Select text to annotate, Click play in YouTube to begin
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we're on the highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator and he completely right apart from one thing we we don't have our foot in the
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accelerator we are tied up and gagged and bound in the boot of the car and the ruling cars are driving it so it's not just a question of like oh we need to collectively come together and take our
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foot off the accelerator and maybe change course a bit etc etc like we have to find a way to cooperate to untie ourselves in each other burst through the back seat Force the the driver out
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of the driving seat of the moving car learn how to drive and not drive off the cliff hello and welcome to Planet critical the podcast for a world in crisis my name is Rachel Donald I'm a
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climate corruption journalist and your host every week I interview experts who are battling to save our planet my guests are scientists politicians academics journalists and activists they explain the complexities of the energy
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economic political and cultural crises we face today revealing what's really going on and what they think needs to be done these are the stories of the big picture go to Planet critic.com to learn
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more And subscribe my guest this week is James Schneider James is the communications director for Progressive International the co-founder of the leftwing Grassroots movement momentum and the author of our block how we win
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James is also the former director of strategic Communications for labor and Jeremy Corbin he joins me today to discuss the roots of the crisis explaining how they can be separated into three separate levels Each of which
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feeds the other and how to differentiate between the crises which are a permanent feature of fossil capitalism through social crises up to modes of production and energy systems James then explains that given fossil capitalism is is
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cannibalizing itself at this moment in history how critical it is that the Progressive Movement unites across the different submovements to respond to the level one crisis energy use and energy
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rights James gives a critique of Reform versus Revolution explaining the problems with the green New Deal and explaining what he describes as the communications catastrophe of degrowth he explains the difference between
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intellectualization and political and Social Power how to take ideas out of the academy and onto the streets he explains his vision for a green Democratic Revolution that we need an anti-regime campaign to overthrow the
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ruling class and despite the immensity of this task James remains hopeful highlighting throughout the interview they put so much effort into holding us down because they are not running the
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system well because people know they are not running the system well and because the vast majority of people around the world share socialist values and and the pressure of that movement the people's movement is building I hope you all
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enjoy the episode if you do please share it far and wide and if you're loving the show become a patron on patreon or support Planet Critical with a paid subscription at Planet critic.com by signing up you'll get the planet
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critical newsletter inspired by each episode delivered straight to your inbox every week you'll also have access to the wonderful Planet critical Community who are full of inspiring thoughts ideas critiques and determination
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the links are in the description box below I'm so grateful to everyone who chooses to support the project I'm a vehement believer in adree and Open Access content so Planet critical wouldn't exist without the direct support of the amazing Community thank
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you so much to all of you who believe in Planet critical and keep the project going every week James thank you very much for joining me on planet critical it's a pleasure to have you on the show thank you for having me so why is the
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world in crisis and what can we do about it well I think there are three different types of Crisis and we need to keep all three of them in mind normally we just focus on the first level of
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Crisis which I think we could call like system normal crisis the the system in which we live generates crisis for huge waves of humanity and that's a permanent feature
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and that doesn't mean that the system as a whole is in crisis in fact it's a feature so you know whether that is environmental destruction in one place the systematic undervaluing undervaluing
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of certain types of work the underpay of of other types of work killing people all of these things these different crises are are are normal to the system
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and yes they move around and they come into uh different formations but that doesn't mean that there's a systemic crisis then there's a level up you kind of zoom out from that type of Crisis
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into crises within the social system as a whole so these are not mere problems that affect some people but they are uh
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crisis in the reproduction of the social system so that might mean that there are too many crisis going on on the first level in the system normal level which
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is reading too much Revolt that is disrupting the uh disrupting the system and this kind of level you can view that as uh things like uh class conflict or
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sometimes Interstate conflict this is the level that um the Italian revolutionary theorist um Antonio grami was talking about when he said the crisis consists precisely of the fact the old is dying and the new can't be
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born that's talking about the the social settlement basically and sometimes we focus on that level we're clearly in a crisis of that level as well well you know we don't
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have uh consent for the social system the social settlement that we currently have there is not br-based support for it and that's part of why we see political volatility fracturing and so
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on and so forth and we don't have the kind of systemic leadership that you sometimes uh see which can lead to expand it expansion for some groups of
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people enough people to actually improve their living standards and the promise of improved living standards to enough other people to maintain a kind of stability but we've actually got a a
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deeper bigger crisis there's another thing if you zoom out further which is to do with uh the mode of production and our Energy System
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so uh you know we our crisis is not just that um there are some issues in financial financialized capitalism or or that people don't trust Elites or that
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there's some other kind of challenge to the current social settlement we have a deeper underlying problem that a massive driving force of the social system we've lived under for the last 200 years which
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is basically fossil capitalism is coming under intense strain because we are having to move from uh fossil fuels as the source of our economic
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expansion and you know while we've had different social settlements at different times in history and in different countries in the last 200 years none of them has stepped outside of the the essential expansionist logic
