Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 60: Time To Cut The Sh*t

Episode Date: July 11, 2018

This one's got a little something for everyone. We talk about electoralism, the danger of using mass media to define our movements and strategies, the potential for a socialist party, and centrally planned agriculture.

okay let's let's throw you right into the fire real quick uh great go for it terrence and i were just talking about the right amount of eye contact you should give somebody to convey respect versus chicken shittedness but without being like creepy what what do you think it is you think you should like you know make direct eye contact but maybe look away every once in a while to kind of break it up a little bit? You definitely have to look away, but I'm super socially anxious, so I'm always, when I'm talking to someone, I'm overthinking how much I'm looking at them.

Yeah, I do that. So I'm always trying to gauge a moment to look away so I'm not being creepy. I do that. You steal a look out the window or down into your lap or something. Because it is weird when you're talking. I was just telling Tom that I kind of have an old mafia philosophy about this.

I don't trust anybody that can't look me in the eyes. But at the same time, too much is... They're trying to convince you of something. I overplay my hand sometimes to try to look more of a tough customer than I am. Like, I go too much on the eye contact. The hardest one is when I, like, go to my therapist, you know, because I'm like...

Yeah. I'm like, oh, she's, like, reading everything I'm doing. So, it's like, do I look away or just, like, stare straight into her eyes? Yeah, that is, that is, that's tough. Yeah, for sure. So, yeah, okay. So, then, how would you like us to introduce you? You could probably say, like, my chapter.

Which is? The Quiet Corner one. Quiet Corner, okay, all right. Yeah, so we're Northeast Connecticut. That's a pretty awesome name for a region. Yeah, that's like the colloquial, like, people in the area call it that. And people in, like, Hartford call it, like people in the area call it that. And people in like Hartford call it like the bumblefuck corner. Right, right.

I don't know anything about Connecticut. I've never been that far northeast. Yeah, it's actually a really, really nice rural state. It's just that we have all the assholes in the south near New York. Right. And those are the only people anyone knows about. Right. But I love it.

It's really beautiful. It's all like dairy land around here, dairy farms and anyone knows about. Right. But I love it. It's really beautiful. It's all, like, dairy land around here, dairy farms and stuff like that. Right. My friend Greg lives in Stanford, and he is an asshole, so you're... Stanford is, yeah, one of the most terrible. You're right in that assessment. Also found out that you call people from Connecticut nutmeggers. Really?

You know, like, you would be a New Mexican or a Texan or I'd be a Kentucky. What does that come from? Katie's a nutmegger. It's a nutmeg state. What is a nutmeg? Is it like what they make? What is a nutmeg? Yeah, I don't.

Oh, desert boy here. We don't have that. Is that a real question? Well, I know, okay, I know what it is in soccer. It's when you kick the ball between someone's legs. I'm sure you try to get high off nutmeg. I've probably done. It's like a seed that, you know, you dry out and then it's a spice.

But according to Tom Sexton, you can get high off of it? Oh, yeah. I think that's apocryphal, but, you know, I don't know. I've never tried it. Fascinating. Wow. You come to work. You learn about nutmeggers.

All right. I'm originally from the Jersey Shore, though. I feel like that's important. Oh, okay. What do they call you there? Jerseyites? Jerseyans? I mean, the only identification I've ever heard is, like, a

Jersey girl, and I literally can't even say it. Nice. Yeah. Alright, so I think we're good on levels. It's been a minute since we've recorded in here. It's like flying an old ship that you haven't been in in a while.

Okay. So, alright,, this week on I never start an episode like this. This week on the Trill Billy Hour. You guys usually just fade in, right? Yeah. We just hop right into it. All right. So, Katie,

might as well just hop right on into it and no more questions about nutmegging or staring at people. Well, now it sounds like a sex act. Yeah, you're right. Proved, of course. Right. Okay, let's jump into it.

So, Katie, you recently wrote a piece. It's called Against Utopian Electoralism. I kind of wanted to talk about it because I think it'll probably wind up sort of serving as the sort of framework or sort of reference guide for this discussion. I know you wrote it a few months ago, but I think it's probably more relevant now than ever. Could you sort of just explain what your central argument is in that piece and what you're trying to get after? Yeah, sure. I actually haven't looked at it in a long time.

It's okay. I have it memorized if you want me to. I think that was back when someone said that London would have voted for Bernie, right? Correct. I believe the context was one of the New York DSA chapters was talking about passing an endorsement of Bernie. Oh, right. Yeah. I think that was part of the context was one of the New York DSA chapters was talking about passing an endorsement of Bernie. Oh, right, yeah. I think that was part of the context.

New York. Correct. New York was thinking about doing it. Right. And they didn't, thankfully. Right. But, I mean, I just, I honestly, it wasn't like that original of a piece, because I was mostly just kind of referencing a bunch of different writing on the nature of you know the bourgeois state because I think that that understanding is kind of lost

when we talk about electoralism in DSA so just kind of like bringing people's focus back to the idea that there's no like it's not that there's like empty seats like empty of political power or preference to the ruling class, that we can just swap in socialists and they'll, you know, slowly, you know, piece by piece, bring about a socialist political system that we need to like understand that the only, I actually don't know if I put this in that piece, but since then I've been kind of, that the only, I actually don't know if I put this in that piece, but since then I've been kind of, you know, saying more that the only role that a socialist could have in the state is slowly dismantling it in favor of the working class taking power back.

And so, like, they need to make their own jobs irrelevant over time. And so that's really what building working class power should be for any kind of politician going into the state is making their own selves and their own position irrelevant. Right. You know, so, yeah, so like one of the quotes actually that you had, I'm going to quote your piece back at you. I know you said it's not very original, but I think it is. You said capitalism will adapt to reforms from within the political system or will violently thwart attempts to install actual socialism.

