Guerrilla History - Workers Movements in the Global South w/ Immanuel Ness

Episode Date: July 16, 2021

In this episode of Guerrilla History, we bring on Professor Immanuel Ness to talk about his brand new book, Organizing Insurgency: Workers Movements in the Global South.  The book combines theory of workers movements with case studies from India, South Africa, and the Philippines.  A must listen conversation for an internationalist proletarian understanding of workers power! Immanuel Ness is Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York and Senior Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg.  His book Organizing Insurgency is available from Pluto Press: https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745343594/organizing-insurgency/.  His other books include Southern Insurgency: The Coming of the Global Working Class (Pluto Press), Urban Revolt: State Power and the Rise of People's Movements in the Global South (Haymarket Books), and The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism (Palgrave Macmillan).  He is also the editor of the  Journal of Labor and Society (Brill).  Lots of stuff to check out!  Manny can be found on twitter @ImmanuelNess. Guerrilla History is the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history, and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present.  If you have any questions or guest/topic suggestions, email them to us at [e-mail]. Your hosts are immunobiologist Henry Hakamaki, Professor Adnan Husain, historian and Director of the School of Religion at Queens University, and Revolutionary Left Radio's Breht O'Shea.   Follow us on social media!  Our podcast can be found on twitter @guerrilla_pod, and can be supported on patreon at https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory.  Your contributions will make the show possible to continue and succeed! To follow the hosts, Henry can be found on twitter @huck1995, and also has a patreon to help support himself through the pandemic where he breaks down science and public health research and news at https://www.patreon.com/huck1995.  Adnan can be followed on twitter @adnanahusain, and also runs The Majlis Podcast, which can be found at https://anchor.fm/the-majlis, and the Muslim Societies-Global Perspectives group at Queens University, https://www.facebook.com/MSGPQU/.   Breht is the host of Revolutionary Left Radio, which can be followed on twitter @RevLeftRadio and cohost of The Red Menace Podcast, which can be followed on twitter @Red_Menace_Pod.  Follow and support these shows on patreon, and find them at https://www.revolutionaryleftradio.com/.     Thanks to Ryan Hakamaki, who designed and created the podcast's artwork, and Kevin MacLeod, who creates royalty-free music.

You remember den, Ben, boo? The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello, and welcome to guerrilla history. the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present.

I'm your host, Henry Huckamacki, joined by only one of my usual co-hosts today, and that would be Professor Adnan Hussein, historian and director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan. How are you doing today? Oh, I'm doing really well. It's good to be with you, Henry. Yeah, it's always nice to see you, Adnan. And unfortunately, and really unfortunately for the listeners as well, we're not going to be joined by our other co-host, Brett O'Shea, who is, of course, host of Revolutionary Left Radio and co-host of the Red Menace podcast today. He had a little bit of a family thing come up at the very last minute that he couldn't get out of, and so was unable to join us today.

But I know he was really looking forward to this conversation, and I'll just say this preemptively, since I know he'll listen to this afterwards, we miss having you here, Brett, and we're looking forward to having you next. time. Absolutely. But for today, we're going to have a really interesting guest. We're going to be talking to Professor Emmanuel Ness. Emmanuel Ness, or Manny, as he allows us to call him, is a professor of political science at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York and a senior research associate at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. He is the author or editor of a bunch of books, including Southern Insurgency, Urban Revolt, as well as a book that I think more people need to know about the Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism from Pulgrave, really, really critical works. And this work that we're talking about today,

organizing insurgency, which is brand new out from Pluto Press, came out about a week before we're recording this at the end of June. It's brand new out, and I think that this is a very important work that fills in a lot of gaps in academic literature that we don't often see written about. Adnan, what were your initial thoughts about this book when we first picked it out for focus for an episode of guerrilla history? Well, I mean, firstly, I think it clearly deals with key issues of our time. You know, it's not a niche book. This is a book that anybody who cares about how to change our world and to understand how global capitalism is operating in our present day and the forms of struggle that are taking shape against it,

I think this would be an important book. It raises key issues and it studies the last 40, 50 years of the global economy, what's been happening in the relationship between the global North and the South and how, you know, workers have been responding in the global South and take some case studies that will probably have a chance to talk about a little bit more of looking at workers and, you know, where you can see possibilities for success and where there are, you know, challenges in the arrayed forces of capitalism under an imperial, through an imperial lens. And I think that's to me one of the key contributions of this of this book global insurgency is is about you know integrating an anti-imperialist perspective in understanding the relationship between the global south and the

global north and so I found this a really important book that raises a lot of key questions that will be debated and discussed and learned from in any serious conversation about how the lessons of recent history can be converted to liberatory struggles in our own time. Yeah, I think that that's a really important thing to lay out here right at the top. And I just also want to lay out one thing that I, so I make sure that I get to talk about it. One of the things that I think was most important from this is that this book really highlights the limits of spontaneous worker action, worker revolt, and highlights the need for a revolutionary party with a revolutionary platform backing up these worker revolts, backing up unions of workers. There really needs to be an institutionalized party structure of some sort behind. and it's something that I've long thought about

and something that's highlighted throughout this book that's really important. As much as I love the model of the IWW, for example, and I have a lot of IWW comrades who are doing amazing work, and I really appreciate them and appreciate the work that they're doing, but as many points out in this book,

there are limits to that model of syndicalist unionism without having that institutionalized revolutionary party structure, backing it up. And that's something that really comes through throughout this book, both in the theoretical section, which is roughly the first half of the book, as well as in the second half of the book, which are these case studies, Agnon, as you mentioned, from the Philippines, India, and South Africa. And I really thought that by using an entire half of the book devoted to the case studies to look at these different sectors of the economy, of course, a lot of these are a rural

and informal labor. They're talking about steel workers in India who are in an urban environment, but in very rural conditions, let's say, very squalid conditions, very run down, no infrastructure for these individuals. We're talking about agricultural workers in the Philippines. We're talking about steel workers as well as agricultural workers in mine workers in South Africa. These case studies really are important for driving these points home because when you see just the theoretical standpoint of, you know, trying to form a union in this way or trying to advance unions through looking for wage increases first and foremost rather than advancing a revolutionary platform without having those case studies that he presents here for an entire

half of the book, it just reads like a lot of other theoretical texts, whereas here you really get to see the application of the theory in the real world. Adnan, why don't I turn it over to you for just any thoughts that you have on that statement or anything else? Yes, just to follow up, I think that's very important. I mean, it's important to have a historical analysis. That's the data for, you know, social transformation that we have. We have to, you know, we can look to the future, but if we're not guided by evidence from, you know, the transformative possibilities of what works and what doesn't in, you know, past circumstances, then we're a little bit unguided. And that is not to say that, you know, historical periods or eras are simply transferable.

But, you know, if you're thinking dialectically, of course, you can't go back, you know, you know this is progress of history even if it isn't you know always progress in the sense of it getting better but i mean history moves forward so it's not as if you know you can just take something that worked from one time and expect it to to work in this new context later on but you know it is very important to have that kind of material understanding and these case studies what's really good is that there are conceptual points that are made you know in and through them that are relevant for us to take note of. So you can't just have a conceptual analysis of the nature of global capitalism without embedding it in these examples. And these are well-drawn

examples from South Africa, as you mentioned, the mining and other sectors and looking at, you know, agricultural production in the Philippines, the banana commodities and in India with metal workers. And so these are representing kind of cases that you can find out more about the details. We won't have a chance, I don't think, to go into all of those details, but it's important to recognize that the book is balanced by having a theoretical and conceptual analysis informed by really close historical analysis. I think it's a really strong part of this book. I guess what I would say about the previous point, about, you know, there's a clear thread running through about the importance of organization in various forms. And I guess it is taking aim at this spontaneous

workers' revolts or, you know, just emerging without organizing. And I know that's a big, you know, division right now also on the left with new theories in the era of globalization and the end of the Cold War. You know, the left was really trying to grapple with the implications and consequences of that. And it has taken us down a number of different paths, some of which might be fruitful and some of which, you know, may not be. I mean, Manningess points out this wonderful famous quote from Gramsci that the crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born. In this interregnum, a great variety of morbid symptoms appear. Right. So the point is that we are in a transitional period. It's been extended for a while since

the 1990s or maybe you could say it was happening since the 1970s and that is the point of the book that neoliberalism is really beginning in the 70s. So the question is really, you know, how do you determine what are these morbid symptoms versus things that are promising and that hold the possibility for transformative change? And so that's what he's trying, I think, to get at. And his point seems to be, among other things, that you need organization, political organization, but also committed and militant labor union and backed by social organizations as well. So it seems like you have to, from his perspective, have all of these together for there be the possibility of sustainable transformations. That's something that's interesting to think about. I hope we'll hear a little bit more about, you know, why he thinks, you know, you have to have

political organization and left parties are so important. But I guess one thought or question that I had for you is about whether you were interested in this is how you relate, you know, the question of, you know, growing inequality in the global north with the story that he's he's portraying here of a radical division between the global north and the south now this might be something that not all you know people listening to this you know will fully grasp and feel that well we need to be engaged in our own you know struggles to overcome inequality in our in our society i'm wondering what you thought about that emphasis that really shifted point of focus to the system's operation through a perspective from the

global south. Yeah, I think that it's a very interesting perspective and something that we do have to keep in mind is that we have growing inequality, particularly in the last 50 years, in these global north countries like the United States. And the inequality in the United States is at its highest point in, you know, over 100 years at this point. It's obscene. However, the inequality of global south countries oftentimes is significantly worse yet. So, for example, South Africa, which was one of the case-studied countries in this book, they have the highest coefficient of inequality of any country in the world. And it's a country that doesn't have the sort of wealth that the United States has. So there's a few things to keep in mind here. One,

