Upstream - [TEASER] Four Ways to Be Anticapitalist

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey, everybody, Robbie here with another Patreon episode. And this time I'm actually joined by Della. Hey, Della. Hey. How are you doing today? I'm doing great. I'm so excited to have this conversation on this piece. So thanks, Robbie, for being willing to dive down deep into it.

Starting point is 00:00:21 Absolutely. And since this was a piece that you suggested, and because I know it's something that And since this was a piece that you suggested, and because I know it's something that you've been thinking a lot about and have also mentioned in a couple of our previous episodes, why don't you go ahead and just share an introduction to the piece

Starting point is 00:00:37 and maybe whatever else you want or whatever points you want to make about it just to get us started. Yeah. So the article that we'll be reading and then giving commentary on is titled, How to be an Anti-Capitalist Today. And it was written by Eric Olin Wright. It was published in Jacobin Magazine and it was published in 2015. So it is older, but I heard it from someone named Alex Valser, so appreciation to him, who I'm supervising his dissertation in Donut Economics, and he offered it as this frame of thinking about anti-capitalism.

Starting point is 00:01:16 And when I just heard the idea of these four ways to be anti-capitalist today. I just found the breakdown really helpful for thinking about all the interviews and documentaries and things that you and I, Robbie, have explored on upstream. And so I thought it would be a great piece to bring and to analyze and also just to think about together as a community. So just a little about Eric Olinwright. So he was an American analytical Marxist sociologist. He actually passed away in 2019 and we had the opportunity to interview him before he passed away actually in 2019. So he was a part of our Universal Basic Income Part 2 documentary. So glad that we got the chance to speak with him and happy to be reviewing his work now. And a few of the things that he is known for, he wrote a book called

Starting point is 00:02:15 Envisioning Real Utopias, which we'll definitely get an essence of in this text in 2010. And then he also wrote a book called How to Be Anti-Capitalist in the 21st Century, published in 2019, both published by Verso Books. And that's an interesting thing that this article that we're reading became a whole book. And I haven't read the book, but I think that again, the essence of these four ways to be anti-capitalist are what really stood out to me as most helpful. So I think for now, reading the article together will be useful. So what I thought we'd do today, Robbie, was give this intro and the piece has kind of an introduction to capitalism and why capitalism is problematic, kind of why to be anti-capitalist might be very basic for us right now. But then he goes into these four ways to be anti-capitalist, which are

Starting point is 00:03:09 smash, tame, escape, and erode. And yeah, I think just I'll just say upfront, I find this offering of these four ways to be really helpful to just analyze and reflect on, you know, theories of change and ideas and processes in this anti-capitalist space. But I also find his conclusion to be not so helpful. And so we're definitely going to dive into that. But I'll just put that out front that we have read this article. This isn't a fresh read. And there's things that he comes to by way of conclusion that definitely don't agree with. And then the questions that I'd love to invite us to think about, all of us listening as we go through this piece is one, what resonates? So what resonates with you? Which way are you,

Starting point is 00:03:56 you know, feeling inspired by or called to? What doesn't? Where is your work? You know, where do you see yourself in this framework? Where do you see your your efforts, your actions, your anti capitalist activities? I also like to think about these four ways in terms of their benefits and then maybe they're like challenges or shadows. I find that a helpful thing. Like, what is the gift of them? And then also what is like the unhelpful or the shadow side of each of these ways? what is like the unhelpful or the shadow side of each of these ways. And then also an interesting point as we're in the turn of the new year, what is most needed right now? Right? Is there like a deeper inflection point right now where one of these is more needed than any other. So those are just some questions I wanted to offer as we

Starting point is 00:04:38 dive in. But Robbie, any other things you want to say by way of introduction before I start reading? Not a whole lot. I think that you did a pretty thorough job of explaining the article and kind of where we're coming from. And yeah, it was really an honor to interview Eric back, I guess, six years ago or so now. And one thing that I realized in reading this piece