One can only understand progressive reforms and or an increase in socialist politicians as winning, quote unquote winning, if one refused to understand the real nature of capitalism, specifically its ability to adapt. And the reason why I want to talk about that right now is because we're right in the wake of this sort of electoral victory, although it's not an electoral victory, it was a primary, of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

And so you've got a lot of these debates sort of in the air right now about the sort of efficacy, both short-term and long-term, of running socialists within the Democratic Party for a sort of larger systemic change. And so, you know, with that quote in mind, yeah, could you talk a little bit about, like, the sort of, like, endeavor of trying to pursue reforms in the nature of a bourgeois state, in the nature of a bourgeois state, in the nature of a capitalist state. Yeah, I mean, I really believe, like, especially that, I mean, I believe both, but the latter is, especially when we forget that, that if it's faced with an actual threat, like, say, a socialist politician that would actually threaten the power of the state,

it would, you know, respond violently. threaten the power of the state, it would, you know, respond violently. And, you know, any kind of embrace of a socialist politician is something to kind of, you know, eye critically, because, you know, in my opinion, I think it means that they're not, like, truly threatening the state in any meaningful way. And in terms of reforms and capitalism adapting to them, you know, I see things like calling for nationalization of like the fossil fuel industry. And, you know, that as a reform that would slowly lead to, you know, a socialist, eco-socialist state or something like that. And I, you know, the nature of the capitalist system is, you know, you can see it happening in Norway,

which is like, you know, held up as this, you know, by some as this ideal eco-socialist state. And it just functions like another private business at a state level and becomes increasingly dependent on oil and functions in the marketplace like any other profiting business. So it's like fully co-opted that idea of nationalization and turned it into an adaptation of capitalism.

Right, and that's something that we could connect to here because I remember after the war on coal or whatever here, one of the discussion points was, well, what if we had nationalized our coal industry like England did in the 1950s? What would that look like? It's kind of complicated because I think one of the reasons why, back in my earlier, more liberal days, the reason why I was so fixated on that idea was because you had this incredibly reactionary campaign like the Friends of Coal campaign. And it was all predicated on the idea that the Obama administration was killing coal. And my thinking was, oh, like in England, they had nationalized the coal industry. Thatcher killed it. And so the whole war on coal narrative was inverted. You had leftists saying that Thatcher had killed coal and you could then rally them towards some sort of like larger liberatory movement, when in all reality, that would have, it was doomed to fail in the exact same way that it was here. Had it been nationalized i don't know yeah and it's not like it's not this like neutral um situation um there's the people in in power in our government have a reason to maintain the coal industry even like so the trump administration nationalized the

coal industry the trump administration is now in charge of the coal industry. Like, it's not like suddenly it's, you know, under control of the working class because we quote-unquote nationalized it. It's now under fascist control. Right. So I don't know what people are, like, expecting to happen. Like, you know, magically it becomes socialist. Right.

But you have to, like, you have to But you have to understand the specifics of power in the situation that you're trying to organize under. Here you still have some people on the left that are fully in favor of that nationalization, even under Trump, and they sort of demonize the environmentalists, saying, these are the people. You know what I'm saying?

Kind of like the inverse of the Thatcher thing. Right, right. It's the inverse of an inverse. Looking at you, Nick Mullins, you know what I'm saying? Kinda like the inverse of the Thatcher thing. Right, right, it's an inverse of an inverse. Looking at you, Nick Mullins, you rat bastard. That's a little inside, Tripoli's inside joke. So, well that actually kinda gets at it, something I did wanna talk about too. Sort of tied to that is like a common refrain

you sort of hear from what I would term maybe like the right wing of DSA is that like those of us to their left, you know, us in this room and you, we've sort of fetishized losing. We fetishized wanting to lose. to lose. I'm kind of like interested in, and this will sort of lead to another sort of question I want to ask in a second, but like, what's the easiest way to dispel that myth that we are, that we have unrealistic demands and that we have sort of fetishized their own position far left on the spectrum? I mean, my, the first thing that comes to my mind is the only consistent thing that's lost is realignment of the democratic party like so or or reformism that's the only thing that's consistently lost in history right so um you know i think people frame the election itself as winning that they don't have if you don't have an actual plan for after the election,

I don't know what you're talking, like, I don't know what you're talking about, you know, so they just, it's like they're using the literal word win to mean something larger than it actually does. And the only thing, and I think you said this on a Trillies podcast a couple of weeks back, is just the only thing that has consistently won in history is revolution. Yeah, it is sort of the only thing with historical precedence, right? You're not going to look back and see a bunch of, I don't know, I mean, yeah, it's the only thing with sort of historical precedence, you're right.

But I guess, and you mentioned this on Twitter the other day, it's like something that I think is pretty interesting is in these debates when we talk about realistic and unrealistic demands. One of the things I hear a lot is, and you pointed this out, like an unrealistic demand is like abolishing private property. abolishing private property. Like, and you know, you gave one good example of how that's not that unrealistic once you, like in your example is the housing market and decommodifying housing. What is your, what do you have to say to this sort of like notion of like realistic versus unrealistic demands? That's a good question. I mean, I think it's just a matter of interpreting these kind of socialist terms that people kind of throw around.

So abolishing private property sounds like when you just use it as a buzzword, which in that interview, that candidate was kind of just throwing it out like that sounds like revolutionary abolishing private property. But it's just about, I mean, to me, it's just about interpreting it materially according to current circumstances. So it's not unrealistic if you actually just take a minute to think about what that means. So if you just take a minute to think, decommodified housing is taking someone's private property away from them and giving it to the public um uh and like collectivizing agriculture would be abolishing private property but that's not even that far-fetched because we already do some you know agricultural

planning on a federal level right um you know know, even workers, you know, taking control of a cooperative is abolishing private property to a degree. So it's just about, like, taking a minute to think about, you know, the current circumstances and actually reading what a Marxist, like, concept means and how it was used in history. And then, you know, so i think anything like that

is just a matter of um taking the time to go deeper than just you know some you know throwing around some terms right yeah it's um it's all about property relations right i mean it's all about like who owns and power relations and and for me, I think one of the things that gets sort of lost in the whole discussion about Ocasio-Cortez, and I want to be careful about it because I'm not like, I don't know, I hate to sound like someone who's just sort of naysaying or trying to like... Yeah, you too get accused of being wet blankets fairly often.

