It Could Happen Here - Anarchist Infrastructure Ft. Andrew

Episode Date: June 8, 2022

Andrew joins us to talk about what an anarchist society would actually look like and how it would functionSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, yeah! It could happen here.

It being a podcast hosted by myself, Christopher Wong, and the Inimitable? And Andrew. Andrew, hi. You're in charge today. Thank you. I almost stuck that landing. I was so close

to not fucking it up. Are you guys proud? Seriously. 80% of the way there. I'm proud of you for being consistent, and by consistent I mean that you fucked it up again. I'm proud. Yeah, I shouldn't have tried to say inimitable that was always going to be a disaster yeah it was like one of those gymnastics

landings where it's like they land it and both their feet go on the ground and then they jump and they fall yeah it's very impressive stuff I'll give you a B for that alright Andrew what do you what do you got for us today right so for this this episode's topic Well, all right, Andrew, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you got for us today?

Right. So for this, um, this, this episode's topic, um, the story begins with Reddit. Oh God, no. I saw, um. That's not a great sign. Well, Reddit and Twitter, the two horsemen, and the discourse that occurred on those sites a while ago, particularly related to infrastructure and infrastructure under anarchism right i mean we all know the basic principles of anarchist society um related to autonomy allowing people to define themselves and organize themselves on their own terms um horizontalism you know people able to organize so that no one dominates anyone else and no one exercises power um over others mutual aid so people able to help one another voluntarily their bonds of solidarity and and networks of generosity that keep the social fabric together uh you know free association allows people to cooperate with

who they want to and how they see fit and also conversely you know refuse and disassociate when it's be yeah that's a key one that people don't emphasize it yeah the free disassociation yeah definitely not be associated with certain people yeah yeah i mean because you can't freely associate if you don't have the option to freely disassociate it's like running into a cage and then you can't exit everyone should be able to move freely as well that's what i can emphasize which is i think one of the things that radicalized me most was um the existence of borders because to me at least like when you're born you know you have this spawn point and it seems absurd to me that your spawn point should have so much control over, you know, the outcome of your life. You know, what rights and stuff you enjoy and where you can and can't go freely. Because none of us have a choice in that matter.

You know, we can't exactly choose our parents or choose our you know neighborhood or where we grew up whatever and of course borders of the national kind aren't the only ones anarchists oppose you know um we also oppose borders related to gender and race and citizenship and well that's related to borders but yeah and so how anarchists propose we get to this society is first and foremost the people liberating themselves the concept of self-liberation so people and even speaking just in terms of workers you know speaking in terms of gender and sexual minorities speaking in terms of racial groups speaking in terms of disabled people you know they must be at the forefront of their own liberation freedom cannot be given it has to be taken and so through direct action which is when we

directly act um without the middle channels of you know authorities representatives we make those changes for ourself and through other methods we pursue the world that we wish to live in which is the whole prefigurative process of building the new in the shell of the old and so i think part of the issue when it comes to discussions of anarchism and infrastructure and supply lines and all these different things is that um i think people have this misconception there's this real strange idea of what an anarchist revolution looks like um where you know we flip a switch just overnight and boom, anarchist society. We have nothing in place.

We have no organizations or systems or networks in place. It's just boom, snap of fingers, and all of a sudden we're all living under anarchy. But in reality, as Kropotkin expressed, there's no fallacy as harmful as the fallacy of the one-day revolution. Obviously, there's going to be a transition. In fact, a lot of people like to define anarchism as an ongoing process moving further and further towards the ideal of anarchy. The whole idea is not whether or not there will be a transitional society, but what kind of transition that will be. or not there will be a transitional society or what kind of transition that will be and so in this period of transition is when we would be engaging in the different forms of social

experimentation to manifest you know anarchist principles in every facet of life and of course this is a process will involve engaging with local conditions and local people and allowing those communities, those individuals to determine for themselves what structures and systems are put in place. Part of the struggle is going to involve mirroring the society that we wish to create. So if our final goal is a communistic anarchistic society, then our methods must be as communistic and as anarchistic as possible. Basic duality of means and ends. So when we speak of supply lines, when we speak of infrastructure, the reality is that existing infrastructure is not going to disappear overnight. We're not starting from complete scratch. This isn't a new, you know, Minecraft world that we have to go and punch some trees and start society all over again.

