ACFM - #ACFM Microdose: Acid Lockdown

Episode Date: April 6, 2020

The #ACFM crew discuss life in lockdown including cheese care packs, the moral economy, and the crisis of liberalism. Texts: Nadia Idle- This Too Shall Pass https://notaloneintheworld.com/2020/03/22/this-too-shall-pass/ / Craig Gent – When Logistics Run Out Of Time https://novaramedia.com/2020/03/23/when-logistics-run-out-of-time / / Jonathan Corum and Carl Zimmer – How Corona Virus Hijacks Your Cells https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/11/science/how-coronavirus-hijacks-your-cells.html / Kropotkin […]

Hey, people listen up. It's a fucking lockdown right now. Come off it, we're not in a prison drama, are we? Three and five percent rather of people in London could be affected outside. If I get corona, I get corona. At the end of the day, I'm not going to want to stop me from party. President Trump now says he wants to reopen the country for business by Easter. So if we get it, we don't actually care. We've had our lives. And perhaps you could sort of take a lot.

sort of taking on the chair, taking all in one in one go. Hello, welcome to ACFM, the home of the weird left. My name's Keir Milbin, and today I'm joined as usual by my lockdown friend Jeremy Gilbert. Hello. And my suburban friend, Nadia Eidl. Hello. And today we're talking about acid lockdown. Nadia.

I believe you have a public service announcement you'd like to share with us. We interrupt our program to bring you this important message. Yes, that's right. Before we start discussing the crazy world we find ourselves in, how we've been feeling and what we think about, there's a couple of things that I want to say. So because the government has fucked up royally on communication around COVID-19, and the threat and because there are still people having house parties and hanging out with their mates

I just want to do this quick public service announcement because unless you are some kind of deep green Malthusian environmentalists that wants all humans to die in which case you shouldn't be listening to this show anyway then this applies to you not just others it applies to you And the reasoning for what I'm about to say is, A, I'm a human being, and I care about other human beings, and I don't want people to die. But secondly, I have a quote, unquote, minor. Sorry, I went to a liberal arts university, American liberal arts. So I have a minor in cell biology and genetics. So I do understand the basic science and immunology around this. So I do know a little bit about what I'm talking about. So this is it.

With the best and properly funded healthcare system to stop the spread of COVID-19 and the death of thousands of people, absolutely everyone, and that means you, listener, needs to do two things. One, keep physically distant from as many human beings as possible, and two, wash your hands and minimise touching your face. On number one about keeping distant from human beings,

COVID doesn't care about your values or whether you're a leftist or whether you have polyamorous sexual needs, no household mixing should occur. That means that if you've got mates living in one house or a lover or a partner in another house, you should not be seeing each other. The exception to that is if you have children under 18, if you're an NHS worker or a carer.

So I'm sorry, but this is not the time to be hanging out with your mates and people who you love. And secondly, in terms of hand-washing, This is not just some kind of random thing that's being said. The lipid on the end, that's the kind of fatty substance on the end of COVID-19, is actually destroyed by soap. And so it's really, really important to wash your hands and to wash your hands properly because viruses like COVID enter your body

via your nose, mouth, and your eyes. So this is not just about whether you're worried about getting infected or not. It's about the fact that you could touch a surface outside Sainsbury's. You come home, then you touch a doorknob, and then someone in your house, then touches that doornob, goes out to deliver groceries to your elderly neighbor. They touch the plastic bag, they get it, and they die. So this is really, really, really serious stuff. If anyone is interested in the science, there's an excellent piece on how the coronavirus hijacks your cells,

which will put a link to it. if people are interested, which is by the New York Times. So finally, I know this is not the usual thing we talk about on this show, but this is really, really serious, and it's really, really hard. It's really hard for people like us to be staying away from other human beings. But the test of your sociality and care to others is going to be about how antisocial you can be with your body and how hygienic you can be with your hands.

so do it now that's it done okay good thanks yeah so we should probably start off by talking about you know talking about just what a weird situation we're in just how much has massively changed in the last two weeks yeah two weeks basically it's been

isn't it I don't know but when do you start counting this is a thing it's come to different people it's landed with different people at different times. Yeah. I think it's two, it is about two weeks since it was clear that we were in a major situation. Yeah. It's too, like it's like I was in the state.

And it's sort of, I think it's two weeks since it was two weeks since it was clear I had to come home like as soon as possible. I think. So for most people in the UK, I think about two weeks. But yeah, you're right. I mean the whole, the whole I mean, one of the, one of the weird things about it is the way it's affecting

our experience of space and time, isn't it? Yeah, quite a few people have said, when will this Christmas week end? For some of us who are locked away from our cheeses, you know, this is like a Christmas week. Christmas week with no cheese, you know, is that the worst sort of Christmas week? As I said, Kear, I've overstocked on cheese.

I'm sending you an emergency care package. So, well, how have you been feeling, I mean, how have you been experiencing it then to begin? You two? I mean, for me, it kind of feels like it is, well, one, I've never been on so many Zoom meetings in my fucking life, because let me tell you, all of my socialising is taking place online. So I'm suddenly in the situation where I'm in touch with a lot of people I care about a lot more, which, to be honest, is, I tell you how I can summarize it. It is an exaggeration of my normal data. day. And what I mean by that is, like, I live alone and I've not touched another human being

since that weekend that I saw Keir, which is the beginning of March, in Leeds. So for the minority of us who live alone, we're now in a situation where we're even more alone. And if you have not chosen to live alone, then that is going to make things a lot more difficult, which we can obviously, like, there's loads of emotional difficulty around this. But how I've been experiencing it. I mean, I've got like 20 spinach plants growing on my windowsill. I didn't foresee that coming. I've, I just feel like I've got an advantage of not being like a teenager or in my 20s because I feel like I'm playing a long game. I'm trying to deal with this by going, right, what are the things that I, for lack of a better word,

want to achieve in this time. Like, can I come out the other end speaking Spanish? Like, can I come up the other end, like, with a third draft of my novel? Like, those are the ways that I'm trying to impose control. I'm actually extremely busy, even though I'm at home. But I don't know. Maybe when you guys start speaking, I'll be able to engage with this emotionally. I have had, as everybody has, had, like, a few wobbles.

