ACFM - #ACFM Trip 11: Friendship

Episode Date: June 26, 2020

Keir Milburn, Nadia Idle and Jeremy Gilbert discuss the history and theory of friendship, from Aristotle to Elland Road, while reflecting on how the podcast has impacted their relationship as a group, with music by Minutemen and Carole King. Edited and produced by Olivia Humphreys, Matt Huxley and Matt Phull. PRS LICENCE NUMBER: LE-0016481 Music: […]

Hello, you're listening to the podcast version of ACFM on Navarra Media. And on the podcast version of this show, you'll get the stimulating and mind-expanding discussion from our hosts, but you won't get the music. That's because of the way rights and licenses work in the digital age. So you're really only getting half the picture, but there is an easy way to fix that. If you head over to the Navaramedia.com website, you can stream the full show. It's easy enough just to follow the link in the description of this podcast. Otherwise, enjoy the standalone discussion in this episode of ACFM. Hello and welcome to ACFM, the home of the Weird Left. I'm Jeremy Gilbert and as usual, I'm joined today by Nadia Idle. Hello. And

Keir Milburn. Hello. And today we're going to talk about the subject of friendship. And apparently this was your idea here. So why are we talking about friendship? Well, there's two reasons we want to talk about friendship. One of them is, is that friendships are being changed at the minute because we're in lockdown because of the whole COVID pandemic and so friendships are sort of changing to go in online and stuff

which is an interesting thing to discuss but I think there's another sort of more personal reason which is quite appropriate for a topic of friendship but a more personal reason why you might want to talk about friendship is because of our friendship, that's three, our friendship which is sort of developed to a large extent through this podcast

of doing this podcast and, you know, the project of the podcast in some ways. So it's sort of an interesting thing to reflect on, you know, probably 18 months into the project. Quite a lot of their becoming friends, becoming friends, you know, online or down the wire via being recorded, you know. Obviously, we do meet up outside of just recording this podcast, but there is a big element. But rarely, yeah. Most of it has been developed online. And in public, you know, in some ways

that becoming friends has been in public through the podcast as well. Yeah, that's really interesting, yeah. Although there's a lot that gets edited out. Yeah. The disagreements and plays in rows. The secret bootlegs are available. But we slag off everyone else on the left.

But Kea, tell us a bit more about what sparked your interest in this. Or is it just that? Well, no, it's partly because I want to just reflect on it, like, you know, what's, what's, what's happened? This is all going to sound a bit soppy now. Good. I've generally, genuinely care about you too, do you know what I mean? And so it's a really good, it's a good, it's like,

it's interesting to me to reflect on the last 18 months, etc. About, like, what's gone on then? Well, why? Because I, because what's really interesting about it then, I'll put it this way, is that when we did the first podcast in Jeremy's kitchen or dining room whatever you know

we sort of knew each other a little bit but we you know perhaps me and Nadia were a bit friends but we weren't like best buddies and we weren't even sure that it would just be us to be doing the podcast or usually doing the podcast we thought there'd be a rotating sort of cast

but it's sort of like clicked do you know what I mean there was a sort of click thing going on which is sort of continued and I think that is something that that is a one way into like, well, what is friendship? Why do you become friends with people? Do you know what I mean?

Like, so there's definitely a shared project. And like shared projects are things you can get, that you develop friendships around or shared interests, et cetera, and all these sorts of things. But there is, there's something about becoming friends with people where there's some sort of compatibility, do you know what I mean? Or, yeah, some sort of compatibility which brings out certain aspects of your, the wider, the wider, I don't want to say personality, but, you know, your wider possibilities of how you act. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah. I mean, I think that's a really interesting question because I think there are people who would say, well, my friends are the people who I got to know in school. And the reason they're my friends is because we were in class together or, you know, we played football together and then we went to uni together or we still lived in the same place together. And we did certain activities together. So my friends are people that I play five-a-side football with or my friends are people who I go drinking with or my friends are people I do something with. And I think that's really interesting to talk about. And you mentioned the project.

It's like, are friends people that we do a specific kind of thing with? And I think in my experience, that's what are... There's definitely an association with that of like a larger group of people where there's been a vibe and that's definitely a sort of a catchment that I would call friends. But for me, there's a lot more about trust and care. Like my friends, my close friends are people who I can call at times of trouble

and who I have some kind of euphoric connection to. Does that make sense? I mean, maybe, I'm sure it's obviously not true of everybody, but I think there is, there's certainly a slightly, I mean, it leads to in our society. There's a slight, there's something of a tendency, I think, for this to be a bit gender. Yeah, definitely. And male friendship is often more project-based, in my experience.

It's more based around doing something, which doesn't know, I mean, there's a difference in being friends and colleagues. And, you know, so usually the project has to be something that's entirely voluntary that you all want to be doing together. And the project can be anything, indeed. It can be having a five-side football team, having a band, like playing games, you know, whatever, you know. doing a podcast. I mean, a lot of the time, people do the, do the project, like, form the band or whatever, largely because they want to do something together rather than, you know, rather than it being the other way around. But what I would say is, I don't know if it's interesting or not, but when I was growing up, when I was sort of a teenager and in my, I guess in my sort of early 20s, I had this real sort of ideal of these sort of pure intimate friendships, which, you know, sometimes girls seem to have with each other and boys didn't, but, you know, for good and bad reasons. And some, you know, some guys had with each other who'd grown up to,