I'm definitely wearing a wet blanket. Right, I'm not trying to dilute anybody's energy or optimism or anything. I guess all I'm saying is that what we established earlier, there's not a whole lot of historical precedence for doing what they ostensibly want to do, reform this corporate bourgeois...

That's a business party. It's a party in the interest of the business class. I think that's a very tall order, and I think that we'd probably be better off putting our energy somewhere else. But if it gets people sort of interested in DSA and if it gets their energies up in the short term, then I don't know.

I'm not going to try to diffuse that. But I guess what I am concerned about is trying to... What I am going to diffuse. God damn it. I spent a lot of time on the road last night trying to formulate how to do this how to like set this whole thing up in a way that didn't sound like i was just shitting on everything um but yeah no so like what the history of socialism we're just all you know just shitting socialists are always shitting on everyone else so well i mean it's politics right i mean it's politics just like anything else um you know i think people would probably be surprised but not that surprised to know that lenin was just

as petty as any of us and just shitting on everybody if you read any Rosa Luxemburg, she's just like shitting on every man around her. Yeah, exactly. Which we endorse. So, yeah, it's kind of a tall order. But one of the things that I wanted to talk to you about, specifically because I think our situations are kind of similar. You know, you live in a rural area. We do, too. I think our situations are kind of similar. You know, you live in a rural area.

We do, too. One of the things I kind of wanted to talk to you about is, like, I can imagine somebody saying, listening to all those concerns we may have raised about Ocasio-Cortez in the last couple weeks or whatever, and saying, like, look, I agree with what you're saying. You know, it's all fair and good. But, you know know the political system in our state like Kentucky is so far to the right and it is so closed

off to any kind of emancipatory politics at all that like you've got to kind of like introduce people to the idea of socialism through this sort of watered down democratic socialist thing FDR yeah yeah yeah and so like I can see someone saying that and I kind of understand because through this sort of watered-down democratic socialist thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so, like, I can see someone saying that, and I kind of understand because, you know, like, I've been an organizer for a while, and it's just sort of like I understand the nature of what they're saying. But at the same time, like, I'm just wondering if you all have sort of run into this, and if so, like, you know, what are you doing to sort of engage with that idea? So, I mean, I actually think we, I'm in a rural area, but I think we have politically, like, some differences in terms of, like, the demographics of the area. Because we're kind of a blue state.

I mean, we have a Democratic governor. the area because we're kind of a blue state i mean we have a democratic governor um people are more or less fine with our senators murphy and blumefell um but i mean a lot of people in our specific region the northeast corner went for trump um and there it's a very blue-collar area, lots of agriculture, blue-collar jobs, that's basically it. So their material circumstances are maybe the same as your area, but in my opinion, it has made them kind of open to socialism a little bit we have not had hardly any problems with like outreach in our area um we did some canvassing i know it's like you know kind of uh the liberal uh punching bag hey we threw a pool party um but and every single person we talked to was a trump supporter and every single person was interested in medicare for all yeah um so they and so they

the tide is turning against the democrats in connecticut um at least at the state level um people are really upset about our state budget that's been mismanaged by the democratic party um and they're pretty discontent so you know one of the reasons our chapter doesn't do any electoral is we or at least through the um through the democratic party and we've kind of talked about almost never doing that is because people in this area fucking hate the democrats why would we ever run on the democratic ballot line um and it's it's just interesting because the other like northeast states you know kind of buy into that idea and i'm just like i'm looking around and everyone shit talks to democrats all the time i'm like that's a losing strategy for us at least so that's kind of interesting so So I actually think people are pretty,

if you talk to them on an issue basis, they're pretty open to the idea of socialism. And even when we've said we're socialists, like straight out to conservative people, they're like, okay, I get it. But if we were going to, like, if we were to go up to them and be like, we're trying to help the Democrats pass Medicare for all, I'm sure that they wouldn't listen to us. Yeah, when we tell people we're social, they'll say, that's cool, man, I'm Presbyterian. That is true.

I can guarantee you that if I, you know, and I have had these interactions in Whitesburg. I would get much more vitriol from saying I was a Democrat than I would just an outright socialist. Oh yeah. Hell, I wouldn't tell it. Yeah, I don't know. I think there's a lesson to be learned from that, though, which is that, like, that's the program, right? Like, we're anti-capitalists, you know, and you stake out your position and then you fight for sort of not just policies but for representation and some of these other things from that position. And then people, you know, they see what you're doing and they come to that.

doing and they come to that i don't know i i i just say that because i i just get sort of like uh anxiety when i hear people talking about like sort of tailoring our message to uh uh an electorate that's that's more towards the right and that's you know got this these notions these 20th century notions of communism and and all this well i I mean, that's what the fucking Democrats, I mean, look at Bill Clinton's whole project. Yeah. He made a career of being way too conciliatory to Republicans, and they still shut the fucking government down on him twice. Right.

Yeah. And around here, it's like, socialists haven't ever done fucking anything to the people here, and Democrats have made their lives miserable. Yeah. Well, Katie, you make a good point. I hadn't even thought about this whole electoral discussion is that maybe the Democratic brand is just too irreparably damaged to even overthrow.