Starting point is 00:05:04 is how much I have, and this will definitely come out in my commentary as we go along, but how much I have changed. I want to use the word grown, and I don't want to use that word in a way that might alienate people to think that I'm putting any kind of judgment or a value judgment on it necessarily. But I really have grown in my understanding of Marxism and the tendency that I have decided because of the evidence in front of me to pursue. And so we'll get more into that as we go through. But suffice it to say, I strongly disagree with a lot of what Eric writes about in

Starting point is 00:05:47 this, but I do really appreciate Della, your bringing in both, you know, talking about the shadow sides, but the benefits too. And I think that we can definitely find benefits and little nuggets of whether we agree with them or not, at least really interesting food for thought in this piece. And yeah, I think that's it on my end in terms of an introduction. Like you said, this isn't a cold read. And generally when I do these Patreon readings, I'm either doing a fresh read or I'm reading a piece that I have read years ago and I'm revisiting it. I read this very recently and I have a lot of notes and I'm going to be coming in a lot. So I'll just leave it there for now and let us get into the piece itself. All right. So I will start reading the text, the title, How to Be an Anti-Capitalist Today by Eric Olin Wright. Anti-capitalism isn't simply a moral stance against injustice,

Starting point is 00:06:47 it's about building an alternative. For many people, the idea of anti-capitalism seems ridiculous. After all, capitalist firms have brought us fantastic technological innovations in recent years. Smartphones and streaming movies, driverless cars and social media, Jumbotron screens at football games and video games connecting thousands of players around the world. Every conceivable consumer product available on the internet for rapid home delivery, astounding increases in the productivity of labor through novel automation technologies and more. And while it's true that income is unequally distributed in capitalist economies, it is

Starting point is 00:07:32 also true that the array of consumption goods available and affordable for the average person, and even for the poor, has also increased dramatically almost everywhere. Just compare the United States in the half century between 1965 and 2015. The percentage of Americans with air conditioners, cars, washing machines, dishwashers, televisions, and indoor plumbing have increased dramatically. Life expectancy is longer, infant mortality lower. In the 21st century, this improvement in basic standards of living has also occurred in poorer regions of the world as well. The material standards of millions of people living in China, since it embraced the free market,

Starting point is 00:08:17 have improved dramatically. What's more, look what happened when Russia and China tried an alternative to capitalism. Aside from the political oppression and brutality of those regimes, they were economic failures. So if you care about improving the lives of people, how can you be anti-capitalist? That is one story. The standard story. Here's another story. The hallmark of capitalism is poverty in the

Starting point is 00:08:47 midst of plenty. This is not the only thing wrong with capitalism, but it is its gravest failing. Widespread poverty, especially amongst children who clearly bear no responsibility for their plight, is morally reprehensible in rich societies where it could easily be eliminated. Yes, there is economic growth, technological innovation, increasing productivity, and a downward diffusion of consumer goods. But along with capitalist economic growth comes destitution for many whose livelihoods have been destroyed by the advance of capitalism, precariousness for

Starting point is 00:09:25 those at the bottom of the labor market, and alienating and tedious work for most. Capitalism has generated massive increases in productivity and extravagant wealth for some, yet many people still struggle to make ends meet. Capitalism is an inequality enhancing machine as well as a growth machine, not to mention that it's becoming clearer that capitalism, driven by the relentless search for profits, is destroying the environment. Both of these accounts are anchored in the realities of capitalism. It is not an illusion that capitalism has transformed the material conditions of life in the world and enormously increased human productivity. Many people have benefited from this. But equally, it's not an illusion that capitalism generates great harms and perpetuates unnecessary

Starting point is 00:10:17 forms of human suffering. The pivotal issue is not whether material conditions on average have improved in the long run with capitalist economies, but rather whether, looking forward from this point in history, things would be better for most people in an alternative kind of economy. It is true that the centralized authoritarian state-run economies of the 20th century Russia and China were in many ways economic failures. But these are not the only possibilities. And can I just jump in real quick here? So I know everyone listening to this is probably expecting me to jump in at some point here with his analysis of Russia and China. And

