In the annals of Occupy Wall Street, in what seem like distant folktales, hundreds of sites burst open like wildflowers in the morning light of 2011. Born by water and sunlight, but pitched by wind and dirt, one encampment after another would rise only to be crushed by the brutal boot of the State before this movement could figure itself out. While this horizontal uprising’s rejection of representation and managerialism were vital and narcotic to some, others found it disorganized and chaotic, garbled by its shrill mic-checks and lack of overt demands. As David Graeber, a co-founder and dream-seeker of this spectacle of mass democracy, wanly stated, “While Americans can do communism, they have absolutely no conception about how to do democracy.” Astra Taylor, Graeber’s friend and skeptical co-conspirator at OWS, investigates our collective troubles with the idea of democracy in her most recent, gorgeously entrancing work of nonfiction: Democracy May Not Exist, but We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone. Published in 2019, as a philosophical couplet to her documentary, What Is Democracy?—released a year prior, Taylor’s book hums in a noble persistence that democracy is a utopian ideal worthy of our time, despite the term having long been abused and defiled by politicians and plutocrats into a kind of milky nothingness. The author deeply considers the meaning of democracy in a graceful series of paradoxes bound by binaries within each chapter. Much like her meditative and dreamy documentary, Taylor’s book asks big questions about the trajectory of democracy in both its idealized conceptions and in its less savory, dirt-dreary praxis points. Jesse & Matt will ponder the philosophical and intellectual questions of these works as masterful collages composed of many voices—where a formerly incarcerated poet-barber exchanges stories side-by-side with Plato, political scientists, immigrants, and school children alike. How can we take democracy from being breath and vibrations of air into a concrete system of self-rule? Astra Taylor’s twin projects reflect what democracy does best when we fall into its enchanting thrall: real democracy is a conversation, a struggle to deliberate, to talk and to listen. Certainly, in this era of a global pandemic, economic devastation, and a climate collapse, now is the time—more than ever—to connect, heal and listen to the voices outside of ourselves. Democracy is a word for something that doesn’t exist yet; but the quiet acts of deliberation, being vulnerable and listening to others might make this word real for the first time. These wondrous projects demonstrate this politics of listening, a reminder that the mixtape of a flourishing future must be gathered from the songs of us all.
Mentioned In This Episode:
What Is Democracy? Directed by Astra Taylor in 2018 - A National Film Board of Canada Production & Distributed by Zeitgeist Films
Democracy May Not Exist, but We'll Miss It When It's Gone by Astra Taylor. Published by Metropolitan Books in 2019.
What Is Democracy? – The official site for the book and film.
Previous Films by Astra Taylor:
Zizek! (2005). Distributed by Zeitgeist Films.
Examined Life (2008). Distributed by Zeitgeist Films.
Previous Books by Astra Taylor:
The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age. Published by Picador in 2015.
Can't Pay, Won't Pay: The Case for Economic Disobedience and Debt Abolition by Debt Collective with a Foreword by Astra Taylor. Published by Haymarket Books in 2020.
Astra Taylor is a Co-Founder of The Debt Collective.
Naomi Klein: “Astra Taylor is a rare public intellectual, utterly committed to asking humanity’s most profound questions yet entirely devoid of pretensions.”
Idiocracy (2006). Directed by Mike Judge. Featuring Luke Wilson and Maya Rudolph. Distributed by 20th Century Fox (which was accused of abandoning the film, which has become one of the truly great cult films of the 21st Century).
London Review of Books Podcast: “Astra Taylor and David Graeber: Democracy May Not Exist, But …”
The Future Is A Mixtape Episode 036: Debt Abolition: A Battle Plan For The Future
Jeremy Corbyn’s sentiment: “Every single person you meet knows something you don’t.” – As Explored in Andy Beckett’s Essay About the Rise of Corbynism in The Guardian: “The Wilderness Years: How the Labour Left Survived to Conquer.”
Rage Against The Machine & The Comical Story of Dumb-Dumbs Who Never Listened to the Lyrics Are Surprised to Discover How Political They Are . . .
The Philosopher’s Walk – A Philosophy of Walking by Frédéric Gros. Translated by John Howe. Published by Verso Books in 2015.
Wanderlust: A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit. Published by Penguin Random House in 2001:
“I like walking because it is slow, and I suspect that the mind, like the feet, works at about three miles an hour. If this is so, then modern life is moving faster than the speed of thought or thoughtfulness.”
Maria Popova in Brainpickings: “Rebecca Solnit on How Walking Revitalizes the Meandering of the Mind”
Plato’s Challenge: Democracy Leading to Tyranny as Explored in His Five Regimes:
“Democracy then degenerates into tyranny where no one has discipline and society exists in chaos. Democracy is taken over by the longing for freedom. Power must be seized to maintain order. A champion will come along and experience power, which will cause him to become a tyrant.”
The Tragic Fate of the 2015 Greek “Bailout” Referendum as Explored in Phillip Inman’s Coverage in The Guardian: “Yanis Varoufakis: Bailout Deal Allows Greek Oligarchs to Maintain Grip”
George Souvlis interviews Yanis Varoufakis in Jacobin: “Yanis Varoufakis: “Syriza Was a Bigger Blow to the Left Than Thatcher”
From the A. Philip Randolph Institute: A "Freedom Budget" for All Americans; Budgeting Our Resources, 1966-1975, to Achieve "Freedom from Want."
Martin Luther King, Jr.: “What good is having the right to sit at a lunch counter if you can't afford to buy a hamburger?”
Combahee River Collective: “Until Black Women Are Free, None of Us Will be Free.”