Revolution is destructive, but it is also constructive and transformative. but it's also constructive and transformative. So, I mean, we're not going to get rid of all experts and all expertise. We're not going to be floundering to figure out how to make penicillin. You know, people in all fields, in all industries, in all layers and all, you know, backgrounds are going to be involved in the process.

You know, adapting their workplaces, adapting their industries towards sustainable and anarchic ends and it's a process that's going on now and will continue because if you know we look at revolution as a combination of i think eric owen right he had in his book envisioning real utopias three basic concepts of transformation you had ruptural transformation interstitial transformation and symbiotic transformation and so interstitial revolution is basically the idea it's basically a mirror of you know prefigurative politics it's a

theoretical means of societal transformation through progressively and strategically enlarging spaces of social empowerment and ruptural transformation is of course i guess the dichotomy between the insurrectionists and everybody else you know where you have these moments of social outbursts, these moments of rupture, where social forms and social developments are undertaken. And we sort of figure out how we are, or rather we directly fight back against the systems that are in place. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora.

An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts I think rupture is one of the more exciting forms, it's the kind of form of revolution people tend to think of

when they think of the term revolution this idea of you know all these this mass of people, this crowd of people storming the Bastille or whatever but the real work of transformation is the stuff that occurs you know prior to and post those moments of rupture well i i one of the terms i tend to like that i've been thinking and reading about a lot is is shatter zones and these are this this is like the post-rupture, right? These are the areas where state power kind of collapses, or at least pieces of state power collapse. And it's,

you know, these shatter zones where kind of you see the state retreat in the wake of a rupture are where very terrible things tend to happen, but they're also these zones of possibility, you know? It's the places, it's the kind of place where you can get an ethnic cleansing, and it's the kind of place where you can get Rojava, you know? Like, there are these kind of zones of possibility in the wake of rupture, and I think that's, you know, a lot of the revolutionary kind of imagery focuses on the rupture, but the future is decided in the shatter zones, you know? Yeah.

And I think what people miss as well is the stuff that builds up to those shatter zones, which is that there are organizations, there are affinity groups, there are networks and structures in place that are able to support those zones they're able to you know when those ruptures occur support the people taking part in those fights and expand you know those zones of possibility yeah i mean this is the kind of thing where like if you're looking at what causes the difference between, you know, these disastrous, like, disasters that happen kind of in the wake of a rupture, horrible crimes against humanity and situations where something better gets built. that happened there and why ISIS didn't win in that terrain is that groups of activists had been organizing in a variety of ways for years in that area. And so when the state collapsed, there were armed groups and those armed groups were supported by farming cooperatives and groups

of people who had been organizing to provide supplies to each other and like community organizations like focused on social like uh development and aid like there was it's it's yeah there was an existing net in place exactly exactly and that's that's what so when you know things fall down you could catch yeah yes catch yeah yeah and i think that's also because there's another way this can go too where it's like you get a lot of moments where, you know, like like May 68 in France looks like this. Right. We're like like the like the was it the prime minister or the president? I forget what De Gaulle was at that time. That's like you like literally like the country's leaders are flying out of the country on helicopters because they think

everything's going to collapse and it just sort of doesn't and i think one of one of the ways you get you get this period that looks like rupture but then everything sort of closes back up in on itself is if those networks aren't strong enough and you don't have some kind of sufficient level of organization like there isn't there isn't anything it's like the it's like you have these moments where the state is discredited but there's nothing to replace it and then the and the the sort of void the void isn't strong enough to just sort of like have the state collapse entirely and so what you get is this moment where it looks like everything is going to change and then just nothing happens and i think that's also a product of essentially the

same thing it's just depending on the strength of the state you can get very different sort of outcomes from these moments where sometimes it's able to restabilize itself sometimes it isn't right yeah and i think we kind of saw that in a way with the 2020 protests. Yeah. Where you had this massive, massive rupture. Probably the largest, one of the largest in American history. You had people in the streets and cities

all over the country. Of course, the vast majority of them were just peaceful marches. But you also did have some serious moments of rupture like in Minneapolis and stuff and I mean look at us you know two years later and while there are you know more community organizations I think there are more people who are a bit more conscious with more whale who are you know radicalized and expanded their knowledge through that rupture