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of fossil capitalism so you've had different distributions of of wealth and of power within given societies over the the past 200 years uh but none of be
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none have stepped out of that logic now we we are coming to a crunch uh not yet primarily because of climate breakdown you know climate breakdown for you know perhaps 10 15
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years has started to put some mild upward pressure on uh prices Supply chains and disruption and that's starting to get much larger and non nonlinear and will get you know projects
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to get much larger and much more uh nonlinear as things um but because of the limitation of fossil fuels themselves you know there currently there's uh about 45
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years of um oil and gas at current production levels in known reserves of course we'll find more but there is there is a crunch coming and that isn't
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you the crunch isn't just like you can switch from one type of energy system to another type of energy system um you know there isn't the infrastructure we've developed over the last 200 years the infrastructure for a fossil
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capitalist system and we don't have anything like approaching what would allow the continuing expansion under existing terms under any other type of
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energy system so that's that's the basic Contours of the of the crisis and each one sits within the other one so uh you know we we have a whole set of crises
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which could be normal to the functioning of the system but there are many more of them because the system isn't functioning properly that's creating crises within the within the social settlement but those can't be fundamentally resolved because the even
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larger issue which is um that the the basis the economic basis of the system which has led to the most dramatic expansion of things over the last 200 years I mean if you look at global
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population if you look at land use if you look at Material production I mean it's been gigantic and that is what is coming under uh a question and it's coming under question not because of uh you
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know not for kind of good reasons not because it's being challenged from class or gender or decolonial positions although of course there are those challenges but it's on its own terms it
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hasn't found a way to uh to to go beyond itself to go beyond the the essentially free inheritance that they had because if you look at history in the grander
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sweep not just in the last 200 years the condition the other conditions for dramatic capitalist expansion have been present which are great pools of mainly
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looted Capital wealth from uh from other people forced Labor uh and organized Merchant power I mean that's existed in many many societies many times of
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history but they haven't yielded um basically self-propelling industrial production because they haven't those those inputs haven't being connected to the other input which is uh
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an incredible energy dense source which which has been fossil fuel so I think that's that's the nature of the current crisis that we're in thank you for that there's a lot in there and I'm sure
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we'll sort of go through each of these three layers in more detail throughout um now it seems almost silly to say you know what do we do about it as if there's like one solution because obviously there isn't one solution uh
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any resilient ecosystem of action demands diversity but from where you sit your area of expertise what do you think needs to be done so I think the first thing we have to do is recognize the
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scale of the issue that we're not dealing with the areas that we that we normally do and normally um Progressive campaign and movements respond to the crisis which is immediately in front of
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them because that's the one that that that affects people and those are very often normal system type uh the the role of um Progressive
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forces Progressive movements the left whatever you want to call call it over the last 200 years has been to try to unite those different revolts generated by System normal in to
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a force that can uh generate and then hopefully resolve a crisis at the uh at the social settlement level in favor of reducing some of those crises that that
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affect people and we don't have at the moment you know very much force that move that does bring together different types of um revolt against the existing
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order which is separated by geography language issue location in the economy location in society and so on um but even if we did have that thing that's not enough because we need to be dealing
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with the first order issues as well which do come down to uh which are both Technical and political the technical is fossil capitalism is whether we like it
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or not that that regime is going away that regime is changing and currently is not changing LED by anything good that is going to replace it it's changing because it's failing on it it on its own
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terms so I think that has to be our our starting point so we need to focus on yes we need to unite the different struggles but we need to focus them then in on the first order issues so that is
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things like uh energy production distri you know energy production energy distribution and who has rights and claims over energy then you get the next
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level down which is production both of food products services and social reproduction and uh and fights fights over that and these things necessarily
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need to be um internationalized then the next question is um about time frame because we've got models for change now we there have been
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substantial advances for um uh that we've seen over the last 200 years within this larger system within this larger regime of of fossil capitalism um but generally speaking
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they've taken quite a long time so they they have a a a kind of radical Social Democratic type logic which is you combine uh mass movements and sometimes
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quick changes with reformed to institutional framework to get a better social settlement and and we've had good examples of uh of that but they've basically gone with the train of the
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system so they they say that the system is expanding we want to modernize it further but do it in a more rational way and socialize its returns and you can see that from lots of different types of um you know of of radical Progressive
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change from the bolix through European social democracy to the pink tide in Latin America they all say you know Lenin said communism is Soviet power and the electrification of the whole system
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you know it's basically modernized and socialize um European social democracy is capitalism if it's left to do its it do its own thing ends in the Great Depression and World Wars so we're going to manage capitalism in a more efficient
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Keynesian Manner and therefore we can socialize some of its Returns the um pink tide in Latin America says we're getting we're getting nothing we need to take the take the state modernize build
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infrastructure and have mass programs to redistribute wealth and power in favor of the majority all did you know all did socializing in those directions but none of them could step outside of the