whereby it was just sort of you were just sort of friends and just being friends was a thing in itself and there was a sort of sense of mutual obligation that would withstand any kind of externalities and I'll be honest like I've never really had that though partly I'd be honest I've also never really had it partly because I haven't really been single like for any length of time since I was 18 so and I think that also is a that also bears upon it because I've basically had that relationship you know with a partner which I would and I wonder to what extent like it all yeah if like always having a partner who you've got that relationship with sort of I wonder to what extent it sort of precludes forming that kind of

intimacy you know with other people I don't know and to what extent that's that's really interesting thanks for sharing about but I think it's I wonder whether that is gendered as well because I'm in two minds about that so there's one story which says that you know a a woman's relationship, you know, in terms of like heteronormative relationships, a woman's relationship with a man or whatever precludes and is more important and is like put up on a pedestal kind of by society, that it's kind of okay to let other things go by the wayside because you've got to, you know, look out for your relationship or your marriage or whatever. So there's that kind of discourse, which is a kind of mainstream discourse. On the other hand, there's also the

discourse, that it's the woman in a relationship, in again, heteronormative relationship here, that kind of holds the friendships together, that without, that she has her friends, but that, you know, if there's a divorce or a breakup or whatever, you've got this story that the guy ends up without having many friends. And I think that's interesting. I don't know to what extent it's true. But this idea that society makes it difficult for men to form friendships at an older age, at an older age, I suppose, but I guess that goes full circle to what we're saying about activities, like that can change, or society makes it easier if there are actually activities where you can get to know people. I mean, it's interesting, because we haven't

really, I'm sure we talked about this before a different context, but one of the interesting, you know, one of the things that's sort of lurking the back of a lot with what we're talking about is that it's the function of the household as well. I've always been really influenced by this kind of, you know, radical sociology from the 70s that, you know, really criticised the form of the household and the nuclear family household and said that it was just sort of calculated to break up people's familial, you know, friendship networks and it creates this kind of neurotic kind of machine of intensity,

you know, around the kind of the two, you know, the couple and the children. My friend, this song's for you, you're such a good man and you're really out to know So we're apart I think of you Maybe not every devil still I do So I wrote this song as a present So we did a call out for people who had songs That made them think about friendship

And a lot of really interesting stuff came back And there's this one song That I don't know the band I don't know maybe you guys do It's called My Friend by Babylon Circus And I really like this song It has this line in it, which is that when we're apart, I think of you. Okay, not every day, but I still do. And I find

that really entertaining. And also, I think something that is like, as it is in attention and a lot of kind of male friendships or even like in friendships that I've had where it's like you want to tell someone like how much you love them, but you just kind of want that expression to be measured as well. It's like, you really mean a lot to me, but don't think that I'm obsessed. And I think it's explained really well in those few lyrics. Another song that's got a great line in it is one that was suggested on your Twitter when you put the request out.

It was Dave Eden actually on Twitter who suggested my friend Dem by Chris Martin which is sort of reggae sort of song about friendship and all the people in the video for that are presumably all his friends but it's got its great line where it says. When we link up it's like a holiday which is like, oh that's great. sort of like you have certain friends

that, yeah, that like take you out of your everyday worries, basically, and all of a sudden you're bang, you're into this other world. It's a great line. It's a good song as well. I really enjoyed listening to it. I did think, like, those are all guys you're talking about. None of your crew are women, are they? But I still enjoyed the whole song.

Yeah, me know, this I want you have for a friend, them no, say them now sell out them one I need. And for all of the one, them, who know, say them, I have a friend for the chat. I have from a friend in, from a friend in. I have a group of friends from my master's degree in the UK. That's over 15 years ago. And we chat every day on WhatsApp.

So there's a group of 20 of us, and we are still friends. And the same goes from my uni friends in Egypt. And when you, and I think what makes it special is that when you see these people again, like even though you might not see them on a day-to-day basis or a week-to-week or month-to-month, it feels like it did, like, quote, unquote, back in the day. Yeah, it's like a time travel thing. It's like it's totally like a time travel thing. And I definitely think it makes a huge difference to your experience of life

if you have that or if you don't have that. And I don't know to what extent it depends on how society is organized and also like different cultural differences from one country or one, experience to the next. But related to that, I suppose there are some people that have always been good in a group at, you know, quote, unquote, keeping the group together. For example, that's definitely me. So I identified that we were leaving university in 2005, my master's, and I set up what was then an email list. And off the back of that email list, we are still friends as a group. And before lockdown, we see each other at least once a month, something.

people have kids, some people don't have kids. And that's like a big part of my life. And I couldn't imagine my life without, I feel like I've always, what I'm trying to say is I feel like I've, I've always been in a crew. I might not have been, always been in a relationship with one other person, but I feel like the crew is, and again, that, I'm saying again, that word this doesn't, doesn't do it justice, what I'm trying to say in English. and that's a big part of my life. I feel like I've got several crews, and it's not really about how often we see each other,

although seeing each other is sort of something that we aim to do. We'll have to do the ACFM thing and put a strict typology on cruise, scenes, gangs, etc., etc. But what do you call it? There isn't a word for it in English, which I think is the problem of saying a group of people, and it doesn't have a connotation, that is kind of either negative or young for a group of people who are middle-aged or whatever who have known each other for some time who go out together.