Starting point is 00:11:01 you know, I don't know if maybe you're eagerly anticipating that or you're rolling your eyes, but I think it would be irresponsible to not just sort of throw down a red card here. So centralization or the planned economy, that was never a fundamental problem in the Soviet economy. And so I'm responding to Eric Olin Wright's previous sentence where he wrote that it is true that the centralized economy of the 20th century Russia was an economic failure. So centralization was not the fundamental problem in the Soviet Union. It might have been restricted by the limits in technology at the time, but I think that diagnosing the problems with the Soviet Union with just centralization is simply wrong. So Thomas

Starting point is 00:11:55 Kenny and Roger Kieran pointed this out in their excellent book, which we actually had our very first Patreon episode interviewing those two authors on this book titled Socialism Betrayed, behind the collapse of the Soviet Union. And in that interview, we spoke about how the majority of the USSR's economic woes came from what we can call the second economy, or otherwise known as the underground black market. And that black market undermined the Soviet economy. The second economy, it created this sort of stratum within socialism where this class of people had personal interests that lay outside of socialism.

Starting point is 00:12:43 And so a quote from the book that I want to pull in here is so they write quote, the larger the illegal economy became, the more it interfered with the performance of the legitimate economy. Since the second economy involved stealing time and material from the socialist sector, it impaired socialism's efficiency." The book details the way that this economy became organized, and so you might be wondering exactly what the second economy looked like. It included things like managers reporting the loss of spoilage of goods in order to divert them back to the black market. State stores of salespeople and managers laying aside rare goods in order to secure tips from favored customers or to sell them on the black

Starting point is 00:13:31 market and all sorts of similar activities to this. There was sabotage being done, there were slowdowns and this kind of stuff actually played a very, very significant role in the downfall of the Soviet economy. But the second economy on its own, it wasn't the main driving factor of the political collapse of the Soviet Union itself. That was exacerbated by Gorbachev and other pro-market individuals who actually rose to power and essentially undid all of the socialist mechanisms of the economy, and that's what inevitably led to the collapse. So the way I think about it is that every single economic system is going to have issues that need to be addressed. And in the Soviet case, those issues weren't just addressed and reformed, but the whole system was essentially imploded by counter-revolutionaries

Starting point is 00:14:27 who wanted to introduce capitalism back into Russia. And I'm going to quote the book again here. So they write, quote, personal consumption of Soviet citizens had increased between 1975 and 1985. Even though the Soviet standard of living reached only one-third to one-fifth of the American level, a general appreciation existed that Soviet citizens enjoyed greater security, lower crime, and a higher cultural and moral level than citizens in the West did. Moreover, empirical studies in the mid-1980s revealed that Soviet and American workers expressed about the same degree of satisfaction with their jobs. As late as 1990, only a small minority favored a transition to a capitalist system. Barely 4% of Soviet citizens favored the removal of price

Starting point is 00:15:20 controls and only 18% favored the encouragement of private property. And so I think just to wrap up, I'm going to read a longer quote as well from the piece, which I think serves as a really important counterbalance to the sort of anti-communist rhetoric of Eric Olin, right? I think it's important for us to think about not just how the Soviet Union had failures and to analyze those failures in ways that don't just shit all over the idea of a planned economy but really look into like granular detail at what was happening in the Soviet Union and the different forces that shaped the collapse. But also, I think it's important to look at the positives of the Soviet Union and the things that they achieved and the things that were lost when

Starting point is 00:16:12 the Soviet Union collapsed as a result of counterrevolution. So this is a bit of a longer quote, but I think it's really worthwhile to read here. So quote, a brief review of the Soviet Union's accomplishments underscores what was lost. The Soviet Union not only eliminated the exploiting classes of the old order, but also ended inflation, unemployment, racial and national discrimination, grinding poverty and glaring inequalities of wealth, income, education, and opportunity. In 50 years, the country went from an industrial production that was only 12% of that in the United States to industrial production that was 80% and an agricultural output 85% of the US.