the inequality isn't only present when there's a lot of capital present. The United States has much more capital than a place like South Africa, and yet inequality is still manifest in a place with a comparatively lesser amount of capital, like South Africa. But we also have to consider what the conditions of those people at the lower end of that inequality gap in each of those places is like. So in the United States, again, just for example, or Canada for your case, if none, we have obscene inequality. However, if you take the average worker, now, of course,

there are a lot of people who are going to be in absolutely deplorable conditions. homeless, living in squalid conditions, no plumbing, no electricity, etc., even in places like the United States and Canada. But by and large, if we're talking about the average worker, they're going to be in that lower echelon of society. They are going to be on the lower end of that inequality gap. And yet, the conditions of workers in the global north are still going to be unbelievably higher, unbelievably greater than those of those people on the wrong end of the gap in the global south. So it's important that we understand that inequality manifests itself wherever neoliberalism or capitalism even more generally is also manifest. But we also have to

understand that this is manifest in a more precarious way for people in the global south. And as such, and it's something that Manny points out, and something that I've thought about for a while, and I'm curious as to your take. And it'll be probably the last thing that we talk about in the intro because we want to get to the interview. Something that I've thought about is how to advance the struggle. And Manny put it far more eloquently than I ever had formulated it of my own head,

but it was more or less what I had been thinking, which is that because of the difference, the different conditions between countries, as well as the extractive nature of the imperialist countries, the imperialist global north countries, we almost have to tackle the problems in these individual countries before we can look at worker solidarity internationally. And that's not to say that we shouldn't have consciousness

of the issues that workers in the global south should have. It's not to say that we shouldn't be advocating for the workers in the global south. It's not to say that we shouldn't be holding hands with workers of the global south, but because of the way that the imperialist system is set up, when we're looking at a country like South Africa, for example, or the Philippines or any other global South country, really, the way that they're going to overturn that system that produces the inequality that's there is by them tackling it within their country first, and then linking up with other countries that have had similar struggles to fight the

international imperialist order upheld by the imperial core. And that was always my feeling on this, although I maybe wasn't able to articulate it quite in the way that I am after having read how many puts it, because it's, it's again, more or less the way that I felt. I mean, he and I might have a few differences here or there. But by and large, I think that I'm more or less agreeing with his conception of this order. And I'd like your thoughts on it, Adnan. Well, I think those are very interesting reflections.

I mean, I think what I like so much about the book and hopefully we'll get a chance to talk a little bit more with Manny about it is that, you know, he has a perspective and he has a position on it. And you've just described, I think, basically that position that he has. What I like is that we might have some disagreements. People might have different perspectives. but he's very forthright about articulating that position and then providing his analysis of the evidence drawn from the case studies for you know of historical you know struggles workers movements and

so on to back up the position that that he has so I think it advances the argument a little bit further than just abstractly or conceptually conceptually imagining how it should go and I like that very much and appreciate it because we are dealing with real world situations, you know, in our struggles globally everywhere. And we have to take into account that, that, you know, that real material existence and the evidence, you know, based on it. So I think that's useful for us. But, you know, I think one could work through some of the conceptual dimensions of that analysis and come slightly to different conclusions and so on. but you'll have a good conversation engaging in this book,

and I think we're going to have a good conversation engaging with its author. Absolutely. And then just the last thing that I want to say is we have to maintain an anti-imperialist perspective. We do want to overturn this imperialist world order, this capitalist world order that we're living in. I just want to make that clear because I know that what I previously said could be misconstrued as saying, like, let everybody fend for themselves. That is not at all what I mean, and I want to just make that clear before we wrap up this segment. Let's advocate for workers of the world. Workers of the world unite. I'm just saying

that the struggles themselves are going to be most successful if they are operating within a national context, in my view. And feel free to disagree with me, listeners. That's just my thoughts on this. I just want to be clear. Yes, we are still workers of the world unite. Don't worry about that. But on that note, Adnan, anything else that you want to mention before we bring in Mani? I think we should get to the conversation. I'm eager for it. Excellent. Me too. So on that note, listeners will be right back with Emmanuel Ness to talk about his new book, Organizing Insurgency, Workers' Movements in the Global South, fresh out from Pluto Press. And we're back on guerrilla history.

And now we're joined by our very special guest, Professor Emmanuel Ness. Again, the book that we're going to be talking about with Professor Ness or Manny is he's given us kindly permission to call him, is organizing insurgency workers' movements in the global south, which is brand new, fresh out from our friends at Pluto Press. Welcome to the show, Manny. It's a pleasure to have you here. Well, thank you for having me, Henry, and a nice. It's a pleasure to have the opportunity to be interviewed by both of you. And too bad Brett is in here.

Yeah, absolutely. I know that Brett was really looking forward to the conversation. So before I even ask you the first question, I also just want to make sure that I have the opportunity to thank you for putting together being part of the team that put together the encyclopedia of imperialism and anti-imperialism. I think that that's a very crucial project that you worked on. that more people should be aware of. So people, if you want to look for that, that was from Paul Grave. So encyclopedia of imperialism and anti-imperialism. Thanks again for putting that

together. But now I guess let's open this interview by having you, I don't know, take five minutes or so to kind of lay out the central thesis of the book in terms of why you decided to make this book, what the general theme of the book is. And then over the course of the book, and we mentioned this in the intro, but over the course of the book, you use case studies to kind of drive the point of the book home. You use case studies from India, the Philippines, and South Africa. So in the process of laying out the central thesis of the book, can you also tell us why you chose these three specific countries to use as case studies to lay out the story here? Certainly, I'd be happy to. Well, the general theme,

of the book is one that is rooted in the concept of the significance of political organization. I think that in the last 20, 25 years, the

left that has been dominant in the West and that has constituted itself throughout the entire world, really, has completely ignored and in fact dismissed the importance of political party organizations and the way they are structured in advancing the interests of those people who are in living in poverty and living, you know, in very poor conditions

throughout the world. So, you know, you mentioned the encyclopedia. We also have an Oxford handbook on economic imperialism as well, you know, in many instances, the people who are poor in the world are subjects of one or another or had been of imperial states, such as England, France, Holland, and so forth and so on. And so I'd like to, you know, kind of reinforce this notion because we have gone through now about 20 years of the idea that parties are not necessary and that we can take succor in the idea that people can just protest and that will contribute to some kind of change without any kind of mechanism that will bring it about. And it's my view that it really does matter what kinds of, not just what kinds of organizations, but having organizations and what kinds of organizations that emerge as part of those struggles.

And by that, I do, you know, kind of pay tribute to the revolutions that have taken place of the last, you know, over the last 100, 120 years. as significant because they did bring about change. They ended significant crises throughout the world. I mean, even before that, you know, the struggle against, you know, slavery in this country, as well as more, you know, recently the struggle against fascism, which we are now seeing again, that took political movements to do that. It was not done by people protesting in the streets. And my view is that people always protest in the streets, that it's not something that occurs and, you know, suddenly people get the right idea that, okay, we could change a society.

Because without any kind of theoretical knowledge of what is possible and without any kind of grounding, the transformation will not take place. And, you know, for instance, we've seen over the last 20, 25 years after the end of the Cold War, the emergence of color revolutions in Eastern Europe, Central Europe, and beyond throughout the world that are, you know, in my view, fake revolutions that are organized by the CIA and CIA fronts. And so I'm not really referring to those at all. I'm actually referring to revolutions that do have socialism as a major feature within the principles of the organization that are highly disciplined, that do believe in a form of centralism, a vanguard, that are anti-imperialist. Because if we take a look at all the revolutions that have taken place, really, over the last 150 years, they've all been anti-imperialist. So, for instance, the Russian Revolution was an anti-imperialist revolution.

The Chinese Revolution was anti-imperialist. You know, even the Iranian Revolution, you know, there was a communist element to it, the Tudet Party. It was also anti-imperialist. And so I think that we will see revolutions in the years to come. And I think that we will see socialist and communist revolutions. And so, you know, within the nomenclature of the left, there is a tendency to eschew anything that says communism and so forth. And I actually think that a communist form of revolution is what is necessary to bring about change, one that is democratic, one that arises from the working class. If I have a little more time, I could speak to the three countries.

I'll just speak briefly. I picked them because there is a concept that Marxists, Leninists have used. You know, people like Stalin and so forth, Mao. And it's called the weak link. And these are countries that are particularly exploited by imperialism and can do very little outside of engaging in a revolutionary transformation. And so I also think that each of the countries I chose, the Philippines, India, and South Africa have the possibility of transforming into something that's much more profound than, and one that has some kind of resonance. to those revolutions that, you know, we speak of, I think fondly in most instances,

you know, the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, and so forth and so on, you know, even the Cuban Revolution. There was a leadership. There was a vanguard. There was a form of democratic socialism. There was a guerrilla struggle and so forth and so on. That's the name of your show, right? So I think that those are some of the features that, I looked at in each of the examples. So I'll follow up briefly. I mean, I've got so many follow-up questions, but I've got to make sure that I let non-speak.

The first thing that I guess that I'm going to have you just explain briefly to the audience, in case they're completely unaware of the concept, is unequal exchange. So can you briefly talk about what unequal exchange is and the role of unequal exchange in the book, of course, that is basically the entirety of the thread that this story is relying on, is this unequal exchange between the imperialist core countries and these periphery countries

that we're looking at in these case studies. So can you just lay out what that concept is for listeners who are unaware of it and then talk about the importance of the theory of unequal exchange within the work? Certainly I can do that, Henry. Unequal exchange was a very dominant mode of thinking. In the 1970s, one of its major proponents was Argyri Emmanuel, who no longer really is that well known, but he's respected by many people who look to a revolutionary transformation. And very much in the Maoist tradition, I would say.

