more, but the point of the experience that bears on your question was that it was a very graphic instance of a very particular role definition overruling people's good intentions by its implications for people's daily options. The way the workers had divided up work into jobs had affected dynamics way beyond just getting the work done. It re-elevated old crap. This experience made clear to me that you have to take institutions and their roles very seriously. The analysis isn't overly difficult or obscure. You didn't need a big new vocabulary to talk about the situation. It is simple enough and, ironically, for academics on the left this simplicity meant it wasn't any good.
Speaker 1:Left academics didn't like that. The analysis was simple. Can you explain that, lydia? Such people in too many cases like to look smart by their long sentences and big words. That inclination or habit too, was a product, but in that case it was a product of academic training and circumstances. If you spoke plainly and you advocated simple but powerful insights, you weren't part of their community. They acted as if being clear and understandable revealed intellectual poverty and irrelevance. It may sound absurd or perverse, but it makes sense if you realize this was just another part of the problem of coordinator habits and practices distorting left behavior.
Speaker 1:For RPS members to speak plainly and advocate simple insights upset left academics who routinely worked hard to use long sentences and obscure words. If that sounds harsh, I can't help it. Of course, not all felt that way and no one literally said it well, almost no one and some hated it but played along just to get along. And it may sound perverse, but after a time we realized that when your status, income and power spring from having a monopoly on empowering circumstances, defending your status, income and power depends on making sure your information and skills remain inaccessible to people beneath you. Your assets can't appear pedestrian, they better appear and indeed you need to make them appear highly complex. This held not only for lawyers and doctors, but for academics, including, all too often, even left academics. Miguel asked what do you mean? Almost no one. Well, I actually looked into it at one point.
Speaker 1:The modern attention to this class difference started with an essay by Barbara and John Ehrenreich. They called what I call the coordinator class the professional managerial class. They called what I call the coordinator class the professional managerial class. A book was assembled and published with a bunch of folks responding to their piece. That was where the label coordinator class was first used, I think in one of the responses. But to what you were asking, I was surprised to see that a frequent complaint of critics of the Ehrenreichs was that seeing two classes of waged employees below owners was just American anti-intellectualism. I think their posing it that way the critics, that is, was respected academics doing what I mentioned above, dismissing a critically important insight because it was simply put and even worse, it challenged academic obscurantist mythology and associated class interests.
Speaker 1:But regardless of academics minimizing attention to coordinator class habits back then and really right up to now, though no longer among activist academics the new ideas were then not only accessible, they were also intensely practical. If you don't pay attention to choices about institutions and their roles, some seemingly innocuous choice or a choice that seemed to you inevitable but was taken for granted could subvert your best intentions. Retaining the old division of labor was an example of that happening. The experience of the workers taking over firms didn't just show that institutions and their roles mattered. It showed that they mattered so much that we had to focus on which features were okay and on which were not, and on what new ones could be better. So academics didn't like spreading skills. When was that? The book was in the late 1970s maybe 1978, I think and the critics of the book didn't like the Ehrenreichs and some others criticizing the PMC for monopolizing empowering work, which included not liking the verbal jibber-jabber that justified their doing so. Nonetheless, the simple ideas were not only accessible, they were intensely practical. It was a long battle that had earlier origins, way back with anarchists like Bakunin, but a simple lesson slowly gained ground If you don't pay close attention to choices about institutions and roles, some seemingly inevitable choice that you take for granted can subvert your best intentions. Retaining the old division of labor was just such a choice. That lesson, however, forever affected me. We had to understand not just bad outcomes but the structures that produced the bad outcomes.
Speaker 1:Miguel turned to Bert Dellinger. Next Bert, you were politicized by no nukes and anti-war activism. You became a key advocate of RPS from its inception and, like Lydia, you are exceptionally well-placed to discuss virtually every aspect of RPS development. You've been a university professor, a scientist and a world-renowned contributor to the fields, as well as a social critic and militant activist, your entire life. You were shadow vice president during Lydia Luxemburg's term as president, and later you had your own term as shadow president.