Starting point is 00:17:02 Though Soviet per capita consumption remained lower than in the U.S., no society had ever increased living standards and consumption so rapidly in such short a period of time for all its people. Employment was guaranteed. Free education was available for all from kindergarten through secondary schools, universities, and after-work schools. Besides free tuition, post-secondary students received living stipends. Free healthcare existed for all, with about twice as many doctors per person as in the United States.

Starting point is 00:17:39 Workers who were injured or ill had job guarantees and sick pay. In the mid-1970s, workers averaged 21.2 working days of vacation, so a month's vacation, and sanitariums, resorts, and children's camps were either free or subsidized. Trade unions had the power to veto firings and recall managers. The state regulated all prices and subsidized the cost of basic food and housing. Rents constituted only 2-3% of the family budget. Let me read that again. Rents constituted only 2-3% of the family budget. Water and utilities only 4-5. No segregated housing by income existed. Though some neighborhoods were reserved for high officials, elsewhere plant managers, nurses, professors, and janitors lived side by side." So we're not looking back on the Soviet Union in,

Starting point is 00:18:39 you know, naive way where we're not understanding that there were some issues in this society. But we should, as a counterbalance to the dominant narrative, which exists among the left as well, honestly, we really need to understand that this society had a lot of benefits to it, that they were striving for things that they were never able to fully achieve because of the fact that they lived in a violent capitalist world that was hell-bent on destroying them. Yet they were able to achieve so much nonetheless. And so that's just the kind of stuff that I think about whenever I hear these sort of hand-waving dismissals of the Soviet Union. I'm not well-versed in the Chinese economy, but hopefully I will be soon because I'm planning to,

Starting point is 00:19:26 like I've mentioned, take a deep dive into China this year. And actually, our first episode on China will be with the excellent Kenneth Hammond on his book, China's Revolution and the Quest for Socialist Future. So stay tuned for that. I'm really excited about it. But yeah, I know I've been talking a lot, a lot of quotes. I hope this was helpful. And I'm really excited about it. But yeah, I know I've been talking a lot a lot of quotes I hope this was helpful and I'm sure that there's gonna be some more anti-communist stuff coming up in this text and I'll try not to Pipe up too much so I don't disrupt the flow of the the reading too much. But yeah, I'll throw it back to you at this point Yeah, so just to kind of summarize that that point that Eric Alenright made that state-run economies were economic failures.

Starting point is 00:20:08 And thank you, Robbie, for bringing in that evidence to the contrary. And a few things that come up for me is that phrase, we're economic failures, it's that question of how are we measuring, right? We are attentive to what we measure from that quote from Dr. Hamantou that I say so often. And so you're giving examples of ways to measure that demonstrate it's not a failure.

Starting point is 00:20:31 And other things that come to my mind, besides what you said about the need for rapid industrialization and the need for defense, so defense amongst the global sea of capitalism that it was under threat on, like I think about Cuba today and the embargo. Would people call it an economic failure? How fair would that be when we look at the impact of the US embargo and other capitalist nations that are really trying to choke it out economically? I also think about Christian Godsey and the conversation on women have better sex under socialism, right?

Starting point is 00:21:06 Showing alternative ways of measuring economic success, right? Economic independence for women and autonomy being a benefit under communist and socialist countries. And then the other thing that comes up for me is the conversation that we had with Jason Hickle, Better Lives for All, where he shows in his research that we can meet all human needs on the planet at a reduction of the material and energy output needed. And how we do that is a state-run central planned economy. So, you know, he shows that and he also talks about the history, of course, in many of his books, but that also comes to mind.