And unequal exchange was a belief that after five centuries of imperialism, And so forth, there has been essentially a pillage that has taken place throughout the world, especially the vast majority of the population of the world, you know, 80 to 90 percent of the world lives in the global south. And those are the subjects of imperialism. So as a part of that process, if we take it fast forwarded to the present day, the degree to which the products, the labor, the natural resources and so forth that are produced in the Global South, where the third world, are not traded for an equivalent amount in the global South, where the third world, are not traded for an equivalent amount. in the north. In other words, the workers in the south do not get the or reap the benefits of capitalism in any way whatsoever. In fact, they're the victims, and they are the most highly exploited segment of the working class. So just to give you an example of this in the case of the Philippines, but also many other countries like the Ivory Coast, Ghana, and so forth and so on, Ecuador.

There are commodities that are produced through the exploitation of labor and plantations. Today, we still have plantations. And in those plantations, you have workers who make something like 10 or 15 cents an hour. And that's at the high point. And, you know, and they produce, you know, they produce bananas. produce tropical fruits, they produce pineapples, and you name it, that are marketed in the north, usually the most highly quality, high quality fruits and products. And those corporations that sell them, the food chains and so forth, as well as the consumers are the beneficiaries

of this process of unequal exchange because, you know, for instance, if we take a look at banana production, it costs far more to produce for the countries of origin, the workers in those countries of origin, than it does to, you know, buy in the West. So in fact, if we take a look at, this has been mentioned frequently, the typical iPhone or the smartphone, the value added that is that is incorporated into it is about $10 in a place like China. So the phone is really produced for $10 in China, but that doesn't take it to consideration

countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo where Coltan is produced as well as other precious metals that phones would not be able to be produced without And many other products, you know, we see the incursions into Bolivia, the coup that took place in 2019 and so forth that are examples of the efforts of imperialist countries to continue to essentially take the resources of the global South countries and use it for their own benefit. But it's not just resources, it's also labor. And so unequal exchange primarily addresses the question of the kind of what is the value of the labor that goes into a product in third world countries and concomitantly what is the price of the good. So if we take a look at automobiles, for instance, many people may not realize this, but also, Automobiles are very cheap in the West.

You know, if we were to take the price of the automobile in the 1960s or 70s when it was produced in the West primarily, the automobile would probably cost somewhere near $50,000 to $100,000 or something like that if we were to look at wages and so forth. Now automobiles are sold for far lower prices because they are produced at far lower wages by contractors. I can go on, but I just want to give you time to your questions. Well, that's really helpful to lay out that basic dynamic. It's structuring the global neoliberal capitalist economy. So that's useful. Maybe this builds on that. One thing I was wondering is if you could perhaps tell listeners what your kind of overall sense of what's been happening

since the 1970s, which is really the period that the book covers in the kind of neoliberalizing and global integration. And whether your analysis of what has been happening really differs from perhaps some other analysts. And I'm not talking yet about, you know, the solutions or your conclusions, but is your story different from, say, how Hart and Negri characterize what has changed in the kind of era of globalization. What do you, what would you say precisely is what you've observed in this period of history, kind of with the relationship in particular between workers in the global south and, you know, movements in, in, in, or what's been happening politically, you know, around labor and the economy in the global north.

Thanks, Audenhan, for that question. I mean, I think it's crucial to recognize. And, you know, it's right in front of our noses, but many of us refuse to, you know, smell what is what we're actually looking at and we're also what we're breathing, you know, in some respects. The idea is that without question, the working conditions that have, that the vast majority of the world is engaged in have, have, deteriorated dramatically. Now, first of all, you have an industrialization of the world through globalization. So you have the outsourcing of work from the West, Europe and the United States and Canada and so forth and so on. And then you have an impoverishment that occurs. And, you know,

people like to use the term precarity or precaritization. And I will use it too. And I agree with the position that precarity is really primarily a concept that could only be used amongst countries that are subjected to the imperialist power of the United States or other countries in Western Europe, because to a large extent, the conditions under which people work in factories, and today we have more factories than at any time in the history of the world, more industrial workers than at any time. This is actually something that is different from the heart in Negri and many other proponents of the idea that artificial intelligence and algorithms and the platform are going to set us free.

Well, why do we have, you know, close to a million, billion workers who are working in industrial factories and so forth around the world? the Hardenegri argument is really one in which, and it's not actually particularly all that new in some respects, but it extends from a number of perspectives that believe that there really isn't any work left to do. And, you know, there are a lot of people who make the claims that we should have a universal basic income and so forth and so on. In my view, a universal basic income would be essentially achieved off the backs of further impoverishing people throughout the world and making the lives of the vast majority of the population that much more emiserated as a consequence of working harder and so forth, reducing, as was pointed out. out by Henry and his question earlier about unequal exchange, that we would have even further an equal exchange if, you know, there were universal basic income and so forth. Hard and Negri

and their ilk, amongst them, others that like, you know, believe in the idea of work is, have stop doing work, are primarily really not looking at in any way the vast majority of the world. Their focus is on the developed world. And I include both the capitalist class as well as the working class in the developed world, because we have a certain degree to which a labor aristocracy exists in the United States, Canada, and Europe that are also, or who are also beneficiaries of the vast inequality that exists in the world. So I think I'm part of a intellectual tradition that has emerged over the last 10 years or so that rejects capitalism, that that believes that artificial intelligence and new technology is not really setting people free. It's not improving the conditions of workers.

You know, I can give specific examples of that when you see people who are making, you know, I'm not, you know, you can't make this up in some respects you could, actually, but I'm not making it up. You know, five cents an hour or ten cents an hour, less than a dollar a day. working in many instances for 18 hours a day, you know, I have a very serious problem with that. And I think a lot of scholars do as well. I mean, there's historians that deal with this question. Jan Bramon from Europe, Amsterdam, particularly has done some significant work on, you know, how the emergence of industrialization in the global South.

has been at the expense of the vast majority of the population. And this is why it's so critical that we have social organizations to challenge the status quo. And social organizations that are credible and that are capable of transforming society and have a vision of transforming society and not reforming capitalism. yeah thanks for that i think that's a you know very important point about the difference in your analysis i think one thing that's so excellent about the book is the way in which it's integrating the global developments in the global south with the politics of the global north because sometimes those are separated and it seems that some of the heart of negri or paul mason you know

kind of post-capitalism these sorts of works are a little maybe optimistic about what's happening in terms of, you know, transformations through globalization. So I think this is a very healthy and important corrective. And also the sort of element of, I'm sure we'll get a chance to talk a little bit more about this, but also thinking about imperialism. Obviously, that's a hidden relationship that isn't being, you know, talked about in some context, as you're pointing out. But let me pass it over to Henry for a question. Yeah. So this is actually a pretty big question, but it should provide for some pretty good follow-ups and perhaps some back and forth. And I'm going to be quoting from your book. So listeners, if you have the book, we're first going to be going to page 184 in case you want to follow along. I'm actually going to have two related quotes from different parts of the book so that you can kind of tie the thread together for listeners who haven't read the book yet. Here on 184, you say on an organizational level, this book has shown that work.

are far more likely to act collectively with the support of a committed and militant labor union backed by community social organizations and left political forces, which is something that's often left out of people's analyses, is that backing with an actual political organization. That's just my additional note there, but to continue on, in response, workers are in a better position to improve and sustain their working and living conditions. In addition, the consolidation of labor union social power potentially sets the stage for the development of strong

transformative political movements wedded to establishing socialist states which are not dependent on the impulses of global capitalists in the first world. So here you lay out the necessity for strong unions backed by strong political organizations and I'm now jumping over to page 53 for those that are following along

where we have many scholars a lot of, I shouldn't say many, obviously we're still a minority position, but within our tendency, there's quite a few scholars that hold up the model of worker cooperatives, including an economist who I am friendly with, have interviewed multiple times, and yeah, worker cooperatives certainly are a very interesting model and one that has a lot of promise, but as you lay out in the book here, they can be very, very problematic. So for example, you lay out here, as such, the promise for workers control over industrial enterprises is subordinated to reformist demands for higher wages and better

working conditions within the context of a capitalist economy. Even if workers seize control of a factory, they remain subject to the profit-driven exigencies of commodity production within the capitalist market. Council communists and their successes may have had, may have had an immediate plan for seizing power, but have lacked the organizational capacity and programmatic resilience to surmount the demands of the logic of capitalist production,

resorting to conventional unionism or being defeated along with their unions. So I guess what I'm driving at with these two quotes and what I'm kind of going to open the conversation here with is can you talk about how your study has found that you need that political organization backing these worker movements and backing these unions in order to prevent that backsliding that almost inevitably happens if you don't have that that strong backing from a political organization.

And can you also talk about how that plays in with the worker cooperative movement in some of these case studies, thinking of the Philippines specifically? Yes, absolutely. And very, very prescient points that you have raised that we, we can talk about for quite some time, but I'll try to limit my response to the specific question. Well, I believe very strongly, it's not just a belief, it's actually based on empirical evidence or what I prefer to say ethnographic research in various areas of the world, where, you know, I've seen many different workers' movements emerge.

many of them were leaderless and others had leaders and in each of these countries we have examples of that but that's probably true of virtually any part of the world where you have organizations that are mostly leaderless they have no social organization within the community

within the industry and etc And there is no left political force. There's no vision in which people can think of improving their standards of living or improving and transforming society in a way that overcomes capitalism. And, you know, you did – oh, I'm sorry, I'm not brought up, you know, the work of Paul Mason, Harton, and Negri, I would add, you know, Nick Sierenek, and amongst others, you know, and whose scholarship is very interesting. in its own right, but, you know, they believe that, you know, liberation occurs as a consequence of not having to do work anymore when, you know, they completely ignore the fact that, you know, even in the most technologically advanced areas, there are amongst the most poorest workers.