I mean, if that's the strategy, you know what I mean? Like, maybe you just don't even want to be associated with that bunch. They're in such dire straits. I 100% think that that's true. I mean, again, the demographic that I find hope in is the non-voters from the last presidential election. Right. Which there were plenty.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, this is interesting to think about because, and it's an interesting distinction to make sort of cognitively, but also collectively, which is that the Democratic Party's interests are, by definition, it's like sort of baked into the entire mission statement, its interests are business interests, its capitalist interests. And so I'm wondering, and I've seen you say or tweet about this before, and it's not something I know a whole lot about,

but I'm wondering what you think about a party that, and I don't know, it sounds kind of utopian in and of itself, it almost sounds just as utopian as, sometimes it does, just as utopian as trying to reform the Democratic Party, but a party that does represent, in my mind, a set of specific groups, workers,, workers, the incarcerated, the indigenous, the rural poor, you know, peasantry, rural poor. And like, to me, like, I guess what I'm talking about is a workers party. I guess that's what I'm saying. What are your thoughts on that? Like, what, is that something feasible? And if so, what would its role and function be within a sort of capitalist state? I am so, like, excited this because I've been starting to think more about it.

And I'm in the ReFoundation Caucus for DSA, and that's a topic that we have been talking about. I wouldn't go so far as to say that we've been strategizing about it, but it's certainly on the horizon, I think. We definitely need a socialist party. And, you know, we could call it the Workers' Party. I think that's also great. But if you read, have you ever read Dead Geniumism and Socialism? I have not. I saw you post about it, and this is kind of what I wanted to ask you about it,

because it sounded really fascinating. So he just talks about the unified labor movement in a really clear and um like easy to read way um and it's just that the two arms of the of a unified labor party you know on the left is unionism and building up the capacity of workers to disrupt capital on the economic side but that we we need our other arm needs to be a political socialist arm that's responsible for building the political power and challenging the capital's political system. So you're working from the economic side and the political side. And that's the strategy that when workers organize themselves to disrupt capital, that the Socialist Party is there with a political program ready to seize, you know, the state when those disruptions happen.

Right. So that idea, I think, obviously we need to think about our current conditions and what that would mean for us. But I think that idea has been completely lost, and I think we should be talking about it again. And in some ways, that seems like a much more easily obtainable goal than overthrowing the Democratic Party. And it seems like the only reason people aren't pushing for this harder is because some literally broke-ass party is telling us that we're always just going to be a two-party system.

And because they know that so many of their numbers would defect if we had a viable third party like yeah yeah and it's so interesting to me when the electoral people talk about um going through the democratic ballot um ballot line because that's the only feasible um political approach but that's never followed by, and that's why once this person is in office, they're going, this is their political program for dismantling the two-party system. It's just like, well, we just have to buy into the two-party system until the end of time.

Right, yeah, they implicitly acknowledge that. It's really so cynical. Yeah, and I've never heard a concrete idea for um breaking up the two-party system and even the whole money in politics thing i mean nixon a millionaire is running on the money in politics thing yeah um and acacia cortez did and they talk about it for their campaign but they never talk about and therefore once i'm in office this is how i'm going to structurally challenge and you know disrupt that system of needing you know um the financial the capital to to run right they're just like so therefore you we all have to raise 20 million dollars um i don't know it's

just like it's interesting to me that it just starts and ends with campaigning. And we're going to do it with an average donation of $27. It is really depressing because it's almost like they sort of, yeah, they implicitly acknowledge that. Honestly, what it does is it just displays an incredible lack of political imagination. And I don't know if it's because people are just demoralized but what i think what i suspect it is is that the vast majority of people who sort of control and shape the discourse around these topics are new york media elites and they um tom's smiling at me this is the InfoWars section. This is the InfoWars. But no, really. Well, this is one of the reasons why Ocasio-Cortez's win gets sort of blown up to this grand narrative about everything that's going on.

And I'm not knocking, whatever. If that's your thing, if you live in New York and that's your thing, whatever. Our grift is down here in Kentucky. We stay in in our lane neither of the twins show me right but but uh but what i suspect has happened is that over time ever since bernie sanders um sort of got you know had a pretty successful campaign a lot of these um sort of pundits and commentators on the sort of pundits and commentators, on the sort of democratic socialist left, I've seen them gradually become sort of just absorbed into the Matt Iglesias liberal commentariat. And so, like, from their perspective,

they're sort of, they're invested in the status quo, and therefore they're not going to propose any kind of ideas that are really, like, the best, the most they can really come up with is sort of ocasio-cortez and that's that toward it sort of demarcates the limits of their political imagination on this yeah at least that's i don't i just want to for the record i don't mind you shitting on her specifically because i just found out the other day she only joined dSA after she had announced her candidacy and just recently deleted from her bio any mention of DSA.

So I'm completely out on her. Well, this is what I'm talking about. It's just like, come on, have some more. We don't have to settle for half steps. All options are on the table at this point. Like the world's burning. You know what I mean? Like all options are on the table.

Go for broke. Go for broke. You don't have to settle for half steps. You don't have to settle for somebody who's just going to be like abolish ice. And then when they get in there, they're like, well, what I meant by that. We need to replace it with something that's equally as bad,

just different name. I just don't think, yeah, we don't have to settle for that, and I don't think that it's diluting energy or throwing a wet blanket on it to just call it like it is. I just can't imagine talking to anyone about, again, outside of New York, about our political system and not having them thrilled at the idea of a third party. I mean, conservatives. You know, it's such a cliche's such a, it's a cliche,

but it's such a bubble for them, you know? Yeah, yeah, totally. And just like, I don't know who you're talking about. No one here likes Democrats, so. Right. We might as well just figure it out. Some guy, some conservative Trump guy, we talked to during canvassing,

and there is, this is some of the revolutionary capacity for canvassing but I built and that's why I do it you know talking to your neighbors and gauging like the political temperature of your region but after we were talking to him he was getting so worked up I mean he had had like multiple surgeries. He was on Medicare already and very poor. In our area, we have a lot of poor homeowners, so they talk a lot about property taxes and stuff like that. And by the end of our conversation, he was like, I'm going to die from this, from his surgery he had just had. He's like, but you guys like you guys need to have a revolution. And like at the beginning of the conversation, you know, he was like talking about Trump and stuff like that.