Starting point is 00:21:48 So I think it's very fair, Robert, to throw that red card down, as you said, and to kind of dispel those myths. So I'm going to continue with the text. Where the real disagreement lies, a disagreement that is fundamental is over whether it is possible to have the productivity, innovation, and the dynamism that we have in capitalism without the harms. Margaret Thatcher famously announced in the early 1980s, there is no alternative. But two decades later, the World Social Forum declared, another world is possible. Just a side note here, Robbie and I have an inside joke

Starting point is 00:22:27 that anytime we mention Margaret Thatcher or that phrase, you're allowed to take a shot if you participate in that kind of activity. You have to take a shot. I argue that another world, one that would improve the conditions for human flourishing for most people, is indeed possible. In fact, elements of this new world are already being created today, and concrete ways to move from here to there exist. Anti-capitalism is possible, not simply as a moral stance towards the harms and injustices of global capitalism, but as a practical stance towards building an alternative for greater human flourishing.

Starting point is 00:23:07 All right. So the next section is titled the four types of anti-capitalism. So he's just giving a brief outline of what we will get into more in the later sections, which is a more detailed dive into those four types. So this section begins with capitalism breeds anti-capitalists. Sometimes resistance to capitalism is crystallized in coherent ideologies that offer both systematic diagnoses of the source of harms and clear prescriptions about how to eliminate them. In other circumstances, anti-capitalism is submerged within motivations that on the surface have little to do with capitalism,

Starting point is 00:23:49 such as religious beliefs that lead people to reject modernity and seek refuge in isolated communities. But always, whenever capitalism exists, there is discontent and resistance in one form or other. Historically, anti-capitalism has been animated by four different logics of resistance. Smashing capitalism, taming capitalism, escaping capitalism, and eroding capitalism. These logics often coexist and intermingle, but they each constitute a distinct way of responding to the harms of capitalism. These four forms of anti-capitalism can be thought of as varying along two dimensions. One concerns the goal of anti-capitalist strategies, transcending the structures of capitalism or simply neutralizing

Starting point is 00:24:46 the worst harms of capitalism, while the other dimension concerns the primary target of the strategies, whether the target is the state or other institutions at the macro level of the system, or the economic activities of individuals, organizations, and communities at the micro level. Taking these two dimensions together gives us the typology below. So we have a bit of a chart here, which we will, I guess we'll try to throw it into the show notes. We'll also have a link to this in the show notes. And so you can look at this chart here, but it's titled for strategic

Starting point is 00:25:21 logics of anti-capitalism. You have the goals of the strategy and then the... I'm not very good at describing charts, to be honest. I'm looking at this and thinking of the best way to describe it. I don't know, Del, do you want to take a shot at this or do you think it's not really... Yeah, let me try to. Yeah, why don't you go ahead and take a shot at this because I'm looking at this and I feel like I don't even know where to begin to try to describe it.

Starting point is 00:25:46 Right. So the chart has the four strategic logics of anti-capitalism and on one axis it has the target of the strategy and on the other it has the goal of the strategy. And so it has taming capitalism, the primary target of the strategy is that it's macro political. So it's macro political in scale, but that its goal is to neutralize harms. Then it has smashing capitalism, which it says the primary target of the strategy is also macro political, but that its goal is to transcend structures. Then it has escaping capitalisms, that is also neutralizing the harms as the goal. And then the target is a micro social focus. And then the last one eroding capitalism also has a micro social target of the strategy,

Starting point is 00:26:37 but its goal is transcending structures. And I'll just come in here with, and this is the end of that section, just to say I found this breakdown incredibly helpful. And here's why. Robbie and I have spent a few episodes doing a part one of our documentaries, doing a part one, which is kind of like the 101. I'm thinking about Co-op 101 and UBI 101. And then we got to the point where we were like, this is great to do like a 101,

Starting point is 00:27:07 what is it? But we kept figuring that there was this deeper question we wanted to explore, which was, but is it a bridge to a post capitalist future? And this schematic, this outline really helped click something for me because we kept asking it and whenever we couldn't find that it was a bridge to a post capitalist future it's because it was in the micro social realm and because it was really neutralizing the harms right and what we were more interested in is what are the actions efforts endeavors theories you, policies that actually transcend structures and are of the macro political lens. So I actually, I find this kind of way to think about this very helpful. And for us, a deep question has been, you know, how do we move to post capitalism? Well,