You know, we can look at cloud workers as one example. we can look at delivery workers as another, and again, it does tend to have a kind of bifurcation between the global north and the global south, the imperialist north, the countries of Europe and America, etc., North America especially, and the rest of the world. And so why are left political forces so important? You know, again, this, again, goes against a lot of the mainstream left literature. And I guess it's an interesting way of putting it, and I'm referring it to as mainstream, because essentially they don't believe in political parties anymore. They are a force that was ineffective, according to the dictum, and that, you know, we should really look at some kind of, you know,

was non-tangible, without any kind of material or political agency whatsoever, some kind of force of the people themselves that will drive the revolution forward. I mean, that's nonsense. I mean, it's just simply nonsense. When we take a look at worker's subjectivity, it is not created by themselves. It is created by a view that they can transform the world into one that will improve, not just improve their standards of living and sustain them and so forth, but will transform the society.

And so that does mean not dependent on the first world. So in each of these cases, and in most every country of the global south, again, 80 to 90 percent, and that's putting it on the low side of the world, lives in the global south and live very close to poverty or in poverty, despite the hype about the end of poverty that the UN puts forward, that, you know, people do not want to see the transformation into capitalism itself. They would like to see something that goes beyond capitalism. And so that goes to, you know, the last point you made, I'll address the question of cooperatives in a moment, that there is a great degree of economism that labor unions have advanced, where, you know, we need to, just in their, in their words, we need to organize as many workers as possible, so we could increase their wages and their working conditions.

And again, there is no critique whatsoever of capitalism. There, I mean, even at the points where they were most militant, you know, capitalism was never questioned or sought to be, you know, eliminated in any way. It was how, you know, we can get our share from the capitalist system. And in fact, to a large extent, workers in the global north, much of them, many of them, I should say, are part of a labor aristocracy that benefit from the exploitation of workers in the global south. Of course, we do have a large share of poor people in the global north, too. And we can get to that if you want to discuss it. But I would say that by and large, there is a dynamic that is north-south, you know, where people's lives, you know, know, are, I guess, cut short in every single way.

You know, so for instance, in a place like Indonesia, you have a stunting rate. And now that means that people cannot reach their height and their body weight because they were not nourished between the ages of zero and eight. At some point, you just cannot sustain that and, you know, reach your height and and your weight and so forth. So they end up being very weak and poor. They work far more arduously than people in the global north and so forth and so on. So, you know, I mean, who wants a reformed system of capitalism to exist?

And I think there's a romanticism amongst some of the scholars who have dominated the literature, the autonomous, you know, the people who believe in technological socialism and so forth and so on, that, you know, the world is transforming and they're just completely ignoring the vast majority of the South of the population on the planet. And, you know, of course, this is not a new phenomenon in that sense that people have ignored it. but it is something that is increasing in the contemporary era. And that's why I think it's very important, you know, that, you know, people like myself are challenging this dominant perspective. Now, the question of cooperatives.

Mani, may I butt in for one second very quickly, just follow up on that last point. And just very briefly, before we switch over to cooperatives, is your conception of this mass movement back? by a political organization the same as Rosa Luxembourg's mass strike or similar to Rosa Luxembourg's mass strike? How do you situate your conception of what is needed in relation to the conception of the mass strike is formulated by Rosa Luxembourg? Thank you for that question. Interesting. I would say it completely diverges from the mass

strike. And I say that because the mass strike has no political organization, really. It's about the workers rising up. And, you know, they rise up. But for what? To what? For what purpose? And that somehow there's going to be this magical transformation into socialism because they're rising up. But I'm sorry, people have been rising up for the last several centuries. And, you know, there hasn't been, you know, with the exception of the Soviet Union and during the, especially the early, years under Lenin and Salon, and China, especially in the early years under Mao, and a few other places where, in fact, the standards of living in the sense of education, life expectancy, literacy rates, food intake, the rights of women, and so forth and so on. I can just give you,

you know, just a few examples of them of real benefits that took place in a very short period of time that were advanced in the Soviet Union in its early years, which was also fighting initially against 19 countries that had invaded it after the revolution took place, including the United States, as well as fighting fascism and defeating fascism. And yet, at the same time, they were able to create a, what I would say, an egalitarian society by 1950 and so forth, that is probably incomparable in the world at this point today. And, you know, the fight against fascism was one that was a, you know, one of the, I know, as Lacerdo points out, and I agree completely, it's probably one of the most important, if not one of the two most important. struggles of modern history in my view, but just getting to the point, again, with respect to Rosa Luxembourg and the mass strike, you know, the book doesn't really deal at all with

anything related to organization. It essentially argues that the workers are going to somehow, and they do, I think she's correct. They're going to rise up. And, But something magic is going to happen and they're going to choose socialism. Well, you know, they may not choose socialism. And I think that's something that people who are, you know, socialists should recognize that, you know, you have to educate people about socialism. You have to inculcate ideas about atheism, to give you an example. In Darwinism, you know, I've seen these kinds of movements around the world where, you know, people need to know. know that, you know, the world has a history to it and that history is one of exploitation.

And to understand it, you know, you have to, over a period of time, I think, become scientific in your analysis. And, you know, this is also another thing that bothers me. You know, they'll say that, you know, okay, you're engaged in this kind of classical socialist analysis, which I'm not in a certain way, and others are not. What I'm really doing is actually, you know, revealing the fact that, you know, we can, you know, to go back to the work of angles in some respect, that utopias do not exist and that utopianism is, you know, really a form of religion in some respect. The idea that you can achieve a perfect socialist, a communist society is a utopian idea.

And so, you know, people say, why are you even a leftist? And I would say, not only am I, I don't really care what people call me, but I would argue that this is a communist and also a scientific perspective that believes it is rooted in social justice that has to be achieved actually through class struggles that are organized by a, you know, I guess a detachment. of the working class that, I don't guess, I believe very strongly about that, that commits themselves to a political struggle and has the resources to fight a struggle over, you know, decades sometimes. And I think we're, you know, we are probably seeing that or that those struggles are happening today. I just wanted to, yeah, so I just wanted to make sure that we got that out in the open about the mass strike over the course of this interview. Mani, can I ask you to just be brief about worker cooperatives because I want to make sure

Adnan has plenty of time to get some questions out there as well. Yeah, I would just say, first of all, worker cooperatives are capitalist organizations. You know, the idea of a cooperative is that you share in the capitalist resources. They're, you know, worker cooperatives exist under capitalism. They don't exist under socialism, unless you have it controlled by a socialist state. They are, you know, traded and so forth, you know, if we take a look at Mondragon and so forth, on economic exchanges and so forth, they fire workers. In the case of the Philippines, they're used as a means to exploit workers, as middlemen,

to emiserate workers even further, while, you know, do, them into thinking that they actually have a role in their own future economic and political power. I can get into that to a greater extent, but I don't think time. Maybe we don't have time for it. Yeah. Well, there's so much to talk about. So yes, I guess one question that I have is that in your conclusion, you cited Brayman and Vanderlinden. And part of what that citation or a quote was about was that it was high time, according to them, to rethink the concept of the working class and the ways in which it can further its interests.

In part, some of the conversation we've been having has been revolving around rejecting some of the kinds of new left theories that have emerged under neoliberalism and in the globalization post-Cold War and saying that they've gone too far in this suspicion of, you know, political organization and political leadership as concomitant or at least a component that's necessary for worker liberation. So I'm wondering, actually, what do you take if you want to expand on that, you know, what kind of rethinking of the concept of the working class did you see as necessary and what were you trying to accomplish? You know, at this moment, how would you see that looking like? What's your concept of this, of the working class? Well, you raised a lot of

questions. You know, I think that we are seeing, first of all, just the initial part of your your point about Marcel van der Linden and Jan Bremann, amongst other scholars, they are moving in a direction that views the world as divided. A former colleague of mine, Zach Cope, has written a book on the divided world between the north and the south. And he's several other works, he's worked on that subject.

And, you know, I think that this, This is the, you know, the historians that, as well as a social scientist, who study the history of the world, you know, have begun to recognize that it is not just one that encompasses the 800 million people who live in Europe and North America, but it encompasses, you know, the 8.5 billion people who live in Europe and North America, but it encompasses, you know, the 8.5 billion people who live in the world. So, you know, we're talking about 90% of the population again. And so I think there is a, first of all, from an intellectual and academic perspective, there is a reassessment of how we have to look at workers. And, you know, one of the factors is that there is a, you know, a vast oversupply of labor in the Global South, which contributes to their exploitation. and low rates of pay.

I think that a number of scholars, like Marcel and Jan Ramon, they've come to the conclusion that, that, yes, there is a divide that really cannot be addressed without a major transformation of the way we engage in consumer. consumerism in the West and

that if wages are to go up in the West, along with, you know, I mean, obviously, you know, we can criticize corporations and they're certainly part of the problem, the major problem, they're part of capitalism. But there are petty

bourgeois elements within the working class. And I think that in many instances, much of the working class in the West has become petty bourgeois. And by that, I'm, you know, rather than just using that terminology, I'll say they've become comfortable, you know, two cars. Yeah, of course, people are struggling and I can give you many examples of that, and I study that even in the West. But there is this dynamic in which a vast majority of the so-called working class, you know,

Engels writes about this, Lenin writes about this, Hobbsbaum writes about, this is a long, there's a long intellectual history about the labor aristocracy, that they have become the problem to a large extent. And that if we are going to, you know, raise wages in the West, and we mentioned, you know, for instance, the universal basic income, et cetera, that is going to be coming at the expense of the, further impoverishment of workers in the south or the population in the south. You know, women, children, you know, higher death rates for everyone, more disease, lack of food, famine, et cetera. And so the world really cannot survive on the enormous inequality that exists between north and south.