And he didn't he he was listening to us talk about socialism and then told us you guys need to have a revolution. Right. this. You guys need to have a revolution. Right. Well, it's just like me and Tom joke about it a lot, like the sort of media trying to pinpoint the coal miner who voted for Trump and doesn't regret it or whatever. But I work with coal miners on a daily basis. I talk with them on a daily basis. The vast majority of them, even if they did vote for Trump, wholeheartedly think that we have to have a universal healthcare system because they can't breathe. They're dying slowly. You know what I mean?

Like their healthcare bills – most coal miners, the vast majority of them are indigent if they're over the age of 50 or 60 just because they've just been ground down over the years from – just from actually coal mining but from our health care system in general and so yeah i i can absolutely see that being the case yeah um and back to the socialist party idea like a workers party doesn't have to the the leadership of that doesn't have to dilute its message in order to push for socialism you know that's something I can see being concerned about. We obviously don't want reactionary elements in a political party, and a large portion of the working class has reactionary tendencies. And again, in this Deb's piece on unionism and socialism, he absolutely is very careful about talking about how to deal with reactionary elements and distinguishing party leadership from your base.

Right. And that is an important distinction. And I think that I just got into an argument with someone on Twitter right before the call about abortion, because a lot of these pro-life apologists talk about, well, how are you going to win over the working class who are mostly Christian if you have a pro-life stance and your organization doesn't let in pro-life people? Because our organization consists of socialist organizers, not our entire future base. You know, like, there's a difference between leading a party and having a

political program um like i'm not going to let my parents who are christian and pro-life run our socialist party right they're working class like they they're blue-collar workers they're going to benefit from the new political system and would lend their support. My dad was a Bernie supporter, and he's a pro-life Christian. And I'm like, I'm not saying I want my parents to die because they're pro-life. I'm saying I don't want them in leadership of the Socialist Party. Exactly. Right, yeah. My mom's the same way.

Okay, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's something I was going to say about that um well you know as we talk about this sort of like notion of like a workers party versus the democratic party or whatever something i've really been thinking about a lot is that um we really do need to inject this idea back into um discussions and it's good to hear that y'all are discussing this. Is it re-foundation? Is that what it's called?

That's right, yeah. Because I think the best example of what can happen, and I'm just saying this in the short term, and I pointed this out on Twitter yesterday, it's like the assuredness I see from people who are invested in Ocasio-Cortez about the short-term future and about their campaigns in the Justice Democrats, that sort of block of progressive leftists running for offices across the country, the assuredness I see gives me a lot of concern. I can easily see a situation in which a centrist technocrat

wins in 2020 and then the Democratic Party just turns around and says, actually, fuck y'all. We don't need you. You helped us out a little bit. Thanks for the free press. And you don't need to look anywhere to see that this has precedence. Just take a look at what's going on in Italy right now. It's exactly what happened. The left, after the Communist Party sort of fell apart in the early 90s, the left was just sort of held together just by anti-Berlusconiism.

That's what held it together, just this opposition to Berlusconi. Once he was out of the office, the Democrats, which is, that party is molded entirely based off our democratic party here they even say that they immediately threw leftists under the bus and and you can you can and then what do you get out of that you get this revanchist populist anti-migrant camp uh movement the five-star movement or whatever i mean i don't know to me the assuredness of the short-term future and the fact that they're not willing to sort of look far into history, you know, in both directions, gives me pause. It makes me very concerned.

It makes me extremely concerned. It's like watching a car crash in slow motion kind of thing. Yeah. And it's very frustrating. And I think part of that frustration is watching it happen because of a small group of people in a specific portion of the country speak about a strategy as though it would be universal. And so we're kind of watching from the outside. These people kind of dictate a strategy based off a very specific circumstance. Right. One thing I wanted to talk about with you, and this is pretty related to what we're talking about right now,

but one thing I do want to talk about with you is the media. And I'm assuming you run... I'm just laughing at me. I know what you're talking about. Alright, look, my new grift is I'm the Alex Jones of the far left. Yeah, you're right, we're both Texans. One thing I wanted to talk about, and I'm assuming you run the Quiet Corner, this Twitter account. If you don't want us to broadcast that, I can cut it out. No, no, I do.

Yeah, that's fine. Okay. Well, there was this thing that you wrote on there recently, and me and Tom were at a party. We were at a barbecue, and I read it, and I read it like three or four times, and I even said it out loud to Tom. I was like, man, this is good stuff. I was like, man, this is good stuff.

But it was right after the MSNBC piece about what is socialism and the Cornelia Ng dork who's running in Hawaii. He was like, you're not dreaming, folks. I was like... I don't know how to approach that. I wanted to say, I don't know about y'all, but I'm a commoner. They are talking about us. Oh, my God. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anything they say about us is good. All right. Well, there's something you wrote, and I think it sums it up perfectly. You said, historically, positive coverage has been a sign of a movement or strategy's impotence and or vulnerability to co-option. Mass media are neither our target audience nor representative of reality and endlessly gazing at our warped reflection

leads to a dead end. Yeah, Terrence was at the end of that barbecue, he just walked out of the bathroom and said, under his breath, endlessly gazing at our warped reflection. And he said, man, that's so good.

It's true, though. I was probably high. He was, too. Yeah, I was, too. But it's absolutely right. Because, and I've experienced this personally, and it's really funny because as the podcast who had Nick Offerman on and was a part of that sort of, you know, their project, this documentary that they're making about like solutions in Eastern Kentucky. I know that every time you engage with the mass media, you're projecting a persona into it.