Speaker 1:Was your initial attraction to RPS similar to Lydia's, or did other facets play a larger role for you? How did you get involved and why? For me too, like for Lydia, the multi-dimensional aspect and the emphasis on institutional roles were important. But even more important for my early choice to join RPS was its attitude to the economy and beyond ideas, its moral approach and the specific values it highlighted.
Speaker 1:Before I got involved in RPS, I was mainly anti-war and internationalist, though I was, like everyone else, also worried about global warming and the possibility of nuclear catastrophe and the possibility of nuclear catastrophe. My activism was anarchistic. I militantly rejected any authority that wasn't absolutely essential for some specific time-bound reason. I had aggressive faith in human potentials and little time for interpersonal dynamics largely beyond our reach. The fact that RPS highlighted human needs and potentials was a strong attraction for me. However, I was most drawn by the specific value it celebrated for how decisions should occur and by the centrality RPS gave that value. Rps called that value that hooked me, self-management, and it is, of course, the by now ubiquitous idea that people should have a say in decisions in proportion as they are affected by them.
Speaker 1:Rps wasn't the first to espouse self-management, but it made its commitment more precise than others had made theirs, and I was moved by that. I liked how RPS argued against elitist notions of a few people making decisions for everyone. Rps argued against elitist notions of a few people making decisions for everyone. Even more, I liked how RPS found violations of self-management not only in dictatorships or in centers of corporate power that bossed around workers and consumers, but also in the dynamics of central planning and markets, in various electoral systems and even in typical sexual and family relations and most schooling, not to mention the dynamics of prior left organizations. Indeed, in those early days of RPS, I saw my calling as seeking self-management for all people, in every side of life. This got a little problematic in the way Lydia mentioned, for how a narrowly feminist allegiance could get problematic. It wasn't that my feeling that self-management was incredibly important was bad. That feeling was correct. What was bad was having one value drive my perception so heavily that it crowded out my seeing and assessing other values. In time, my activities in RPS got me past that narrowness.
Speaker 1:You said you were moved, bert, by how RPS found certain less obvious violations of self-management, and not just self-evident ones. Can you give an example that mattered a lot to you? If an owner can tell employees their hours of work, their pay and whether they can take a bathroom break, it obviously violates the workers having a say in the decisions that affect them. But less obviously. Consider this example, which very much affected me when I finally understood it.
Speaker 1:Most people, decades back, felt they freely chose their work. By applying for a job and getting it, they felt they freely chose what they consumed by going to the store or online and purchasing it. Both seem true enough. After all, I didn't have to take a job or to buy particular shoes. I work here or there, I buy this or that, I choose, I self-manage, I interject. Remember, when these guys say things like decades back, they mean in our time Bert went on. But if the jobs we get all have certain features we can't escape or influence, are we really choosing how we will work? Or if the range of items available to consume is tightly constrained and we have no say in that again, do we really freely choose?
Speaker 1:Consider two analogies I heard back then. Imagine you are in prison and you go to the commissary and you purchase some items. Do you self-manage your choice? Well, yes, you do, but also no, you don't. You certainly decided to go to the commissary and you certainly saw the options and you picked some and not others. However, you had no say in what was and what wasn't available, and yet that largely determined what you wound up with Outside prison. Obviously, a much wider selection is available, though I saw that it, too, was horribly constrained by market pressures. Similarly, when you apply for a job, if you have as your only options to apply for jobs that are subordinate to a boss and paid a wage based on power relations. Are you really self-managing? Your choice Wasn't the main choice made before you arrived, with your having zero input into it? Or consider one more example.
Speaker 1:About 90 years ago was called the golden age of capitalism. Let's call the average productivity per hour at at that time golden output. Roughly 50 years later, productivity per person was literally twice golden output. Another 40 years to the present and it's now three times golden output. This means if the average time of a job per week was 40 hours just under a century back, when average productivity per person was called golden, we could have had that same golden output per person in society in 20 hours a week at the start of this century and about 13 hours a week now. The reduced duration of work would allow the same output per person.