but I'm keeping myself very busy mentally and physically. I just feel like this is completely unprecedented. There is no way when I was telling people in December, when we were recording the post-election come down, when I was telling people take drugs, have lots of sex and go for long walks, that that would be some kind of premonition that they won't be able to do that on this part of the year.

so yeah that's I just couldn't have believed that we any you just can't believe that it's actually happening it feels like a nightmare but also an opportunity there is a sort of sense of unreality to it which is sort of fading a little bit as we settle in and like that Christmas week thing is not really a joke because that's one of the only

sort of like times when you when you feel this unreality do you know I mean this sort of the suspension of normal life to a certain degree which is sort of interesting you know that You know, when we come to think about what all this means, you know, having, for quite a lot of people, their work is suspended or disjointed, you know, and you're stepping outside your habitual patterns,

that does give you a little chance to think about things differently. You know, definitely in my household, we're having a totally different relationship to food. You know, it's all about, you know, what might be on the turn, what we have to use now, etc. you know which are sort of good things in a way I actually had a virus

which probably isn't COVID-19 I think but I had like two weeks of a virus just after I met Nadia actually yeah and that's come and gone which is a little bit odd to be having a high temperature when you're in a sort of pandemic panic

but my general way that I cope with all of these things is to, you know, basically, the way I sort of try and gain some control over it is by analyzing it and thinking about what it means, et cetera, et cetera, which has taken up quite a lot of my time. I spent the first week absolutely addicted to Twitter and the news and trying to work out what was going on. And in part, that's because things were just moving so quickly, you know, not just, we haven't got a pandemic, of course. we've got, you know, a economic collapse, which would probably be of a scale,

at least initially greater than the 1930s, which is something which is really hard to get our heads around. And we've also got, you know, the breakdown of what was this, what seemed like an ironclad political common sense about what it was possible to do in terms of policy, etc. So all of these things are just shifting. And they all seem to be shifting in the first week, which just meant added to this whole sense of unreality.

The doors are wide open in all sorts of ways. Yeah, and it is specifically the suspension of normal capitalism. I mean, that's what's suspended. I mean, that's partly anyway. Yeah. You know, that, I mean, it's sort of, I think it's funny. I mean, it's funny because people keep commenting. I keep hearing people say, oh, I'm kind of enjoying it as if that's really surprising.

And I would say, well, from our point of view, it's not at all surprising. Yeah, work is, we've suspended the basic, you know, the basic infrastructure of capitalist social relations. you know people aren't going to work instead they get instead the government's paying for them you know that's obviously that is going to feel sort of you know it's going to feel sort of utopian in certain way so though there's also the business of having to do everything online and but obviously there is you know in terms of our relationship to time and you know it is sort of you know that's the suspension of capital the fact that the suspension of capitalism feels sort of liberating isn't at all surprising to us mean it's what we would expect, I guess.

And I also think there's this sense that I haven't really seen anyone else quite commenting on it. I'm sure other people have because it seems obvious. But it's also the sense that, you know, everyone is sort of inhabiting the same time in a way that we don't normally these days. I mean, it's a cliche of sort of culture and a media commentary that, you know,

the sort of golden age of, you know, mass democracy and mass culture in the mid-20th century, you know, everybody went to the same movies at the weekend. Like everybody, you know, everybody watched the same TV. and it's a cliche now like trying to explain to little kids like what it meant that your program was on telly one time a week and everyone either watched it then or you missed it they literally this is a really good point they can't get

they can't get their heads around it and and we're all sort of back in that at the moment we're all in that in sort of simultaneous time so even though we're not we're not together physically the sense of a kind of shared experience and a sort of shared culture is suddenly that really really robust It is. And I wrote this, I wrote about this in my blog piece, but I think you've just articulated it much better with that example actually about TV shows. That I think like after the election, I felt like I was sharing this experience of how we felt with probably about, you know, 7,000 people. But now it's 7 billion.

It's like not a joke that everyone is experiencing this same relationship to, everything changing by everyone in the world there's not one person unless apparently you're in the moon or you're in the big brother house or something of people who still don't know that this is happening or the station or whatever apparently there's some groups but but this this feeling of like everything is suspended and and there's power in that because I can speak to I mean I don't want to take up time talking about this but I've organized my streets and I've organized my street and I was shitting myself. And now we've got this incredible like email list with with people on my street, which I've been thought I'd never be able to talk to because they're conservative

small C. And now we're all helping each other out because shit is going down and people can't get eggs. So is that part of the mutual aid network? No, no. Is it just separate? No, I've not engaged with that, I think, for various different reasons. This is not a critique of it. I want to stay offline. I get addicted to social media pretty quickly, which is something that I've written about. And I know that the only way that I can engage with a lot of things is online because I live alone. But I spend a very minimal amount of my time online if I'm not chatting to other people now. And I can't quite engage with the big stuff because it requires me to read a lot of things on Facebook, just being completely honest. And I thought it more important to organise my street because there's a lot of old

vulnerable and self-isolating people here. So that's the thing that I've done for the moment. No, that's interesting. Kear, have you done it? Have you been engaged in the mutual aid group? I haven't, no, because we've been self-isolating because that virus. And my partner, Alice, is in quite a high-risk thing. So we went across and asked one of the old neighbours, one of the older people, one of our older neighbours, rather, but they were fine. But so I haven't, I've been, I haven't been engaged in that. But, like, just to come back to the, to this idea that, because that is one of the weird things,

that this is a global event. But I think it's only something like 30% of the global population living states which have ordered sort of some level of social distancing or lockdown. Serious? Oh, my God, interesting. Yeah, yeah. Most of the world is actually carrying on relatively as normal. I mean, we will, like, that's what really worries me is, is this pandemic exploding into, you know, the huge urban sprawl of Africa or something like that.