My wide sort of friendship group, there we are, it's not a crew or a scene, it's a group. My wife is a sort of friendship group is quite sort of much more disparate than that. And like, you know, it goes in and out. I was thinking the other day, actually, about two weeks ago, the football league would have ended and I follow Leeds United I've mentioned this before and I've got a group of friends

that's a surprise Keir but as soon as COVID-19 hit and the season got cancelled I based didn't care I thought I didn't care because it just seemed totally insignificant compared to what was going on and then on the last,

what would have been the last day of the season where I'm pretty sure a Leeds would have got promoted to the premiership I just started thinking oh God yeah what would with my group of friends in which I watch football and like you know we would have had this big it would have been one of those peak moments

do you know what I mean that keeps a group together partly because we would have got horrendously drunk etc but you know you would have shared an intense experience together do you know what I mean and so that's gone and so Lee's will probably go up

and it basically won't mean the same because you won't have that intense intensity do you know what I mean but then I was thinking about when you were talking about how the real continuity in your friendship group. I think, I've got sort of like my, my, my, the people I think of as my friends and who are like, you know, close friends to me, they sort of, it's much more, it comes and goes a bit, I think.

And I think I tend to, um, orient myself to the people who bring out something in me or, in fact, it's something like, I like the way I am when I'm around them. Do you know what I mean? Yes. Yes. I know exactly what you mean. I've got a friend in mind who basically I've known since I was sort of, you know, 18. And, you know, he's lived in different parts of the world. We may not see each other for a long, long time, etc. But it's that time travel thing, Nadia, where we're exactly the same. And I could not be any other way than the way I am with him all of a sudden. Do you know what I mean? It's a certain level of, like, sillyness. Do you know what I mean? It's something like that, which is a, yeah. And so different people bring out different things in you, I think. And then you notice something you think, oh, I really enjoy it the way I am. I'm around that person. So you tend to orient yourself towards that. Yeah, yeah, totally. And I think, so I think from what we're saying,

there seems to be kind of three different aspects of friendship. There's the people who you got to know because you've done some kind of like activity with and or you enjoy doing that thing with them. There's the people who bring, who you're conscious that it brings out something in you and you like being yourself around them and you miss yourself around that person.

and you know that it can't really exist except in that kind of dialogue. And then there's the other thing which we haven't really talked about that much, which is the people that give you something that you need. So the people that you go to, that when you need to lean on someone, when you need to take someone's opinion on something,

the people who've seen you in... Your confidants. Your confidants. But also the people who've seen you, there's a big trust thing there for me. The people who've seen you at your best, at your worst, at your lowest, at your strongest, the people who validate yourself back to you in conversation

and who you know will have your back. To me, that's a really, really big thing. Those are my closest friends. And I couldn't imagine living without them. I would really like us to. to play Carol Kings, you've got a friend. When you're down and troubled, and you need some love and care

and nothing, nothing is going right. I mean, that whole album, tapestry, which I was amazed to see that John McDonald, voted as like one of his favorite four albums of all time on Twitter like a few weeks ago, whatever. But that Carol King album tapestry is is incredible. And I think for me it holds a specific importance because my mom used to sing a lot of Carol King around the house and I was growing up. So I kind of, I've got that kind of memory of the early 80s of it. But this specific

song you've got a friend is just, it's such a sweet song. But also I think the way it's composed in the chord progression is just lovely and brings about all sorts of really nice feels, really. It's a theme and a question in, like, in philosophy, like, going all the way back. So there's this famous quote from Aristotle where he said, oh, my friend, there is no friend, or, you know, obviously there's different ways of translating it from the Greek, and I don't speak Greek. And like Derrida in the 90s wrote a whole book called The Politics of Friendship,

really just look basically examining the different interpretations over the centuries people have tried to make of this statement like oh my friends there is no friend and nobody really knows what it what he meant by it and you know but it always seems to sort of it seems to sort of gesture towards the idea that indeed there's some sort of ideal in the idea there's a sort of ideal of friendship and a kind of perfect reciprocity and ongoing intimacy which is just sort of unrealizable in reality and I never you know is sort of always bound to disappoint and the question of friendship comes up again it keeps coming up I think this is sort of casual you know a bit of history but I think I think it comes up it comes up a lot in the renaissance

the question of friendship in sort of renaissance like Italian philosophy and such and it seems to me it's pretty much it's something that tends to crop up a lot whenever basically when people are living in cities and you're meeting you're meeting different people and people forming relationships that aren't just with their immediate, the small group of neighbours in their village or with their family or with their lord or their employer or what have you. And the whole question of what is the basis for the friendship? Like how much can you expect out of it? How much should you expect out of it? What starts to become something people really sort of fret about and try and formulate sort of relationship surrounding it. And it's interesting, it's one of

those things which is always, almost always sort of gendered in, to some extent. And Derrida's book, I mean, one of the points of Derrida's book is to sort of criticise a sort of androcentric history, a sort of man-centered history or a history which uses the image of fraternity, like the band of brothers as a way of kind of imagining ideal forms of friendship, because it has obviously sort of militaristic connotations and, you know, sexist connotations. You know, I mean, one of the kind of figures of fraternity that he's sort of critical of is the ideal of the French revolutionary ideal of fraternity. And it seemed to, it always seemed to, you know, there's always been an obvious defense of that that we sort of mentioned last time that, you know, they're using a kind of unfortunately gendered language. But really, they're talking about an ideal of solidarity.

And, you know, Derrida being Derrida, he's really not interested in concepts like solidarity. And I think that is, and an obvious counter position to that is J. new book about the idea of the comrade and Jodie's book is all about wanting to basically, I mean, so she's wanting to reclaim the idea of the comrade and comradeship, but she's not, she's not really talking about it in relationship to the idea of friendship, although I think it is interesting for us to think about that. She's talking, she's talking about the idea of the comrade as distinct from the ally. The idea of the ally, yeah, exactly.