And what you're seeing reflected back at you is not who you really are. And this goes for individuals. it goes for movements and organizations. And so, I mean, I don't know, could you just talk a little bit, there's probably not a whole lot to say about it, other than trying to gauge our sort of broad appeal to the masses using mass media, media it just seems like as you said a dead end yeah it's like not only that and it's it's just like the worst and you know right it would if we continue down that route it's it's just like imploding over to like over time it's such a bad strategy and it really damaged and killed, like you could say, SDS in the 60s. They just, they couldn't have like a correct reading of reality because

they just, they saw their image and they tried to, so they, they just lost a sense of self and a sense of reality. So they just kept ramping up this performative aspect to their organization because they would get media attention for certain actions and the way that it appealed to a mass media audience. And so they would get that feedback and then they would just respond to that feedback and then it was just this loop that happened over and over until the until they got ridiculous right and just lost a sense of proportion you know a gauge on reality and and their organization died so it's really worrisome especially when it's accompanied by zero analysis. Like, you could, I think you could make a case for, and there are debates in media studies about movements in media and stuff like that, about, you know, how you can use mass media for your own purposes. But that's a tricky game, and it's, game, and it's very delicate, and we have no, our organization has no media strategy.

One person does media relations, and it doesn't seem like they think critically about it very much. And another example I can think of is the whole NRA debacle, where the NRA was like talking about DSA and then DSA national used that in some you know like PR stuff like the NRA is afraid of DSA and you should join us and and people in my chapter were talking about it and we were just so concerned because it was it was like thinking you can co-opt a message from a professional PR department of one of the wealthiest centers of power in our government for a tiny organization who has no media strategy is so foolish. Like it, it, it made us look ridiculous, like so ridiculous. And it made me really mad. And just being like, yeah,

they should be afraid of us and stuff like that. And, you know, I mean, I could go into that more, like why that was bad, but I think you guys probably know. Yeah. And, yeah, so it's just, it's a really big issue for our organization, and I think we really need to develop, like, more tactical media strategies, including, like, media literacy for organizers. I agree 100%.

Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Um, um, uh, yeah, yeah. Um, I'm going to go, I'm going to add one more thing to that, which is, um, another huge problem that I see, like no, no example from the past is like a one-to-one comparison. So obviously there's specifics to our organization, but something that I I a similarity between SDS and DSA is with mass media having unelected, like unaccountable leaders getting amplified from the media side and then being upheld as like representatives of the organization. But they have no on the ground connection to us and no accountability. So they are able to craft this public-facing image of DSA that no one had a say in. And that happened in SDS too. And it just, you know, it improved the

careers of a few people who got to speak for the organization. And that became what the organization was to the public. And it just, you know, was an out-of-control mess by the end of it. And I think that there is a really fundamentally, when you really get down to it, mass media, honestly, it doesn't matter if it's the New York Times or MSNBC or the most ostensibly progressive, well, I don't want to say every single mass media outlet but the vast majority of them would go they would they would be willing to just go full-on if there was a sort of like fascist takeover of government in this country they don't see fascism I think as an existential threat the only thing they really see as an existential threat is communism people running like workers uh as i said earlier workers the disenfranchised and marginalized running things and so like when you have that in mind there's several editorial filters that that your message is not going to get through um and that they are going to try to dilute and that was um you know, I can't really talk very, you know, intelligently about the example of SDS, but it just seems, I don't know, it just seems kind of like...

Yeah, I mean, they're businesses. Exactly. They're, exactly. They sell a product. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the thing about, you know, what I was saying with not being too excited because it means that we're a good product. You know what I mean? If it's being presented in a positive light, it means that it's being packaged as a good product that's not an existential threat to both the media company and the political system. And it's something to, and that doesn't mean that it was an accurate representation, but

that's why it's bad to celebrate it as an accurate representation. Right, exactly. Because it means that we're, it would be accepting that we are a good product to a company. Right. Yeah. That's very, that's very spot on. Okay, so yeah, covered the media. That's good. We covered some electoralism stuff. Let's just get down to brass tacks here. Let's get down to what we really wanted to have you on,

and this goes back to nationalization. Corn. Corn. I came in here to talk about corn, God damn it. I came in here to talk about corn. Yeah, let's see what you got. What do we need to know about how to plan and structure a centralized agricultural economy? This is why I'm here.

This is why you're here. What was that? Nothing. Go ahead. Yeah. Well, what do you want to know? How do we do it? Yeah. Well, we need socialists in power first. True. Okay. Because, I mean, that's the thing about the nationalization thing.

It's not a bad conversation to have about what it would look like. It's just that people forget to have the discussion of power relations and property relations along with it right um which is any nationalization project has to come after workers in political power right um because yeah like for the reasons you mentioned before so like that's the important caveat before we like talked about anything else but yeah, I mean, I really started thinking more about it. I mean, obviously, socialists through history have been doing it, but just as an individual, we live in a dairy region in the Northeast. My husband's family were all dairy farmers. His grandfather was a dairy farmer here.

He has an uncle who is a dairy farmer in Vermont. And recently there's been a huge, like, volatile, a very volatile market with dairy in America. And you've probably seen, like about farmer suicide on the rise uh... and so i really really start thinking about it with some of these recent news stories about the market crashes and it's obviously

constructed uh... by the state in a lot of ways uh... and just thinking through like uh... you, what do we do about this? And as you start to think about what you would do about an agricultural crisis like this, I just, you can't, you naturally come to the idea of not only, like, nationalization, but internationalization of agriculture. Right. Not only for economic reasons but in the in the face

of climate change um how are we going to survive and have food to eat if um you know we have monoculture in one part of the world and that's it right um and so you know just thinking through it you just any as far as I'm concerned, like, any rational thinking person who thought through this agricultural crisis to its logical end would come to the understanding that we need to have international democratic control and central planning for agriculture. Right. It's the kind of, you know, it's sort of like Locus Point for, like for the argument of centralized planning. I was talking to somebody about this last week, and it was about natural gas, but I think the same principle applies.