We don't know what, what relationship it has to temperature, so, like, high temperatures seem to slow the spread, I think. But, you know, there are lots of, there are lots of parts of the world where social distancing is much less of a realistic prospect than, most of the UK, for instance. So we are having a sort of common experience, but under different circumstances. So, you know, I, you know, in my house, we can sort of socially isolate relatively easily, whereas other people are, it's much, much more difficult, I think. Do you mean from each other in one household? Or do you mean isolate as a household away from everyone else?

Isolate as a household, yeah. Right. And we should mention that just the terms social, which I have a massive critique of, which I think I'm going to write an article about, but social distancing and self-isolation. I mean, these are terms that now everyone is using in the UK, and they've, like, dropped into, like, our vocabulary as if it's normal. It just made me think, wow, how do human beings adapt? Like, I've adapted to the fact that I can't see people in person.

I've adapted to the fact that I'm using this language. I just think it's incredible and bizarre. And I'm observing it also with a level of kind of spiritual curiosity, I have to say, apart from, like, as a lefty, definitely there's part of me that's like, wow, these are interesting times. I mean, it does prove, though, that all of the zombie films were rubbish. Because this is sort of what they were about. And the fact that we'd all turn into like Mad Max type, like, bands shooting each other.

No, actually, in disasters, people behave in a very pro-social way and automatically look to see if they can help each other. Well, that's an interesting point. And at that point has been made. I've been seeing that made by lots of commentators, both but lefties and sort of anti-liberal Tories. And it's interesting that. Because actually, that, you know, that imaginary,

which assumes that, you know, in the state of nature, we're all going to try and kill each other, you know, and if you, underneath the surface of civilization, we're all just waiting to, you know, go on a violent rampades. I mean, I mean, you know, my argument is that's basically that's integral to the kind of liberal imagination going back to the 17th century. But that's also bad science. Yeah, no, it's wrong. Of course, yeah. It's both materially wrong. But it's specifically sort of liberalism that it's fundamental to the imagination of, I think.

And it's interesting. I mean, one that politically, you know, what all this presents a massive crisis for is liberalism. And it's sort of, you know, it's creating a political opportunity both sort of, sort of, sort of. of authoritarian but paternalistic conservatism. And for various kinds of like communal, communitarianism, socialism, even anarchism, with the kind of extraordinary event of a national network of community groups taking the, putting the words, phrase mutual aid in their title,

which is just something worth. So it's creating all these kind of opportunities. Actually, should we say something about mutual aid? I just think it's really where, I suppose most people listening to this will probably know this, of extraordinary. That's a phrase. It's the title of a book by Peter Kropotkin, the great anarchist writer the late 19th century. And it's specifically an argument that the kind of social Darwinists who were interpreting Darwin's theory of evolution, as indeed in the terms we just

described, as proving the kind of competition between individuals is natural. And Kropokin sets out to show that this is completely wrong, that species only thrive on the basis of cooperation and always do cooperate. So we've got a dry throat. I've not got COVID. And that's, and mutual aid is like it's, you know, it's an anarchist slogan. Like I used to be, you know, there was the anarchist centre in Liverpool when I was a kid. It was called the Mutual Aid Centre.

So it's kind of extraordinary that that's become the name for this network of, like, mostly fairly non-political kind of, you know, community support groups, isn't it? So I've got a question about, just a quick question about the, the mutual aid groups. I mean, if one of you knows better and can describe them, because I, like, does the mutual aid groups require people

to go out and move around? Because that seems, I basically don't know about how it's organized, because what defeating the spread of the virus needs is for people to move the least. I mean, mostly what they're doing is they're trying to identify people who are vulnerable in the neighbourhood.

And what they've done in our area is people have delivered leaflets and they've through doors and they've been delivered, you know, people delivering them have been gone on their own and they've had, they've worn gloves and masks and things while delivering leaflets. And the leaflets have given people a contact number to contact if they're vulnerable. And then if people are vulnerable, if people need shopping done or they need somebody to talk to, if they need somebody to talk to, then somebody will phone them up. If they need shopping done, then people will do the, I've been finding ways to do the

shopping, kind of individually and leaving it on the doorstep. So no, people are definitely, people are not congregating. They're basically been trying to support the, you know, they've just been trying to support vulnerable people locally. I mean, my understanding is that, you know, here, my understanding is that they've been very, the character of them has been very different in different places. And I keep hearing from people in places like sort of Lewish of Manhattan.

There's massive political rows going on within the sort of WhatsApp groups. I mean, you know, how, uh, I think even in other part, I mean, in my part of Walthamstow, which is sort of, you know, the posh part of Walthamstow. Yeah, it's just, you know. I just hate that shit. I hate it. And people should not be organising on WhatsApp in that way.