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broader the broader regime so I think we we have to start looking at things to do with very fast time frame and very profound change now that sounds kind of
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Otherworldly and perhaps absurd from the perspective of of where we are but two things to to counter that I mean firstly we should be realistic and you know to be realistic we have to demand the nearly
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impossible because the trend scenarios otherwise are profoundly terrible and the other thing is things look closed because we are only entering
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into the system breakdown period and that will produce terrible threats but also opportunities and and and openings and so I think what we have
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to do now is we basically I mean maybe the science will show this in 10 years time or 50 years time or whatever but maybe 2023 is the year where in terms of climate breakdown we've entered nonlinear breakdown things
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are jumping around much more we've had gradually changes gradual and bad changes let's say for the last 30 years now we're getting you know nonlinear big jumps um
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and that's going to throw up some some very weird things so just to try to now hone that down into something um more manageable you know there are sort of
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two broad um programs or ideas that deal with this or that try to engage with this issue they have pockets of support
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one is the idea of a green New Deal or a global Green New Deal and the other one is degrowth and and I don't think that either of those work for different reasons so green New Deal has although I
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would support a lot of the policies and the things within them but as as Frameworks alone I don't think I so green New Deal proposes that through a
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transfer of investment a certain percentage one and a half 2% a year basically not that much as a percentage of um the global economy we can build a
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uh green Energy System to rapidly TR move away from fossil fuels and doing so will require more State Direction More State involvement and so that we can socialize that system basically follows
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the previous model which is why it seems superficially um attractive because you can it builds an alliance between some workers some Bill payers people concerned about the environment and some
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catalysts who will benefit from owning this green infrastructure to make to make the changes now the problem with that is
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firstly um as you know your audience will not be uh will not find surprising at all you can't just unplug fossil fuels and plug in clean energy you
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know there really is no such thing as straightforwardly renewable energy because the stuff that goes into making solar panels wind turbines and so on those things aren't renewable and
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they're far more complicated processes than just extraction of fossil fuels which is both in in technical terms relatively easy whereas building a wind turbine is extremely complicated it
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requires huge amounts of you know incredibly complex supply chain minerals from all over the world various different industrial processes along the way um and we haven't built the infrastructure or even on things like
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steel you know there is um you can Electrify the production of of Steel and therefore make it potentially green if your electricity grid is um mainly clean
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energy but that isn't like you take out one part and you put in another part you're building an entirely different um uh an entirely different production process so the scale of what's required
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is is is much much larger and fundamentally it isn't working anywhere if you look at the most Green New Deal inflected policies currently on offer in
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the world so you take the US with its um with its Imperial uh inflation reduction act FR Shoring near Shoring you know all of that stuff it can also happen while they
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simultaneously open the willow oil field in Alaska um if you you it there's no reason why expanding investment into green energy can't go hand in hand with
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expansion of fossil fuels or absolutely the continuation of fossil fuels and that the the green New Deal structure essentially leaves the
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political system and fundamental economic relations intact um and so while superficially attractive and all of the individual policies within it I would entirely
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support should we insulate homes yes of course should we be building out Public Power for clean energy yes of course should we have free or as close to free as possible uh Public public
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transportation should we be electrified things all of those things are absolutely the case and should the jobs that come with it be green and should all of that stuff is of course correct but it's insufficient because it's and
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it's just really scratching so then at the other end you have uh degrowth which I think it we we have to get away from because it it without
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being too comsy about it it's such bad coms right like going back to the analysis at the beginning with the crisis thing like normal crisis in the system for most people is degrowth like
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most people's living standards don't rise that's so it's it's divorced from the experience that that most people have in in in the UK you know where we're where we're speaking from wages at
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the same level they were in 2005 rents aren't bills aren't your groceries aren't but your pay is so um you know most people have been experiencing
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degrowth that's the comms reason why it's bad the uh hang onang wait wait I just want I just want to jump I do you guys want to jump in here very quickly and say most people are experiencing
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degrowth through the way that they are allowed to understand what degrowth is by a you know sort of um vapid uh policy lens in which any economic growth
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benefits everyone which it doesn't because we know that wealth doesn't trickle down I mean real de growth in the way I'm not saying it's good or bad cons just saying real deth in the way that the deth scholars talk about would be also be a redistribution of resources
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sure which would benefit so so so pick a different term oh um right just for just for start let's go let's go more into it right so it's a terrible term we should never use
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it ever again right but also there's an intellectual element to it which is quite right the idea that because society says we're going for GDP growth that we have we live under fossil
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capitalism there's a kind of like if we measured different things we'd have different ACS just isn't true like the the the underlying uh the the underlying Logic the reason why things have to expand
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isn't because we are measuring expansion and therefore things have to expand like the the the words are describing the reality the reality isn't bending to the world so uh you know why why do we need
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to have economic expansion because there's 300 trillion dollar of debt based on future expansion so if we don't have future expansion that's $300 trillion
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worth of debt which isn't going to be repaid entirely which means total financial crisis and so on and so right I say it is baked into the system that it has to