Speaker 1:So the question arises who decided that instead of working hard a half or even a third as long as earlier, we would actually work hard quite a bit longer than earlier, generating vastly more output, and on top of that, that the immense fruits of our labor would be given over to a small percentage of the population or to creating weapons and other useless or harmful outputs. I didn't decide any of that. You didn't decide any of that. We had no say in any of that. No one we know had any say in any of that. In fact, in truth, it is fair to say that no person decided it. Rather, by its roles, market competition imposed that, to survive, firms had to pursue a profit-seeking path. The institutional context of market allocation took away control over critically important decision-making about how long we should work as well as who should get the fruits of our labors.
Speaker 1:From these examples, I came to understand more viscerally the prerequisites of self-management and the complexity and promise of institutions that would provide rather than curtail it. I interject Burt is like Lydia teaching, albeit with some stories. But is he wrong? Miguel continues what about within the left itself? Was there self-management there? In the period from the 1960s upsurges through, say, 2020 or so, the idea of self-management certainly existed. It was discussed. It was even elevated to a prime, or even the prime status by some, especially, for example, by the anarchists who I identified with. But was it actually operative inside the left?
Speaker 1:If you look at activist organizations and projects of the times, for example, at media organizations of which there were many or even at organizing projects and movement organizations like unions, ecology movements, anti-war organizations, anti-racist and feminist organizations. There really wasn't much structural commitment to self-management. Mostly, movement projects looked like other institutions in society. Some people made most decisions. Way more people were largely absent from decision-making decisions. Way more people were largely absent from decision-making. Donors and fundraisers often had incredible power, just as owners did in mainstream society. People who were analogous to managers, lawyers and engineers or, for example, people like editors and publishers and alternative media organizations also had great power.
Speaker 1:When self-management went from rhetoric to actual practical changes, it was almost in a kind of transitory situation where it was praised but not implemented in lasting structure. Groups would be more or less collective, but it was often a function of people's attitudes, of their desires that emerged from prior activism or even from study, but not of structures which ensured their collectivity and self-management. There were massive phenomena like what was called the Occupy Movement, with vast assemblies and hand votes of all involved often seeking consensus. Yet even in those, if you look closely, you would see that relatively few people were really calling the shots and, more to the point, there were no lasting structural features that could deal with more complex agendas and processes.
Speaker 1:Not very long before RPS began to take form was the election of 2016. I'm guessing that you have probably heard a lot about it from other interviewees. The Sanders campaign said very good things about not being a one-man show and about the paramount importance of grassroots involvement and trying to attain real democracy. But despite those verbal commitments which I considered sincere, at least from Sanders himself the overall project was still utilizing all forms of internal organization, with a few people deciding everything and with only at most very vague and unimplemented notions of any alternative. Debate between tight, hierarchical decision-making and incredibly loose raise-hands decision-making with virtually no lasting structure and anyone at all voting had long had little to do with actual self-management. Rps started to confront that on both counts and to pressure changers, not only in society's election procedures, official accountability and social relations, but also in movement organizations and projects, and social relations, but also in movement organizations and projects. I should mention one other impact.
Speaker 1:In the anarchist community, we had always militantly rejected oversight, hierarchy and authority, but sometimes this led us in unproductive dimensions. People would argue their right to do as they please, as if others didn't have a right to be free of impositions imposed by the first group's preferences. We can riot at big demonstrations if we want. We alone decide our actions. Despite that, our choices could mean others will have to stay away or endure rioting, or people would argue against having lasting rules, laws or even collective norms, as if every situation had to emerge anew spontaneously, with no attention to prior agreements. This sometimes got very self-serving, with each argument reflecting only immediate interests of the person making the argument and with little attention to the interests of others who would be affected. At any rate, rps's clear early enunciation of the logic and some methods for collective self-management did a whole lot to focus anarchist values and commitments in ways that were far truer to the early days of anarchism than were the self-centered approaches that had become prevalent for some anarchists before RPS. So RPS actually improved and strengthened my anarchism and propelled much more and better anarchism from others as well, even as it also initially aroused opposition from many folks calling themselves anarchists.