It doesn't work. No, sure. Well, I think, I mean, but my one locally hasn't had any of that. My one has just seemed to have been very, very efficient means of kind of making sure that vulnerable people were, you know, looked after. And also, you know, it being the kind of area that it is. My impression is there's been, there was like three times as many people wanting to help as anybody could identify as vulnerable and in need of help, which is, I guess, you know,

it's probably not the case out in those parts of the country where the left is so weak. It's probably not the case that there's, you know, loads of people wanting to help and not enough people needing help. But, um, I don't know. I think it's been quite widespread. There's like two, two and a half million people joined in a, joined up in on Facebook. So that's, yeah, maybe you're right. Yeah, I guess you're, I guess you're, I guess you're, I guess probably you're right. I mean, I mean, just to follow the point you were on about earlier about, you know, confounding the precepts of liberalism, like, you could go a step further because that idea that we would, in a state of nature, we'd all be in a war against all, of all against all,

you know, goes back to Hobbes, who was talking about just after the English civil war, and like, you know, that's his argument for having a sovereign, you know, only by you having a sovereign can we can we avoid this war of all against all? In fact, it was the opposite. It was those mutual aid groups sprung up because our sovereign, Boris Johnson, was absolutely useless, basically.

It was a million miles behind the pace. You know what I mean? So people basically stepped up and started self-isolating before they were instructed to, or social distances, sorry, before the government commanded them to, you know, all the sports, their sports was called off

before the government commanded it, etc. So you can sort of see, confounds it in that way. One of the other things I found really interesting as well in the early days was when you saw those people who had been hoarding suddenly became public enemies. So there was this guy in the... I can't remember what state it was.

This guy drove around and bought all of the hand sanitising in one state in the US. Somewhere in Florida, I think. Yeah, I think it might be Florida. And he basically went and tried to sell it on eBay, and eBay banned it. And so he went to the press saying, look at how unfortunate I am. And I can only assume that he was thinking, you know, look, I'm actually doing what you're supposed to do, be entrepreneurial, et cetera.

And then all of a sudden he was a figure of hate, do you know what I mean? And I think it reveals that like, like, E.P. Thompson. It's like the riots as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But basically what I'm trying to say is that like underneath a market economy, there's this sort of like nascent moral economy that functions. And E.P. Thompson talks about this about how. how when market economies first got introduced, they rubbed up against this moral economy,

which was, you know, that people should respect people, and people should get what they want, you know, and it's all based on, like, what the expectations of a society are. You know, and he was using that to explain,

like, all these sorts of food riots that you had in the 17th century, etc., which were highly moral. So basically people would, like, raid a big grain of, a big grain store, take it all,

sell it at what they thought the moral price, was rather than the market price and give the moral price money back, etc. And you can sort of see that that, you know, the moral economy does emerge in these sorts of moments. And but yeah, but also like, I mean, we should we should reference here the excellent article by Craig Gent on Navarra about logistics and the individualisation of blame around supermarkets. So that's not that's not exactly what we were talking about because what

you were talking about from my understanding, Keir, was about someone taking sort of capitalist values to their logical conclusion by being an entrepreneur. But related to that is the way in the UK, and the government jumped on this bandwagon as well, or started it, as did the right-wing press, this idea of like pointing fingers at people and saying that they're a stockpiling for going basically because everyone did a weekly shop. Like some people did, you know, by ridiculous amounts of loo roll, but basically everyone went for a weekly shop at the same time. And from my understanding, like the way that the logistics system works with supermarkets, it's, it's, it, you can't do that. You, it doesn't, the system cannot support

basically, and it calls it a run on the shops, but that's not what's happening. It is just in time logistics. So that's a really good article to read and like why. And obviously like the politics around the individualization that the, that you're. pointing the fingers at people, rather than asking why can't supermarkets supply this amount of food? Like, why are there empty shelves? Like, we should be demanding full shelves because there isn't an actual problem on the, on the umbrella level of supply. That's not very well articulated by me, but read the article and it makes more sense. No, no, it is well articulated and it is really crucial because it comes back to this issue of the, you know, people of living in a culture with or without kind of

simultaneous time, because the shift to just in time ordering is the absolutely fundamental mechanism of the shift from Fordism to post-Fordism, and the shift from, you know, the form of capitalism that prevailed in the middle decade of the 20th century, up to the late 20th century, which was based on kind of mass production and mass culture, but also was the context within which it became possible for the Labour movement to, you know, demand, you know, historically unprecedented reforms. The shift from that to a culture in which basically people live, production, distribution, retail, all go on in much more complex distributed networks in which corporations disaggregate into multiple kind of companies doing specialist jobs

and ultimately into sets of short-term contracts with employees rather than sort of long-term jobs for life and protected careers. All of that is basically that's the infrastructure that produces the whole culture of sort of post-modernity of the kind of fragmented sense of culture. And it creates all kinds of opportunities. for people to live in a much less conformist culture than the, you know, say the culture of the 50s, but also one of its absolutely characteristic features

is the breakdown of this sense of a kind of shared culture, a shared time. And indeed, in material terms, it absolutely depends on the idea that, like, rather than doing a weekly shop at the big supermarket, like, you know, you did when I was a kid still in the 70s, you are more, you know, you're supposed to just go get a few things at Texco Express, you know, every couple of days.