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expand it isn't it isn't based on the fact that we've got the wrong metric because it expanded before we had GDP growth as as a measure of expansion and you know for all the David Cameron saying well we should measure well-being
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as well and you know it it it isn't really getting into the the the underlying Dynamic of the system okay I hear you and I like that the words are trying to create reality and reality is
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not bending but when you go up a level um of like economic thinking do you not and I'm probably betraying my total ignorance here but you like is it not that nobody really expects debt to be paid off anyway and that's part of the
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fallacy with um with its very existence and why a lot people are calling for like debt cancellation for example so it's I mean the debt has to be serviced and the reason why the debt won't be cancelled or when it is canceled it it
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almost immediately comes back you know there was some debt cancellation for some heavily indebted countries in the year 2000 and now uh one in four countries on Earth can't service their their their debts um of course not all
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the debt will ever be paid back that's not the point of it but it has to be it has to be serviced along the way so there have to be returns to it now that can happen either through just massive monetary expansion
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which is what we've been having or it can happen because of uh underlying material expansion those you know th those are the two things I mean and then yes
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people are calling for a debt Jubilee and yes we should have a a debt Jubilee and we're going to have to you know part of any solution we you know we're talking I'm trying to talk here about regime change like bigger than bigger
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than social system social settlement change bigger than uh you know bit at a much larger a much larger level so yes all those things would would have to
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happen um but they can't just have this is the other this is the my other critique with um a lot of the dth disc again very sympathetic to the basic thing
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about uh we need to have an economy that meets human needs within planetary boundaries right that's it that should be an incredibly obvious sentence that everybody can uh that everyone can agree
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on how you then construct a social system to deliver it both in theory and then build the power to do so is an entirely different uh is an entirely
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different matter and it's not a it's not just a theoretical thing you can't say well you know if we had an economy that we measured these things in these particular ways know you need to have the social power
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to force those that are in power to not carry on doing the things that they're doing for example we need to shut down fossil fuel production you know that doesn't just happen because we get a
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nicer theory of how a balanced economy or whatever we want to call it will will work you know that requires a political strategy and social power as well as technical plans for how to deliver it
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and how to deliver the alternative power that you're going to have to heat people's homes and keep people moving around and uh and and grow food okay hang on I'm G yes so I want to
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definitely I want to definitely take this juncture and go down there uh talking about political and Social Power because I think we do see a lot of like intellectualization of the problem and people are not really sure how to press go essentially and it is like a big
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critique um that is very easy for the right-wing to weaponize I just want just on this de thing though just just very quickly and I promise we won't stay here for very long because I understand that um I can't learn everything about debt
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in the next three minutes but I also definitely couldn't teach everything about blind leading blind that's fine let's see where we go like if if if if the global e economy is expanding
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all of the time and we are using that this monetary expansion because of the amount of debt that exists because debts have to be serviced then why is the amount of debt continuously increasing too surely if that sort of strategy was
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either working or Genuine debts would gradually be getting paid off but from what I understand like nations are continuously in more and more debt because to service the debt that
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doesn't mean to pay it down that means to pay the interest to the holder just the interest so um uh and where debts are paid down new debts are taken out so
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um you know the debts are never going the problem isn't that we we have to pay off 300 trillion or else Everything is Everything is doed it's not that it's that the the ongoing expansion has to in
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the minds of investors be related in some way to the returns that they're going to get gotcha so okay uh so if they don't think that they are going to get any return then the the the value of
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that asset that the that the debt is based on will fall and if that becomes a generalized issue then you have a then you have a financial collapse okay well I mean doesn't this take us then quite
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nightly nicely to political power because couldn't that be one way to like quite dramatically Force regime change then if if you could Implement degrowth and kind of trigger a because this is a
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a lot of what they talk about as well degrowth Scholars like it's either degrowth a controlled degrowth or an uncontrolled Financial collapse so couldn't that then force a change in the
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financial system whereby this old kind of you know this historic evil of like making money off of money um is no longer possible for investors or or Rich Nations so I'm going to take some
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different parts of that in so let's start with the the controlled deth but I'm not going to use the term degrowth because I I don't think it makes sense right we we need to implement emergency
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plans to transform th some things very fast and those are the highest order things within the within the world system so that
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is um most importantly energy food production and debt write Downs those are those are the things and there are other things as well but those
00:31:24
are some of the most important things that we need to have emergency plans that we can then follow for Rapid transformation now we might be talking
00:31:39
you know using different terms of the same thing I'm sure there are some deg gr Scholars that would you know agree with that and I would agree with their with their things I'm not trying to I'm not trying to diss people that do and
00:31:51
good things um but how do you move things out of the academy to to to reality to social reality and into power so then the question is how do you
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develop the power to deliver these uh these emergency plans and do so at the the national the transnational and the international
00:32:16
levels which all seems Bing the term that I'm knocking around at the moment for you know something which isn't a green New Deal de growth is a
00:32:28
green Democratic Revolution which has the green because it we need to have ecological transformation the Democratic because you know democracy is basically the most radical thing full stop which
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is why they tried to make it mean something that it doesn't mean um uh I just going to take a small detail here for a second so Antonio gues the the UN General
00:32:54