Speaker 1:You said that another aspect of RPS ideas that attracted you not just its multi-issue approach and its prioritization of institutions was its approach to the economy. Can you explain that? I interject? Well, here comes some redundancy, I think. But you get the logic. It's an oral history and different people get to say their say. Burt goes on.
Speaker 1:Before RPS, leftists, including myself, called a couple of percent or so of the population capitalists, because those folks owned the means by which society produces and distributes goods and services society's capital, setting aside small owners. We called non-owners employees because those folks owned only their ability to do work which they had to sell to owners to get income to survive. Owners and employees were seen to clash over wages, the length of the workday, the pace of work, work conditions, production choices, national economic policies and more. Rps felt that if you see only employees and owners, you rightly recognize that the non-owners work for the owners, but you wrongly miss that about a fifth of the non-owners, so a fifth of the employees, have great power and influence due to their position in the economy, while four-fifths of the employees have nearly no power and no influence, also due to their position in the economy.
Speaker 1:This observation that some people who weren't owners nonetheless had dramatically more power, income and wealth than other non-owners had its origins all the way back with early anarchists, well over a century before RPS for RPS. But even being aware of that, until RPS got going most activists didn't understand why the difference existed and why it meant there were three main classes and not just two. Rps said that beneath owners and above workers sits another class. This third class did not own differently than workers since, like workers, members of this third class did not own workplaces and resources. And also like workers, these other non-owners were also subordinate to owners. They too worked for wages paid by owners. What put these particular non-owners above worker non-owners was the different types of tasks each did. Seeing this class difference was, I think, different types of tasks each did. Seeing this class difference was, I think, a graphic instance of utilizing the type of institutional thinking that Lydia mentioned earlier.
Speaker 1:Rps argued that the division of labor and corporations and throughout modern societies gave 20% of non-owners empowering tasks and gave about 80% of non-owners disempowering tasks. It called the empowered non-owners the coordinator class. It called the disempowered non-owners the working class. Because of their different tasks, those with empowering roles accrued confidence, social connections, organizational skills, information, time and disposition to affect affairs and define relations. Those with disempowering roles were habituated to obedience and became fragmented from one another and separated from information. They knew each other, but not people with pull. They suffered shortages of time, became exhausted and became disposed to escape their alienated subordination as much as possible, and you didn't need a microscope to see this or a lab to tease it into visibility. It was in front of everyone's nose everywhere that coordinator class members not only would oversee working class members in capitalist settings, where the former designed the circumstances, issued daily orders and even, to a point, healed and mended workers below, but they would continue to do so even with owners gone, as long as the same division of labor prevailed.
Speaker 1:This too wasn't rocket science, but you did have to think a little and look at some history, unless, of course, you lived where it occurred. Then it was totally evident To me. This last observation shattered many prior beliefs and created new ideas in their place. For example, it shattered my attachment to old forms of post-capitalist vision. It made me ask how we might remove the features of economic institutions that give the coordinator class both its power and its inclinations to use its power as it does. It made me think about what new institutions could deliver real classlessness.
Speaker 1:While RPS was trying to modestly refine radicals' understanding of race, power and gender in light of incorporating the impact of each on the rest regarding economy, it also sought to get us to see how class division arose, not only from ownership relations but also from a corporate division of labor. At first I found it difficult and unfamiliar to understand this in personal, human terms and especially in terms of what it meant regarding vision, strategy and people's ways of thinking, acting, talking and writing. Difficult, even though it was all around, yes, miguel. Difficult, but not technically hard or obscure. Rather difficult because it was so contrary to familiar talk, including my own. But as I made progress, it became a big part of my becoming deeply committed to the RPS project, deeply committed to the RPS project.