things basically went back to the way they were in a lot of ways and in other ways you know police budgets were just increased i think there was a i can't remember the analogy but i'll just go with the analogy of like a hydro where you know the state whenever it's attacked and stuff it's able to just restore itself just able to recover itself and able to like adapt to those sorts of attacks i remember reading in dawn of everything where the davids were talking about how the state or they're using the example of the american state they were saying the American state of 1900 is completely different in a lot of ways from the American state of the 2000

because the state and statecraft is constantly evolving constantly expanding constantly responding to the conditions that they face we saw what happened in 20th century you know the different movements that occurred in that time the state was able to respond to those movements and adjust itself accordingly

and so obviously when we have these ruptures we have these you know moments of struggle and obviously the times in between where we are prefiguring um robust systems and alternative institutions that can support people in those moments of rupture um part of that isn't going to involve, you know, defense. And the issue is not, oh, well, how do you defend revolution? Anarchists don't want to defend revolution. They don't know how to defend revolution. But rather part of defending it is defending it from people's attempts to seize power away from the masses, from the working class,

to siphon that energy and use it for the ends of a smaller group, a smaller class of, whether it be parties or whatever the case may be. Yeah, and there's something there, I think, going back to, like, thinking about borders and freedom of movement, because if you look at, like, both the USSR and China do this very quickly, which is that, okay, so you have the Communist Revolution, okay, and theoretically class and power,

and then, like, the first thing they do is set up internal border controls. And these, like, like, like like i mean in china they're technically like the the the prohibition on movement is like technically over but the the like the household registration system still exists and it still determines whether you where you can get benefits and how you get benefits and whether you can live in a city and like what like how what social security you can access can you buy houses things like that like that kind of stuff if if you're not if if what you're doing is just putting a group of people

in power and not actually putting you know like if you want to talk about it in class terms right it's like okay either the actual working class governs itself like the class in the entirety collectively makes decisions or you've just created a new like bureaucrat class and if you wind up with a new bureaucrat class it's like yeah immediately look at what happens it's like oh hey a bunch of people have now decided that you like you can't leave your home province because you don't have the right registration and it's registration. And it's like, okay. Right. And that kind of reminds me what you were saying about,

you know, if all the working classes was member of the state reminds you of a video I was watching last night, actually from this YouTuber, Anark, Daniel Barian. And he was talking about, I believe how the state is necessarily um exclusive if everybody holds power

then the state necessarily um must be wiped out must be wiped away if not it's going to try to reclaim its monopoly on power its monopoly on violence um it cannot exist without people under it you know and so as you know we are engaging in this as we are you know organizing strikes creating networks of activists creating assemblies um creating you know self-managed schools and social centers and cooperatives and all these different forms of infrastructure that can weather and exist under capitalism, but serve as prefigurations of our potential beyond capitalism. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows

presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows.

As part of My Cultura podcast network. Available on the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts. Or wherever you get your podcasts. And so I guess to pivot back to the topic I was speaking of in the beginning with regard to infrastructure, you know, all of history books and stuff stuff general history books tend to speak of the government centralized government states and stuff arising out of the need to build and maintain like these big infrastructure projects they tend to use the example of irrigation it's taken for granted you know it's taken as a given that bureaucracies and such were necessary for

organizing these large populations and that while you while egalitarian principles may thrive on a small scale, they just cannot scale up when populations get any bigger than a small band of people. But what we do know is that complex rural irrigation systems and egalitarian urban decision-making systems have occurred in human history that our ancestors were able to organize those those institutions without the state without a centralized body with a uh with with with coercive you know authority there's also like this implicit assumption you know when people

make these assertions that societies must necessarily grow and endlessly grow and that we cannot choose to limit our scale in any way to avoid centralization to enhance egalitarianism you know we can't scale ourselves down to more manageable levels aka degrowth and as you've seen that's just not not true. We are capable of making those shifts. Large-scale projects like irrigation or supply lines and stuff, they do require coordination, but coordination is not synonymous with the state. Coordination is not synonymous with hierarchy. Yeah, and that's something that's interesting interest interesting to me the way people like how badly people think about that because like even even even in terms of sort of like mercantilist trade right like that kind of like long-range coordination long-range like moving