It just will not be able to survive that way so that, you know, as we speak, you know, there are all these programs that are stimulating the economies in the North, doing nothing in the global South whatsoever in the aftermath or in the, this stage of the coronavirus pandemic. And these stimulus programs are intended to, you know, help populations that have been hurt. I do agree that there has been a decline in living standards and maybe not a decline in living standards, but a greater level of inequality in the North, that's true maybe by about 2% over the last 30 or 40 years and in certain places like the United States to a greater degree, but not that much greater. But, you know, if we are going to have another new deal, so to speak, for workers in the United States, and that might include, you know, a Green New Deal, by the way, that will come at the expense of workers and the vast majority of the population in the South because they're going to be producing all the goods that are, you know, not, you know, we raise the question of unequal exchange, but, you know, that are not, you know, recorded the proper value in the international economy. I mean, we're just touching the surface with respect to Immanuel's work,

our Gary Emmanuel's work. So I just think that that's a very, I guess, a somber note to put forward. But I think that we really have to recognize that. you know, workers in the West, as well as the population as a whole in the West, are really beneficiaries, not just of a system of 500 years of imperialism, but imperialism that has existed, that is actually increasing through the post-colonial societies and semi-colonies, such as Philippines, in which, the extraction rates are just growing and growing. And just think of the 250 million people who are permanent migrants around the world who have really no homes whatsoever, international migrants. That excludes about a billion people who are internal migrants around the world.

So where we're dealing with tremendous crises that are affecting the working class. And this is a working class that actually does mobilize, does engage in strikes. I mean, I actually wrote a book earlier called Southern Insurgency that dealt with this question. And, you know, I think the missing point was that, yeah, we could celebrate the strikes as much as we want. And isn't that wonderful? Yes, it shows that people are willing to fight back when they have very poor conditions. But what it doesn't address whatsoever is the significance of organization, community organization, labor unions that are militant and radical and connected to political parties that are socialist and communists

that are challenging the system of inequality that is structural within the global system. So that's how I would answer your question. question at this point. Before I let you ask your question, if not, I just want to make a brief statement. So you mentioned that Green New Deal, as it's being thought about in the United States in particular, but the imperialist core more generally is an imperialist project as it's currently being conceived in terms of extraction from the global south. And I just want to do a brief plug for listeners that want to know more about this.

I just did an interview on the David Feldman show along with my friend Nomania from anti-imperialist net with the author of another new book that came out from Pluto Cress at almost the exact same time as organizing insurgency called A People's Green New Deal by Max Isle. So listeners, feel free to look up that book, A People's Green New Deal, which I like to call it the anti-imperialist Green New Deal. It's a very interesting book, and it was a very fun interview. So I'll link to that in the notes. But Adnan, why don't I turn it over to you now for your question? I guess I have a follow-up here on that. And I think what's so important about what you've been doing, Mani in your book here is, of course,

integrating that anti-imperialist perspective and internationalist perspective that, you know, understands what's happening in the global south is absolutely crucial to how this system is working. But so in some sense, if your, you know, analysis has to be international and global here so that the, you know, first world leftists, you know, actually understand, you know, what's at stake in how the system is really working. I'm interested in the fact that you emphasize, however, that successful

struggle has to take shape, perhaps, within a particular country. in national sorts of terms. So I was wondering if you could explain why you think that's the case and why, you know, why not, you know, find ways in which one can disrupt and organize around disrupting the, you know, global network of supply chains and, and these sorts of things that, you know, could be seen as vulnerable, you know, given the way that are. architecture of neoliberal global capitalism is working. And if you can imagine that there might be some form of internationalist organized politics from the global south. Adnan, I'm going to hop on

to the back end of that question. We're in sync, you and me. I was about to ask the exact same question, so I actually have part of the book pulled up that I can quote from to drive this point home. So, Mani, you write, on a systemic level, workers in the global south must defeat the neoliberal capitalist order in order to achieve a long-lasting victory over multinational capitalist firms that are dominated by global commodity supply networks benefiting people in the global north. Yet the implications of each of the three case studies is that it is far more likely that the working classes may achieve long-term gains through struggles in a single country

rather than across states. Thus, the labor and working class struggles in India, the Philippines, and South Africa are distinct and advanced through the development of counter-hegemonic forces in each country. You go on from there, but I just wanted to make sure that we had that in this question since I had it open anyway. Well, that was exactly the quote I had in mind. So thank you. Perfect.

There we go. Thanks, Adnan, and thanks Henry for those points that were put forward. And actually, I was thinking about it myself because I was thinking, like, you know, one point that really needs to be driven home is that socialism in one state is really the only possibility for achieving socialism in the near term, that it's very difficult to unify, you know, countries that are far-flung in many ways. If we take a look at the Soviet Union, of course, it was the defeat of the Russian Empire created a Soviet Union in which, you know, a number of countries, 17 countries were a part of at different times and so forth and so on.

But, you know, it was Joseph Stalin who put forward this heretical idea that socialism is possible in one state. And, you know, it's not about him or anything like that, But I think that that's something that we should actually latch on to because that's the only kind of socialism we have ever seen in any way. It has been a very successful form in the Soviet Union and China. And even in countries that are poor and isolated like Cuba, we've had socialism in one state. You know, people might argue about whether, you know, they, you know, adhere to, you know, the absolute principles of a specific form of Marxism, et cetera. But, you know, it is a form of socialism.

The level of equality is quite great and so forth. But I would argue that what is needed and the reason why I have, you know, put forward these three examples of the Philippines, India and South Africa, is that I see each of them as each of these countries as ripe for revolution. You know, I see Philippines as maybe more than the Philippines because that entire region is oppressed, especially, you know, the Philippines and Indonesia, et cetera, for many years. But the Philippines certainly under the Spanish and then under really current American colonial rule, it's a big enough country over, you know, 110 million people and so forth to create a socialist state. In India, you have 1.35 billion people. I don't think the state could survive in terms of supplying the daily needs of its population without creating socialism.

And, you know, the population of the world, I think in 1900 was about a million, a billion, I'm sorry. So we're talking about 50% larger population in the world's population that exists. in India today. And, you know, I see I view South Africa as Southern Africa, which should be more of a region that should be able to consolidate all that natural resource wealth that happens to be in that part of the world and to, you know, be able to dominate it in a way because those resources were taken away for hundreds of years, you know, at least. 150 years in the case of South Africa

with respect to diamonds and gold and so forth but you know hundreds of years the Spanish, the Dutch, the British and the French, et cetera, et cetera. So I think, you know, on the point that was raised with respect to, you know, can there be a global movement? My view is that, you know, we

Americans, Europeans, wherever we're from, who are better off, should support these movements and that we should provide whatever kind of resources that are possible, you know, outside of the NGO model, of course, that will advance the workers' movement

in the Philippines, the workers' movement in, and workers' movements, I should say, in India and in South Africa, which are in some cases developed and, you know, their fits and starts and so forth. But, you know, make no mistake about it. We often think of, well, okay, you know, India is a capitalist state. Yes, it is a capital estate. You know, the Philippines is a capitalist state.

South Africa is a capital state. But, you know, when you go and talk to the average person on the street and you ask them what they want. They want, they want socialism. They want a powerful party that they could latch onto and say, you know, this is our party. This party represents us. It advances our interests in a democratic matter. In fact, democratic socialism is the only way that, you know, really democracy can actually take hold because it expresses the ideals of the workers and the aspirations of the workers. And it puts them into force as opposed to systems that shift from one to another based on the idiosyncrasies of, you know, bourgeois elections.

So I would, you know, make a very strong case that if we look at the history of the last 100 years, the examples that we have, you know, if we're historians and so forth, are socialist countries in one state. You know, have they made mistakes? You know, people can say they have made mistakes, but not as many mistakes as capitalist countries have done. in terms of killing people and destroying civilization in many ways. Just take a look at China during the 19th century. And, you know, I can go on and on and we can have speak for hours about imperialism. But the point, again, would be very clear that socialism in China had succeeded dramatically in

improving life expectancy, eliminating famine. Yes, it was violent. And that's problematic, but that's the way change takes place. Unfortunately, it's the way that change only takes place because right now the greatest form of violence is perpetrated by the United States and other imperialist countries around the world who are arming rebels, who are engaged in various forms of warfare,

drone warfare, et cetera, and as ways to maintain economic and hegemonic power over the world. So I just want to make the point about logistical workers, which was raised by Agnon. You know, I have investigated them, do think that they, they're sort of like choke points. It's actually the term analogy that I use with a colleague of mine, Jake Ali Mohamed Wilson. It, it those are, you know, for instance, you know, workers who are in the docks who can stop ships from sailing to, let's say,

and advancing their economy. They could, you know, stop, you know, providing ships that are, you know, transporting arms, et cetera. They could also stop the supply chain of consumer goods to the West, potentially for a period of time, but I don't think for very long. And I don't think it's in their interest to do so either. So, I mean, many of these workers are, you know, high-wage workers, On the other hand, many of the workers are also low-waged workers. I also want to make that point to work as delivery workers and transport, you know, Amazon products in various communities and so forth in the United States.

So, you know, I don't want to discount the fact that there are not poor and working-class people in the United States. There certainly are, and we should recognize them. And I do think that if we really want to make a difference in the world, however, I think we must unify any kind of struggle in this country with struggles of people who are highly exploited outside of this country. And the leaders of those countries, forgive me, the leaders of the social movements, the trade unions, the socialist parties and so forth and so on, are very serious people. you know, they are serious about transforming their society. They're serious about involving the entire community or communities of their countries and building power for men and women, looking, you know, seeking equality in that sense because women do probably most of the work in new factories today.