And she makes an extremely, to me I mind, an extremely persuasive argument that the whole problem with the current kind of identity politics idea of allyship that, you know, white people as allies to black people in anti-racism or, you know, men as allies to women in the struggle against misogyny and sexism is that that formulation overlooks the extent to which doesn't take account of the extent to which actually those people should be engaged in a common struggle. So it's not just women struggling for their emancipation and men supporting them from the sidelines

is the fact that on some level, you know, men also have an vested interest in dismantling patriarchy and that we should all be seen as comrades in that struggle. And it's, you know, it's persuasive. And also the relationship between comradeship and friendship in the left tradition is obviously, you know, very close and very important. And I do sort of feel like, I would say,

if I'm honest in my own life, actually, there is a difference between my effective relationship. and my sense of friendship with people who I'm sort of mates with or even sort of quasi-family with but who I'm not sure they're really comrades. I'm not sure they're that they're not, I'm not friends with anyone who's like on the right politically but people who I think are not that bothered.

You know, come the revolution, they'll probably stay home and not really get involved. You know, I feel a different kind of relationship to them to the people who I think of, you know, you know, when the barricades go up, they'll be out there fighting with us, you know. And I, even though, I don't think that was ever going to happen in a country like Britain.

I know, what do you think about that? I guess my feelings about comradeship go up and down depending on whether I feel like people are behaving in a comradly fashion or not. So when I think that people who I don't know very well who I expect to be my comrades have acted in an uncomradly way and I guess we have that concept of what it is to act in a comradly and uncommerdly way, which I guess is a more solid concept than, again, there's more terminology around this than there is for friendship.

So if people have behaved, or a group of people have behaved in an uncommeredly way, then I tend to get down, I feel down on comradeship. And, like, I doubt whether it can really exist. And I doubt whether that trust is there because of the shared project or not. So that's my specific feelings about that. I do think they're different. What would you do if I say how to tune? Well, you stand up and walk out on me.

Let me, oh, ears and I'll sing your song. I'm assuming that, with a little help from my friends, is originally Joe Cocker. Oh, no, it's the Beatles. Is it originally the Beatles? It's a cover of the Beatles. So when did the Beatles? Beatles recorded it in 67.

To me, the 1960, like the 1969, and it's only that one that I like, It's the 1969 recording of with a little help from my friends in Woodstock, which I like the sound of. And I find it really like really euphoric, like the guitar progression. I just love that version. Well, it is really interesting because it's sort of a ditty on them. I mean, like a lot of those late Bittal songs,

it's a sort of ditty really on Sergeant Peppers. And Joe Cocker makes it as much more serious. serious and sort of impassioned statement a sort of which in a way is I'm sure it's partly it just suits the shifting mood of the times doesn't it I mean it's 67 you know everything's great social democracy is going to last forever you know by 69 it's already apparent that things that you know

people are going to need their friends given what's coming down the road that's how I've always understood that that's an interesting way of looking at it I think it might be useful to get into Jodie Dean's concept of a comrade a little bit more because I think it opens up some interesting because there is a bit in her book where she does contrast comrades with friends and says something like, you don't have to be my friend to be a comrade,

basically, you don't have to like something to be a comrade, you don't have to be friends with them. Yeah, I agree. And like her thing with friends is it's like friendship is based on a specificity, you know. I think she quotes Derrida. actually. And it's like a singular thing. Do you know what I mean? Compatible people come together and then they make, you know, something special and specific out of it. And there is a big history on the left of like politics based on friendship networks, which is like the whole

affinity group thing. Do you know what I mean? Actually, that's probably worth in talking about a little bit. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Because the term affinity group gets event in their late 60s by this guy, Ben Moreau, who was in a group which at one point was called up against the all motherfuckers because I'm the best name for a political group or the worst name for a political group

I'm quite excited and they called themselves a street gang with an analysis and it's very specific to that late 60s sort of weather underground

sort of weird sort of scene but he so he started calling themselves talking about affinity groups but he got it from talking with Murray Buchin who's like this big anarchist theorist

the minute the Kurdish movement in And Rojava, is that? Rojave is that? Yeah, yeah, sorry, Rojave. It'd be really into Murray Buching. But anyway, so Murray Buchan had looked at how the Spanish anarchists had organized in the late 19, 30th, 20th century.

And it was all based around sort of friendship groups, probably like, you know, neighborhood, sort of friendship groups. And so he called them affinity groups. And then it got named. And then it has gone on to be, like, the main form of organization in certain movements. To some degree, probably it was one of the main forms of organization in the sort of all to globalization movement, some sort of level. In Enda Gelenda, definitely, in the environmental movement. Yeah, well, yeah, in Germany, it was like, there's this huge long, like, from the 70s, in fact, from the 60s, I think, for, like, anti-nuclear movement,

which is, in which that's been the sort of main form of, when they blockade in trains carrying nuclear waste and all this sort of stuff, like, you know, that's been a main form of organisation and, like, organised protests of, like, you know, 20, 30,000 and so forth. And what are the characteristics of an affinity group? Well, I mean, they, I mean, they're in the name. It's people who have affinity with each other. It's a unit of movement, isn't it?