Speaker 1:Did it impact your life choices outside RPS? Actually, yes, it did, but not without some resistance from me. I am a scientist. I work in a major university as a professor and also in a lab In my workplace. Well-known scientists are paid more, have better conditions, have more influence and are indeed indeed coordinator class. So there was a real issue Would I continue to accept the many advantages I enjoyed, which had seemed to me like my right and thus in no way unreasonable, or would I agree to and even join efforts to attain equitable remuneration and balanced job complexes where it would impact me?
Speaker 1:Powerful pressures for change and time came from students and newbie scientists, and also from technicians, janitors and others who worked in traditionally powerless positions that benefited everyone in the labs, but did so for far less pay than professors earned and with no say in policies. At first, pretty much all professors resisted. Honestly, we mostly found it absurd. How could it make any sense for us, given all our experience and training, to do a share of cleaning up? It would mean disaster for science. In fact, our reaction was wrong, even regarding productivity, much less regarding justice. Indeed, the justice part was obvious as soon as one regarded all who were involved as equally worthy human beings. But the productivity part, while it ought to have been similarly evident with just a little thought, only became compelling when it turned out. The labs with balanced job complexes were not only much more humane and fulfilling to work in, but because of the reduction of tensions and what I guess some would call office politics, were also better at apportioning time and getting tasks done, and if one had eyes for it, one could see they were also vastly better at teaching the next generation.
Speaker 1:So, yes, I became an advocate, not only in theory but in my own realm as well, albeit with some delay, but a lot faster and more thoroughly, though I wish that weren't true than for most others in comparable coordinator class roles. Look, we all lived in a diseased world in which it was impossible for anyone to be fully human or humane One way or another. Everyone who lived in that world was maladjusted. The roles did that. To be flawed was no crime. To ignore the flaws after they became evident, that was a problem. Lydia, were you as attracted to RPS elevation of values as Bert was, and did RPS's new attitudes toward class play a role for you as well? I suspect almost everyone who relates to RPS was at least in considerable part moved by its emphasis on values, and yes, I was too. But for me I think it was RPS's emphasis on diversity as a basic value that had most initial impact. My coming at things as a strong feminist already disposed me toward recognizing the incredible range of life patterns bearing on sexuality, nurturance and bringing up children. The fact that RPS highlighted and celebrated diversity was critical for me when I came to understand diversity as emanating just as logically from an ecological orientation. That too helped broaden my thinking.
Speaker 1:The notion of solidarity, which is also a central value of RPS, was, like self-management, certainly not original. Rps didn't come up with the idea that people ought to feel solidarity and even empathy with each other. That was long since familiar to people seeking good social outcomes. It was the way RPS coupled making values central with understanding institutions that impressed me. For a value like solidarity, we were pushed by our institutional approach to ask what current social roles impede or even annihilate people feeling solidarity, and, as well, what would have to happen to society's various institutions to accomplish their desired functions and yet also foster solidarity. And the same thing happened for diversity and self-management. With the values in hand, we had a criteria for judging institutions. Did market competition, with buyers and sellers fleecing each other, create solidarity? Of course not, but in RPS, our concepts push us to ask why markets failed at that and to consider what we could do about it. Similarly, did families with a male operating with father duties and a female operating with mother duties, each of them having contrary roles, foster self-management or solidarity in the adults or in their children? No, okay, then what could we do about that? I hadn't been immersed in the ownership as the linchpin for understanding mindset, so the revelation that RPS delivered regarding class relations didn't uproot my values as much as it did many other leftist views, though it was certainly important for me as it was for Bert, and playing a key role in my activism. Actually, we are uncovering, I think, one of the things about RPS that I am most entranced by. Every aspect is entwined with the rest. Rps's understanding of class isn't somehow isolated from RPS's understanding of sexuality or gender or race, and vice versa In real societies.