And if everybody suddenly starts behaving in this completely kind of uniform way, then the entire system breaks down. I mean, it's also, that's also, actually, my understanding is that that's also what, I mean, sort of that's one of the issues with the whole epidemic as such, or with an epidemic as such. It's not that, you know, most people, if they contract COVID, are only as likely to die from it as they're likely to die in that year anyway, in the coming year. But if you have all those people dying at the same time, it's going to completely, you know,

if you have too many people dying at the same time, or just getting really sick at the same time, it's going to completely break the whole system. So we inhabit a form of kind of advanced capitalism, whose whole premise is people not doing stuff at the same time. Yeah, and it's not doing stuff at the same time. Well, algorithms are slightly different. And in a way, because also I would say, and other people would say,

you know, we've been shifting over the past 10 years out of that sort of classical model of post-forwardism into something different, again, which is a sort of platform economy. And the platform economy is basically the world in which it's really, it's home deliveries and it's Amazon is basically does everything. And Amazon is the kind of logistical framework through which everything happens. So which is sort of has very strong just in time elements, but also has these elements of, you know, mass warehousing and, you know, and it's kind of instantaneous.

you know, communication and such. And I think, you know, but we're also, I think we're seeing the extent to which from all this, we're in a sort of, you know, we're not fully in sort of platform capitalism. You know, we're not actually all labels, or if we are, it retains elements of, you know, significant elements of post-forwardism,

which are being put under, which are being put under massive sort of, massive, massive strain. Well, one of the other things with platform capitalism is, it's all about offloading, or obscuring costs, isn't it, basically? So Amazon can do these, you know, overnight deliveries, really, really cheap, you know,

almost eliminating the costs of deliveries. And it can do that because it just offloads the costs onto a load of other people. And those are normally just hidden, you know. And so, like, I've been really thinking about this idea of, like, the dominant form of, like, of autonomy, the feeling that we are autonomous and free and a way of means of acting in the world

is that based on all of this hidden infrastructural work such as all these Amazon delivery people and all of these, you know, deliveroo riders, etc. And not just that, but also like a whole load of social reproductive work is always obscured or care work is always obscured. And like one of the things the pandemic's done is it's revealed all of that work. And it's also revealed the conditions under which that work's done, basically.

Yeah, totally. All of a sudden, the conditions under which people are working of all of this infrastructure work, that can be the difference between whether you get this virus and perhaps die or not, do you know what I mean? So that really incentivises you to look at it. No, but I was thinking about, like, what's the outcome of all of this? And I really think there's a crisis for the right,

for like the sort of anti-woke right. Do you know what I mean? The denialist right. And part of that is I think, what it made me think is like, the dominant form of the right, they've got a project almost diametrically opposite to us, because what is the anti-woke right is anti-consciousness raising, right?

It's about like each individual is responsible for their own, for the outcomes of their own lives, etc. There are no structural causes, there's no politics, etc. All of a sudden that's not sustainable anymore. Like it's quite obvious our lives rely on the actions of all these other people. Do you know what I mean? And like the fact that they've got no sick pain means that we're, a really, really vulnerable all of a second.

That's one of the ways I've been trying to think this out. And so that means, you know, our project, which in some part is about, like, you know, trying to think about all of the structural causes and constraints of our lives, that suddenly becomes important. But the things that, I mean, you're completely right. The things that have been made visible just in the last two weeks are just, it's just incredible. And, you know, like I probably said at some point, I said at the beginning of my public service announcement,

that I'm probably going to write a piece on the communication of this and the problem the problem that the government's had with being able to do basically plain speaking and what it reveals about their politics and I mean even if we go back to you know we know that London is a hot spot

Greater London there's lots of commuting in and out there's lots of overcrowding there's lots of moving around and it took what I mean it still is unclear to people like, not unclear to people, sorry, the government is still saying stay at home

unless you're a key worker and there's loads of people who think, well, if I don't go to work, my family's not going to have enough food to eat. And what it's revealed is it's revealed the extent at which this kind of top-down assumption that just because you say something it means that it will kind of solve

the intrinsic social relations and economic relations that exist because people will understand somehow the understanding of the magnitude of the problem, i.e., people are going to die and you need to keep away from other people, is going to trump their need to earn a living. So you've got this situation on the London Underground

where I think it's something crazy, like a third of all workers, as in who drivers and stations staff, are either ill or at home, isolating or taking care of someone. So literally we don't have enough trains to run. So what you've got is a situation with a point

that was just overcrowding on the trains because people had to get to work and unless you pay those people and the government's figured this out late and it's been shown, you know, it's been obvious to us, you know, as lefties. Like, you've got to pay people if you want them to stay at home.

Like there's no other way. Anyway, I'm absolutely fascinated by this whole like stay at home, save life. thing, which I just think is. Just a point of information, Nadia. They rolled back on that. Only key workers go to work. They rolled back on it the next day.

And now it's the advice is unless, like all people go to work unless your work can be done at home, which is fucking insane. So that's why we don't have a full lockdown. It was the same in Italy where they were keeping workplaces open and 90% of all new infections were coming via workplaces. And in the end, it took, it took like Italian unions threatening to go on strike for them to roll back on that. Yeah, I mean, but even like, even that is like, there's loads of construction workers which are going to work because, yeah, anyway, this is a really, really big topic of conversation. But it's just there's something in it that's particularly interesting for me about the way that's communicated that has revealed kind of like the ideology and the relationship to the populace, if that makes sense.

yeah yeah it does and it I mean it's also I mean it is all concentrated in this idea of essential work and like what is essential work and I think it is you know I mean lots of people are saying this but it's not it is an opportunity for a real kind of raising of consciousness over the what is it isn't essential work but I mean what so what did we think of the the applause for the NHS so I mean people out for people listening outside the country there was a big there was an event a couple of days ago when I don't know where it came from actually it just circulated through social media it was agreed that people would like stand at their door steps and applaud workers in the

National Health Service and other kind of care services for their work and it what you know in a lot of places it really happened it was really effective like the whole kind of street erupted into applause and but in the UK it was an official government uh was there I didn't I know they jumped on the bandwagon yeah yeah yeah okay but that because it was a much more spontaneous thing from civil society because it started off in I think it was a space and then in Italy, actually. Very really. Yeah.

But then, and here it was much more linked to. And so in Spain, Italy, it was, it had an element of, you know, the government isn't doing enough. You know what I mean? Whereas, yeah. So I felt a bit. I'm not sure I agree with you, Keir. This was, this was, it was jumped on by the government who said that they supported it.

