Everyday Anarchism

No one seems to really understand what money is and what it does. In this new book, Josh Mason and Arjun Jayadev give the best explanation I've ever seen for what money does, how it works, and the damage it's doing to the world.

Ruth Kinna joins me for the Fifth Anniversary Episodes! First, an announcement: I wrote a book to be published by PM Press introducing everyday anarchism. No publication date yet, so more later on that front!Ruth and I discuss just what anarchy and anarchism is, and why anarchy is actually always all around us. This means that everything from Donald Trump to the Roman Empire are, in some key way, running on anarchy, and it means that attempts to eliminate anarchy from politics, from those of Hobbes and Plato to the US Constitution, will always fail.Thank you for listening!

For my 200th episode, I invited science fiction writer Ann Leckie to the show! Ann's novels are one of the original inspirations for the podcast. Ann has imagined worlds which are completely human, and yet totally different from the one we live in. Her works help me to remember that everything can be different, that another world is possible, and the future is unwritten.Here's Ann's website: https://annleckie.com/

Rhiannon Firth joins me to discuss Journey Through Utopia, Mary Louise Berneri's anarchist survey of utopian thinking. Rhiannon and I discuss why so many utopias seem so totalitarian, and how we can imagine a better world without falling into that trap.Here's a link to the Berneri book: https://www.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1008And Rhiannon's book Disaster Anarchy: https://www.plutobooks.com/product/disaster-anarchy/

It's generally accepted that there was an "age of revolutions" in Europe in the 18th and 19th century. Sometimes the American revolution is added. But there were many, many revolutions in the Caribbean and Latin America in that same time. Shouldn't we have an "age of American revolutions"? And if so, doesn't that mean the American revolution (or "United States Revolution") was just one American revolution among many?Arturo Chang joins me to discuss A New World of Revolutions, his book about the rise of "American political thought" and the various revolutions across the Americas that sprang from these political ideas. We also spend a great deal of time talking about how looking at history as the story of states prevents us from seeing what was actually happening across the wider landscape.You can learn more about Arturo and his book here: https://www.arturochang.com/This episode is part of the "Radicalism in the American Revolution" series

Amit Chaudhuri rejoins me to discuss his new novel/memoir/essay, Chateau Rouge. The book is about a writer who finds himself in a region of Paris, Chateau Rouge, filled with immigrants and their small business hustles, not cafes and patisseries. Shocked by how different Chateau Rouge is from the Paris of Hemingway and Proust, the narrator has to find a new way to understand what Paris is and what it means, without reliance on Parisian cliche.Amit and I discuss all of this, and also the broader question of how you find the meaning in the mundane. We also conclude the interview talking a bit about the filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu, whose films were also about the meaning of the mundane. I recommend starting Ozu with his film Good Morning, linked below. Amit recommends I was Born, But... also linked below. And you may be interested to learn that Good Morning is Ozu's own remake of I was Born, But...Chateau Rouge: https://flyleafbooks.com/book/9798896230878Good Morning: https://archive.org/details/good-morning_202012I was Born, But...: https://archive.org/details/i-was-born-but

Shays' Rebellion was a nonviolent, popular movement designed to stop corrupt Massachusetts elites from lining their pockets at the expense of workers. It worked, and is thus a perfect example of "self-regulation" or, as we might put it, anarchy. Jefferson called it "anarchy" and also "honorable." So what was the result of this honorable anarchy? The US Constitution, which was designed to prevent such anarchic uprisings from ever happening again.Dan Bullen joins me to discuss the rebellion (or regulation), its legacy, and its similarity to Occupy Wall Street. The lesson is: Join or Die. Or, as Dan puts it, "If we don't stand together, they're going to take all we have."You can find Dan's book here: https://honorablerebellion.com/Here's Jefferson on the anarchy of Shays Rebellion: https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/105.html

David Thomson joins me to discuss his new book, A Sudden Flicker of Light. Although we both love movies, we've noticed that movies have distorted our way of seeing the world, changed our sense of reality, and most of all, turned politics into a fascist mass spectacle. After all, Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, and Mussolini all loved movies. Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin love putting themselves on screen. Totalitarianism and the cinema have always been linked, and politics is less democratic, and more cinematic, than ever.Here's a link to the book: https://flyleafbooks.com/book/9781668205730

Historian Benjamin Carp joins me to discuss The Boston Tea Party and how we should remember it today. We particularly discuss the tea party's place in revolutionary history, the radicalism embedded in the New England colonies, and whether or not labels like "direct action" or "civil disobedience" should be applied to it.