Speaker 1:Rps says that what happens in the economy has implications for everyone who fills economic roles, because economic roles require us to behave in certain ways and respect and implement a certain logic. And it says this holds for any economy, not just for the capitalism that RPS struggles to replace, but for the new economy it favors as well. And RPS says the same thing holds for the institutions of kinship and the ways. Their roles require certain kinds of behavior from people bringing up kids and relating to one another and families. Kinship roles require that people behave in certain ways, respect and implement a certain logic, and so on. What RPS notes is that economy affects our assumptions, circumstances, beliefs and habits and in turn, we bring all these effects with us after work and beyond consumption, for example, when we are at the dinner table or in bed or celebrating holidays or voting. And similarly, exactly the same holds for kinship's impact on men, women and children. Here too, the effects are not confined to when we are inside families or with friends, but also travel with us into workplaces, places of worship, malls and voting booths. So RPS emphasizes how the social and behavioral field of influence emanating from any one key area of society tends to require that other key areas abide and sometimes even incorporate elements of its logic into their own relations, its logic into their own relations. Rps shows, in other words, how societies push and pull into a more or less stable, entwined mosaic of all their key parts, as well as how this mosaic can become unstable and can even be unraveled to become entirely transformed. What's more, it raises the question what new mosaic of what new parts do we desire to implement?
Speaker 1:So it wasn't only that I became aware of the third class existing in its birth area, the economy. It was that I became aware of it in all sides of life, including implications for families, religion and so on. I interject when I channeled Miguel's oral history book and when Miguel assembled it, extracting from all the interviews he did. Is there too much repetition, too much teaching? It seems true to the experiences, to me, but how does it seem to you. It is long. Is it too long to allow numerous people to go over similar ground? Miguel continued.
Speaker 1:Bert, what about the last key social value that RPS was initially emphasizing? Did equity as a value also resonate for you? I was slower to take to the last RPS value than I was to favor balanced job complexes, and I suspect this was due to my defending deeply held but not fully thought out prior beliefs. Rps says a person should get an income which is actually a share of the total social product in accord with the duration, intensity and onerousness of the socially valued labor that they do. If you work longer, harder or under worse conditions making things people want, rps says you deserve to receive more, but it also says you do not deserve to receive more for having special talents or for working in some area that is more valued than another, or for working with tools that increase your output, much less for owning property or for simply having the power to take more. One way to think of it is you get remunerated for your effort and sacrifice. Another way to think of it is that each person should enjoy a combination of leisure and work which, overall, should afford the same total benefits minus debits as every other person's mix of leisure and work as every other person's mix of leisure and work In 2045, for all members of RPS and for most other socially engaged people as well, whatever label for this aim one favors. This approach to income seems natural and even obvious, but when RPS was just getting started, that wasn't the case.
Speaker 1:Having come from an anarchist tradition, I had always believed in the guiding precept from each according to ability, to each according to need. That slogan was a cornerstone of my radical identity and I vigorously defended it, more like one would defend a family relative literally than an idea. So I first heard the RPS formulation as a step back from, and even perhaps an attack on, a central component of my radical identity, not as a serious issue for discussion and understanding as something to dismiss, was actually quite similar to the RPS view. But the anarchist norm assumed, without describing it, that there would also be an accompanying economic arrangement that would allow the norm to operate well. However, this assumption was made as a kind of dogma or first principle, without thinking closely about the actual features needed to attain the desired effects. Additionally, the anarchist norm took for granted that having rules about work and consumption that limit options for each person in light of social circumstances is intrinsically alienating and oppressive Limits, no good.