And going back to, to answer Jeremy's question, but also to say why I, I kind of disagree with what you're saying. here there is that the the okay I'm trying to find a way of formulating it so okay normally when people's my I have an

instinctive emotional reaction when people say things like celebrate our workers in the NHS like clap for our workers let's go on a march to support the NHS when the NHS is structurally being torn apart and deliberately underfunded

and understaffunded and understarch And the response by, you know, some unions and organizations and the press, including the right wing press, is let's clap for these people while, you know, they're being worked to, in a ridiculous way and people are becoming ill. And the system is falling apart. I have a reaction to that, which is that fuck that, honestly. Like, if people want to, if people want to support the NHS, then I don't want to see that kind of tokenism. So that's normally how I respond to that sort of thing. things like things going around on Facebook or whatever about like how amazing our nurses are while like you know they're having to work triple shifts and whatever so that's my normal reaction in this case I saw it and I kind of thought the same the same way but I really kind of was emotionally moved by the fact that this is a monumental point in history and so I was on my online choir at the time we're doing online choir at the moment in as opposed to like actually

meeting each other, as I'm sure a lot of people are doing with their activities. And, you know, like I live in a suburban conservative small sea kind of area. I had just organized my street, got an email list, but I hadn't put anything on there about anything to do with this. And we interrupted the choir because everybody wanted to go outside and see what was going on. And I went outside my window absolutely thinking nothing is going to happen. And I saw my neighbours come out and say, thing's going to happen and then suddenly half of the street came out with pots and pans.

And for me, I, this, that will be a moment, which is, which will stay with me for a really long time. Because if my street can come out and do something collective and recognize themselves in each other, then we have massive hope. So that's my really long-winded answer on that. And that was and I do think that people are pissed off with the government I don't agree that that people are coming out and doing that action because Boris Johnson said that I don't think that's true

no I felt a little bit ambiguous about it the actual experience of it was great really really great and I'm really really happy that you have this spontaneous outpour and I mean no fireworks would have been set off on my end people really really were into it it, you know.

You know, and I much, I much prefer that to happen around the NHS than, you know, clap our troops or something like that. Oh, God, yeah. Yes, and I, you know, but the thing it brought up for me, though, was, like, so you've got this thing, you've got this sort of half an urge of thinking, this is just great, like, basically, people have obviously in a state of really, really worried, and it's coming out for a collective celebration of the NHS, which is the most socialist institution. still the most socialist institution, you know, in the country, you know, if not in

bloody Western Europe. So that is just like a dream come true. But the other half of it, of course, is that everyone's thinking, okay, yeah, well, why did fucking 48% of your vote Tory then, you're thick bastards? But, like, which leads me to, like, this idea of, like, I want to just know what a cosmic coincidence it was that both Corbyn and Sanders. those projects end in terms of Sanders

it ends like a week before this pandemic comes along which basically proves everything Sanders has been arguing right do you know what I mean I'm so happy Corbin didn't win the election I never thought I'd say that

but you know I just think I'm really happy that it's the Tories that are having to deal with this and exposing all of their values and I'm not sure I believe Karma, but I just want to say, Boris, karma's a bitch, mate. This is not how you saw your reign over us pan out, and it's exposing a lot to, you know, non-political people.

You know, the Tories are on 53% support, actually, at polls in a minute. That won't last. It's not, it's more of an effect of the fact that people want to pull together in a really uncertain situation. And, like, we don't know, you know, by the time things really hit the fan. I think that will change but I think there's a real danger I mean I think there's a real danger for the

there's a real danger for us in that the Tories do that I mean the Tory I mean you know Johnson I think doesn't have any ideology and it's going to be quite happy to implement a large part of you know what would have been Corbyn's program and take the credit for it and just reinvent the Conservative Party as a sort of economically

slightly centre left you know sort of paternalist authoritarian institution. I mean, and it's not just now. I mean, a number of people, you know, a number of people were sort of anticipating that that was quite

likely what he was going to do, sort of months ago. And I think that is a real, I think that's a real danger for us. I mean, I think that definitely is where they, I mean, actually, no, it's none of that is definite at all. That could be what happened. That could take a relatively benign, but very frustrating form that

they basically implement a kind of new rounds of, you know, decades of initiate a new round of decades of or Keynesian or quasi-Kinzian sort of welfare capitalism but is relatively socially liberal but also highly technocratic and there's just no real kind of

you know there's just no way of even getting any purchase from a kind of democratic left perspective that could happen could take much more nasty kind of authoritarian kind of racist like you know quasi-fascist form or of course it could well be I mean they're already under pressure from sections of capital to say that once the crisis is over it's going to initiate

and even worse, like, epoch of austerity. I just think, I think you could go in lots of different directions, couldn't it? So I don't know whether I'm glad, but I don't know, we don't know right now whether I'm, you know, I'm glad they've got to deal with it or not. Just a minor point on, are you done, Jeremy? Sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just a minor point on something that Keir said, just for the record,

I don't agree with calling people stupid because they voted Tory. I kind of know why people voted Tory and people vote Tory for all sorts of reasons. So even though I hate that that happens, I fundamentally believe that the vast majority of people don't know about the NHS, how the NHS is being dismantled and they don't believe that the Tories would ever take away the NHS. So in terms of like the vote in the last election

and there's all sorts of different reasons why. And I think we discussed some of them in the come down. So I just want to say that from, myself for the record. We've got 15 minutes left. What do we want to talk about? Do we want to talk about some of the economic stuff? Or do we want to talk about, like, what to do under lockdown? Or do we want to do that in a completely different episode, guys? What are you feels? I'd quite like to insult the electorate a bit more. Go on.