So I just want to make the point that, you know, logistical workers can go only so far. think that we as principled socialists or communists, I don't really like to call myself anything because I think, you know, I oppose capitalism and I oppose imperialism. And I don't believe in first world capitalism. Forgive me, first world socialism. I think that that's another form of exploitation. And, you know, I see the, you know, the literature really that we've read over the last 20, 25 years, talks about, you know, what we should achieve first world socialism. And, you know, the Social Democratic Socialists of America are one of them, not every person in that party, of course. But, you know, they want to create a system in which you have, you know, socialism for

for Americans at the expense of, you know, the further immiseration through lowering, the wages of third world workers and you can take a look at every single product from you know the houses we live in from the cars we drive if we drive from the furniture we sit on to the computers that we use to the televisions we watch to the clothing we wear i mean i can go to the food we eat you know just about every single thing that we can use and consume our commodities that are produced not all of them but our are produced outside of, let's just say, the United States for this argument, but also Europe as well. You're also in Europe, so Europe as well. Yeah, that's very interesting, Manny. Yeah.

The only reason why I asked that question was, of course, because you yourself, you know, in the book, mentioned that capital does take advantage of, you know, through globalization, of political, social, economic and legal differences, you know, among a range of states. So I kind of wanted to, and I very much appreciate that historically speaking, the big gains, you know, socially and economically have taken place when you have socialism in a particular country. But it's very interesting that you mentioned this opposition to First World or Global North socialism. It's very interesting point here. Because, you know, one thing I was wondering is that in some ways, it seems like you're suggesting that unless you have an anti-imperialist politics, very, very, you know, profoundly and directly, the role for first world or global North left is somewhat marginal to where the real struggle is taking place at the workers sort of level.

And so I'm just wondering, you know, if you can elaborate a little bit on what you see as the proper role. since our audience is mostly, I mean, we'd love to have a global audience, but I think we're speaking in English and, you know, in terms of who listens to this podcast, I think it's really mostly global North leftists. What do you see as the sort of role, if there is a role, you know, how do you understand what should happen in, you know, the politics of global North left? Yeah, I was going to, I had a chapter that was written in this book on global North. left, and I was debating whether I would use it or not, and I decided not to because I didn't see enough evidence that there was any interest in advancing the standards of living on a global level. And so just to get to that point, you know, I mean, you're a historian of empires. I believe, you know, and do you know them well, and that empires extract whatever they do, they extract, you know, one form or another of resources or labor, et cetera, from other people's around the world.

And today we have a global capitalist empire that's controlled in the north. And, you know, there could be no mistake about it. Yes, there are capitalists in India. They're capitalists everywhere. But for the most part, you know, it's not even for the most part. It's just by and large, we're dealing with Europeans and Americans and, you know, Japanese, et cetera, Australians who are, you know, dominating, you know, the wealth of the world. You know, in a place like South Africa, you know, the two leading families control something like 50% of the wealth, or is it something? I mean, I don't have the precise numbers in front of me, but it's something like maybe

the 10 leading family is 50% of the wealth in the country. That's just an abomination. And it just does speak to, you know, a country that's actually ripe if it had the proper organizational features for a revolutionary transformation. And it will have to happen. I mean, you know, it's, there's no. escaping it. So that will mean that, you know, we will pay more for the automobiles that we are driving in because catalytic converters cannot be produced without platinum. And platinum is,

you know, you know, again, when we think about the green economy, it's essential for it. You know, and again, that's what I'm referring to before. And, you know, Max Isle's work is extremely important. And as Henry was pointing out in that respect, you know, there is a high degree of, I would say, hypocrisy in the Green New Deal proposals because they only think of a Green New Deal for the North. You know, so for instance, lithium, not the drug, the battery, is found in Bolivia in a few countries in the global south. and the United States and, you know, one can say even China and many other countries want to get their hands on that lithium so that they can produce it at, you know, at low cost, you know, and many of their, you know, the supporters in the United States of the Green New Deal or, you know, which, you know, I don't support the Green New Deal. I do think we have climate change and we should do something about it as quickly as possible because especially the people who suffer from it most are in the global South through flooding and and drought, etc. That's so extensive that it's, you know, just, you know, millions of people

are dying every year from climate change in the global South. So I think it's serious. But, you know, the Green New Deal is sort of a laughable thing when, you know, it would, you know, only benefit people in this part of the world to the greatest extent in terms of economically. So I'm saying that, yeah, there is a history of inter-imperialist rivalry. Today, I am amongst those people that would say that the United States remains the pegemonic power of the world, although there are potential competitors, the degree to which they compete will be seen. But even amongst those competitors, people mention China. Of course, China, you know, a very good scholar from Australia, Samuel T. King, you know, writes China is a poor country. And that's true.

You know, you could get, you know, basic services in China and so forth for the working class. But, you know, most people survive on very low wages. They produce, you know, at low wages for the West in many respects. And, you know, while China might be reviving to its greatness of the past, it's still a poor country because of the immense amount of labor that is engaged in highly exploitative labor. of work and at low wages. And, you know, we've seen that play out a number of struggles and strikes. So, you know, I'm not, you know, I don't think we should give China a free ride.

On the other hand, I think we should oppose any American effort to begin and extend a cold war with China, which is very deleterious toward the population of China as a whole and the region as well, Southeast Asia and East Asia, where, you know, people, you know, thermonuclear wars, you know, could kill half the, you know, population of the world. We're talking about, I think, two-fifths of the population of the world live in China and Southeast Asia. And so anyway, those are some of the points that we should consider. And I think, you know, I grew up during a period of time that people cared about nuclear war.

and nuclear weapons and, you know, the cessation of it, I don't think people do as much as they had in the past at all. And I think it's a very serious problem. And at the same time, I don't think that certain countries should give them up because I don't think that the United States should be, as well as its competitors, should dominate control over the military might on the planet. I think that's a very dangerous, a very dangerous thing to have happen. So I'm really going a bit off topic,

but I am talking to the point of empire. And the fact that we do have imperialist struggles that the United States is trying to foment, you know, by creating, new wars on the boundaries of Russia. Again, I have no love loss for Vladimir Putin, but many of these wars, if you read the literature, have been fomented by the United States,

and they do so again as well with China in the same way. Not to say that there aren't problems, but the United States is very powerful and remains the most powerful country in the world. That may change, but I don't think anytime soon. That's my position. Right, right. No, I really appreciate that.

I think it's a very important point, and if I could make a bit of an appeal, you know, that chapter that you were going to put into the book, the Global North Left, you know, might make a very good book. And I would love to read it, and we would like to have you back on if you do write that for sure, because I think that is a big question about how to create that consciousness and solidarity for the global South and recognize our complicity in imperialism and develop a genuine left politics in the first world, global North to oppose it. I think that's important, a very important point. So I hope you do write that. I have already written a number of chapters that I just haven't published it yet. But I just look at the research that I've done,

what people care about, the left cares about in this country. They care about improving the, which aren't bad things necessarily, you know, improving health care access, you know, improving education, et cetera. eliminating, you know, climate change. I mean, no one can really disagree with those objectives, but they seem to be very parochial and don't really have much to do with improving a lot of the planet as a whole, you know,

which is, you know, really suffering to... And when I say the planet, I'm referring to humanity on the planet. Yeah. At the level, I think, greater... I mean, you know, philosophers have spoken about this extensively. Thomas Pogue, amongst others, you know, it's almost unspeakable, the differentiation in the standards of living between Europe and the United States and North America and the rest of the world. It is unspeakable, in fact. And, you know, we talk about other events that have taken place in the 20th century, you know, we had fascism.

We, it was very important to defeat it as it is even, you know, today, any element of it. And, you know, it's possible they could come back. But, you know, I think that, you know, if we look at, you know, historians might say the 20th, 21st century, you know, is marked by neoliberalism, which I don't see going away very quickly without a struggle. And that's why I appeal to socialism in one country, not for any person, not for any ideological perspective, but I just think it's possible. And it's been the only way that socialism has actually been achieved.

The other point should be made, and maybe I am getting a little ideological here, and that is that we have not really seen socialism take place in the Global North at all, you know, with, you know, minor exceptions of the Nordic countries where they had, you know, social democracies, which are essentially capitalist states with high welfare components to them. And but, you know, I think people are going to look back who are living, you know, hopefully living 200 years from now and say, well, this, that was a really outrageous century

in terms of the way humanity treated itself, you know, people who had power. had extracted so much from the global south, I think, far more than even the past five centuries, that it will become, you know, I think, one of the most important conceptual ideas historically, you know, along with, you know, slavery, the destruction of indigenous people, fascism, and so forth and so on. I think the, you know, the, you know, the destruction of indigenous people, I think the structural poverty that is created through imperialism will, is and will become much more important in the years to come. I just want to, so we're going to have time for one short question left, but before I get to it, I just want to mention, since you mentioned the Nordic countries, that, yeah, certainly the social welfare programs that they have make life there very common. but it still doesn't question the structure that we've been talking about between the global

north and the global south whatsoever. Let's just take Sweden for an example. Sweden has a long and bloody history of operating mines all through Africa, very famously slows, very famously so, and still have mines present in Africa, where they're extracting incredible amounts of profit in exploiting the workers to a tremendous degree with very, very poor workers. conditions for those individuals, and there's no talk about it. Meanwhile, how are they funding their social welfare programs? One of the big things that brings in money is the VAT on their arms industry. So, arms that get sold to other countries, and in a lot of cases, countries that are destabilizing global south countries or are in the global south and are in the middle of bloody

conflicts, ethnic conflicts, national conflicts, whatever. The VAT from those arms, industries in Sweden are funding the social programs there. So yeah, it keeps the lives of the people in Sweden, for example, but the Nordic countries in general, very, very nice, but it is not questioning this relationship. That's not the question I have. So this is, we're very, very short. It's a brilliant analysis, Henry, I have to say, because it really does speak to the relationship between militarism, exploitation of natural resources, welfare states. Well, thank you. I appreciate that.