Natural gas prices right now are depressed because there was a huge glut in the market over the last five years. It's just really fascinating to talk to people about that, like that very basic idea. Like what is sane about a system that overproduces? Like what is sane about a system that like floods the market with goods and commodities and then sends the entire economy spiraling into some sort of panic or whatever. And so that's ultimately why, for me, sort of market socialism or all these other names

that people have for it is just so inadequate. Because you have to- Yeah, exactly. You got to play. Market socialism is fake. What is that? I always hear people say it. I don't even know what it means.

Oh, it's just the very loose definition of it being that after socialism, you can still base production off of supply and demand. So basically atomizing production decisions, leaving it up to like, I mean, so they believe in like worker co-ops so that there's no, there's no like hierarchical control in a workplace. But all of those individual worker cooperatives

would be basing production off of the market. Right, market imperatives. Yeah, so it's just like, I don't know. It's not real. It's not actually socialism. It's just like thinking the farmer's market is socialist or something. I appreciate that. I've bluffed my way through so many conversations about this.

I hope I'm right. No, I mean, I that that's probably it um i think i think richard wolf is the one that believes that yes socialism is just worker cooperative yeah you're right which like as though like every socialist in history hasn't talked about workers cooperatives and why they aren't socialism. Right, exactly. Well, I think this notion of planning, for whatever reason, people get either scared about it or they've so internalized the anti-communism of the last 100 years that they're just like, oh my God. I don't know. But it's weird.

It's like there's a weird contradiction in it, too, because as we were talking on that one episode, you know, the Bush administration subsidized corn production. And it's just like a lot of the things that we do with agriculture right now is planned, but it doesn't make any sense. Exactly. It's capitalist planning. Exactly, it's capitalist planning. It's not only capitalist, it's capitalist imperialist planning, because the reason we overproduce corn is to use it as food aid to developing countries that we've started a war in. Right. And then we start a war so that there's refugees, and we force them into a concentration camp so that they starve,

and then we sell them our corn, and then they can thank us by becoming a colonial state. Right. Yeah, it's all... That's dark. Very dark. Yeah. Well, it's the whole thing that if an actual capitalist system existed, it would just be the most bloodthirsty, people-killing-each-other-in-the-streets

thing that you can possibly imagine. The capitalist system we have now is very planned it's just not oh yeah it's just not um how they i don't know it's not done with managerial right right good word tom yeah like it's gonna like it's gonna crash because it's planned or something like that right i don't know but yeah i mean so it's it's just a vision of and again, it can't be just like national, because if we're really talking about climate change, I'm going to back up for a second and say, like, I think the thing that's different about us talking about planned agriculture now and communists in the past planning agriculture, which I think there's obviously a lot of good things to learn from, you know, killing off all the landowners in the past. But a lot of that planned agriculture was focused on feeding industrialization within those same states. So, you know, our reason for central planning internationally would be global survival of the human race

because we're going to run out of food. Right. And, you know, so, and I think it's also important to know that a lot of, even eco-socialists talk about, like, communal agriculture. So it's like collectivizing agriculture but not planning it so that you know we need to teach also like teach all socialists how to garden which we do um or again like the farmers markets are socialist kind of thing like buy local or things like that is if you are really pushing buy local for the long-term agricultural plan, what are you going to do when a hurricane wipes out the Northeast

and we no longer have dairy? So it's like the only way to survive a really volatile climate is having production centers right throughout the entire world and farmers being public servants that respond to um a democratic workers direction of what needs to be produced for who and in response to what shift in the climate and we need to be able to shift production like on a dime we need to be able to like well um all of our wheat is gone because it's too hot in canada now um just like it was too hot in the u.s 20 years ago right and so now um you know i don't know anything about growing wheat but so now this country is going to be, has already started growing it because we knew this was coming.

So it's just like it needs to be a really quickly adapting international system in order to feed the world, which we can, it's just a matter of choosing to do so. Right. It's probably the sort of, and maybe you disagree, I don't know, I'm saying this without a whole lot of knowledge behind it, I don't know. I'm saying this without a whole lot of knowledge behind it. But to me, it's sort of like maybe the marriage between sort of like eco-socialism and a sort of computerized socialist society. Like you can plan production or switch it on a dime or whatever using all kinds of complex computer modeling. And people say that when they want to sound smart, computer modeling.

And so I don't know. It seems like the two aren't really at loggerheads. Oh, like a fully automated kind of communism? Yeah. But I don't really know much about that. I didn't show up to talk about corn today. I mean, that's a good question, like whether it's like really at odds. I mean, you can automate certain farm work, but in terms of like sustainable practices and that knowledge,

like you obviously need people in that process, people with like long-standing knowledge of you know sustainable practices yeah um you're right and it gives people like a sort of sense of of purpose i don't know it it's just really insane that this story of um of uh you know all these suicides this sort of like mass epidemic of farmer suicides is not a bigger story. And when it is, it's just sort of mocked. Like Howard Dean had a tweet about, you know, Wisconsin farmers like killing themselves or something. Oh, my God. Yeah.

Just like, I don't know. It's just this it's you know, it's it's the it's an age old profession. Literally what what brought us from being hunter-gatherer societies into civilization, farming. And, you know, I don't know. It's just not often talked about as a class. And I want to point out Wendell Berry, friend of the podcast, I'm assuming. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We, we like Wendell.

We've tried to get him on the show, but... We thought it'd be hilarious to fill this, like, agrarian grandfather into this dirty little show of ours. Right, because he doesn't

have, like, electricity in his house, and so we were like, how does that work? Because, you know, with podcasts, you kind of have to... We'd have to go to him.