I said, I'd quite like to insult the electorate a little bit more. Go on, then. No, I'm joking. I'm joking. Well, the economic stuff, can we just refer people to the Navarra episode, with James and James and Butler and James Meadway talking because we're not really going to add much to that. I don't think. Let's talk about, let's talk about, you know, the experience.

I mean, I'll make the one political point that I think we're going to find ourselves within the next six months having to decide, like, as a left, as a country, to some extent, if we're going to have to take for a general strike or not, because I think we're going to be, we are going to find ourselves in a situation where the, um, they are, I mean, whatever happens they are going to try to find some way of like passing on the cost of the crisis and they are going to and they're not going to do what they should do after all this which is double

nurses wages and I think I mean nurses and the concern for nurses is a really interesting example you know it's a point I'm always making to students it's very hard to find any member of the public and any from whatever their supposed political affiliation who doesn't agree with the statement that it is shocking that nurses are paid so much less than like people were working in banks, you know, people working for banks in the city or whatever. And, you know, there's, you know, you get maybe 5% of the population who would actually give some bullshit kind of market logic. You know, that's just how it works. You know, justification for that. Like, most people think it's, recognize it as indeed, it's morally obscene. And I think, you know,

I mean, we're going to have to come out of this crisis with a set of demands from the left that we try and make. Yeah, and I think, you know, some of them are going to have to be general and structural and some of them are going to have to be symbolic and some of them are going to have to pivot between the two but yeah and one of them which might be largely symbolic is I think should be just a doubling of nurses wages I mean we should just and I think there should say

that general strike if there is not a doubling of nurses wages in the NHS because it is just appalling. I can't believe that you Jeremy who's like who's like more of a hippie I think than me is basically saying general strike and it's making me wince and it's like it's making me question I'm like

why why am I why is it's just my idea of like I just feel like that's such a trotty thing to say but you might be right Britney Spears called for a general strike the other days yeah well I think it would be interesting to talk about

like what does the left do in this situation because a general strike would be great but like you know basically that is what the economy actually really needs us to go on general strike that's what the lockdown is yeah no we we can't do much until they start to remobilise the economy.

That's why I think. I mean, James Medway's point, which is a good one, and there was a big article by someone else in the FT about this, is that, look, what makes this a relatively unique crisis, is that the entire economy is having to be demobilized. And all we can do now is prepare for it, which we are doing with podcasts and reading groups, and, you know, the world transformed

is going to be doing loads of free courses and stuff online. So, you know, watch out for that. But I think it's an interesting thing, though, Because if we go back to like why a nurse is paid so little, why they're so undervalued, ultimately that comes down to the fact that it's incredibly hard for people in those sort of caring positions to strike. Right?

If you do care work... Yeah, that's why you have to have sympathy strikes. That's why historically, historically, you're removing the right to strike, the right for sympathy strikes in the 70s, you know, was a real, you know, it was an attack on, you know, the ability of workers in less vulnerable workers

to defend people like nurse. yeah but that's one of the things I think one of like our current condition right is so basically what we're all sort of like unable to get together physically and we're trying to work out at the moment how we organise in that sort of situation where we're all sort of isolated but like that is the general that is the general that our experience now is basically just an acceleration of the general direction of travel anyway which is like it's really hard to get in the way we live our lives it's really hard to get a load of people in a room together especially if you live in London oh god not more meetings. Yeah. No, but that is, you know, or basically, like, you know, we should be using this time to work out how you do things like political education,

how you do things such as, you know, organize ourselves when we are, when it's difficult to be co-present together. Do you know what I mean? But also it's about being, but how do we stay sane as human beings? Sorry to interrupt you, Keir, but I think there's this tendency on the level,

for people to think about themselves as left political actors rather than also like you are also a human being who is subject to the effects that this extraordinary moment is going to have on your mind and your body, including the pressure cooker situation of people living with other people. It's just going to be more intense because if you like the people you live with, you know, you're in a really lucky situation. there are people who are going to be living inside a house stuck inside with loads of people that they don't particularly like or that there are issues. You know, the rise don't even get me started on the rise in domestic violence. So sorry to move away from the point, but like as leftists, like people just need to also be like a little bit reflective

and curious in this moment, like as individuals and towards other people or else we're all going to mentally go nuts. and we need to not be nuts for the future. No, no, but that's the whole point. It's like, how do we basically, like, how do we start from these shared experiences and, you know, the pressures that are under and, you know, not just, like,

I don't think it's separate to do, to thinking about politics and that. You know, we have to start with those moments. And like, you know, so basically, how do you do consciousness raising when you're not all in the same room, you know? How do, that's what political education is. political education is, let's try to understand how we've ended up in this situation and how

we can get out of it. Do you know what I mean? I don't think it's a, I don't think that there's life over here and then politics over there. I think they're related and we need to make them more interrelated. Well, what do you think now? What can we be doing to help ourselves or other people stay sane in there? Well, I think, I mean, I think basically we're all in agreement, even though like it sounds like we're not from my tone of voice. But it's, so So yes, I think of course they're related because, you know, something that we're interested in this, in this show and the stuff that we talk about. And, you know, our kind of like our politics is about, you know, affect, etc. But I don't think that a lot of people on the left behave as if that's the case, even if they ideologically agree with us. So what I mean by that is like people need to take the time to sort out their household. situation and to have conversations about the rules

and regulations of how they're going to behave towards each other, to give each other space, but also solidarity over what might be I'm not joking, we might be here till next spring. So the situation might be that you're thinking about how am I

going to survive? Like, what, how am I going to treat other people and what do I expect and what are my needs and how can I negotiate that with the immediate group of people I live in live with whether they're like my family or housemates or whatever we have to start from that point because there's only there's only so much time where you'll be able to escape online talking to your comrades when something is going to go wrong in the immediate

vicinity that you live in and you won't be able to physically escape because we're not allowed to we have to spend most of our times indoors and I know people don't like authority that listen to this show I'm sure but I'm sorry I'll be bad cop like we need to be staying indoors for the vast majority of time so so that's the things that I would I would urge people to sort out like you know if you live like if yeah what how are you going to sort out your household arrangements like when are you going to have your movie nights when are you going to be quiet when when who's going to do what rota on what now and then the policy the the the high level politics comes later That's how I'm thinking about it.