goods across the world has all like it's a like mostly not been states doing that like it's you know and you can talk about like okay whatever it's like it's however you sort of want to think about the market mechanisms here but like yeah like people have been people people have been moving stuff from one side of the world to the other like essentially without the state having anything to do with it for as long as there have been people. Exactly. um inaccurate um attitude that like the idea of people like exchanging goods and services is fundamentally capitalist that the idea of people like organizing that the that like a factory right is something that has to be has to be either organized under capitalist models or under state socialist models as angles angles exactly as if people haven't done it in

other ways right this is not theoretical we're not like trying to posit like well maybe it could work this way it's like no motherfuckers have done this um yeah we have practical examples even under capitalism yeah yeah because stuff like the mondragon corporation and whatnot like it's not um it like it's this is not like theoretical stuff that we're talking about i was thinking more along the lines of what happened in argentina yeah yeah you don't those years ago or even something going a bit further back as you know like the cnt which i'll get into yeah in a little bit yeah yeah like that's something well i mean i think part of what's happening there is it's like yeah like people have run factories in other ways and every single time they try to do it

every other political faction on earth sets out sets aside all their political differences and goes and tries to kill them and it's like hmm this is not yeah that's that's true that's true i'm also reminded of the fact that you know parts of what happened and part of the issue that occurred in Argentina and has occurred elsewhere is this concept that I think Michael Albert talks about a lot. This idea of the coordinator class and the issues that arise out of that sort of coordinator class. And so I think part of that sort of organization is going to involve confronting that. We tend to think of it in terms of the capitalist ownership and getting rid of the capitalist but there's you know a lot more at play than than just just the capitalist hell of the firm is the firm i think there's also like this sort of assumption that people aren't capable of like taking any kind

of you know I think there's this kind of weird assumption that people aren't capable of taking initiative that people aren't capable of of you know um seeing the needs around them and organizing to fulfill them so when people end up you know trying to do these gotchas and stuff with anarchists like oh well how are you going to deal with garbage it's like people don't like garbage around them you know which is why we have a sanitation system which is why we have garbage disposal systems in place but you know under this system because everything, all the costs of our consumption and stuff are externalized and hidden, people don't have to think about the ways

that our actions are affecting our local ecosystem. We see that we pay other countries to, or at least, well, I can't say we, the US pays other countries. countries i mean we have a problem in internet as well where all of our waste um just gets dumped like right next to mangrove and there's a community right opposite the highway where the um dump is located and you know they burn garbage there and it's like the burned garbage it's like a constant smell of burnt garbage around that community and it's of course the most impoverished community

in the country and it's it's a whole thing um but i digress you know when we aren't able to just you know externalize the costs of you you know, how we live, communities are able to, you know, notice how to, you know, notice the problem and figure out ways to handle it. You know, whether it be small rewards, people who volunteer to, you know, deal with trash or, you know, just there's people who enjoy doing that as well you know um and the same goes for other undesirable jobs or you know people might decide to go on like a rotating basis and the reality is you know we don't have to like define our lives around a career so you know a

person doesn't have to be entirely like a garbage collector on top of that you know with as we scale down the amount of garbage we produce that task will become you know less and less necessary yeah so you know with waste infrastructure people are able to take care of that you know we can't externalize those sorts of issues um you know with food infrastructure you know we're able to like for example in in the tighter hills region of what is now kenya you know people were able to create these complex irrigation systems that you know lasted hundreds of years before you know colonial states moved in and ended these agricultural practices you know back then you know the

households would share the day-to-day maintenance of that irrigation infrastructure you know everyone would take care of the parts of the infrastructure that was closest to where they lived and you know as it was commons people enjoyed it in common people maintained it in common people benefited in common people would also come together um periodically for like major repairs and it was a form of collective socially motivated role work that we see in many other you know decentralized societies you know i often hear conversations or rather i often read about you know these different societies and even under capitalism you have communities that you know when someone needs somewhere to live the whole community gets together and helps them build their house and when someone else needs somewhere to live

