In this, the second part of our double-album release, we return to our familiar conversational format to discuss the ideas and diagnoses put forth in CrimthInc’s poetic manifesto, To Change Everything. The 48-page pamphlet documents a dizzying array of morbid disorders from the same sick nation-states that give you endless awful B-sides, such as: “Disney’s Manifest Destiny,” “Healthcare, Sometimes,” “Bootstraps Best for You,” “Lock’em & Cock’em,” “Student Debt Meets Mr. Ramen,” and finally, “Do the COVID-Collapse.” Many of the threatening obstacles and dangerous injustices diagrammed in CrimethInc’s proclamation adhere, like super-glue, to the plastic surface of the U.S. petroleum project. And so, the collective’s polemic is always aware that the solutions required must be bigger than one state, one nation or one continent to contemplate, fathom or undertake. The manifesto stirs with telling details and insightful observations about what we know and what we wish to ignore in this, our shared reality that spins like a deranged compass. And while To Change Everything functions as a good primer to anarchist ethics and its attendant traditions, it’s worth noting how little it offers in the way of clear, practical, and focused solutions—like The Golden Square—or what Jesse & Matt like to call the “No-Bullshit Blueprint for Socialism” explored in Episode #031. The promise of anarchism is not some grand plan, or some self-righteous political dogma that will magically release us from capitalism’s death-grip, but its values demand us to make a clear paradigm shift away from the dizzying maze of domination and violence that perpetually blocks humanity from having any nice things. Anarchism points towards a deep-system critique and an egalitarian ethics of rights and responsibilities that we so desperately need in our institutions and social relations. By flipping the script on a world built on a logic of forced scarcity and do-or-die competition, we can instead design a world of mutual cooperation and shared abundance. As CrimethInc writes, “Every order is founded on a crime against the preceding order—the crime that dissolved it.” But we can’t commit that righteous crime with a fetishization of poetic ambiguities; we must work in solidarity to build dual power—abolishing institutions of state violence while we build new institutions of care & freedom at every level. Above all else, if we are going to survive together on this fragile planet, we must decommodify life and democratize society. And to do it now, we must start by changing everything.
Mentioned In This Episode:
To Change Everything: An Anarchist Appeal by CrimethInc
Al Burian in Vice News: “A Night Out With an Anarchist”
Work: Capitalism, Economics, Resistance (2011) by CrimethInc
Infamous Poster from CrimethInc: “Capitalism Is a Pyramid Scheme”
Anarchists to Blame for “Protest Violence” in 2020? Seems So (lol); As Explored by Rebecca Davis O’Brien, Andrew Tangel and Ben Chapman in The Wall Street Journal: “Lone Wolves, Self-Styled Anarchists: The Disparate Actors Accused of Protest Violence”
Luke Mogelson in The New Yorker: “In the Streets with Antifa”
Oliver Milman in The Guardian: “Trump Complains About 'Ugly Anarchists' as Police Continue Aggression on US Protesters”
Lauren M. Johnson in CNN: “New Yorkers Take to Social Media to Mock the Justice Department’s Anarchy Jurisdiction Label”
Hakim Bishara in Hyperallergic: “Artists Celebrate Their “Anarchist Jurisdiction” by Parodying Nostalgic Postcards”
Emma G. Fitzsimmons in The New York Times: “With Billions at Stake, New York Sues Trump Over ‘Anarchist’ Label”
Natasha Lennard in The Intercept: “Facebook’s Ban on Far-Left Pages Is an Extension of Trump Propaganda”
CrimethInc’s Condemnation of Ban: “On Facebook Banning Pages Associated with Anarchism: And the Digital Censorship to Come”
The Agency’s Open Letter: “Stand with Anarchist Publishers Banned by Facebook”
CrimethInc’s New Facebook Page: To Change Everything
CrimethInc: “Surviving the Social Media Crackdown The Instagram Ban—and How to Keep Following Us”
New Year’s Resolutions Are A Neoliberal Racket; Claire O’Neill and John Schwartz Offer an Individualist, Consumerist Solution in The New York Times: “New Year’s Resolution for the Planet”
The Future Is A Mixtape Episode 021: The North Star of Human Decency
David Graeber’s Classic Introduction to Anarchy: “Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You!”
How to Be an Anti-capitalist in the 21st Century by Erik Olin Wright. Published in 2019 by Verso Books. Discussed in Episode 026: How to Erode Capitalism in the 21st Century
Thad Williams’ Article: “Emancipatory Politics, Emancipatory Political Science: On Erik Olin Wright’s Envisioning Real Utopias”
America: The Most Overworked ‘Rich’ Nation in the World; As Explored by Harry Cheadle in Vice News: “New Report Confirms Just How Shitty US Workers Have It”
Ryan Cooper in The Week: “Americans Are Absurdly Overworked”
Micah Uetricht Interviews Jamie McCallum in Jacobin: “Americans Work Too Damn Much”
Tony Romm and Karoun Demirjian in The Washington Post: “McConnell Says Push by Democrats, Trump for $2,000 Stimulus Checks Has ‘No Realistic Path to Quickly Pass the Senate’”
Ed Kilgore in Intelligencer: “What’s McConnell Up to on the $2,000 Stimulus-Check Proposal?”