But we're very, very short on time, Manny. So I'm going to let you allude to one thing that plays a very important role in the book, which we didn't get time to talk about. So just allude to it, very briefly said the listeners have a reason to pick up the book and then just give one or two minutes worth of closing remarks in terms of what you want the listeners to take home. So what I want you to allude to is the rural question. I think that it's something that we've kind of neglected both in this particular episode. We haven't really talked about it specifically, but in terms of from an analytical framework, people have stopped looking

at rural workers because we consider the world to be urbanizing. And your book very much shows that to not necessarily be the case. We have to pay attention to these rural and informal workers. So just very briefly allude to why I made that statement and then give us one or two minutes of take-home message before we wrap up. Crucial question and actually, you know, it makes me think more about the whole point, which I think is very, very clear. Well, you know, Mike Davis reported in Planet of Slums in that 2004 that the world had become more than 50% urban and that that would be an ineluctible trend that would continue into the

future. What is missing in that, and I know that Mike Davis recognizes that to be the case that much of the urban areas, or most of the urban areas in the world, are really rural areas that have been constituted as cities. So you have populations that have been displaced from their agricultural communities and so forth. They've migrated to urban areas because they cannot survive in the rural areas. But what are those? urban areas and what do they look like? In many cases, there's very large populations in those areas, but they don't have sewage or water treatment. They don't have electricity. They don't have roads. They don't have education. The housing, you know, this housing that I see in the

middle of Delhi, you have, you know, four or five-story flats with people walking up the stairs on ladders. I mean, this is a kind of urbanization that they talk about that we should be so hopeful for. In addition to that, you know, the major point is that we have more rural people in the world today than at any point in the history of the world. So that at the same time as the world is becoming more urban with those kinds of workers, we're not talking really about workers who are moving to New York or Chicago or Paris, etc. London were really referring to workers who are moving to places like Jakarta, Chennai, New Delhi,

and, you know, I can go on and on and on, many cities in China and so forth. But especially outside of China, you know, Dhaka, et cetera, South Asia is one of those places. but also Africa as well. These aren't really cities. These are really places where you have agglomerations of people who live in substandard conditions that are even worse than rural areas in terms of supplying services.

So there are two points. One is that the world is more rural now than ever before in the sense that more rural people live in the world. world, 3.5 billion people at least, you know, pushing higher, you know, and so we have 4.5 billion in urban areas. Of that 4.5 billion, you know, I would say about 2 billion of that population lives without water, clean water, without, you know, proper nutrition, without medicine, without, you know, clean air, which is a very important factor, without health care, and so

forth and so on, so that I would argue that, you know, people who are living in rural areas were doing far better than they are today in underserved, decrepit urban cities of the global South, that, you know, no one, I mean, I've got to be honest with you that no one wants to live in. No one would want to even stay there for a period of a day or two, unless you're in, you know, going from a limousine to limousine. You know, it reminds me of Thomas Friedman's, one of his books that he put out, and forgive me if I'm going over time, about India being the competitor to the United States, which is the most laughable thing that went to imagine, you know, he probably, you know, had blindfolds on while he was, because I traveled to many of the cities

that he did in India, you know, Hyderabad, Bangalore, et cetera. And he was talking about these high tech centers. Yes, they're high tech centers, but, you know, you're talking about, you know, 3%, 5% of the population at most that are beneficiaries of that, he completely neglects 95% of that population that are living, you know, not great lives, and I'd say 75% that are living in abject poverty, abject poverty, you know, without, you know, living in shacks and stuff like that, you know, and that could be destroyed overnight by rain or a hurricane, etc. and yeah unfortunately we're out of time but it was a fantastic conversation that we had with you manny and as udnan said any time that you put out some future work we'd be more than happy to bring

you back on the show and hopefully brett will be available next time because i know he really was looking forward to the conversation today but listeners again our guest was a professor Emmanuel Ness, who wrote the brand new book from Pluto Press, Organizing Insurgency, Workers Movements in the Global South. Thanks again for coming on the program, Manny. Listeners, we'll be right back with the wrap-up. And listeners, we're back for the wrap-up, and we just had a very, very interesting conversation. We had a little bit of back and forth with Manny after the conversation as well, which was similarly illuminating and definitely thought-provoking and provides a lot of avenues for us to

explore further in the future, both of this show as well as our own study. Adnan, what were, what are your initial impressions of the conversation that we had? Did it really draw out more than just the book on its own brought out for you? Well, I mean, I think you're right that we had good back in forth, even after we had to conclude at a certain point, you know, these questions on the most important issues facing the world, of course, are potentially unending because there is so much to talk about. There's so many implications to understanding, you know, how the global economy is working and what the pathway is towards overturning capitalism, you know, might be. So, you know,

that said, so if we didn't cover some component, I know we gave short shrift a little. little bit to a question you raised about the implications and importance of understanding the rural context and, you know, informal labor as opposed to, you know, the more organized formal urban labor context. And, you know, that's just... You might if I, you might if I hop in for one brief second there? Because, yeah, just on the, on the rural question, so again, just to back this point up, and then I'll let you continue for as long as you want. But as you mentioned, we didn't really have time to talk about it during the interview

itself. But it is a very important question within this book that's talked about at some length. And I just want to highlight for the listeners to consider this, that when we're talking about workers of the world, that when we're thinking about global north countries, we tend to be thinking of everything urbanizing. We tend to think of things automating in many cases, but urbanizing. even in cases where automation isn't happening. And the way that we've been told this in the past and even in the present is that there's

a shift happening from rural to urban. And certainly the rate of the urban population is growing significantly faster than the rural population, but as Manny points out in his book and even provides the data for it in his book, the rural population has also grown over the last. 50 years. It's not shrinking. It's still growing. And so yes, the urban population has grown more, grown faster, but the rural population has still grown. And even in, and particularly in the global south, I should mention, the global south has had a fairly dramatic rise in the rural population over the last 50 years. And as many alluded to briefly in the interview, even when we're

talking about the increasing urban population, it's a little bit tricky to say that, because as he mentioned, when we say urban, it doesn't necessarily mean living in urban conditions. It's just living in a city. Many of these individuals are still living in a place that has no running water, no septic system, no electricity. These are the same conditions that these people lived in when they were living in rural conditions. They're just now packed into these tin can houses like sardines, you know, urban. But the conditions of life haven't really changed to that significant degree that we're

typically thinking of when we think of urbanized workers. Furthermore, he also mentioned several times throughout the book about the mobility of workers. A lot of times in particularly the global south, workers will move from rural areas to urban areas to work for periods of time and then move back to rural areas again once they have gotten some money to do more rural work. So the proportion of people that are mobile is a very tricky thing to try to calculate, but also plays some role here. So it's important that when we're thinking of workers, we don't forget about these rural and informal workers because the way that we've been told this story for the last, you know, however many, I guess, decades at this point,

is that you can kind of not even worry about analyzing rural workers and informal workers because as time goes on, it's becoming more and more urbanized. So to analyze the labor movement, we have to analyze the urban labor movement. And Manny does a pretty good job in the book. And unfortunately, we didn't have much time to talk about it, that the rural agricultural, informal sectors, particularly in the global south, are still huge. are really what is holding up the global economic system because these rural workers in many cases are the ones who are providing the resources for more advanced products to be produced

in global North countries, for example. Anyway, sorry for that interruption. No, no, not at all. I think that just illustrates exactly what was, I think, significant when you said, you know, how did the conversation go further? We could have probably talked a little bit more about that subject to really elucidate those links that the book is trying to show through its particular case studies and examples. But if I was thinking about insights that came out a little bit stronger as a result of the conversation, I would say how much Manny's perspective really does emphasize. I think maybe you picked up a little bit more on it, how much it does emphasize the importance of politics, of political organization, of a party that's dedicated

to supporting these militant labor unions and social movements, but basically represents at the political level, the project of a revolutionary transformation, and is willing to engage in capture of the state, you know, and to contest that, that those really do, you know, have to work together, but he really wanted to emphasize that. And that was kind of, you know, that was interesting. Now, that might be controversial, and he definitely endorsed certain, you know, previous examples historically from the earlier part of the 20th century of, you know, those kind of classic party politics and those revolutionary movements. You know, the question is, is under what shape can these, you know, take place now? I mean, and so there will be maybe from the more

anarchistic, you know, or autonomous. And I should have asked, actually, I would have been interested. I thought afterwards, oh, I should have asked about examples like Zapatistas, where it isn't just a free form autonomous kind of movement, but it is definitely a different model that has engaged in land-based, territorial-based, liberatory movements, and what he thought about that? Now, obviously, there aren't a lot of examples of this, you know, being very successful. So these are important and interesting questions for us to think about. And hopefully we'll have a chance to ask him at some point, you know, about these in a future conversation. But I guess the second point that came out that I was interested to explore further and I gained a little bit of a better understanding is this importance of national struggle.

Again, because I think with globalization, and I had a chance to ask about this, I think we could have talked a little bit further about what does an internationalist politics look like because capitalism is able to exploit differences and to pit global South countries against one another and blackmail them and, of course, to index the ideological use of the whole, you know, monetary. system and trade system, you know, with these global institutions like, you know, the IMF and the World Bank, that there are ways in which any attempts to implement at the national level, like nationalize industries or to implement some of these socioeconomic transformative policies, those countries are punished and capital leaves and goes somewhere where it finds a comprador, you know, class that was willing to cooperate, you know, at the national level. So that seems to be a tension that we really need to think a little bit more. I like how his examples show possibilities for being able to resist this.