Speaker 1:Later to think that came to seem quite strange. After all, why shouldn't my connections with others impact my options as well as theirs? Earlier views I had about this eventually seemed to me strangely antisocial, even though that was of course not my earlier intent. And yes, this of course harks back to what I said earlier about the impact of the RPS view of self-management on anarchism's understanding of its own values. At any rate, for me at the time, the anarchist norm, as I then understood it, meant that we should each do what we can with our talents to contribute to society, because that's the right thing to do, and likewise we should each receive from society what we need, like everyone else, because that is the right thing for society to provide. But while that was my feeling about it, rps caused me to ask myself what does this superficially delightful norm literally mean if we try to implement it in real relations, rather than only use it as a kind of rhetorical placeholder for broad hopes about desirable outcomes, even regarding the intended goal and ignoring that the anarchist norm offered no institutional mechanisms to attain it?
Speaker 1:As RPS made a case for its new approach, I began to realize that, while I liked the anarchist slogan for its connotations, I hadn't seriously examined its meaning. Work to ability Okay. Who will say what my or your ability is Consumed to need? Okay, who will say what my or your need is? If this norm says someone else will determine my ability or my need other than me, then it forgoes all its anti-authoritarian connotations. But if it says that I am free to determine my ability however I choose, which means I can choose how much I should work and at what tasks, and that I am free to determine how much I should consume of what items, and if it says there should be no say in these determinations for anyone or anything beyond myself, then the norm translates to saying that I can have for consumption whatever I decide to take and I can work however much or little I choose at whatever job I choose. There is an implicit assumption or hope, no doubt, that I will choose wisely, but there are no constraints, no requirements and even no mechanisms to facilitate my being-wise.
Speaker 1:As the alternative RPSPS approach slowly gained traction, I realized my anarchist from each to each norm had two central problems. The first was rather obvious and people would often discuss and argue about it. The other was more subtle and up to the emergence of RPS it was rarely raised, though once considered it was clearly crucial. The first problem was we can't all compatibly take what we want and produce what we choose. On the one hand, producing what we choose with no attention to how well we are able to do it, is a problem, because people may choose to do things they cannot do well. But even if we ignore that serious difficulty and assume we will each only want to produce things we can produce well, why can't I take a tremendous amount from output and produce little or perhaps even nothing? The maxim says do as you will, so why can't I do that? So the maxim's first problem is if people strictly obey it and opt for the best result for themselves, with no concern for the effect on others, which effect they have no information about in any case then society unravels due to there being way too much demand and way too little supply.
Speaker 1:In response, the from-each-to-each-is-maxim advocates would typically qualify it to accord better with their intentions. They might say their maxim really means that we should take what's fair given our needs and we should produce what is fair and needed given our abilities, where the latter includes only doing work that we do well enough, so our product is socially valued. Doing work that we do well enough, so our product is socially valued. Indeed, the above is literally the pattern of thoughts I had when first confronted by RPS advocates. I wanted to retain my link to the slogan that I thought was at the heart of anarchism's logic. But I realized that I could retain my allegiance to the anarchist norm only if I qualified it.
Speaker 1:But my attempts fell short and the RPS folks were relentless. I was forced to recognize that even with the fix there was still a problem. How would I know what is fair? For that matter, what does fair even mean? What if someone says that, in their view, fair is to receive income equal to what their property produces? Or fair is to receive income equal to how much society values their personal product? No anarchist would abide either view, nor would any advocate of RPS. But how does the from each to each maxim rule these choices out Further? Whatever I decide is fair, how do I manage to make choices that implement it?
Speaker 1:Rps convinced me that the ethically desirable and economically sound choice for what is fair is that people should get income for how long they work, for how hard they work and for the onerousness of the conditions under which they work, as long as their work is socially desired. But RPS added that in practice none of us can make this assessment unless we engage with one another in production and consumption in ways that reveal what people want and how much they want it. The last observation was critical. For me, the dispute wasn't only about ethics. It was also, and arguably even mainly, about what information had to be available for people to be able to be ethical. That was when I decided that RPS norm was consistent with my anarchist desires for equitable outcomes but that, unlike from each to each, the RPS norm was able to generate the desired outcomes by revealing needed information rather than obscuring it. I would later realize there was more, that is, the information was also needed for society to orient its future production sensibly in light of changing desires. But the above is what got me initially. I interject. I gotta say this is likely familiar reasoning to folks familiar with Revolution Z, but maybe that helps and maybe it just makes it a little more plausible that we in our time may be on a path toward what Miguel's interviewees helped accomplish in their time. What do you think. In any case, miguel went on.