I mean, obviously, I'm spending time with the person I like the most, which is myself. So I'm in a pretty good situation, you know. I mean, it's going to be hard for me. Don't get me wrong. It's going to be hard for me because I can't see any other human being. But we have to play a really long game emotionally with this. Because I do not trust that we're going to be out of this in a few weeks. I can't get away from myself.

It keeps following me around. It's a fucking... yeah i do well i yeah obviously i agree with i guess you know i mean i'm i'm at home with my partner and two kids so we've sort of been thought we have to we have we've had to do that there's been no choice for it to work out a sort of system and work out what we're doing and i guess i guess also the the other advice i mean the general advice is our usual i mean usually the the stuff people are going to need to do is stuff that we we normally advocate isn't it you know a bit of exercise a bit meditation if you're up for that you know music i think you know i'm listening to a lot of ambient

music personally um i think you know use i think the you i think it's a good to reflect on how people are using how one uses social media i think i mean i think it can be really useful yeah i think i've had a lot of fun just kind of joking around with people on twitter and not you know nobody's bothering doing arguments because everybody's just kind of treating the situation ironically but you know but that's a kind of help you know there are good and bad ways to use it and you need to be careful i'm not sure um i'm not sure uh you know not sure what else to add really but i think it's sure as well i mean the nature i was going to say the little bits of nature that we can get like approaching you know this is going to sound even more hippish than the

stuff that jeremy says but like approaching i've said the word curiosity three times already in this in this edition but honestly I think like the birds know in my garden like I'm an avid bird watcher but honestly it's so interesting

how the wildlife is responding I mean I don't know enough about pollution indexes I mean obviously the pollution that's a whole other issue has dropped but but it just feels a bit like it's like nature

is having its time away from us and the stuff that I've observed just in my garden and the fact that it's in spring and I've wrote about this in my blog post like please don't miss spring because you're staring at a computer like take it in and and yeah just just just allow yourself to like revel in the the little bits of nature that you can get from your walk or your garden or out your window or whatever and you know if you're in a city I mean the quietness the change to the sonic kind of landscape is pretty extraordinary and it's sort of fantastic actually

I don't know if anyone saw the other day but Venus was incredibly bright in the sky. Yeah, I did see that. Before I'd worked out, well I'd sort of worked out it was Venus but before I realized it was a widespread thing I was thinking what could it possibly be that there's less light pollution? I don't think that's true

but it just seemed as though everything had shut down and you could all of a sudden you know you have this huge huge planet in the sky etc they're presumably I don't know maybe the most street, most light pollution is from streetlights but I guess there's places where lots of like

pubs and stuff are shut down. Yeah, less cars driving about, perhaps headlights, etc. I don't know, anyway, that's speculation. Yeah, I'm also worried about people, like I'm worried about people's drinking, to be honest. I mean, I'm critical of alcohol at the best of times. You know, I don't, like, I'm not teetotal, but

I'm worried that there are people who will just, you know, they can't go to the pub, but they can't meet their friends, so they're just going to drink their way through this. And like, one of the main things that will kill your immunity is over consumption of alcohol. I know a lot of people who will listen to this show and otherwise have a high tolerance, you know, like good for you. But I'm worried about people's health and they're, you know,

even if it's not for themselves for like the pressure on the NHS, if people just start drinking like crazy and suppressing their immunity. I think logistical problems and the difficulty of shopping is going to cut down on a lot of people. Oh, the booze is, I think the booze industry is doing really well. I got a beer delivery from my local social centre. Of course you did. Well, you know, a bit of solidarity, etc. Can I just say, though, I think, I also do think that this, like, at the moment, I think,

like making sure we don't go nuts and working out how we're going to survive this is pretty important. But, like, we cannot come out at the ever end of this. We have to come out at the ever end of this. having, you know, done a lot of political work as much as we can. Because already, you know, we can see that people are lining up to dump the costs onto us. Do you know what I mean? So we need to come out of this with, you know, as much of a stronger organisation, as much of a better grip on the world.

And also just thinking about ways that you can still exercise leverage, such as rent strikes, etc., which have been mooted and how you might possibly organise those when it's much more difficult to talk to the neighbours. Yeah, and I think you're completely right. And I go back to the thing that I was talking about, about organising your own street. I just think, like, it's probably like the best bit of organizing that has followed exactly the trajectory that I hoped it would.

It's the best bit of organizing I've done in years. And I know that my street is not going to be the same afterwards. And I think there is a lot of power in that. I think Jeremy talked about this on one of the earlier, episodes when we were talking about, you know, like, just being able to be social with other people and demonstrate that people can help each other. Like, that has a profound political effect. But you're right, Kea, we have to make sure that things don't go back to normal,

which may be why we should have an episode on acid strategy boring. Both are good. Well, I think we will do that, but not today. It's time to stop. Yep. Okay, stay safe everyone Yeah, stay safe, everyone and we'll speak to you soon.

Wash your hands and stay away from other human beings. This is not a drill, this is not a joke, honestly. All right, I'm going to stop. All right, bye. This broadcast is brought to you by Navarra Media. Go to navaramedia.com slash support.