Secretary has clearly been reading a lot of climate science and the guy is [ __ ] scared because he's he's just sitting there all day he's reading the climate science he's then looking at the social system and going oh my God we're not
00:33:07
doing anything oh my God we're not doing anything and every single time he's able to put out a press release that's going to get coverage it all goes ah come on like um and he had one I don't think last year or earlier this year whatever
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and he said you know we're I won't do a Portuguese accent he said we're we're um we're on the highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator and he completely right
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apart from one thing right we we don't have our foot in the accelerator we are tied up and gagged and bound in the boot of the car and the
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ruling cars are driving it so it's not just a question of like oh we need to collectively come together and take our foot off the accelerator and maybe change course a bit Etc Etc like we have
00:33:58
to find a way to cooperate to untie ourselves and each other first to really extend this metaphor in a really tortured way burst through the back seat Force the the driver out of the driving
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seat of the moving car learn how to drive and not drive off the cliff which is extremely you know extremely F and you know maybe that's not technically possible you know maybe the car the the
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propulsion of the car is too you know we're too close to the edge and the car is already moving too quickly who knows um but you know that's what democracy is democracy is is not Parliament democracy
00:34:38
is certainly not the the US system which is set up explicitly to be anti-democratic know was how do we insulate the system from from from popular power popular control so the only way in which we can actually
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deliver these emergency plans would be through having a democratic economy and a democratic Politics the Democratic economy means large scale planning of
00:35:05
the you know the most important elements of it and that is a revolution which is why you have revolution in the in the term because it's political change it's a social change but
00:35:16
also and I you know think this is important in the kind of what the left postur is to regime break to system breakdown which
00:35:27
experiencing has to be anti-regime let and and and let me explain it because otherwise the anti- regime forces go to the hard right and if the left tucks in
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behind is the left wing of the uh the the management state which is trying to technocratic limit the catastrophe of breakdown will'll never get popular
00:35:53
scorts that's basic and we we we've tested this recently I because that's basically what happen happened with Co know with Co the the hard right went ah no no science no nothing right and the
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left went well should be very sensible and you know basically let's listen to what the government say and in behind it's like the left edge of the as of the administrative State um and of course
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politically that's very bad because who benefited from politically from coid I mean you've had massive expansion of the hard right in huge numbers of countries and in British politics for example
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that's the coming Force know the trend scenario is we have a a really crap labor government and the hard right will be the main pole of opposition to it um Trump coming back you know bson ormo is
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hardly over Modi is unbelievably popular blah blah blah blah blah um uh yes so that i' I've forgotten what I was saying but I think what I was saying was that our our posture as well
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has to be like totally anti- systemic we're not coming in to try to get some reforms to try to amarate just some of the some of the crisis
00:37:11
because we it's actually not possible from where we are in the system the things that the the um the choices that Progressive forses had to make let's say
00:37:23
50 60 years ago where the system is still had a lot of expansion a lot of Road left to run with it in it saying well look if we get involved at this point we can improve the barging position of this group and that group we
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can amarate this crisis we can resolve that the by crisis I mean normal functioning crisis this one and that one we can approve these conditions we'll change the social settlement this amount
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where we are now so close to full-blown systemic breakdown we don't really get that much for a green Democratic Revolution I think
00:37:59
this is this is so interesting right because obviously I mean one of the main issues with um one you know there's so many bloody issues with politics today I mean the fact that it's National when we have
00:38:12
international corporations in a planetary crisis for one um but it is so difficult to get people excited about politics because they've sort of seen through the two- party system now where it's just like the same thing over and
00:38:25
over and over and over again so you have to offer something new but I think was quite difficult for the left or for like really like a progressive uh Revolution is that if you take that kind of
00:38:37
thinking to its logical end I mean it's essentially you know you kind of end up at like why don't we just abolish the whole thing you kind of end up at Anarchy right where like communities
00:38:50
have a sense of sovereignty and they get to make decisions for themselves and they get to take care of each other and all this kind of thing um where whereas so like the logical progression of really Progressive leftist like
00:39:01
thrusting um thinking is kind of the undoing of the of the tool itself in order to sort of break through into like you know a new world order or whatever whereas the right it's kind of the doubling down of the thing it's
00:39:13
constantly um making itself a firmer Force right it's kind of like the difference between like like um like a womanist sphere yeah um and like the Wom
00:39:26
allows for like new things to grow is is Life Giving by its very emptiness whereas the spear I mean that thing will kill you um like this is the difficulty for that kind of thinking I think as as well now
00:39:40
um let alone the forces that exist to try and undermine and impeach and um torture and twist that kind of ideology and I mean you'll know this better than most given you were in the heart of the
00:39:54
the corpin campaign and saw him getting Tak taken down by the right-wing nut jobs allegedly on the inside of the labor party
00:40:06
um well there's a lot there um oh thck any okay so to to start of the the beginning um you most people quite rationally don't follow politics don't believe in it and so on and so forth because they're smart and we're stupid
00:40:20
if we follow politics we're basically stupid because um uh we as you know you get all these supposedly intelligent people on the intern like oh he'll do
00:40:32
nice things when he gets in no no no no labor will no they will they won't they're being clever because actually if you don't promise you'll do
00:40:43
anything good then you'll do things good or whatever right okay I mean you need an advanced degree to be that stupid um
00:40:56
you know most people that's they're most people are not that done um and uh the changes that we need to make to our political system go well well
00:41:10
well beyond like having a better P party in changing who some of the MPS are and so on and so forth because it is structurally set up to insulate the ruling class from popular pressure and
00:41:25
you see this I mean it's painful I you know I worked in Parliament for I guess about four years for for for Corbin and for labor um and you can see it all the time it's
00:41:37
unbelievably it's unbelievably painful we look at all the our institutions you know the bank of England is set up so that um uh a massive chunk of macroeconomic policy which affects how much money people
00:41:50
have it's outside of political contestation right but and then which say like oh it's good you know technocrats will do it which means no the elite consensus will take over and the elite consensus doesn't care what uh you know what's in the interest of
00:42:04
Ordinary People which is why they decide against the interests of ordinary people at every conceivable possible juncture um the broader political system also functions um in that way through uh
00:42:17
through lobbyists through the revolving door between the top levels of the Civil Service and the corporate sector and that's why you get the outcomes that you get and in under normal
00:42:30
times things that the overwhelming majority of people support are not on the political agenda which is why this whole the idea that there is a center in politics is a complete fiction the center does not exist it's it's
00:42:44
constructed like the center is just the moderate midpoint between the right and the left no the center is Elite consensus opinion that's it and Elite consensus opinion is almost always
00:42:57
massively in the minority and so you have to work very hard to prevent things which are massively in the majority from getting political expression so you know you look at polling and between 2third and
00:43:12
three quarters of people support including generally speaking the majority of people who voted T in the last election support things like public ownership of energy water rail mail so on and so forth they support a 15 pound
00:43:25
an hour minimum wage they support a wealth tax they you know all of these things which are you know considered way way on the on the left they're not on the left that's actually the center right if if you're talking about where
00:43:38
is the where is the mainstream British public opinion and it's such strong public opinion because no one ever says it in the public sphere and when they do they are ridiculed so you have all of
00:43:50
the the the communicative apparatus of the of Civil Society particular the media but also think tanks and so on and so forth saying oh all this nice stuff that you
00:44:02
want you can't have it oh what you you you wanna you want to have a nursery place for your kids so you can work and also have a no can't can't have it oh
00:44:14
you think the you don't think there should be a tax repul so wish she soon that pays a lower rate of tax than you me sry can't do it no and there's no politician that's going to um to speak in FA
00:44:26
so this is also what I mean with with with how the progressive fores need to be properly anti- systemic it's not like we want to be junior Partners within that system because you you get you get
00:44:40
swallowed up and the reason now just say one more thing based on on the Corbin stuff the reason why Corbin has to be defeated and destroyed and now since
00:44:52
then basically raised from the history books as any anything other than this horrific aberration it's because Corin was a horrific aberration from the perspective of elite consensus opinion because you
00:45:05
had an alternative that was put forward which PE which people could go for now of course there are many things that we did wrong there are many structural failures there are many limitations from
00:45:19
the from the Corbin project but fundamentally it put forward an alternative which for a huge chunk of the population is common sense and therefore it must be expunged in favor of you know let's take
00:45:32
water um you know public ownership of water is like 75% plus popularity right it's so obvious and yet labor are um are um
00:45:47
plotting with the privatized water companies according to Elite email from what from I think it's the boss of seven Trent W company to allow them to keep keep in private hands but through you
00:46:00
know it's a public interest company or you know some other you know some other technocratic fits um I don't really know how much i' I I didn't really answer your question I just of went on three different rants
00:46:13
that intersected slightly but that's fine because I said three that my own had three different rants I think that's that's totally fine um I suppose was quite let's leave leave
00:46:26
the kind of like metaphysical wom versus spear thing aside because that we could probably talk about that for hours and let's go back to focusing on like these forces that exist to undermine
00:46:38
popular power um and maintain the the the ruling class um I mean how do we have given given given the media is controlled by the ruling class as well given that we
00:46:53
don't have control over the narrative therefore given that we have it's very difficult to get access to power because power coales is in such a way as to ensure that anyone who is entering into it um is going to play by the rules
00:47:06
given that we had that kind of like once in A- lifetime aberration Corbin who lost and given as well that the revolution needs to be Global because you cannot have sort of a you know
00:47:17
a uh popular Ral in one country that won't then be taken down by the global capitalist regime in some way I um how do we have a green Democratic Revolution
00:47:30
how do we organize a green de Democratic Revolution and also how do we reclaim the word revolution because a lot of work has been put into undermining that as well as something that's dangerous and kills people and never actually
00:47:44
works oh well I'll start with two extremely optimistic points right the first is my God they have to work so hard they have to work so hard they have
00:47:58
all of the money and all of the Power and still everyone [ __ ] hates them and no one thinks the system works well yeah right so you
00:48:09
know let's not get sotally like oh you know they people PE people are just happy going along they're eating their Soma it's Brave New World no it's not it doesn't work it doesn't work for most
00:48:23
people and even when they have full section control o over the media saying you know this is bad and this is bad and this is bad and this is stupid the the the common sense of the
00:48:36
country is Social Democratic left Social Democratic even on lots of policy issues where the media is really effective is where it has a concentrated hate campaign against a particular group of
00:48:49
people or or people then it then it can really change um public opinion and that's for you know that's that's an objective force that we have to compete with but in general terms you know they
00:49:04
are they're not they're not doing terribly well the other optimistic thing to say is yeah sure transformation has to happen ultimately at the global level but everything starts
00:49:17
somewhere and and and each thing that happens can encourage the next thing to happen and and you know generally speaking that is how change does take place it happens in one place then
00:49:30
rapidly in some other places it may get defeated in the first place but it's had profound effects in you know uh other countries you know the was it emanu wall some you know someone made the point
00:49:42
that um the French Revolution happened in Denmark it's like from the point of view of 50 years after the French Revolution you know you've got the the monarchy back and blah blah blah and someone like yeah but you know all the most of the things they fought for in
00:49:54
the French Revolution they have in Denmark they didn't before the French Revolution right now then then they did um so you know those are some basic optimistic things now to get into the
00:50:07
and therefore like you know let's not be defeat us about it like they are not running the system well and people can see that right that you know we think that we're doing worse than that than we
00:50:18
are because we've spend that what we tend to hear is the media we don't tend to hear what people think so you hear someone who seems like they're the voice of normality on the media saying oh no
00:50:31
couldn't do that right that's not actually a normal person that's someone who is there because they will fulfill the role of appearing like a normal person who who believes that thing they you know everything not everything but a
00:50:44
very large amount of what we see in here is formed by selection bias there like there's have you seen this amazing interview from years ago with um what's he called Andrew
00:50:57
marsky yes and um uh and he says and um Andrew Maron says in a incredibly pompous way you know journalist with a stroppy disputatious lot you know how you saying people are telling me you
00:51:12
know telling us what to think and and jum says no I'm not telling anyone's told you what to think one I'm saying is that if you thought something different you wouldn't be sitting opposite me now asking me the questions and that's how you know that's that's how it functions
00:51:23
so we shouldn't in as you know people who are active on for radical social change environment whatever we want to call it we shouldn't internalize that too much and think that they you know
00:51:37
that the the actors are are actually reality because because they're really because they're not so now you know practically what what can we do um and it's of course it's going to be
00:51:50
different in different National contexts for obvious you know obvious reasons but those do need to add up so in the uh there are some commonalities so the the
00:52:03
first thing I was saying was have a a fully anti- systemic posture right like so let's take Spain for example pmos basically has got swallowed up by
00:52:16
and I've got lots of friends in pomus lots of respect for them and also for Samar the new Left Force afterwards work with them great but they have been swallowed up into uh you know the left part of the
00:52:30
the block that fights against the the rightwing block that's a necessary role that they're playing but the next Force needs to sit outside of that um so
00:52:40
that's one thing next thing is uniting different types of struggles diff into a social majority with one line of antagonism one line of attack against
00:52:53
the people that are in power and that needs to be our you know that needs to be our of antagonist we need to find things and issues and events that people care about that brings together the big social blocks that we have so
00:53:07
people as workers people as women people as disabled people as racialized and so on and so forth uh to into having a a united front and then when there has
00:53:21
that United f it needs to have a radical Democratic element extremely radical Democratic element as in this is not just we're changing some of the people that are at the top of the
00:53:34
state we have to go into democratize the state which means that we can then democratize the economy so that means building Democratic institutions that can manage the economy and have popular participation
00:53:49
within them for like small thing but for example there should be a day year which is tax day where everyone does their taxes which should be a national holiday but also it should be participatory economic planning day where you say I
00:54:02
think we should spend more money on this and less money on that and we should do this blah blah blah blah and that can be an aggregation of of what people want which then gets fed into what you know what comes out there needs to be hugely
00:54:15
at every single conceivable level more democratic participation not only because it will yield far more Progressive outcomes but it is also far harder to
00:54:28
attack you know it is so much easier to say oh that Jeremy Corbin bloke what a bastard then it is to say wealth taxes are
00:54:42
bad and then it's one step even more difficult to say yeah I don't care that the majority of people have just come up with and said that um that they want wellth taxed for this reason the majority of people are bastards it's just it's just a really weak argument
00:54:55
it's really hard to demon you know it's that the majority is much harder to demonize than um you know something which can be polarized around exactly as you were saying earlier you know how do you stop something being seem you know
00:55:09
uh left so they polarized without losing its identity you normally when the people are saying that they want you to merge into some ridiculous mushy let's all hold hands with Rory
00:55:21
Stewart and you know basic flop into the elite consensus thing but from a kind of nicer nicer and that's all want it's a very hard line extremely hard militant line because they the we we need to to
00:55:36
go back to the incredibly tortured um Antonio guish inspired uh car and Cliff analogy no they do be really forced out the seat you know really forced and you know we're nice people so we'll probably
00:55:49
just tie them up and put them in the boot rather than throw them out of the moving car because we're nice right but they have to be pulled out of the seats and stop driving the car okay okay I want to pause you here then and ask not
00:56:02
just based on this metaphor but can we get there without violence um
00:56:13
so violence is not the thing that will most likely bring forward uh social majority for power okay but that social majority for power
00:56:26
will be met with violence necessarily yes um you know uh which is even if we set up a really nice democratic system where people choose democratically to have a fair
00:56:41
redistribution of wealth power and opportunity which is what people would choose that is taking away wealth and power from a small number of people who have it who also have tremendous access
00:56:53
to violence and so the you know violence therefore will come but it will come as it already H have the system relies on a tremendous amount of violence to maintain itself um at every single level
00:57:08
I mean of course at the at at the geopolitical level uh to secure access to resources the overthrow of governments but also um the policing of
00:57:20
workers in mines and so on and so forth and even in in Societies in the global North if you if you look at types of employment types of employment related to security have
00:57:33
also increased quite a lot in the last 30 years you know more people whose job it is to either meet out respond to or in some way negotiate with violence has
00:57:45
increased um in you know in Societies in the in in the global North so I mean the system it's not like those that wish to change the distribution of power in the system are the violent intrusion into the
00:57:57
system you know system system normal part of part of the crisis of system normal is uh the meeting out of uh is the meeting out so yeah I I I do think you know to to go back to the to the
00:58:10
number of your questions we have to be clearheaded about the fact that if you are going to take away things from the people who have the most wealth and power in the world and the greatest access to violence they will mobilize
00:58:22
that the question is not morally but strategically what is the best response and if they have all the guns probably standing there with your little pistol is not the best it's probably not the best response that's not because
00:58:34
standing up with your little pistol is is some moral deficiency and you know if they're being violent we can't meet it with you know anything like that it's just well if they've got the guns you've got to find it you you you you've got to
00:58:47
find the terrain to fight on and the train to fight on isn't you know isn't going to be who's got the most warships yes but also I mean even before that right before we get to a point of like taking
00:58:59
away even being able to enter onto the terrain even being able to um begin the fight um and I love the the French word is De CL like trigger you know
00:59:13
how because there's so much talk right in the in the movement around violence and nonviolence and how you know oh no it's nonviolent movements that are always the best way and always create a better system and then um obvious Andreas mom wrote how blood Pipeline and
00:59:27
said there is no such thing as a non-violent Revolution the moderate flank is always supported by a radical flank essentially which allows for the moderate flank to be invited to the table um and we do sort of seem to be um
00:59:40
tied up in like moral knots at the moment around are we really going to let the end of the world happen um at the hands of just a very very small number
00:59:52
of people because we are un willing to fight on that terrain essentially um so even before it comes a stage of like say the the the ruling class putting up
01:00:06
a fight against what we wish to take away because undoubtedly they would but how do we even get to the stage where we have the right maybe not the the might the political might to begin that fight
01:00:19
as well and will that sort of be forced to to violent I mean how long do we wait to see that we are not being listened to so to answer your two
01:00:33
questions in in one well hopefully in one way um the the debate between violence and nonviolence reform and Revolution
01:00:45
whatever whatever those are debates that that tend to happen when basically nothing's going on right like we don't have agency we don't have a campaign we don't have a thing which is challenging
01:00:57
power so we can have the abstract discussions right when we do have uh agency we have a vehicle we have a a project which is
01:01:09
which is doing something then we won't really be having those debates because they it's going to be incredibly shaped by contingency and by what's in front of us and and and what's there and again to be optimistic and
01:01:22
optimistic looking at the frailties of the existing system like they don't have this on lock they really really like corburn wasn't meant to take charge of I'm not saying that there's going to be a new Corbin in the labor party but like
01:01:36
the labor party was was a threat to the cus class a 100 years ago it did make substantial social reforms in the interest of the overwhelming majority of
01:01:48
people 70 70 years ago and it has over time been uh trained into a kind of more of a kind of house pet party a a plan B for the
01:02:01