It's a unit of movement. So it's the unit that acts within towards an action or whatever. So if you're planning, my understanding is if you're planning a demo or you're planning an action, then it's, and this is very simplistic. It's affinity groups are the lowest common denominator. and that's because it's the value that's understood of the trust and the bonds that exist because of the friendship in being able to move together.

Yeah. Basically, there's a whole structure of organisation based around it. So if affinity group would be a small group of, I don't know, like between five, six, up to like 15 people. Normally people who know each other very well, quite often friendship groups, and they would operate together and, you know, join up with other affinity groups. So there's a whole sort of form of organisation that gets formed on that.

So I've been in these things called spokes council meetings where basically a representative of the affinity group sit in the middle, in a big circle, and then the rest of the people in the affinity group sit behind them and feed them bits of what they think they should do, etc. Sounds like the Masons. It probably is. I've seen it work, though.

I think the thing is, because the problem with any politics-based, on friendship is like well hang on that's not going to scale i have seen it scale to a certain level interesting right um you know so coordinating between several thousand people and but like i think you need very specific context for that basically you know a fairly politicized crowd and like an you know an object which is set in in in advance like but there's still a problem of scaling is that like like you which uh yeah yeah which gets us into stuff like like you want to you've got shared interest with people who you don't know, basically. You know, that's a, that's a, you know, that's a level of scale, which, which if you start

from an affinity group, I don't think you can get to that. So Jody Deans, but when she's, because I think that makes a nice contrast, because she sort of says, like, oh, well, if she doesn't say this, but she could say, if affinity groups are based on, like, the specificity of people who know each other, comrade is a complete opposite. It's like, it is not about specificity. It's about sameness. And it's like the sameness of being on the, on the same side of a concept. conflict. Do you know what I mean? In fact, you'd probably say like the sameness and equality because like you're heading towards the same horizon, which is a communist horizon sort of thing. And so like, so there's a tension then between this like the specificity of friendship and like the sameness. And she even talks about generic. A comrade is generic. They can be swapped out or whatever. Like this gets to somewhere quite, quite dodgy, I think. But there's, the last thing she sort of says in.

this sort of bit about the friendship is, like, one of the things with, like, anybody can be a comrade, but not everybody can be a comrade. Do you know what I mean? So it's not that thing of, like, the brotherhood of man or something. I mean, again, I think this is something that I, I can't stress enough, like, and even for our listeners, there will be, like, loads of our listeners who don't operate in the sphere where we even use the word comrade at all. Like, for us, it's standard, for me, it's only standard since I joined Plan C. It was really, really weird beforehand. I'd never heard it. Like in all of my time working on the left and I had worked on the left, no one had seriously had that kind of used that terminology. But I found it

really interesting the way it's been used and the way like we come across it in our circle. So somebody would be like blah, blah, blah, so and so. And then somebody would say, oh, I thought they thought this or I thought what they said was a bit dodger or whatever. And then somebody else would respond and say, don't worry, they're a comrade. And by calling someone a comment, By a comrade telling you that somebody else is a comrade, it kind of, there's a real level of trust there of going, of understanding like where the boundaries of your circles are. But it's kind of like how do you expand in terms of like doing politics, like how do you expand your sphere of association? And one way that we do that and by bringing people in and out without actually being introduced to someone through, you know, going to the pub with them or an activity or things of friendship.

It's through somebody you trust saying that they're a comrade. See, that's not what Jody Dean, but she would say that's not right. Okay. Because, yeah, because her thing is, well, I can't quite work it out because one of my problems with it is becoming a comrade seems to be something that you commit to. You sort of say you're a comrade and then you become a comrade. In fact, it's probably something, comradeship is probably something that needs to be built, I think in reality.

And the whole sameness thing from her argument, like basically, I think it relates to a different era where sameness was the property of, you know, the Fordist era where sameness was the property of how we lived. You knew which side you were on because you might work in the same factory. Well, I think J.D. would say that the sameness comes from the fact that we all have a common class interest.

And we all, so, you know, we're all part of the proletariat. I mean, there's several things going on in that book about comradeship, but I do really recommend. So there's partly this, the critique of identity politics, adyship and the suggestion of the notion of comrade is a better idea, which completely resonates with me. There's, but there's also her wider, there's also fitting that argument into her much more sustained political

and theoretical project over multiple books, which is about basically defending a very classical idea for basically the Leninist party and her insistence that you know you can only really be a comrade by joining the party and joining the parties I mean but that's where it gets dodgy though because no that commitment is the point

the point of being a comrade is that it's about getting the discipline that you need if you're going to transform the world basically it's about trying to find discipline again right and I think that's a really interesting thing of like where do you find the discipline because lots of examples in that book are like drawn for

from like completely different societies to the one we live in now where you had this faith that you were going in a certain direction and that would allow discipline. But as soon as the discipline is then, and comradeship is sort of reduced a little bit to people in the same party, well that just sets up, you know, the loyalty of comrade sets up all of this terrible behaviour that's happened, you know, historically in the 20th century

and today in political parties of all of this covering up. Do you know what I mean? It's interesting to think about it. It would be interesting to think about that. that. If we think about the actual concrete historical experience that we've all lived through, the sort of experience of Corbinism and the kind of moments of the 2015 to 2020, because, yeah, definitely a sense of a much broader sort of sense of comradeship across many different kind of, you know, groups and people from the left did emerge out of that.