Meryl Kornfield in The Washington Post: “Homes of Pelosi, McConnell Are Vandalized After Senate Fails to Pass $2,000 Stimulus Checks”
David Sirota, Andrew Perez and Walker Bragman in Jacobin: “Joe Biden Was Against $2,000 Checks. After Enormous Pressure, He’s Reluctantly Changing His Tune.”
The Long & Winding Road to the Rest of Your $2,000 Bucks (eh, $1,400); As Explored by Laura Davison in Bloomberg: “Biden’s Stimulus Hopes May Depend on ‘Reconciliation’”
Ursula K. Le Guin’s Most Famous Quote on a Political Philosophy She Had So Much Kinship With:
"What is an anarchist? One who, choosing, accepts the responsibility of choice."
Bonnie Burton in CNET: “Pioneering Sci-fi Author Ursula K. Le Guin Gets Her Own US Postage Stamp.”
Nathan J. Robinson in Current Affairs: “The Power of Anarchist Analysis”
Rhaina Cohen in The Atlantic: “What If Friendship, Not Marriage, Was at the Center of Life?”
Ken Miyamoto in Screencraft: “The Secret Themes Behind All of Pixar’s Films”
Ferris Jabr in The New York Times Magazine: “The Social Life of Forests”
The Art Newspaper: “VIDEO: Marina Abramovic Advises Public to Complain to a Tree to Help Heal from 2020”
Owen Jones Interviews the Greek Activist, Writer and Politician, Yanis Varoufakis About How We Live in Techno-Feudalism: “We Live in Something Far Worse Than Capitalism”
Another Now by Yanis Varafoukis. Published in 2021 by Bodley Head.
No Wall They Can Build: A Guide to Borders & Migration Across North America Published in 2017 by the CrimethInc Collective.
Democracy May Not Exist, but We'll Miss It When It's Gone by Astra Taylor. Published by Metropolitan Books in 2019.
The Future Is A Mixtape Episode 038: Democracy or Death
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”
German Lopez in Vox: “Why Trump Shouldn’t Compare America’s Covid-19 Outbreak to New Zealand’s, in One Chart”
What Is Democracy? Directed by Astra Taylor in 2018 - A National Film Board of Canada Production & Distributed by Zeitgeist Films
YouTube Clip of Ronald Reagan’s Famous Phrase: “Government Is The Problem.”
Thoughtcrime: A Wikipedia Definition of the Term’s Orwellian Origin and Influence
Thought Police: A Wikipedia Exploration of Its Use & Origins
Jon Miltimore in FEE: “The Origins of the Thought Police—and Why They Scare Us”
The Future Is A Mixtape Episode 029: The Anticapitalist Compass
Eliminate State Violence
Guarantee Social Welfare
Decommodify Life
Democratize Society
The Future Is A Mixtape Episode 036: Debt Abolition: A Battle Plan For The Future
Can't Pay, Won't Pay: The Case for Economic Disobedience and Debt Abolition. Authored by The Debt Collective with a Foreword by Astra Taylor. Published in October of 2020 by Haymarket Books.
From Can't Pay, Won't Pay:
“All federal student debt can be erased in an instant using the authority Congress has already vested in the Department of Education. The law is called “Compromise and Settlement,” and implementing it would require little more than the Secretary of Education’s signature.”
"Exercise: What Would an Anarchist Program Look Like?" by CrimethInc (Nov 2, 2020)
The Socialist Worker: “Mike Davis’ Advice for to the Occupy Movement”
Democracy Now: “Housing Activists in Tacoma Take Over Empty School Building for Emergency Pandemic Housing”
Jessica Chasmar in The Washington Times: “Tacoma Housing Now Activists Take Over Travelodge Motel, Demand Free Housing for Homeless”
David Fincher’s Fight Club (1999): YouTube Clip of Edward Norton Toilet Reading His Porno IKEA Catalogue
More Fight Club: Edward Norton & His Single-Serving Friends & Why Capitalism Is Just the Loneliness of Decay:
“Everywhere I travel, tiny life. Single-serving sugar, single-serving cream, single pat of butter. The microwave Cordon Bleu hobby kit. Shampoo-conditioner combos, sample-packaged mouthwash, tiny bars of soap. The people I meet on each flight? They're single-serving friends.”