for the ruling class you know they've got their a team they've got their party the Tories and the Tories Rule and then eventually they really suck so bad that even within our anti-democratic system they're going to get chucked out so they
01:02:14
give you plan B right and plan B comes in and yes okay fine we have they have to give some reforms and we get some stuff out of it but that you know that's the basic structure but even Within that system and it's sort most you know in
01:02:26
2015 after whatever we had by that point 35 years of neoliberalism uh falling Trade union membership you know all of the objective things not looking good Corbin is able
01:02:41
to win why because they changed the the electoral system within the party why did they do that because one labor MP punched aor MP in a bar and it cus a bol like it's like a random chain of events that leads to this opportunity
01:02:55
and the reason there's an opportunity is because they're constantly having to fight hard to put what's the right metaphor I'm terrible with metaphors as we're now learning but you know it's like it its hands are pushing down
01:03:06
against water and it's still squirting through it's finding the Gap there's huge pressure that's building up and they're trying to hold it down and we don't know exactly how you know out of which knuckle Gap you know
01:03:19
there's going to be there's going to be a spurt but there is going to be one and uh the job for whichever one it comes through is going to be the same
01:03:31
strategically but it'll be in a different you know different location so have to act differently and it be based on its contingencies but it needs to challenge the system as a whole it
01:03:42
needs to unite div different elements different bits of society that make up the super majority but that form different PES of as I say
01:03:55
workers women racialized etc etc into a common front to make a democratic assault and then what that Democratic assault is looks different in different you know in in different
01:04:08
contexts some of those might seem might be quite traditional some of them you know like the Corbin one was pretty you know pretty traditional we tried to go through the first Pastor post electoral system to elect a better prime minister
01:04:22
right that was the you know that was the model pretty simple pretty pretty traditional there might be other ones in some countries that really works in others of course you can't do that um and then it's the glomeration of those
01:04:35
revolts those mutinies um and you know particularly important is uniting the the the what should be a generalized Mutiny in the South the global South against the system as it is against the
01:04:49
the specific mutinies in the north I mean you know if we're talking about um you know agency and who has who has who has agency who has the need to change things you know
01:05:01
um 150 years ago as workers of the world united' got nothing to lose but your chains you know if you follow that same logic it's the the workers and peasants of the global South whose land is going
01:05:13
to be further exploited for minerals whose labor is exploited for the extraction of those minerals and also for industrial production based on it who going to have you know huge s So-Cal Surplus populations that will be uh that
01:05:27
will be chumped and and so on and so forth I mean there's potentially tremendous revolutionary agency there but very disaggregated of course now that and that's part of the uh part of
01:05:39
the the necessary work is uniting people divided by geography language issue um against common enemies because you know we do we do have common enemies and
01:05:52
those common enemies again going back to the old the old metal they're in the driving seat and they they're driving us off a cliff they're driving themselves off a cliff as well yeah but they can't help
01:06:03
that yeah GNA do anyway and you know if saying please don't do this look we have this nice science man he's got this nice coat on he's got all the graphs he can
01:06:15
really show you please take your foot off it they can't take their foot off it they won't and and the existing system at the map Pro level is unreformable now we have seen that with uh with climate
01:06:29
climate breakdown didn't have to be know marar facture understood the climate was happening and thought that it could be managed because they were able to deal with the ozone there problem the
01:06:40
difference is free radical cap you know the destruction of the ozone there is caused by free radicals um uh interacting with the ozone there therefore dissolving it right free radical Capital wasn't that important so
01:06:54
you can just say piss off free radical Capital you're causing us all problems go away you're ruining the party and they go away and then the open grows back and you've dealt with the environmental problem and you can carry on the system as normal right fossil
01:07:06
capital is not like free radical Capital so you can't just do that we've tested that to destruction now for more than 30 years um but we see with everything else
01:07:18
you know debt crisis you know the the the so the system that's meant to manage development and debt for southern countries only works to further exploit
01:07:30
you know while while Sri Lanka is going through its terrible uh you debt crisis it's still paying the IMF money Ukraine at war is still paying back the
01:07:44
the IMF you know clearly that and and as we were saying beforeand you know in the year 2000 there was a debt write off for some ined poor countries as that was
01:07:56
what the the acronym was um and a lot of those are are back in debt because that's how the system operates or take coid now in coid we had the technical
01:08:08
capacity and the manufacturing capacity to inoculate the entire world in one year with Co vaccine with Co vaccines which were almost entirely produced with public money and public
01:08:22
research and and we didn't and we didn't because instead we followed some intellectual property laws which could be waved and there were Provisions in the WTO in order to wave them and yet
01:08:36
that didn't happen so yeah we have tested to destruction the theory that if we give better information to those in
01:08:48
charge about how terrible things are they will realize that in their own interest and the interest of everyone else that we need to change course we've tested that that doesn't that that doesn't work yeah to be honest it makes me like
01:09:03
think to really extend that metaphor it makes me think that if we ever got to the stage where we like ripped open that um driver's door it would just be a driverless
01:09:14
car everyone's in the [ __ ] back seat there's some idiots that think they're driving yeah and who're all talking driving it yeah they yeah they're in the trust up in the back seat doing this with the wheelers if they're driving
01:09:28
well someone needs to learn Computing fasting because I mean cars are made of plastic and computers so yeah yeah well yeah yeah how do you
01:09:40
I'm sure they have a handbrake I'm sure they still have a handbrake yeah they've got to still have a hand they got to have a handbrake I suppose the great thing about that is like you can kind of at least take everybody out of the car and let it go over the
01:09:51
cliff um I'm going to stop there with that metaphor otherwise I'm going to get confused and I'm going to ruin it for everyone I already ruined it that was such a nice little like punch line like we open the door and it's a driverless car I shouldn't have taken any further
01:10:05
damn it James this has been really really great I love how you've kept hitting the same points over and over and over again about what needs to happen why it needs to happen and how to do it thank you my
01:10:18
final question for you is who would you like to platform um I really like Richard Seymour who is a uh British well it's actually from Northern
01:10:30
Ireland so I don't know if he is technically anyway that that that bit doesn't matter he lives in in in London he he is a writer EOS socialist right also L on the rights of fascism
01:10:42
contemporary fascism um the psychology around Mass support for the hard right and lots on ecosocialism stuff and he's very good excellent
01:10:54
thank you so much thank you if you want to learn more I've put links to everything in the description box below remember to subscribe to the channel if you're new here and share the episode if you enjoyed it to support the show subscribe at Planet critic.com where you
01:11:08
can read The Weekly Newsletter inspired by each interview you can also become a planet critical Patron all links are in the description box below as always my deepest thanks to that Community Planet critical wouldn't exist without your
01:11:20
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End of transcript