You know, it created a sense of, you know, I mean, my, I mean, really for me, in some sense, the most important aspect of the whole experience was people who had been in, in very different little niche bits of the left before or in no bit of the left at all, coming together around a sort of common project. And on a certain level, I think J.D.'s analysis works very well, that there was this sense of sameness, the sense that, okay, it didn't really matter now

that you were a Trotskyist or a tankie or an anarcho syndicist or you'd been in the sort of soft left or a green, that we were all now, we were all going to join the Labour Party, and indeed it did, to some extent, require that the party. We were all going to join the party. we were all going to support Jeremy, we were all against both the people in the party trying to sabotage him, and we were against the Tories.

So that, and that was sort of fantastic. But I think, I mean, implicit, I think what you're getting at Keir is that, well, you know, the sort of Lacanian, almost sort of Baduian kind of framework for Jodi would say that, well, there's this sort of, there is this sort of, you know, at an abstract level, there's some sort of definitive moment at which you make the commitment, like you are now part of this thing.

and you've subjected yourself to a certain kind of discipline. And the point you would be making is that from our sort of Delisian perspective and Qutarian perspective, actually what's going on is a set of molecular processes whereby these relationships build up, you know, comradeship emerges, you know, as a sort of emergent property of the effective relationships of the people who are struggling together and working together that it isn't the result of a kind of singular moment of decision. But I think sort of both things are true. I agree. I think both things are true.

Both things are true at the same time. There is, you know, there is a moment where you decide you're either for it or against it, you know. I recognise the whole generic thing as well from like when you go canvassing and you just jump in a car with people you don't know. Exactly. Like, it's not the specificities, is it? But then when you're going round, you're chatting and you're getting on. And yeah, okay, okay. But also, I mean, it's like, I can't remember which episode it was that I was just like, I just think, you know, Jezzo and John

McDonald are solid comrades. I don't know them. I'd love to have a cup of tea with both of them or go to the pub, but I feel like they are my comrades, right? And that there is that there's also like a flattening of it as well. So it's not in terms of a hierarchy necessarily, but like people of different ages who have been doing different things at different points by calling them a comrade, you're expanding your field of like what the project or the struggle is as well. And I think psychologically that's also really important

is like it's knowing that, you know, that whole thing of like standing on the shoulders of giants which like always gives me goose pimples just now, just even saying it, like that you come from a trajectory and then also over space in different countries, you will also find your comrades. And the fact that, you know, with us, in terms of like our international travel or whatever.

You, if you're, you know, if you're doing like political work, you get placed or you get, you get put in contact with people who somebody else will say is a comrade. Now, they might not end up being your friend, but it expands your world as part of this project massively, and it expands the potential for you both to do work, but to build affinity, etc. So I do think both things are true.

Well, it's true. And it's also, in terms of thinking about, the specificity of our moment, you know, when I was, you know, I was in the States for a few months teaching and working and I met various people who were in DSA, a Democratic Socialist of America, who was supporting the Bernie campaign. And there was just no, there was nothing to even spell out. Everybody knew anyone who was a Corby Knight here was a, was a comrade of someone who was a supporter of Bernie in the States. And there would have been, there wouldn't really have been anything like that over the past few decades. I mean, there was, I guess, I guess, we,

could go back to say 2003 or something and say, well, everybody who was in, there were people in who were in reclaim the streets in the UK would have felt like they were sort of comrades of people in who were, you know, doing kind of, you know, anti-globalisation protest in the States. But it was on nothing like the same sort of scale, really. Yeah. Yeah, it's the scale, isn't it? It's the scale and also the... But also, and also, J.D. is right, because it wasn't, I mean, my great criticism of that whole scene in the early 2000s was always that it never got outside of a certain logic of identity and that it was basically a whole lifestyle

and a sort of, you know, that you would be assumed to be sharing with these people. Yeah, exactly, the activist. And like, if you weren't a vegan, like you wouldn't really be a comrade of the ones who were vegan. There's a lot of that still going on, though. There's a lot of that lifestyle or shit going on. Not in labour, not in labour, but under-unquote.

No, that, so, and Jody is right. I mean, it is a very powerful argument about the function of the party even, or the ideal of party in some way. I was wanted to just think about their consciousness raising group I was wanted to just think about their consciousness raising group so we've all since we've been experimenting with a group of other people from the from the world transformed

in doing Zoom-based COVID-19-based consciousness-raising where we just meet once a week and discuss how we're feeling in relation to COVID, but also a series of questions. So it sort of starts for your personal experience and then you're trying to work out the commonalities. So you're working your way up to comradeship or working your way up to recognizing you're on the same side

and recognizing the specificities of that. Do you know what I mean? Well, it is really interesting, isn't it? Because I did, well, I would, but I would say for me, the condition of possibility of the conscious raising group is that we are all already complex. Yeah, yeah. Even if we're not friends.

Yeah. And we're sort of becoming friends in a sort of, it's a sort of politicised, deliberate cultivation of friendship on some way. It's sort of what we're engaged in. And that notion of a politicised, of a deliberate cultivation of friendship, it also, that also does have a certain kind of genealogy.