Freedom of Speech
Freedom of Worship
Freedom from Want
Freedom from Fear
Democratic Confederalism: A Wikipedia Definition
For a Deeper Dive into the Political Concept, Read Abdullah Öcalan’s Democratic Confederalism. Published in 2011 by Transmedia Publishing.
Carne Ross in The Financial Times: “Power to the People: a Syrian Experiment in Democracy”
Malcolm Harris in Talking Points Memo: “The Small Miracle You Haven’t Heard About Amid Syria’s Carnage”
Debbie Bookchin in The New York Review of Books: “How My Father’s Ideas Helped the Kurds Create a New Democracy”
David Graeber in The Guardian: “Why Is the World Ignoring the Revolutionary Kurds in Syria?”
Real Media’s YouTube Channel: “David Graeber - Syria, Anarchism and Visiting Rojava”
Giran Oczan in Novara Media: “David Graeber Was Right to Recognise the Importance of the Kurdish Struggle”
A Collection of Remembrances of Graeber in The New York Review of Books: David Graeber: 1961-2020
Lucy McKeon Interviews Astra Taylor in The New York Review of Books: “Remembering David Graeber”
Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution by Wendy Brown. Published in 2015 by Princeton University Press.
Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm (1995) by Murray Bookchin. Published by AK Press.
David Graeber’s “Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You!”
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on John Locke’s Contract Theory and His Political Philosophy: “Locke’s Political Philosophy”
James Buchanan’s Public Choice Theory: As Explored by Sam Tanenhaus in The Atlantic: “The Architect of the Radical Right: How the Nobel Prize–Winning Economist James M. Buchanan Shaped Today’s Antigovernment Politics”
Getting (Private) Money Out of Politics & Creating a 28th Amendment with Wolf-Pac via an Article V Convention Process
Additional Organizations Involved in the Fight to Get Money Out of Politics: Move to Amend; Represent.US; California Clean Money Campaign; The 28ers
Nick Thomspon in CNN: “International Campaign Finance: How Do Countries Compare?”
Wikipedia on Publicly Funded Elections
Terje Birkedal in The Norwegian American: “How Norwegians Do It: National Elections in Norway”
Emmett Rensin in Mic: “What America Can Learn from Norway’s Success in Regulating Campaign Finance”
BBC News: “Happiness Report: Norway Is the Happiest Place on Earth”
Legislature by Lot: Transformative Designs for Deliberative Governance by John Gastil and Erik Olin Wright. Published in 2019 by Verso Books.
Against Elections by David Van Reybrouck. Published in 2018 by Penguin Random House.
Anne Dennon in Best Colleges: “Biden Could Forgive Student Loan Debt on Day One”
The Debt Collective: “End Student Debt! Join the Fight!”
Adam S. Minsky in Forbes Magazine: “Biden Says He Is ‘Unlikely’ To Cancel $50,000 In Student Loan Debt By Executive Order”
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” was a slogan popularized by Karl Marx in his essay “Critique of Gotha Program,” which was published in 1875.
Cori Bush: A Wikipedia Biography of a Formerly Houseless, Former Nurse, BLM Organizer & Medic
Tessa Stuart Interviews Cori Bush in Rolling Stone: “Cori Bush on Black Lives Matter, Ferguson, and Her Mission in Congress”
Ayanna Pressley, Congressmember of Massachusetts and Member of “The Squad”: “Those closest to the pain, should be closest to the power.”
Howard Zinn, Historian, Activist and Author of A People’s History of the United States: “Education can, and should, be dangerous.”
Murray Bookchin’s “What Is Communalism: The Democratic Dimension of Anarchism”
Social Ecology and Communalism by Murray Bookchin. Published in 2006 by New Compass.
Morpheus in The Anarchist Library: “A Brief History of Popular Assemblies and Worker Councils”
Si Shepard in The Atlantic: “What the Syrian Kurds Have Wrought: The Radical, Unlikely, Democratic Experiment in Northern Syria”
Abdullah Öcalan: A Wikipedia Biography
Emergency Committee for Rojava’s YouTube Channel: “Revolution in Rojava with Debbie Bookchin and David Graeber”
Michael Moore’s Where to Invade Next (2015). Distributed by Dog Eat Dog Films.
Our Conversation on the Film: The Future Is A Mixtape Episode 011: Picking the Flowers, Not the Weeds
Jackson Rising: The Struggle for Economic Democracy and Black Self-Determination in Jackson, Mississippi by Kali Akuno & Ajamu Nangwaya. Published in 2017 by Daraja Press.
Utopia or Oblivion: The Prospects for Humanity by Buckminster Fuller. Originally published in 1969; reprinted by Lars Müller Publishers in 2019.
The Future Is A Mixtape Episode 035: Library Socialism & The Golden Square
Written Before Trump Rick Rolled Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Election: Ben Adler in Vox: “The Inside Story of the Campaign that Killed Keystone XL”
Don Marshall in Resilience: “Standing Rock: Three Years and Still Fighting”
SRSLY WRONG’S PODCAST TRILOGY ON “LIBRARY SOCIALISM”
Episode #189: “Library Socialism & Usufruct”
Episode #196: “Library Socialism & The Irreducible Minimum”
Episode #200: “Library Socialism & Complementarity”
Cory Doctorow in BoingBoing: “Library Socialism: a utopian vision of a sustainable, luxuriant future of circulating abundance”
Daniel Denvir’s The Dig Podcast: “Alyssa Battistoni Interviews Astra Taylor on Democracy”
Kim Gordon (of Sonic Youth): “People pay money to see others believe in themselves.”
Ursula K. Le Guin, in an acceptance speech for The Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters:
Illustration by Dylan Meconis