But that's some field where I think we could think more. And I was really interested in his remarks during this episode, during our interview with him. Yeah, I would have also liked to talk more about the role of the Comprador class in these global South countries. Because I think that that's a very important point within this story. that was both touched on in this book, but I also felt could have been expanded on more in the conversation. And, I mean, there's just so many things to talk about that we didn't have time for it. But as you were talking, it reminded me of another point within this book,

or I guess two points, and I've pulled them up. I'm going to read two related quotes from here. And I'm just curious as to your thoughts on these quotes. So talking about how the global south and the global north are compared, to one another. We can also compare global self countries that are controlled by very capitalistic ruling parties compared to ones that are more socialist in comparison. So, for example, here's a section from page 75, if anybody's following along. In contrast to other developing countries, it's in quotes, like the People's Republic of China,

the Indian government has typically not identified, or sorry, not invested capital in infrastructural projects to expand production, but has depended on a large reserve army of labor in manufacturing, whereas a rural surplus value has been realized through their super exploitation. In this way, the dominant strategy has been for small and medium-sized industry to compete through low wages, long hours, poor and unsafe working conditions. And he also, and now jumping back to page 42, again, for anybody that happens to be following along. He says, well, labor militancy indisputably coincides with the flow of capital. The case studies in this book show that labor militancy also occurs in manufacturing agricultural

mining industries with low level of capital subsumption. In this way, capital and also capitalist profits do not require spatial or technological fixes to generate profits, but rely solely on the super exploitation of labor. Now, I found this to be a very interesting point because we tend to think of these technological, spatial, temporal fixes in terms of how to generate profits. And one thing that we typically think about is, you know, automating industries in order to increase the productivity of that industry and extract greater profits from that. That's not what was happening in India in particular in this case study where no money was really being put in. to the infrastructure and automating the steelmaking industry.

There was so many people that were employed in this industry and so many people that were living in absolutely squalid conditions in the area, this one district of New Delhi, where these fixes weren't even required. They didn't even require automating the jobs or increasing the conditions whatsoever of these factories. They were able to get away with just having an incredibly large reserve. army of labor and then beating down the people who are in the work so far and super exploiting them in order to maintain profitability. I found that very interesting and I'm curious your

thoughts on that point at none. I agree and that actually is something if we'd had more time we should have discussed because I think this goes very well with our previous podcast actually. I think T-War, you know, a history of capitalism in India and China, which is to understand and recognize that the pathway by which, you know, first world global North societies have, you know, followed capitalist development doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to work in exactly the same way elsewhere. And we think that just because this transformation has happened and we're in this particular stage of capitalism and capitalist organization, that this is just going to be globalized. And, you know, maybe these other parts of the world haven't caught up yet, you know, with the full

standard of living being raised and so on, that it's going to happen and then we'll have different questions and issues to have to deal with as a result. This, I think, is very, very important to recognize that you can have different kinds of labor regimes, that fundamentally the value comes from exploitation of labor, but how that happens can happen in various ways. We learn that with Andrew Lee from T-Wore, and we're seeing in a way that, you know, you don't have to have these investments in technology, which is kind of what Andrew Liu was saying as well. You can still find ways in which the absolute exploitation of labor because there's a large

reserve army, you know, inhibit some of the transformations that many leftists are hanging their hat on when they imagine the end of work. And of course, I would love also to see the end of work. You know, I mean, who wouldn't? But the point is, is that it's still very much an issue that the left has to be dealing with because that work has been displaced to migrants in the first world or certain populations that are segmented away from, you know, the glare of where we think most left politics is happening in the kind of workers, you know, people who are in the reserve army of labor, the under-employed, you know, in the first world, but especially in a scale that is completely unimaginable for us if we just analyze first world societies in the

global north is the way in which there are these huge reserve armies of labor that are being exploited in the global south. So I think that was another point that was very interesting. and we could have elaborated on, but, you know, he really took aim, Mani did, at the sort of optimistic sort of scenarios of the Hartnegri view and of, you know, those like Paul Mason, whom we discussed briefly in this episode are imagining that the algorithms, artificial intelligence, and the new knowledge economy is going to transform everything. We have to think of a new kind of post-capitalism. It's like, well, yeah, that might be, you know, possible.

possible in some frame, potentially, but you can't just jump to that when you actually see what's really going on in the global south. And that's why those case studies are so important to root us, not in just conceptualization and theoretical, based on our particular position or what we're witnessing in the society around us. But actually, you have to take into account that most of industrial production is happening now in the global south, and that there are so many workers who are being exploited in various ways. So I thought, I'm so glad that you raised that because we could have talked even more about that, that point. And I just want to bring up that last point that you were talking about in terms of, you know, automation, AI, building a better world for us. But there's two questions that that follow that. When and on who's back? you have to have the capacity to build those things. It requires infrastructure.

It requires raw materials. Whose back is providing this gilded future that some of these theorists are looking for? It's these same people that we were talking about being exploited all throughout this work. Now, to build a better society for people in the global north, in that conception, necessitates continued immiseration in the global south. And I think that what is crucial for everybody that's listening to this podcast to realize is that as we're thinking about worker struggles and union labor struggles and how to organize workers, we have to take an anti-imperialist view of this.

We can't just take basically a global North chauvinistic imperialist course, chauvinistic view of how to get these things done. We have to care about workers globally. And this is calling back to the thing that I said in the intro. When I said that these advances are largely going to be done within one country, that doesn't mean that people in the global north do not care about this. No, this is how we have to conceive of this. It's in an anti-imperialist framework, in a pro-worker of the world framework.

It's important. It's crucial for us to do that. If we don't do that, we're going to be perpetuating the same system of exploitation of individuals in the global south that we're currently seeing. And even if we're building this better future for workers in the global north, it's going to be on the backs of the workers in the global south. I think it's important that people realize that. Definitely. And I think that is one of my major conclusions out of this. that went further a little bit than you find in the book. It's sort of an implication that, you know, we drew out in our conversation with Manny is that, you know, without an anti-imperialist politics, you know,

we're just reproducing the system. So, I mean, and these inequities globally. And so that's kind of one area where I would say further thought is whether there is an internationalist global South politics possible. I understand that maybe it has to be rooted first. locales that then can use the state, you know, in their particular country to consolidate those gains and then be able to, you know, be a node in a wider network of internationalist anti-imperial struggle to overthrow, you know, the inequities of capitalism

and that from a systemic perspective. But, I mean, I think what it really raised also is for the audience of English speaking, you know, and reading, and we talked a little bit about this, is what is the role of the first world global north left? This was a fascinating addendum to the conversation contained within the book, and I really think has some potential for future work, and it seems that maybe we were helping encourage many to go ahead and do that work, because that's really the issue for many of us who are in the global north, is really working out what kind of a politics can actually contribute to global liberation,

not just looking at what's possible in our own societies. And the real issue is, and I think that's why we have guerrilla history, is that we want a global perspective. We want an internationalist perspective to inform our left politics in the first world, to learn from what's happening in the global South, and also what role we can and must play. And it's not just going to be about trying to reproduce those inequities by building a socialist exploitation, you know, a socialist nation in the first world that is just, you know, exploiting

even, you know, better in some sense, you know, the inequities with the global South. If we're actually dedicated to liberation, it has to be, you know, humanist on a broad, scale, and that's the only recipe really ahead for us. So that'll be, I think, a very interesting thing to keep thinking about as we go forward. How do you develop an internationalist anti-imperial politics of the first world that is actually in alignment with internationalist struggles as they consolidate spaces within various countries in the third world? This is, I think, the task ahead. Yeah, I think that that's a good note to wrap up on, too, is for the listeners to know that that is something that they're going to have to keep in mind.

And something that they are going to have to think about is how to construct an anti-imperialist workers' movement in the global north that is going to advance the struggles of workers in the global south. And just a shout out for Manny, if you happen to still be listening. When you make your anti-imperialist book on workers' movements for the global north or workers movement, how a workers movement in the global north should be constructed in an anti-imperialist manner, feel free to get back in touch with us and bounce ideas off of us because we'd love to have that conversation with you any time, whether it's to record something

or just to have that chat, because we really did enjoy talking with you after the recording was done about some of these ideas. So thanks again, Manny, for coming on the show. really appreciated it at listeners hope that you got something out of this conversation again the book that we talked about today was organizing insurgency workers movements in the global south by professor emmanuel ness uh out in it just came out in june from pluto press i'll include the link to get the book in the show notes uh highly recommend everybody pick it up or if you're not going to pick up the book yourself encourage your local library to get the book in stock i think that it's an important work for people to read. So the more libraries that get this work in stock,

the better. Okay, so as we're going out the door, Adnan, why don't I tell you, have you tell the listeners how they can find you and your other podcast. Sure, and we do miss Brett. Looking forward to him joining us in a future discussion. But in the meantime, you can follow me on Twitter at Adnan A. Hussein, H-U-S-A-I-N. And I would encourage you to listen to The M-A-J-L-I-S, other podcasts that I co-host or host, and it relates to the Middle East, Islamic World, Muslim Diasperas. And we have a new episode coming out every two weeks, sometimes monthly. But if you're interested in those topics, do check it out.

Yeah, and I'll do Brett's promotion for him since he's not here. You can find Brett and all of the work that he does for guerrilla history, Revolutionary Left Radio, as well as the Red Menace, by going to Revolutionary Left Radio.com. As for me, listeners, you can find me on Twitter at Huck 1995. You can follow me on Patreon where I write about immunology and public health. Patreon.com forward slash, Huck 1995. That's really appreciated. It helps me fund myself. And you can follow the show

Gorilla History on Twitter at Gorilla underscore Pod. That's U-E-R-R-2-Rs, I-L-L-A underscore pod, and support the show at patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history. Again, Gorilla with two R's. So until next time, listeners, it's been a pleasure talking with you. Solidarity. I'm going to be able to be. Thank you.