Christopher B. Zeichmann joins me to discuss his new book about ancient anarchism. We discuss the way the origins of the word anarchy, the way that democracy and anarchy have long been linked, and how to remember the radical communities that the historians of that time wanted to forget or attack.Here's the link to the book: https://flyleafbooks.com/book/9780745350394

Cory Doctorow joins me to discuss how capitalist ideology has made AI worse than useless, and if there's a way for us to make AI useful rather than malicioushttps://flyleafbooks.com/book/9780374621568

In this episode of Radicalism in the American Revolution, Historian Mark Peterson joins me to discuss his new book The Making and Breaking of the American Constitution: A Thousand-Year History. We discuss the way the constitution emerged from a long British tradition, Thomas Jefferson's ironic place in American imperialism, and the new understanding of the constitution as a mere piece of paper which threatens to render it irrelevant.Here's the link to the book: https://flyleafbooks.com/book/9780691180014

The fastest, easiest way to anarchize your life is to buy food locally and cook it yourself (or grow it yourself). It won't create an anarchist society. But it's a great first step.Mark Bittman and I discuss that first step, what might come after it, and what difference it'll make in today's episode. We also talk for a while about why processed food is poison and what that means for Ozempic-style drugs.

Before it became west of Islam, or China, or "the Orient," "The West" was simply the Western Roman Empire, and what it was east of was the Eastern Roman Empire. But the westerners wanted to be the true inheritors of the classical tradition, so they renamed it "western civilization," and made up reasons why the Eastern Roman Empire was actually something exotic and foreign and decadent and queer. They called it Byzantium.That's the argument of Anthony Kaldellis' new book, Phantom Byzantium, and Anthony joins me to discuss those ideas and what they mean for our understanding of "the West" and the ideas about politics that European thinkers appropriate from Rome.You can also listen to Anthony's first appearance on the podcast: https://www.everydayanarchism.com/the-roman-empire-lasted-because-its-rulers-were-in-a-constant-state-of-terror-anthony-kaldellis/Anthony has his own wonderful podcast, Byzantium and Friends. I highly recommend it!https://byzantiumandfriends.podbean.com/

This episode is a crossover with Peter Michael Bauer's Rewilding Podcast. Peter and I talk about rewilding, everyday anarchism, and the connections between rewilding and anarchyWe recorded this episode in support of Peter's new documentary film series on rewilding. It has successfully funded on kickstarter, but you can still back the project here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/villagevideo/rewilding-101-a-survival-strategy-for-humanity

Luke Kemp rejoins me to discuss the second part of Goliath's Curse, "Imperial March and Fall." Luke and I start off talking about why empires and states are actually the same thing, and move from there to various ways that people justify imperial politics, what it's like to be anti-empire when surrounded by defenders of empire, and how we can try to get the machine of empire to stop.Here's the link to buy the book: https://flyleafbooks.com/book/9780593321355And here are Luke's previous appearances on the podcast:https://www.everydayanarchism.com/166-goliaths-curse-luke-kemp/https://www.everydayanarchism.com/146-james-c-scotts-two-cheers-for-anarchism-luke-kemp/https://player.captivate.fm/episode/2c8105f0-611f-4545-b632-e868e5039840/

For this first episode in the Radicalism in the American Revolution series, historian Annette Gordon-Reed joins me to discuss her new book Jefferson on Race, a collection of writings by Jefferson on the topic of race from throughout his entire career. Anette and I grapple with a pair of irresolvable facts about Jefferson: he was a race radical and an enslaver.You can find the link to Annette's book here: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691122069/jefferson-on-raceHere's the letter to Jefferson from "A Slave" that strikes an apocalyptic tone on slavery and uses Jefferson's own words: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/99-01-02-9200