Starting point is 00:27:59 that really is a transcending structures goal. And it really is, you know, as what we as what we've explored recently around imperialism and how capitalism is inherently global, it needs to be in the macro political realm. Of course, it has impacts in the micro social. But if you're not looking to the transcending structures at the macro political, you won't actually transcend structures at the macro political, you won't actually transcend capitalism and move to a new system. Yeah, no, I think it's really, really helpful. And yeah, I think, I believe it's Eric Olin, right? I don't know if he actually talks about this in this piece, but I believe it's Eric Olin, right? Who at least introduced me to the language of revolutionary reforms. And I think it's interesting because I'm getting the

Starting point is 00:28:45 feeling that his project is trying to find this sort of synthesis of neutralizing harms and transcending structures at the same time. And I find that to be a very admirable endeavor. And I think that there are certainly ways of neutralizing harms while transcending structures simultaneously. And I think that there are such things as revolutionary reforms. I think as we'll get through this piece, we'll just see that I personally disagree with what his equation is power and the struggle for power and politics. But that's something that we will definitely be unpacking more as we keep going through the piece. And so, yeah, why don't we start with the next section? You want to take over, Della? DELLA All right. First section of the four ways, smashing capitalism. Given the way capitalism devastates the lives of so many people and given the power of its dominant classes to protect their interests and defend the status

Starting point is 00:29:53 quo, it is easy to understand the attractiveness of the idea of smashing capitalism. The argument goes something like this, the system is rotten. All efforts to make life tolerable within it eventually fail. From time to time, small reforms that improve the lives of people may be possible when popular forces are strong, but such improvements will always be fragile, vulnerable to attack, and reversible. The idea that capitalism can be rendered a benign social order in which ordinary people can live flourishing, meaningful lives is ultimately an illusion because at its core capitalism is unreformable. The only hope is to destroy it, sweep away the rubble, and then build an alternative. As the closing words of the labor tune Solidarity Forever proclaim, we can bring forth a new world from the

Starting point is 00:30:52 ashes of the old. But how to do this? How is it possible for anti-capitalist forces to amass enough power to destroy capitalism and replace it with a better alternative? This is indeed a daunting task, for the power of dominant classes that make reform an illusion also blocks the revolutionary goal of a rupture in the system. The anti-capitalist revolutionary theory, informed by the writings of Marx and extended by Lenin, Gramsci, and others, offered an attractive argument for how this could take place. While it is true that much of the time capitalism seems unassailable, it is also a deeply contradictory system, prone to disruptions and crises.

Starting point is 00:31:37 Sometimes those crises reach an intensity which makes the system as a whole fragile, vulnerable to challenge. In the strongest versions of the theory, there are even underlying tendencies in the laws of motion of capitalism for the intensity of such system-weakening crises to increase over time, so that in the long term, capitalism becomes unsustainable. It destroys its own conditions of existence. I'm just going to jump in here really quick. And yes, correct. This is the strongest version of the Smash Theory. And it's, in fact, the version that Marx himself laid out. This takes us, of course, into the realm of historical materialism, where we understand the development of society being based on certain laws, and which

Starting point is 00:32:27 so far have been shown to be quite empirically and theoretically robust. I don't think we need to get into historical materialism in depth at all because we've done so many episodes, both on the Patreon feed and the public feed, and we've done those quite recently actually, and they cover historical materialism. But just to lay it out for the purposes of this conversation, the argument is that at some point, capitalism's incredible ability to advance the forces of production, the things that Eric Olin writes sort of uplifted at the top of the piece, that that ability is going to be restricted because of the limited ability of the relations of production.