It's there. I mean, I was thinking about this before. This is also, it's in more than one sort of spiritual tradition. The friend is the ideal sort of form of egalitarian relationship. I mean, friendship is the ideal form of egalitarian relationship. So the Quakers who, you know, play such an important role in the kind of English speaking world, it has a sort of, often as sort of a, you know, incubating certain kinds of radical ideas. You know, their official name is the religious society of friends. And for, and that went, it was first adopted, it was a completely radical statement because it was an explicit rejection of any kind of institutional hierarchy. And also in the Buddhist tradition, there's this notion of what's called spiritual friendship. And spiritual friendship is specifically a relationship which is different from a relationship between, like, a senior and a junior person in any form of hierarchy or, you know, sort of institution or teaching relationship. So, and the spiritual friend is the peer. It's like the notion of peer. It's like the notion of peer. peer review like in the university so and um it's really interested about the quakers because

like the politicized quaker movement was one of the the main vectors through which that sort of affinities group spokes council form of organization developed you know the way it's spread particularly in the u.s with um this group called the movement for a new society it was sort of came out of the peace movement and a quaker movement so it probably does have deep deep roots in Quaker friendship. It's true. Well, I think the idea, I think the consciousness rating, I mean, the constantness rating group for some people definitely came out,

you know, for some people in the late 60s, it was coming out of similar practices from the peace movement that came straight out of Quaker meeting. You know, because in, I mean, the Quaker form of religious, you know, experience is you're supposed to all sit in a room together and nobody even gives a speech, nobody even gives a sermon. Everybody's supposed to sort of med, you're basically in a group meditation until somebody's spontaneously moved to just stand up and speak

and then people just listen or they don't or they respond or they don't. So it is this sort of... Sounds like podcasting. I want to talk about History Lessons Part 2 by the Minutemen who were a sort of late 70s, early 80s, sort of a punk band. They were sort of into that DIY punk sort of almost punk hardcore scene but they're not particularly hardcore at all. So History Lessons Part 2 comes from an album called Double Nichols on a Dime from 1984.

And it's just a really great song about friendship. A particular friendship between two of the members of the band, Mike Watt and Dee Boone, who base it. Well, a lot of bands are sort of based around a friendship, basically, and friends egging each other on into sort of like new enthusiasms, etc. And that's exactly what this song is. you know it's basically it's a song about them getting into punk together

and learning about the world together it's got a good story well there's a good and tragic story arc to the song because there's a very good documentary called We Jam Econa about the band and in that there's Mike Watt talking about when they first met basically

and the story is that D Boone fell out of a tree and landed on top of Mike What and it's like a nice image because it's like this clash of bodies, this chance, class, you know, because I think we were sort of alluding earlier that, like, friendships can have this moment of chance on them, just, you know, you have a collision of bodies,

and, like, Mike Watt just says, like, that moment changed absolutely everything in my life, basically. Our band of Scientist Rock, but I was E. Bloom, and Richard Hell, Joe Struber, and John Doe. Me and Mike Watt playing a guitar. He falls out a tree, hits Mike Watt, and they become best friends, and it's a particular type of friendship, which is just about finding new enthusiasms. And a lot of the songs from that, a lot of the lines from the songs really relate to that.

So the band forms in 1979, the record comes out in 1984. In 1985, D. Boone dies in a car crash. And obviously, Mike Watt is completely, completely sort of devastated. and, you know, it basically affects the rest of his life, really. And the documentary ends with this really great clip of Mike Watt talking about, you know, the importance of sort of finding your own friends to be creative with, basically. You know, he says you've got to find friends to be creative with to create dreams together. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, I think there's something really interesting about, I mean, that, in particular, that American kind of early 80s, that hardcore punk scene, I think there is a certain sort of idea, very pure ideal of friendship. You know, I mean, a lot of those bands seem to have these very intense personal relationships. And there's this idea, you know, which is, which I think is sort of reacting against, you know, the emergent, the emergent hegemony of this of crass individualism and consumerism of Reaganism. And an ideal of the kind of the affinity group, actually, you know, even though that term wouldn't always have been used. as a sort of refuge from a refuge from the kind of ravaging effects of neoliberalism on social relationships in general. I think it is quite important. There's also something there in that

hardcore, you know, in the sort of straight-ed rejection of, the sort of rejection of romance and sexuality as in some sense less pure forms of relationship than just, you know, your friendships like the people in the band. And also there was often an attempt or basically failed attempt, usually, but it's an attempt to have a kind of element of sexual egalitarianism as well. There's an ideal that kind of women should be able to be in the band as well. I still don't know how many friends you guys actually have. I mean, they're probably sort of, you know, about half a dozen people. I mean, to be honest, they're all, they are, the people in the close to, the closest second

friends, they are all white men, so middle class white men with whom I just have an incredibly overlapping sense of, you know, we're all really into, like, about two or three different things together. They've got to be really into two out of three of, like, you know, left politics, you know, sort of academics, sort of cultural theory and psychedelic or psychedelic drugs. Like, they're into, like, they're into, they've got to be into at least two out of three of those. You got your checklist, which you check in before you meet. No, I can't ever, that's the thing. That's what, that's what those people all, that's why I have in common with all those people.

and there's enough of a kind of common vocabulary. And, you know, we haven't taught us at all about class and friendship. When I was growing up, and I don't know how much this is just delusion or fantasy, but I grew up in a classic, you know, I recall in Wright we'd call the kind of contradictory class location, you know, that we were poor and we lived among other poor people. But my parents, you know, my parents had been to uni, well, my mum had my dad and my stepdad and my stepdad had both been to university and had sort of professional qualifications. And my mum came from a kind of upper middle class family

where in the generation above her, everyone had gone to university. And, you know, her generation hadn't because they were sort of 60s rebels. There was this complete contradictory class location. But I also, and I grew up with this real sense that amongst the working class, and this was the northern English or a traditional working class, there was a real sense of kind of loyalty towards and generosity towards your mates that was totally lacking from the fucking bourgeois, from the bourgeoisie, amongst whom friends were people you were friends with for much more instrumental reasons, you know,