I guess we couldn't work that piece out yet. Record it on a tape recorder. Anyways, as you were saying. Oh, no kind of have to go to him. I guess we couldn't work that piece out. Recorded on a tape recorder. Anyways, as you were saying. Oh, no, I was just going to say, like, I love, like, how he's gotten, as far as I can tell, more radical as he's gotten older. And, you know, he has some, like, certain, I would say more culturally conservative ideas, for sure. I love the man. But he has talked about central planning of agriculture. He's written about like a 50-year farm bill. I don't know if you've ever read his stuff about that, but just the need for long-term

central planning because we have no direction nationally for how we should have sustainable practices. Our farm bill is just the best of a document that has nothing to do with surviving or feeding people in a healthy, economically and otherwise way. And he's just trying to, he's used it as a template for thinking more long-term about agriculture and what we need to do collectively. So I just think that it's such an interesting thing to read. He worked on it with some institute, I can't remember the name of it, but it's something, it's really something to read. Yeah, I actually had read, I think you included it in something you wrote, it was called

The Land Institute or something like that. It was, but yeah, no, Wendell Berry seems pretty cool. Tonya sort of knows him. She has, one of his books is dedicated to her. Yeah. Oh wow. His wife's name's Tonya too, but it's legit. She is dedicated to our Tanya.

Yeah, she protested him. Way back in the day when she protested with him, way back in the day when people still protested against the coal industry, and there was an active coal industry in the state. Anyways, so that's really about every... We're at an hour, and I think that just to sort of sum up everything, just to sort of put a bow on it, I don't know if you had anything else you wanted to add, Tom.

No, my conscience is clear. Yeah, more long-term strategizing, more long-term thinking and planning. Don't get sort of swept up you know today was the day the day they announced uh justice kennedy's replacement on the supreme court and honestly it's so strange to me um you know and there are legitimate concerns i'm not saying that there aren't but it's it's really funny to me because there's a lot of things that have happened in the Trump administration where I find myself feeling very panicked and like oh my god everything's you know falling apart and going crazy but this was literally maybe

one of the only things where I just really like whatever cross my I don't know maybe it's just because I wasn't surprised or or what but um but like i think the society that we're organizing towards the the sort of revolutionary moment that we're organizing towards um would like to see a sort of dismantlement not just of the capitalist system, but also just our overall philosophical approach to justice and to, I don't know, lawmaking. And for me, that includes dismantling the Supreme Court. And I know that sounds absurd. This is another thing I wanted to talk about before we let you go. There's another thing I wanted to talk about before we let you go. There's another thing I want to talk about is like, people, I think people have this

notion of like communists or like far leftists as like these people who just want revolution tomorrow. And like, you know, and that's, they use that as a sort of like cudgel or something to say like, oh, you're unrealistic, you're idealistic, all this. But I don't think anybody's actually advocating for that. First of all, if we actually actually tried that it'd be a massive failure and we discredit ourselves and we'd all wind up in jail but second of all you know we're not saying that it has to happen tomorrow or next week or next year but like I would you know just sort of put it out there that like societies have gotten to that place before where a lot a large

enough movement of people look around at the same time and go things don't have to be this way um that we can break with the old way of doing things and and that's what a revolution is you break with the old way of doing things and um, and it's about bringing the focus back to, it has to be like a change in property relations and in power relations. Exactly. And if you lose sight of that, you're not talking about socialism. It has to include change in property.

And with that comes a change in political power. And yeah, I mean, and again, it's like,'s just a misconception of like what we were talking about with people calling things unrealistic. It's the misconception is on the side of the person calling it unrealistic because no one who has ever studied revolution thinks it happens overnight. It's a long struggle. And the point is the is the kind of work you do and the kinds of goals that you have it's not it's not a matter of timing i don't know if revolution is going to happen in my lifetime but i'm working on revolutionary tactics because that those are the tactics that i think have historical precedence right and you

know with all the things that we've mentioned, impending climate change, disaster on the horizon, but just about any issue you can imagine, we owe it to the future generations to be organizing towards that. I mean, these half steps and whatever, it's time to cut the shit. It's time to cut the shit. That's what I need to start telling people. Yeah, it's time to cut the shit That's why I need to start telling people It's time to cut the shit

That's why I started just threatening To like kick people's asses Yeah right All this debating is getting tiring Start kicking lids asses That's what this episode is going to be called Time to cut the shit I like that Well Katie thanks for joining us Kicking lids asses. That's what this episode is going to be called. Time to cut the shit. Cut the shit.

I like that. Well, Katie, thanks for joining us. Oh, yeah. It was fun. This has been a great conversation. Don't be surprised if we ask you to come back on again sometime. I had so much fun. I was so excited to talk to you guys.

I love listening to your podcast while I'm gardening. Oh, great. Oh, yeah. That's awesome. That's the setting we have in mind today. That's awesome. That's the setting we have in mind today. That's true. Washing dishes, gardening, and maybe going to... What's that?

Commutes, I guess. Commutes, right. Once I'm better at my job, I'll listen to it in the truck, but I'm too scared right now. Yeah, get your sea legs under your feet. Yeah. But seriously, though, as far as podcasts, I know you guys are the only ones I listen to and actually agree with politically, so it's really nice to have you guys out there. Good. I'm glad to hear that. And that's the whole point of podcasting.

We find like-minded people and we get together and synthesize our ideas. And do more podcasts. And do more podcasting. Can I give a shout-out to Erin? Absolutely. Erin Goudreau, I think is how you say her last name. Yeah, Erin. She's my Trillbillies pal.

In Montana. Shouts-out to Erin. Oh, yeah, Erin in Montana. Longtime listener. One of our very first fans, really. She did a playlist for us, even. Yeah, she did do a playlist for us. She's just the cutest and very smart.

Right. Yeah, agreed. Well, shouts out to Erin and shouts out to The Quiet Corner. That's a great name. Thank you. All right, Katie. Well, thank you so much, and we'll see you on the internet. All right, talk to you later.

All right, see you. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. alright talk to you later alright see ya alright bye the foundations of the world are being broken broken broken Broken, broken, broken

The foundations of the world Are being broken broken broken broken broken broken The foundations

of the world are being broken, broken, broken, broken, broken, broken.