Speaker 1:I have been asking folks to recount an event or campaign or situation during the rise of RPS that was particularly inspiring or meaningful for them. Could you do so please? Aside from all the major RPS campaigns and events molding me, I have to acknowledge a particular long-running experience. When I was about 18, I guess in 1984, visiting with a girlfriend at the time listening to music, she played me the album Another Side of Bob Dylan. It was playing, we were enjoying each other, but then the sound started to take over my mind. I don't know what else to say. I was not one to have a song distract me from anything else, much less 18-year-old enjoyments, but it started happening. And then I heard Chimes of Freedom and I was enthralled. I later listened not only to that album but to a whole lot of Bob Dylan over and over. I later listened not only to that album but to a whole lot of Bob Dylan over and over.
Speaker 1:I poured over certain lyrics until I could hear them fully, like subterranean homesick blues Ah, get born, keep warm. Short pants, romance, learn to dance, get blessed, try to be a success. I didn't just look the lyrics up via Google, I wanted to hear them, as first listeners did decades earlier. Some songs I heard fine right off, others I had to hear repeatedly to begin to get a hold of. I think it was the first time something so cerebral was also so emotive for me. I have to admit, I think Dylan was the main literary engagement I ever undertook.
Speaker 1:Have to admit, I think Dylan was the main literary engagement I ever undertook and I truly do believe that my experience of his words and music significantly contoured my life journey and especially my revolutionary desires, about as much as anything else did. I could talk about song after song and its impact on me. I assume that I often read my feelings into them, but a great song achieves that. Someday I hope to write about his words and their impact, but for now, if it is okay, just one more bit on it here. Of course, many of Dylan's songs opened me to the breadth and depth of injustices in society, to the dangers its structure imposed, to the insanity, to the hypocrisy and to hope as well, to what he called society's pliers, its roles that bend us out of shape.
Speaker 1:But less known, dylan also observed critics of injustice and, as on most topics, he was way before his time conveying insights way beyond what his actual involvement and awareness of activism would seem to have permitted. Somehow he seemed to tap into wisdom that he didn't even himself own. I don't know where he got it or how he mined it. I often wondered if he could express it in dialogue, in simple terms, remotely, as he did in song and sometimes poems, but I always doubted he could, which to me was and remains a bit of a mystery. Consider this as one passage of many, many I could reference.
Speaker 1:It is from the song Farewell Angelina, and to my ears it is Dylan not only bidding a very gentle goodbye to Joan Baez, but also a not very gentle goodbye to the tumultuous movements then growing around the country, which Baez admirably wished to and did still relate to, and which Dylan largely left for reasons that activists in those movements should have heard and which I think RPS later in some sense did hear. So he sang the machine guns are roaring, the puppets heave rocks. The fiends nail time bombs to the hands of the clocks. Call me any name you like, I will never deny it. Farewell Angelina. The sky is erupting. I must go where it's quiet. Let me try that once more. The machine guns are roaring. The puppets heave rocks, the fiends nail time bombs to the hands of the clocks. Call me any name you like, I will never deny it.
Speaker 1:Farewell, angelina. The sky is erupting. I must go where it's quiet. For Dylan, we were the puppets, even the fiends, and he did seek quiet, and the movements of the day largely lost their best political wordsmith, their best political troubadour, though Dylan's social brilliance went on and on, and that is where Miguel ended his seventh chapter of his oral history, and so channeling him and them, and perhaps a bit of Bob too. This is Mike Albert signing off until next time for Revolution Z.