and people with whom you had a slightly more competitive relationship. They were the people who, you know, you wanted to get into the better university than, rather than the people, you know, you would live or die for. And those are ridiculous cliches, but they also had a, they did really, there was also a certain truth to it, that had a real kind of effect on my politics growing up. I mean Marx always says this about capitalism itself Mark says capitalism makes the maintenance of social relationships

itself a challenge that it tends to dissolve all social relationships it tends to dissolve them all into what he calls the cash nexus and I think as we've lived through a kind of second wave of you know not a second wave like we've led through a new

you know a new wave of intense kind of resurgence of capitalist power since the end of the 60s we've seen a massive, you know, it has put massive pressure on lots of people's ability to form friendships. And there is a sense, it's partly why there is a sense a lot of the time that, you know, forming friendships, just forming friendships feels like a resistant act sometimes, doesn't it? I feel like you're right in saying that it feels like a good friendship exists outside the system. Like it does feel like an antithesis to the way daily life is lived.

For me, for me, definitely. That's definitely true. That's because it shouldn't be based on like, you know, calculation of interest, which is why the most horrific and human parts of like neoliberal doctrine around human capital when people start to think about like their friendships. And transactional as well, you know? Transactional, yeah, that's what I mean. Their friendships and even their romantic relationships

as some sort of level of transactional, yeah, as a transaction, basically, a transaction rather than based on something which is a, which is a bit more ungrasperable. Yeah, exactly. And that's partly why the friend, you know, and that is, that's also a thing that Derrida says about the friend, actually, is friendship, is that it's sort of incalculable because it can't be transactional,

because it can't be, it can't be simply quantified, even though it has to happen within this horizon of equality. And that's partly why it is, you know, it is so important as an ideal for people of friendship. And it's partly why the law, I mean, social media, its good aspects and its bad aspects are all based on halting out the lure of friendship, the possibility of friendship

because people feel that sort of friendship and labelliness are things that are absent, are excessively absent from the kind of alienated scene. And one of the reasons we wanted to talk about this is Keir had this statistic, didn't he? Kier saw this statistic and I've seen that as well that when people, you know, the social surveys about people's relationships and friendships,

I mean, according to the quantitative data, at least in like places like the UK, in the US, more and more people when asked, do you have a confidant? Do you have, you know, how many kind of really close friends do you have? More and more people to say zero. They don't have any friends.

I mean, one intuitively, one immediately recognises that is alienation. You know, that is, that is a symptom of, you know, the damage that capitalism does to human sociality, isn't it? I want to see all my friends at once Go bang, bang, bang, go bang it. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, go bang. Go bang, bang, go bang.

Dinosauril, go bang, go bang, bang. Dinosauril, go bang, by Arthur Russell, and most famously remixed by Francois, it's like arguably the definitive loft classic, the famous chorus, I want to see all of my friends at once. And in fact, one of the parties that I help organise and very occasionally DJ at

is called All My Friends, in a direct reference to that. And so the ideal of having all of your friends in the one place, the kind of simultaneously of all your friends, it's a kind of utopian trope in dance music lyrics, going back to the 70s. And I would say in light of a lot of things we've talked about, actually. See, I think we haven't quite said this properly, have we?

Or we've sort of alluded to it several times. But look, the cliché, the sociological cliché about contemporary friendship is that people either don't have friends or they have these very complex overlapping or completely disaggregated circles of friends. And that what people don't have and can't have anymore is what Nadia calls the crew, the coherent group of friends. sort of go through their lives together as a cohort in some way. And the people can't have that precisely because neoliberalism and post-forwardism made it impossible.

They made it impossible because people have work on short-term contracts and they have to move for work and they have children at different times. And when they have children, they're forced to retreat into their nuclear households and somehow leave the partially lead the friendship group. And so people can't have these fully coherent sort of cohorts of friends who sort of go through their lives together and one argument is well that is very damaging because historically one of the bases the most basic units of class solidarity in a political solidarity is the co-war friends you know the people you went to school with the people you stayed at work with

the people who were your neighbours the people if you were a man the people the people you served within the army for a bit you know and and that was historically that was a basic unit of class solidarity and even well not not so much of cross-class solidarity but potentially in some communities. And the fact that people don't have that experience makes the practice of solidarity and a feeling of solidarity much more difficult. And I think partly the reason

the idea of having all of your friends at once, all of your friends in the same place for one kind of glorious moment is precisely it becomes a utopian idea in the 70s and precisely the moment when it is becoming something that people are conscious is no longer possible, something that doesn't happen anymore. And I think that,

And I think that is really significant. Oh, now look, everybody's got to have friends. Hey, Phyllis, are we his friends? We're your friends. We're your friends. We're your friends to the bitter end. And we want to be your friend.

And this is Matt, part of the team who puts the show together behind the scenes with a very quick note to tell you that in the show notes of this episode, you'll find a widget to put your email address into to sign up for a brand new ACFM mailing list. I'm not totally sure what's going in there yet, but in the spirit of friendship, we wanted to take this opportunity for us to become friends, if only digitally. And finally, we just want to say a big thank you to friend of the show, Ileana Kerr. who's done some beautiful new illustrations for the podcast. Check out her work in the show notes. Big up yourself, Ely. Okay, boys, play us out. And when you're outside looking in,

who's there to open the door? Come on, kid, we need a tenor. What friends are for? This broadcast is brought to you, by Navaramedia, go to navaramedia.com slash support.