Starting point is 00:33:10 That's the way that we organize how we produce, the limited ability of the relations of production to keep up. So feudalism was transcended by capitalism because the feudal mode of production was unable to serve the continued advancement of production during the late feudal mode of production was unable to serve the continued advancement of production during the late feudal early capitalist period. The serf lord relation was unequipped to serve the growing class of merchants who needed to be freed from ties

Starting point is 00:33:38 to the land and who needed to be able to invest capital freely. So the same thing is happening today, inevitably under capitalism. I'm actually reading a very interesting book right now by Frank Chapman that looks at black liberation and its connection to socialism historically and in the present. And there's a lot of really interesting analysis where he talks about the period of slavery and the transition in the United States from like a slave system in the South and the different forces, the more capitalist forces in the North and how those relations of production shifted during the Civil War and stuff like that. And I think I'm going to bring that book up a couple more times during this. But it's very interesting to think about these things and read about this history as it played out from a Marxist,

Starting point is 00:34:29 Leninist perspective, because so much of what we're used to reading doesn't come from that perspective and doesn't use historical materialism. But things click so much more when you're using that framework and that mode of thought. So I'm really getting deep into historical materialism right now. And I can't think of the world in terms that aren't based on historical materialism. And I do think Eric is right here. The historical materialist analysis is not just the strongest form of the smash argument. To me, it is the fundamental law-driven explanation for why capitalism will inevitably and has to come to an end. But I'll throw back to you here, Della.

Starting point is 00:35:12 Well, I will say the strongest part of this argument so far for me is when I read this part about the argument goes something like this, the system is rotten. All efforts to make life tolerable within it eventually fail. From time to time, small reforms that improve the lives of people may be possible when its popular forces are strong, but such improvements will always be fragile, vulnerable to attack, and reversible. That is actually for me the strongest because I think about the examples through history, like I think about the NHS, the national healthcare system

Starting point is 00:35:45 in England, and it's just completely under attack by neoliberal forces and constantly undermined, right? Trying to demonstrate that it would be better to be privatized, right? And then, of course, as we in the US face Trump becoming president, everything seems to be on the table. The US Postal Service being privatized, deregulation rampantly for the environment, for labor conditions, for food and products and health care. So I completely feel that, that reforms are constantly under attack, even when they do make life a little bit more tolerable. The quote unquote tame capitalism, as we'll see, they are constantly under attack and can be completely undermined often. Or we think about globally, all the

Starting point is 00:36:39 efforts to have public utilities like water, or, you you know the rights to land internet that are just constantly being under attack and privatized under neoliberal capitalism. And this reminds me a little bit of the discussion I had with Scott Sion in the logical case for socialism about about his book about socialism and logic and one of the points that he makes in that book is that he believes that a society can be more socialistic or less socialistic or more capitalistic and less capitalistic, and that it's kind of a matter of degree. And I fundamentally disagreed with that. And I think that for me, it's much more that you have to bring in not just whether the state has more control or whether free enterprise is more dominant or these different things that we think of as socialistic or

Starting point is 00:37:31 capitalistic, but who's in power, right? And who does the state ultimately serve? And you can have reforms that a capitalist state imposes that might be helpful in some way, shape, or form to the working class or to an oppressed class of some sort. But if those reforms are still done under a state that is ultimately ruled by and in the service of capital in one way, shape, or form, it's a capitalist society and there's no scale to that, right? those Reforms will be undone the second it's convenient or necessary Politically or economically like you're saying Della for it for them to be so anyways Just another side that I thought was an interesting if anybody wants to learn more about that We have some episodes that explore that including the one with Scott Sion

Starting point is 00:38:21 All right back to the text and just to remind us we're in the smashing capitalism section. This was a clip from our Patreon episode, four ways to be anti-capitalist. You can listen to the full episode by becoming a Patreon subscriber. As a Patreon subscriber, you'll get access to bi-weekly bonus episodes ranging from readings like this to interview conversations and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it'll also give you access to our entire back catalogue of Patreon episodes, along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this whole project

Starting point is 00:39:07 going. Find out more at patreon.com forward slash Upstream Podcast or at upstreampodcast.org forward slash support. Thank you.

Upstream - [TEASER] Four Ways to Be Anticapitalist

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