you know everyone gets together and builds their house and so on and so forth you know people are already doing this in parts of the world these systems are already doing this in parts of the world these systems already in place in parts of the world these sort of reciprocal networks of of support and i mean whether you're talking transportation or power or communications or housing or food or health care there's a precedent set you know these precedents may have certain flaws but we could study them we could learn from them and we could establish something better you know for example like as we mentioned earlier in anarchist spain right during the spanish civil war barcelona's medical syndicate which was organized largely by anarchists managed 18 hospitals six of which they had created 17

sanatoriums 22 clinics six psychiatric establishments three nurseries and one hospital whenever they had a request the syndicate would send doctors to places in need because medicine was considered to be in service of the community not the other way around you know funds for these clinics would come from the contributions of like local municipalities and this syndicate um had a health workers union that included 8 000 health workers the union operated 36 health centers and distributed through Catalonia and provide health care to everyone in the region and these syndicates would send delegates you know to Barcelona and they would be able to deal with common problems and implement common plans but every department was both

autonomous but also not isolated so they supported one another where needs be. Under the CNT, we also see lands being taken by peasant syndicates who would organize properties and allow the whole community to take care of their land and their animals and their crops as needs be. The more I've read

about it, the more impressed I've been with the way that I guess you would call it the anarchists in Spain basically did a universal healthcare program in one year in the middle of a civil war and like you know and like i think the other thing about it that was important is that like they they were able to like they they had this whole program that was

about like sending like sending doctors into the countryside to get to like into communities that never actually had regular access to medical care before and they're able to do this extremely quickly and had a system the benefits of which are like enormously better than like basic well i like if you you can go find i'm forgetting the exact rules but like you can go find like their their their policy for like how much time off you can get for like an injury and stuff and it's like yeah you can take you can get like six months eight months off at like full pay like uh your people like your family will be provided for like they had they had all of this just like incredible like healthcare infrastructure they were able to set up really, really fast.

Yeah, yeah. Because they also had these regional federations of different collectives and they were able to basically distribute surplus goods and distribute as you said, distribute surplus goods and distribute, as you said,

healthcare and, you know, basically pool infrastructure so that everybody rather pool the resources so that everybody was able to benefit. You know, they often pulled resources for things where, you know, areas were unevenly developed,

you know, so that, you know, more, um, developed regions, you will to help other regions improve their infrastructure, you know so that you know more um developed regions able to help other regions improve their infrastructure you know build roads and canals and hospitals and so this when i read about you know what happened in catalonia i'm not saying they were perfect they definitely had a lot of issues when i read what happened there you know in the midst of a civil war, the possibilities that were present

and what could have potentially happened further along. You know, it's very inspiring. Yeah, and I think it goes back to the sort of, the point we've been we've been talking about which is that like the the capacity to provide care for people and the the capacity to do stuff like this exists in our society right it's not something that has to be just sort of just like completely manufactured from the ground up it's just that the capacity is not being used to actually like give to benefit people what they need it's like well okay it's not it's it's it's it's less like a process of just completely reconstructing the society and more a process of like hey why don't we use the resources we already have to do the things that are like

actually useful. And people for some reason think that stops being true if you don't have a state, and it's like, no. The state disappearing does not mean that every single doctor suddenly vanishes from the face of the earth. Yeah, it doesn't mean every single sanitation worker suddenly disappears.

Every single construction worker suddenly disappears. Every single teacher suddenly disappears every single construction worker suddenly disappears every single like every every medical teacher suddenly disappears every yeah yeah like i said we're not starting from like a new minecraft world you know you don't have to go and kill the ender dragon and all that but um i mean i guess that's a that's a good place to wrap up, basically. We have these possibilities. We always have. And in a lot of ways, the state and, you know, capitalism and all these other manifestations of hierarchy

are holding us back. They're preventing us from reaching our full creative, the full unleashing of our creative potential as people yeah we should do that instead of this yeah we should do this instead of that you know rather we should do that instead of this

yeah well Andrew thank you so much where can people follow you I believe you just put out a new, a new video this week, if I'm remembering correctly. Yes. I don't know if they will hear this episode before my next video is out. But y'all can find me on youtube.com slash Andrewism. And you can find me on Twitter at underscore St. Drew. slash Andrewism. And you can find me on Twitter at underscore St. Drew. Awesome.

All right. Well, go start a hospital. Look, let's do it. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com

or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of right an anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of latin america listen to nocturnal on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast