Why Easy Answers Fail: From Riots To Reproduction And What Comes Next with Heatwave Magazine

The hardest problems don’t fit into a slogan. We invited the editors behind Heatwave Magazine to unpack why national fixes can’t solve planetary crises, why tariffs and “reindustrialization” won’t restore a high‑wage equilibrium, and how social democracy keeps running headfirst into profitability and energy limits. We talk plainly about China’s energy transition and youth unemployment, Mexico’s narco‑capitalist dual power, and why so much left media looks away from contradictions that actually shape daily life.

Our conversation moves from print as a living hub—short, sharp pieces that travel through bookstores, Discords, and reading groups—to the strategic dead ends of culture-only union optimism and Twitter-only militancy. Riots are real—often the form class conflict takes when every other route is blocked—but without institutions that bridge street power to social reproduction and production, movements burn out. We explore what those institutions could be: not a party blueprint, not a co‑op panacea, but durable infrastructures for shared analysis, care, and coordination across borders.

We also cut through the growth vs degrowth stalemate by asking different questions: what forms of energy and production reorganize land, labor, and life without reproducing domination? How do we build imagination when most people have never known another way to live? From beavers and watersheds to logistics chokepoints and labor’s changing composition, we map the terrain as it is—messy, global, and unforgiving—so we can act with clarity instead of wishful thinking.

If you’re tired of easy answers and ready to engage the hard constraints shaping our future, this one’s for you. Listen, share, and tell us where you think the real leverage lies. And if the conversation sparks something, subscribe, leave a review, and pass it to a comrade who needs a sharp tool, not a shiny slogan.

Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to Bitterlake

Chapters

• 1:36 Meet Heat Wave Magazine
• 3:53 Roles, Design, And Ecological Lens
• 6:39 Why Print, Why Now
• 10:44 Anti‑State Positions On Today’s Left
• 16:16 Nationalism, Climate, And Global Limits
• 21:42 Tariffs, China, And Energy Transition
• 29:05 Social Democracy’s Profit Problem
• 35:32 Mexico, Narco‑Capitalism, And Morena
• 44:11 Labor, Logistics, And Union Limits
• 53:15 Riots, Parties, And Organizational Gaps
• 1:02:17 De‑Skilling, Cottagecore, And Reproduction
• 1:11:07 Nothing Changes vs Everything Changes
• 1:16:27 Holocene, Apocalypse, And Imagination
• 1:22:55 Easy Answers, Co‑ops, And Populism
• 1:32:07 Calls To Read, Submit, And Connect

Transcript

SPEAKER_05: 0:49

Hello and welcome to Varn Blogging. Today I'm here with a panel from uh Heat Wave magazine, which is a magazine that has some ties to the historic ultra-left, a term I don't even like. Um, the name definitely is reminiscent of either an old situationist magazine or a music magazine we're not gonna talk about. So um, I wanted to bring you on because I've liked a lot of your articles in the world of uh communist publishing right now. We've seen sort of uh a decline in publications uh tied to um more uh what Jacobin and Co would disparage as ultra-left tendencies within the ultra-left um or within the left in general, and a rise of both social democratic and soft Marxist-Leninist publications such as Monthly Review, a Jacobin magazine. Um, and then a lot of people formally associated with with issue with uh tendencies like communization writing for new left review of books, or new left review, um, and the LA review books. So it's an interesting time in that world, and you guys seem to be trying to make a kind of intervention specifically in light of where we are historically in capitalism and in terms of climate change. Um, but you've also done some interesting work on like the tariff issue and what might actually be going on there because clearly it can't it can't be what the current administration says it is, or if it is what the current administration says it is. Um the reason why it's being supported by by members of the capitalist class can't be the same reason. So I wanted to have you on a talk about that. Would you like to introduce your project and what you do for that project? We can start with uh Bruno.

SPEAKER_04: 3:06

Yeah, so I'll just introduce my role in the project, which is mostly on the design end of the spectrum, design uh designing some of the zines and designing the magazine itself. Also do some Spanish translation uh when it arises and trying to connect people, um, like uh connecting with the Latin American section of the tariff people, well the Mexican section specifically, but um yeah, and then next person go on, and then we'll describe the uh the magazine later uh in a bit.

SPEAKER_02: 3:44

All right.

SPEAKER_05: 3:45

Uh we'll go on common run.

SPEAKER_02: 3:47

Okay, yeah. Hi. Um, so I wrote the article that's in issue one under the name Common Rune, and um I'm trying to bring some like ecological perspectives and see uh I guess what happens when I bring some like recent ecological and biological theory um into dialogue with with some more Marxist and materialist thinking. Um I guess I'm interested in how um moving past the sort of degrowth conversation, the the back and forth about growth versus degrowth. And I feel like while there's like some value in that, um especially thinking about like the total material flows, um, there's a lot more um to talk about with ecology and communism. Um so uh besides writing, I do I do a lot of editing and uh and I've done some of the design stuff too, like uh the logos and stuff.

SPEAKER_00: 4:52

Yeah, um my role has primarily been editing at this point uh and doing a little bit of the like backend finance stuff. I hate to call it finance stuff because we we don't really have the finances to do the finance stuff yet, but you know, the the moving of the coins, so to speak. Um and uh um yeah, I think I will probably write stuff at some point, um, or it'll be joint jointly written. Um, but that's sort of been my role at the in the project so far.

SPEAKER_05: 5:26

And what are the overall goals of the of the project, as I mentioned? Um left communist publishing has uh uh not been on the up and up, but left publishing has, even though it hasn't really corresponded with the growth in the left overall. So uh wanted to know uh why this project and why now.

SPEAKER_02: 5:52

Um I guess I'll say for me, um it was important to get something in print. Um there's a there's a lot of interesting writing you can find online. Um there's not a lot, as you said, besides Jacobin, um other than more academic journals, there's not a lot of uh print media with with these kinds of perspectives. So um I mean, obviously the website reaches a lot of people and it helps make the project more international, but um but yeah, doing print was like a priority for me. Um and then as far as the magazine itself, I guess we've kind of chosen, at least with our first couple editorials, to sort of emphasize um an ecumenical perspective. Like we don't say we're an ultra-left or left communist magazine. Um there's certainly affinities um that some of us have with particular tendencies, but um I think we don't want to limit ourselves or pigeonhole ourselves exactly in that way. Um yeah, I guess I'll let somebody else talk about the overall.

SPEAKER_00: 7:07

I mean, uh one thing I'll add to that is like, and this maybe sounds a little silly, but like sometimes you just have to do something with people that you like. And uh doing things, there's often a lot of activity that happens outside of the doing things. So whether you're like at a demo or you're doing the dishes or you're writing a magazine or you're going on a hike or whatever it is, like there's sometimes a central activity around which other kinds of social life can take place. And I think that part of like for me, that's one way that I think about the print magazine, is that it really is this it is kind of like the central thing through which another broader media ecosystem can grow, but it's also just activity that we can do together and as a way to connect with other people, even outside of what we write uh and what comes out of that project. So there is something about that that's important to me where like we the magazine is the thing that kind of helps us get together about lots of other things too, beyond the magazine. Um, and you know, I think maybe this is a discussion that we can have a little bit later, but um, we're trying to find ways to do a print magazine that's actually doing somewhat short form content. Like I think a lot of the way that the the sort of whether it's in the left or just in the media publishing uh in general has been like a lot of the short form stuff will go out online, and then you have these longer form outlets for print content. And I think there's a reflex to say that the longer the format, the more whatever, physical or something. Um, and we're trying to do something where we have these shorter form pieces that are in fact coming out in print, uh, and then through that you can get connected to other forms of digital content, whether that's through the Patreon or on our Discord channel or things like that. So I think we're trying to find something in there that works both uh that kind of gets out of the escape of being potentially over academic, um, but also something that's that's physical as well.

SPEAKER_02: 9:06

Um Bruno, did you want to say anything else on that?

SPEAKER_04: 9:09

Uh sure. I was gonna see if Derek wanted to say something. But um yeah, no, I think just the it was very important to have just like a presence of like a left-wing that isn't necessarily uh has like an anti-state bend towards it and that has like a physical presence in people's minds, or I guess it out in the world, because for too many, I guess it feels like the old ultra-left or like this more committed people, in my opinion, to like a laboratory project, are like it's very online here in in the States or in this side of the world, and to have something physical to be able to like connect and tell people about and point to like hey, you can get this at this bookstore or whatever, and then get connected to like a wider uh network of people, like Chris was saying, uh, was just really important. And and I don't know, just there was like it's kind of like the network of like anarchists sharing zines around, but also with a more uh as much as you know, anarchists are cool and and stuff, uh a more rigorous um uh accounting and analysis of uh of various longer-term trends that I feel that various strands of the ultra-left or of communist uh theorization has that's just like often I find wanting in anarchist spaces. Um yeah, and that's I guess where why I like wanted to join the project to kind of like push for that type of uh weird mix and also to make the magazine look pretty.

SPEAKER_05: 10:57

I mean, I do want to ask you you guys about this because um I have noticed two trends amongst the general left in the past decade since I started getting involved in this. I mean, I've been involved in this for like almost 20 years, but um you know, after Occupy, uh there was a flourishing uh what's we could call it left communist and anarchist publishing, but then the anarchist stuff quickly died back. Um, and the anarchist milieu, if we are completely honest, it's heyday was really before Occupy, it's kind of uh uh 90s through aughts after the fall of the Soviet Union. Uh and I call it a milieu advisedly because I believe, for example, that the anarchist movements of that time period don't have a lot of historical connection to prior anarchist movements, they seem to be kind of imminent critiques of the new left from the 70s, or imminent critiques of the movementism of the left in the 80s and 90s, um, or whatever the hell David Graber was doing. Um, but it does seem like now, outside of maybe some some things around communization, which is why I think your magazine is often recognized as an ultra-left magazine, even if it's not, or even if you don't conceive it solely that way, is because the uh the vision of a stateless society, um even in the long term, is increasingly not something that's in the left vocabulary. Modern monetary theory is dominated by uh national technocratic orientation. Um lot of them are my fans, and they won't like that I say that, but it's kind of factually true. Um Jacobin. I don't know if most of the analytic Marxists believe a stateless society is possible. It's pretty clear that most of Marxist Leninists are not just do not just believe it's not possible in the in the short term. They also have picked up uh threads by Dominica Lacerdo and et al. Who argue it's just you know something that should have been dropped in the early 20th century altogether? Um uh, you know, and I I I have chided them because I've told them even sell and believe that eventually you'd have a stateless society. At least that's what he said. Um so uh do you find yourself, you know, in a, you know, not just because you're working with anarchists clearly, but also like trying to represent um an anti-state or state skeptical position within the left that isn't so dependent on uh state-led social engineering themes, but also isn't tending towards uh weird uh uh let's see, tailing the right.

SPEAKER_02: 14:00

Yeah, I mean, I I think one thing our project has in common with yours is uh is uh that we don't want to put out easy answers. Um and like a lot of the tendencies you just mentioned, um I mean how to put it. So that that wave of like communization that you're thinking of post-Occupy is like uh typically cast as valorizing the riot. And then with the with a turn away from that and a lot of the criticism of that, it it's just often a turn just towards a different, easy answer, right? Um that we're gonna against all of the tendencies pushing it the opposite direction, we're gonna have this like red wave of revitalizing labor, or you know, all the problems with electoralism that people tend to ignore when there's like a temporary, what seems like a temporary gain, like with Mandami. Um so I guess with Heat Wave, we are kind of going against the tide in a lot of these ways. And I feel like it's not even so much an ultralight position as just a more Marx-centric um position on a lot of these other questions. Somebody else, if you want to add to that one.

SPEAKER_00: 15:26

Bruno, you want to go? I'm still thinking of some stuff.

SPEAKER_04: 15:30

Yeah, well, I was gonna say my own, I mean, uh as much as I chide being like, oh, you linking it to like my own identity or whatever, but I I do think the anti-state position, or at least the anti-statism that brings up about for me personally, it kind of comes from this uh lifetime of basically being uh uh structurally in opposition to the state, or at least the state necessarily like would I grew up uh being afraid that my parents are gonna get uh disappeared or you know take you know deported back to Mexico. And it's this oppositional state that I think or just oppositional, I don't know, uh just upbringing that kind of like informs my own theory, my own like understanding of like, well, there are people that we are we're gonna be against the state, whether we whether you're a Marxist-Leninist or whatever, whether the this political project that we're in is generally gonna be against this current state of affairs, whether we want to grab it for our own, grab the state machinery machinery for our own ends, or just as a as a general, just abolish it all. But that question and the way it relaxed onto people who live already, I'm not gonna say outside the state, because they're obviously still very much affected by the way the state does things and the way we go about our lives. But the but the way we are able to resist and continue on with our lives and reproduce our lives in general are very much like without these states, without necessarily relying with the assumption that the state is going to be there to help us in general, which is where I for me has always been the rub with like the Mam Dani types, the like um liberal types, because I mean my family can't really like uh apply for various subsidies, especially coming from a deep-bred state where they're like very much willing, like if you fuck up on a bureaucratic form, you know, there is a high chance they're just gonna, you know, ICE is gonna get called. Um and I'd say that and I and for me, at least this post this ultra-left, this anarchist influence, this anti-state left or communism, or however you want to describe it, you know, ecumenically, um has been the most amenable to like how uh I lived my life, or like my family has lived my life, our lives, and and this deep commitment to an internationalism, to like a world without borders, to this anti-nationalism that I that I agree with, that I agree with you that this anti-nationalist world or this anti-nationalisation or world without uh the state is becoming increasingly, increasingly harder to like imagine to even like this discourse within uh like even abroad. I mean, you know, but um at least that's for me, that's like why I kind of like think having this physical magazine and this like space for people or this is like these principles are important to us as writers and as like just people in the world to be able to fight each other and to like keep that flame going on because I mean I don't know, I've been able to have because of this commitment to his principles, I've been able to have really awesome interactions and discussions and moments of resistance and you know everything that makes life actually worth living. That's not you know, that's not fucking working construction that makes you want to commit suicide. Um and I I don't know. I mean, I know that's not more of that doesn't help the analytical people or whatever, but I mean this is kind of like a more personal understanding of why of why I think this is just like talk about resistance against the state and maybe an anti-state vision, if people are amenable to that, is important to have. And not to be too moralistic about it either.

SPEAKER_00: 19:45

Makes sense. Yeah. I mean, I I I would just add too that putting something out there that can uh challenge maybe some of the the sort of taken-for-granted assumptions that might come out of uh a left sort of sphere that I think in a certain sense is relatively more revitalized than it had been, you know, maybe 20 years ago or something. Like I think that there are the the rise of certain parties, certainly in the United States, there's like the Trump era that has given people some inklings of reflection outside of the Democratic Party. And I think that the degree to which there are a variety of perspectives that could, you know, maybe reach those folks and uh sort of poke at some of the assumptions that they might hold around what's possible or how to do politics or what that looks like. Um, I think that can be sort of particularly valuable to exist. And I think it's an open question about whether we're reaching those people and whether like there's a like what what does it take to reach folks like that that might have had experiences at demos or had experiences living through adverse political effects of all the horrible shit that's going on and being like, man, how do I make sense of what just happened because my world got rocked? And those people are gonna go to the interpretations that are available to them. And we basically we want ours to be available to them as well, and that that can be sort of you know brought into the fold uh as as logically and as reasonably as you know, oh, I'm gonna uh like this is why I should canvass for a politician, or this is why I should try and um you know push for some certain legislation that that might actually be very materially helpful, but uh, but might also sort of signal the end of the road of a political imagination.

SPEAKER_05: 21:35

Well, political imagination is an interesting point because my critique of the left post 2014 and 2015 is uh and even that critique of the left, I've I actually should be careful with that because most people who do that end up being kind of full of shit because we don't know what left means for them. It's a floating signifier. But my critique of the various tendencies that emerged after Occupy is that at a time period where the power of nation states seemed more limited because hegemons were beginning to hit power limits. We also started seeing doubling down on almost all sides. Um, and I don't just mean all sides of the left, I mean all sides of society, all sides of political discourse on national discourses. Um and at the same time, uh the problems that we face are not national. Be they, you know, one of the things that's implied in your name that we're dealing with climate change. Um that's not a national problem. There's not a single nation that can address it by itself. And you know, all power to the Chinese in their in their ecological society pushes. I'm not saying that's bad, and I have a trust but verify attitude towards it. But frankly, that's not enough. You still have to deal with India, you still have to deal with the developed world, which still uses a disproportionate amount of resources. And in all the cases, not only have they not these national and international agreement frameworks not delivered, um, they've also been turned on in their internal politicians. And unfortunately, for a lot of people in the United States, uh uh the United States has become weirdly both more global in its influence because of the domination of English on the internet, but also more parochial in its understanding of itself. So, for example, people who think that the democratic Mili Lays is a problem voluntaristically of bad Democrats and not something we're seeing about liberal elites across most of the planet. Or um uh uh the completely either damning or in a lot of cases on our end of the things, uh naively trusting statements about China as the future hegemon and how this is gonna be good for everybody. Um, because China is working economic miracles, even though their GDP has now normalized to regular capitalist GDP, and they seem to have gotten some wins from the Trump tariff, but they're holding they're hoarding gold because they seem to be afraid that the international economic order is gonna be in some severe trouble, and they're not yet at a place to lead it in quotation marks. Um uh and I don't see that discussed right now, frankly. I mean, what you normally see is either people doing apologetics for the Chinese state or people condemning it, or uh, you know, in the in the pages of like Jacobin, they just don't deal with it at all. Uh, similarly, uh, when talking about Mexico, a place that I know really well because I lived there uh for for a while, um, and uh am deeply invested in, there's a lot of left celebration of Steinbaum as if like she's Linen or something, it's bizarre. Um and not a lot of dealing with the actual economic uh policies that are going on just because they're you know, they are better than what the pre of the pawn was doing, right? But that's a really low bar. But you know, yeah, you know, not disappearing a bunch of uh of uh of college activists and teachers is you know kind of a minimum strategy for liberal society, it's not even like a left-wing project, anyway. Uh, and you guys actually are one of the few outlets reporting on some of the more contradictory elements on the international sphere, not just the national one. I think about stuff in your tariff dossier that actually tried to deal with this tariff uh development from an international perspective, not just from the national perspective that one sees on like TikTok and Twitter right now. Um so you know, what do you think uh is missing in a lot of the discourse around where we are in the world around this and like what these tariffs mean, or you know, what bricks means or any of that? It's a big question, admittedly.

SPEAKER_02: 26:11

Common room, you want to go first or um yeah, I mean, so on the tariff question, I'm not like an expert on this, but I that's part of why I'm really glad we were able to solicit some really great contributions. Um especially like because we're talking about China, like it's really great that Shuang contributed their piece, and Shuang is a project that is like an inspiration for us as the collective. And um yeah, and I think we'll hopefully see more contributions coming up soon. But but like you bring up, I mean China, regardless of the degree to which it could be classified as socialism, is still subject to the same uh forces uh as any other capitalist economy. And and when it comes to the energy transition, like that's often a misnomer because what you see is more renewable production and at the same time either a maintenance or an expansion of uh of fossil energy use and and an overall increase in total energy throughput. So uh yeah, I I don't know why there is this tendency for for these kinds of topics to be ignored on the left. Um it's certainly irritating and and irresponsible.

SPEAKER_05: 27:35

I have my theories, but they're almost they're almost conspiratorial, aka funding. But right.

SPEAKER_04: 27:42

Yeah, I mean, my my my thinking goes to just how again to like a lack of political imagination of just like how different things can be. I mean, so much of the world, and I think to go about to kind of like go a bit on your point of um uh even domestic uh workers despise when liberal liberal elites try to kind of like address climate change by doing popular policies. I mean, this is kind of like around the world of work and a and a complete lack of imagination of like, well, everybody uses all this just for the like gas, you know, protests against the rising gas prices or gas taxes or fossil fuel taxes that kind of like there's been a threat of them over the years. Um, and just how much gas is involved in petrol, I guess, in in these UK parlance, is used just to go around places or to use to undergird the economy and our daily lives, and just how much people don't want for our daily lives to change in that fundamental way. Um, or even in many places outside the developed world, a desire to have that quality of life that developed places have that is undergird by a um by fossil fuel economy, or even you know, just by uh just uh a level of consumption and consumerism and really shitty American culture that um you know that is ever present and just like desired by, especially by uh rising middle class uh in a lot of developing countries where you know they learn English. I mean, in Mexico, there's like certain type of person that is kind of like sprinkles English in some in various uh conversations just to like kind of show them kind of just to make themselves feel a bit better than you know the lower class people. Um so I think that's kind of like why there's kind of like this lack of interrogation or like really like really concrete interrogation with like just environmentalism in general and climate change more specifically. Um I mean, is yeah, I don't know. I like I come from like a rare rural background, and I mean even I don't know, I come back from my parents' hometown and they uh you know I come back smelling like like petrol a lot of times because there's just so much use of uh of that around town. Um because you know it's just necessary to live daily daily life there, you know, like uh I don't know. Um yeah, that's what I have to say on that specific question. And Chris, you can uh say your piece. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 30:37

Yeah, I I I think maybe my reflection is uh a little bit different, but one of the things, uh at least at the international scale, um that that I'm interested in in heat wave thinking through and writing about, I think we do this to a certain extent at uh on the tariffs dossier. It's like I think with uh Trump and with the rise of uh sort of politicians, like on the one hand, people feel like Trump does stuff. And sometimes people feel like other politicians don't do stuff. And what that leads them to think is like, oh, politics in its formal sense is a space where people can do things as long as you have people to do them. And so you just need people to do the right things, and then you get this certain like political change, even if we don't like it, and even if we're scared of it, uh, I think it gives people this capacity to think that if you just have the right leaders that are like really ready to just you know get their hands dirty, that the political machine can actually like function and maybe not well, but it can do things. And I think that people's reflection of politics for a long time was like, oh, like nothing can be done. Like we're just sort of in this. And this is, you know, to borrow from EndNotes, which is also a journal I think a lot of us are are influenced by, is like, you know, that they they sort of they lay out in their holding pattern essay, I think really well, that there are these like real material constraints to the way that um the the sort of the international community can come to face with some of the core contradictions of capital. And that it's it there are certain things, there's a space for maneuver in which different leaders or different parties can push for one thing or the other, but to really get a a broader view of where those where that room ends and where there isn't actually a lot of space to maneuver unless you take serious consequences from, you know, you basically set up these really extreme winner and loser situations. And so I think, you know, on the one hand, it's it's a tricky thing to develop in a magazine or in any political analysis where, on the one hand, you need to stress and underline that people, human beings, can really change their social relations and their material conditions because they are social relations. Um, but at the same time, that it can only be done through a breaking to a certain extent of the conditions in which you're in right now and going all the way through the formal machine to the sort of like great man theory of political change will only get you so far. And I think that a good international materialist analysis of the economy can help sort of chart out that path through you know, the the sort of the inability of uh people to change their current conditions within the construpts of those current conditions and then need to kind of go beyond that.

SPEAKER_04: 33:26

But yeah, to quote Marx the 18th Brumaire may make their own history, but not under their own uh doing or not under their own desired conditions.

SPEAKER_05: 33:39

Well, whatever the quote you're actually pretty close. This uh I also quote that all the time and slightly wrong. Um call it a remix, call it you know, conditions of their own choosing. I mean, they only get it properly. We have to actually quote it in 1960 German, but like whatever.

SPEAKER_02: 33:59

Yeah, I guess I just wanted to pop in on that question just a little bit more. Um, because I feel like we can look at um you know the Trump administration, and this ties into you read Jamie Merchant's article. You know, they're trying to respond to these conditions of like overproduction, declining productivity with uh or profitability, um with this like bombastic, like no holds barred, um, extreme like approach. Um, like we're gonna accept that it's a zero-sum game and we're gonna, I mean, besides the tariffs, like they're gonna abolish the roadless rules and just try to like bring in mining and logging into every stretch of wilderness. And and it's not even working. I mean, like the jobs, the job statistics are tanking.

SPEAKER_05: 34:49

Um yeah, so all the statistics that they're that they're interested in, not just the job statistics, I mean, even like trade imbalance has gotten worse, like everything they've done has accelerated the things that they're supposed to well, uh, I actually I really don't know if they actually care about them or not. I suspect it's a mixture of sincerity in some cases, and like I do think they really would like to reindustrialize, but also since they're now in allegiance with tech overlords, they'd like to do it mostly with robots. So yeah, I'm like, okay, so how that like since you're also guiding the social safety net, how does that work without you know 10-15 years down the line you're basically at civil war? Maybe they're just trying to bring that preemptively. I don't know, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 35:32

Um but so with all that, with if if if this sort of uh extreme um MAGA approach isn't working, then to me it's even more uh cause for people to question the idea that uh that social democracy in these conditions is still viable, that like we can have something just like now, except more fair. I mean, and I get why that's a popular position on the left, because it's really easy to, you know, you're raised like a liberal or whatever, and it's really easy to move into like a social democratic position where you get this idea of like it's like I think like Bruno was saying earlier, like our lives are basically gonna stay the same, but uh the things will just be more fair somehow. And and again, like bringing it back to Marx, you know, we go to this isn't like esoteric notes from the background Risa, it's Capitol Volume One, that the Capitol establishes forms appropriate to it. Um and that's talking about production, but those forms are are carved into the landscape. Um and this isn't uh this isn't a sort of like material world that can just be be run in a more fair way. Sorry.

SPEAKER_05: 36:51

No, no, no, you don't apologize for that. That's actually a great point. I mean, like I've been thinking a whole lot about how so social democracy as it is often presented, or democratic socialism since the democratic socialist uh don't want to admit they're Keynesians, um uh and social democrat and social democrats have mostly long since done that in the 50s. Um did it has some serious problems. Uh, one is that it there's been a large-scale denial, uh and not just from actually from all kinds of sorts of uh third world was two in the declining rates of profits. Um and now that people see that you know, okay, even when we're not dealing with commodity money or metal money, even when we are not um, even when everything's turning into rent, there is a profitability crisis on physical commodities. That's like mainstream economic mainstream economists don't even really deny that now. Yet for the last two decades, a lot of the left, even the Marxist left, has been hardcore denying that's a problem. Um and I do think it has to do with this commitment to a fairer social democracy because that if you believe in any or the um you know organic capital problems, you can't run a capitalist society and be fair. Um it would not have surplus to spread around. So it's or at very minimum, even if you had not uh like nominal in the sense of like you had currency moving around because you have some kind of modern monetary conditions, there would be a slowdown of production that would cause a serious problem, even if it is decoupled from any sort of monetary apparatus. And I don't see um or oh, let me put it to you another way. The problems that Trumpism has, as you guys have been implying, actually are also problems for social democracy and Sandersism and Corbinism and all of that. And it's not dealt with.

SPEAKER_04: 39:12

Go ahead. Yeah, no, I think this kind of goes into something I wanted to get into since you mentioned Scheinbaum. And in the tariff dossier, we you know we had uh comrades at uh Editorial Conatus talk about, you know, they did an accounting of like the problems that Mexico is facing and the problems that Scheinbaum either inherited or is kind of like actively um working against or uh or contributing to rather. Um and that kind of is, you know, I mean, so many people on the electoral left kind of like see Shine Baum as like uh just a success story of the left of like reindustrialization, or um, I should say the project of Morena, rather, broadly, Amla and Shinbach. But uh I mean, but it is like to deny its pop to deny its popularity is kind of deny reality because she really is a popular president. Um, I mean, I just saw today that apparently she had like 70 plus percent approval ratings in the opposition party or opposition parties. But I mean, you know, this the social democratic project still relies on a bunch of narco-violence that hasn't been addressed. I mean, there's currently repression against the Zapatistas and Chiapas, like various incursions into their territories, uh, which is scarcely mentioned, uh, at least on the left, and at least in the places that I'm looking at, which, to be fair, it's not necessarily traditional meet left as media. Um uh rampant environmental destruction, especially in the North and especially in conjunction with uh with narco agribusiness, uh, not to mention the capture of agricultural businesses by narco-capitalism. It's kind of like this, and the I don't know, I don't I don't remember, I I don't believe the uh Gonatu is described this way, but I kind of just I've kind of been thinking about the like position that Mexico is in terms of like uh the economic social transfication, especially as someone who's coming from northern Mexico. And unfortunately, you know, not gonna go further than that, but uh it is kind of like a dual power a capitalist dual power state right now in some places where you have you know, you can get either fucked over by the government or you can get fucked over by the narcos, and you know, and both of them, you're not gonna, you know, you're not really you don't really have really recourse for much of them, but at least with the government, though they're giving you some money to survive and you get a sense of national pride against Donald Trump. But I mean, that really isn't, you know, that's not much consolation. And we're kind of seeing that also with Carney right now in the support for the um I forget what the Liberal Party is called there. The Labor Party, that's not the Labour Party.

SPEAKER_05: 41:56

No, it's the Liberal Party, it is just the Liberal Party.

SPEAKER_04: 41:58

Okay, it's just the Liberal Party. Yeah, but uh yeah, but Carney getting a lot of support because of Trump's comments as Canada being the 51st state. But you know, that's kind of again, that's like the the language and discourse of nationalism. I mean, at least Mexico has the capacity, industrial capacity right now to back up and fund that social democratic project. But like what happened in the 50s in Mexico, what happens when the money runs out, or when uh global you know, economic growth slows down, like we're all saying it's gonna happen, or you know, like you're mentioning that we're kind of like ignoring that problem. Or we aren't, but or at least we're trying not to. Um, but you know, most leftists are ignoring and not kind of seeing the what's written on the wall.

SPEAKER_05: 42:48

Well, I mean, I'm gonna go through the variety of answers that I normally hear. One is usually some MMT-based answer that we can inject enough liquidity to keep things going long enough to get production back up and get consumption back up to eat that. But the problem with that is obvious if you think about the climate crisis. Uh, you know, um, since we are not really focusing on new kinds of production, um nor is all green production actually all that green in its first instantiation. Um, and if you have to keep doing it, that kind of defeats the purpose.

SPEAKER_02: 43:23

Like, so right, right. And as you pointed out, also the tendency for production to expel more and more workers from the workforce as it increases automation. So, yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 43:34

I mean, feeling work on this is pretty shitty, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_05: 43:37

So I it's not even the type of life I want to live under. Right. Um, I mean, and then you have this this idea of like um the entire world can't run a services economy, uh, nor can we, you know, I remember reading McKenzie Work, and she was talking about uh, you know, these digital economies as if you know, our and the techno neofito people, uh most of them talk about like Facebook and stuff as if just the media end of that is floating the entire economy up. And I'm like, okay, just to explain stocks to you people, uh, the the Manificent 7 is the only thing holding most of the stock market up right now, and most of that from what I've now looked at is in the physical capacity of um these power eating generation things, which are actually still a net money loser if you look at what's happening on the back end, and uh um you also see it in uh the chip production, but there's a hard wall of that too. Um, and so it's just like okay, so the propital things are still the things that are material, they're not these rent-seeking things, and also I don't know how your digital serfs get food um or make food, except from the global south. So that again it seems to be blocking out a whole lot of of what's going on. Um, and I say this also, you know, I I lived in northern Mexico for two for two years, and I lived at the Anadazetis in a lower cartel war uh when the pan was also in charge of the local government, and the pre had just come back to power in the national government. So to give you the time period, I was there. Um it was also during the Oaxaca teachers' uh strikes and whatnot.

SPEAKER_04: 45:41

Um I remember my cousin, yeah. I was I was in Mexico there, and I remember my cousin being surprised that I was pro to teachers.

SPEAKER_05: 45:49

He was shocked totally. Uh the other, the the the uh that was also a time when there was kind of an undeclared civil war in Michigan between the auto defenses, uh the the indigenous auto defenses, the uh federalis, and the narcos in a three-way battle that you know Americans kind of noticed because avocados got expensive. Um but it was it so I I'm familiar with the fact that it's almost like a dual power state with the with the less violent narcos, which is not to say they're not violent, but they're you know, they don't go in and do what the Zetas did and just behead half of a village. Um uh becoming a kind of quasi-government. I mean, you know, when I lived there, they made sure that you know, indirectly, they made sure that I knew that they knew I was there and that they knew I was an American. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like um and uh, you know, and and and basically I had the the privilege of being too white to disappear and uh and too poor to be a kidnapping target.

SPEAKER_04: 47:01

Yeah, no, I mean I mentioned Mexico just to say, like, you know, even in the best, like even in the success stories of social democracy that we have right now, it's still, you know, like there's still these problems that we're trying to address that are fundamental issues that like you know, the problem of Trumpism is also the problem of Scheinbaum, is also the problem of China is also the problem, you know, it seems like there's something connected in all of this, you know. And this is why, you know, we're interested in the political economic question here. I mean, we're interested in other questions as well, of course, you know, the environmental question as it relates to political economy. But you know, the the way people want to just kind of like uh just put this in a box of being like a Trumpism problem, you know, it's just you know setting us for disaster, setting us to fail if there is like a whenever we do finally have like a real movement to uh to push Trump out, I guess. I don't know.

SPEAKER_05: 47:58

I mean, I'm not even sure if that's the goal, but you know, let's let's I I have I mean this does lead me to a question of the Biden administration and like elite response to that, and and and what you guys are doing is you know so outside of that that I really appreciate it. But I also listen to all the major discourses that everyone else has served. Of course, no, we we live in the states, unfortunately. Right. Um, I mean, I do read Mexican news because I do have a good enough graph of Spanish to do that, but I also know how much I can trust that. Yeah, anyway. Oh yeah, yeah, you don't have to tell me.

SPEAKER_04: 48:32

I mean, I yeah, I'm sorry, uh common ruining Chris. Like, I feel this is becoming like a let's complain about Mexico.

SPEAKER_05: 48:38

I mean, I actually really want to. This is good, it's my favorite country, but um uh I I do think that that like if we look at this on an international spec spectrum, or even if you look at nationally, there's some key questions that people just don't ask very deeply. For example, um, why did the Biden administration just normalize so much of Trump policies? Was it just because you know the Democrats just really want the same thing that Republicans do? Or is it, you know, that economic elites um have a set of agenda concerns and they don't have answers to them, and those answers that the best answers they can form are somewhat consistent uh between between administrations, and then it leads to weirder things like liberals arguing that the deportation regimes of Obama and Biden were better just because they looked outwardly more humane. And and I am sort of like, well, are you mad about the theater? I mean, because it seems like you're mad that actually that the Obama and Biden governments were just more competent about doing this thing, not that this thing was happening. I mean, so admittedly they want to go to brunch, right? Yes, as I have famously written, but yeah, I mean it does um it it does uh it does kind of lead us into uh this weird question is why is that the case, or why is it uh maybe to make a sharper point that isn't just US centric. Why is it that the liberal parties everywhere, including Canada, are having stagnations and a lack of ability to respond to their own base? That is not just a problem of the Democratic Party in the United States, it is more acute in in Europe and the UK than it is here, even. Um, I mean, you just look at Keir Starmer's numbers, are uh um pretty much any of I mean, like the SP Day in in Germany, how fast did they flame out? Like it was incredibly quickly. Um, and you there are exceptions to that. Lula is Brazil. I I uh but even there, yeah, even Brazil it's weaker than you think. It's it like the the popularity that Lula has is not transferred to his party.

SPEAKER_00: 51:05

So um I mean, I I I gotta think a lot of this is connected to COVID. Like I think there was really something about the return to uh some kind of what a lot of liberals felt was was a more established and certain way of managing the world. Uh, and I think uh the other thing that happened, I think at that time was the variability of COVID responses among seemingly or you know, liberal in-name parties, because you got a variety of different approaches to something that was a global crisis. Uh and it, I think when people see that play out on the sort of the political scale, they say, there are different ways to do things. There is difference, there is possibility, there is choice. And actually, they don't see the degree to which those liberal parties, like you're pointing to, are uh unable to actually manage some of the fundamentals under that. But when you get something like a global pandemic that was managed quite differently, even if you can argue for certain like underlying material currents that impeded certain types of actions uh that could have taken place, like it's not it's not to say that uh anything was possible, but there I think there's a sufficient variety for people, for most people's engagement with politics. So it looks like a difference. And I think that that is sufficient enough for people to believe that you know the uh the football's not going to get pulled out from under them this time when they try and go kick it.

SPEAKER_05: 52:36

But it was though.

SPEAKER_03: 52:39

Yes, it was. Yes, it was.

SPEAKER_02: 52:43

I don't know. I go back and forth on this. Like, are they just afraid to rock the boat? And I mean, it's just like that was a French saying, uh, Après moi la deluge, like after me the flood. It's kind of like when you have these uh sort of oxtagenarian senators um putting their investments first, it's kind of like, well, if I can just, you know, get by and make a little more money before everything falls apart. Sometimes I think that is really like all that's going on. There isn't really much more thought to it. Um like I saw a tweet the other day, Larry Summers is teaching at Harvard, and he's apparently assigning like Noah Smith's substacks as like cross material. So it's like, are they really just out of ideas? Are they giving up? I don't know. I mean I don't know.

SPEAKER_04: 53:32

All I know is I'm putting Harvard education on my CV now.

SPEAKER_01: 53:36

Hell yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 53:38

Well, I mean, I will say this. Um, one thing that I talk about that I that I do wish um would come up more, and uh and maybe is part of the reason why people don't recognize what's going on in China uh versus what's going on in the United States. Um, where because the Chinese elites are still relatively competent, and you know, my theories around that have to do with like energy inputs and decadence cycles and stuff, like stuff that's actually largely impersonal, um, are not even about like, oh, like Chinese have a long view of culture and Americans don't. I'm like, well, but Americans did in 1940. I don't know what you're you know talking about, really. Um uh I think you know, when I look at this, I just think, oh, our capitalists are subject to some to some forces, some of which I think are older than capitalism, quite frankly. Um, about where they are in a cycle of of over specialization and decline, then that is paired with these Marxist forces that we see in capital, and that is paired with you know global ecological crisis, and you know, no one's gonna really be up for that game by themselves. There's not an elite that can handle that, that's gonna have to take everybody all hands on deck to kind of even figure out how to solve. Um, and I guess that does bring me to another thing I liked about your journal. A lot of people misunderstand my critiques of growth and degrowth communism. Like, I find the whole debate somewhat tedious. Um, because when I go to look at what Kohei Saito are um Lee Phillips, you know, uh Saito, who I was initially very sympathetic towards, Lee Phillips, who's uh who I I know and have had many conversations with, um I find a total lack of political imagination about the future. Um, I find some of the degrowers to be a little bit more imaginative, but then some of their imagination I think is actually more Malthusian and worse. But also when I talk about like what we need to deal with the different world, I am not talking about just growing GDP because I just frankly don't think GDP would matter in even a socialist, much less a communist society. Um, you know, so uh yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 55:58

I mean that's that's kind of why I chose to write that article about beavers, um, to talk about how it's possible to um exert a lot of energy and change uh the landscape on even a continental scale, but the but the way it's done matters, and that's why part of the degrowth conversation gets tedious is because they're talking about like total energy use uh by a society in this like very abstracted way, but not connecting it to like what is actually happening on the land. And so um yeah, I I hope to try to move both conversations like green communization or whatever, is what Jasper called it uh um in a different direction. And an issue too, actually, there's uh there's a really great article that a comrade wrote um that takes up the concept of of non-domination, like from you know the Republican side of the Marxist tradition and starts thinking about non-domination um and where that concept ends. Like, does it end with human beings or or does it apply um to like ecosystems and and uh it so that's uh that's a piece that I think people will really like.

SPEAKER_05: 57:17

Yeah, I I um I did like it. That's kind of what got me to thinking about the question because I was reading, I was like, oh, finally you guys don't make me pick a side between a debate where I think both sides actually should not should probably not exist because it's a misunderstanding of the problem. Um I uh you know the tariffs issues is interesting. I you know, you mentioned the Swang piece and the problems of ab labor in China and labor conditions in China, which which I think people look at look at how much better things seem on paper than China and then miss that like Chinese worker antagonism against both factories in the state is on an increase in a way we haven't seen in a while in Ji's China, and J'iz China for the most part. Um, a lot of the problems of the Hu Jin Tao era were kind of taken care of uh by finally doing some reinvestment in rural areas, um, and by encouraging a high reinvestment scheme. But it does seem like uh in increased exploitation and even things like trying to form large amounts of free youth labor so that the youth aren't just sitting around doing nothing, but since there's no private industry to pay them and they don't want to start giving stipends out because it will weaken the proletariat's uh something or other, I forgot what G argued. Um that it does seem like they're gonna have a trouble, you know, creating enough internal demand. And that the economies they wish to cooperate with are also export economies, not import economies. So it does seem like there's a real problem in the Chinese growth strategy um in the long run, uh, that has kind of been temporarily semi-stalled, I wouldn't say solved, um, but stalled by Europe wanting to pull off a little bit from from the United States after Trump. But that given Europe's own demographic crisis and everything else, uh the that won't be a long-term solution to the problem. Um, and the other thing I've really thought about is uh the restructuring of IMF loans is gonna have to come in a lot of the developing world, and uh it particularly in light of the frankly, uh stalling and failure because of the Russia-Ukraine war of um the Silk Road project, which was kind of, you know, as I like to tell people, what that really was was a Marshall Plan for the for the non-European world, but marshall plans are not as benign as you think they are, they're about building up um economic uh resources and establishing uh trade controls in a regional hegemony. Um, so and that didn't happen.

SPEAKER_02: 1:00:15

I mean China can't be imperialists, they're socialists, right?

SPEAKER_05: 1:00:18

Yeah, sure. Yeah, exactly. Um, yeah, I mean I mean I've always said that this is partly because China is a responsible capitalist state versus a bunch of irresponsible capitalist states, and we've just lowered the bar so extremely low that that looks like socialism to us.

SPEAKER_02: 1:00:36

Right. I think the competency gap you talk about in our elites uh is real. Um, but like, yeah, I mean, one of the latest Schuang pieces talked about youth unemployment. hitting almost 19% this summer. So there's clearly cracks in the end of this. And again, you know, this is why we're not putting out easy answers. Whereas like the the Lacerdo uh fan club, I guess, is like basically pushing for a nationalist and dangist idea of what it means to be on the left.

SPEAKER_05: 1:01:21

Well it it leads to a kind of paradox I mean in Lacerdoism in particular because you can read Lacerdo and become a national chauvinist and you can read Lacerdo and become a third worldist. Because essentially both the answers are nationalist and you can have your class collaboration either way. I mean talk about choices that I don't want to be in either way. Yeah um I mean I just find that absurd to be arguing that we need to do developmental programs with a national bourgeoisie in the most developed part of capitalism. I just that just to me is like a laughable prospect.

SPEAKER_02: 1:02:02

But right and and the resource grabs implied by that um and the militarism or you know neo-imperialism implied by that is it should be obvious. I mean think about resources like lithium and cobalt and this like huge boom and development in the US it needs to acquire those things right and I don't know then or they need to learn how to mine under Brooklyn those are your options like yeah um yeah they're talking about trying to mine lithium out of a salt and sea I guess so I'm sure that'll do well.

SPEAKER_05: 1:02:44

No problems there with our oceans at all. You know and I think one of the problems with being a hard problemist uh maybe I'll call us that instead of ultra leftist I don't consider myself an ultra leftist but a lot of other people do so who knows so some of the folks at heat wave wouldn't either so some of us would maybe ultra sounds but obviously we're just interested in the complicated questions.

SPEAKER_04: 1:03:12

That's just you know we're we're interested in complicated questions and the harder answers.

SPEAKER_05: 1:03:18

Right. Um well I mean I I will say this as much as you know as much as I got frustrated with Innotes volume four so you're gonna know is where I got frustrated at I actually do think for example there are things even in that essay a history of separation that I don't have I don't listen to comments have a good answer for. So for example um if we agree with the Marxist Leninists which actually in notes people do that the peasants were the driving uh revolutionary force for most of the middle 20th century for largely nationalist projects what do you do now that there are no peasants now that there's no peasants but that there really is not a vast subsistence agricultural sector in anywhere in the world and we we now live in a place where there's more people in the urban world than the rural world everywhere not just in the developed core so yeah I mean and or even to to be more abstract than than say the peasantry specifically but that there was an abrupt change.

SPEAKER_02: 1:04:18

People knew there were different ways that they could live because they had lived in different ways and now they were you know industrialized proletarianized. And I think it that brings us back to imagination like because of that experience that generation or those generations had a sort of imagination um I think this also ties into like why why a lot of indigenous struggles are kind of like some of the struggles at the forefront of of what we see today is again like people who know there are other ways that we could live.

SPEAKER_05: 1:04:54

But that doesn't help the fact that the vast majority of people are multi-generation uh like urban proletariat and I don't know if I can say the vast majority worldwide but um people who've lived basically in this way with things just like slowly getting worse um but have no direct or even generational experience of something else I I I I think that I am fairly common for people who came out of the quote blue collar working class unquote in the sense that my grandfather was a bricklayer my mom was a waitress and then a nurse and I am uh what what what do the social democrats call people like me PMC something something even though you know I draw a wage downwardly mobile little class yeah except I'm not the funny thing is I'm actually technically upperly mobile but still I did you know I'm I I end up with those chuds.

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:51

Um I love you all you're my subscribers forgive me but um but uh you know what I mean though it it whereas you know today we have a problem that like we haven't dealt with since the second international it's like even the proletariat um and there are some Maoists I think are very good on this actually uh the the former labor's like ghana in certain places like Latin America never even existed like uh at scale like if you're in like Colombia you're now probably urbanized you are probably working piecemeal jobs at at site pay like day laborers um statistically speaking and so most of the four of the formal working class you know um organizational styles that we've assumed since the second international will not work for you um you know uh but you're not lumping in any sense either it's not like you're engaged in uh uh quote unquote criminal enterprises or black markets you're doing day labor work in an informal economy um which you know even in the United States was common practice until what the 1910s 1920s and frankly it's becoming common practice again yeah I was gonna say it's it's definitely becoming more you know people are needing to supplement their even their full-time jobs with uh you know the the gig right this is the sort of the gig economy to a certain extent yeah I mean um like I like I mentioned earlier we're just moving coins around right now but maybe one day heat wave will become some of our side gigs too we can have the pleasure of that choice to uh to have a lovely side gig that can bring in some some petty cash into our lives but but this is the you know I think this is like um this is really real and I you know the the question that you bring up about like what do you do when there's no peasants like the the logical answer seems like well you uh you know you have organized through the workers right that is the logical like uh historical answer and from like a from a Marxist standpoint that's been that's just been ever present right is that well you have to it's it is uh through labor that the organizations for these kinds of uh this kind of activity takes place but but we also need to be honest that a lot of labor unions and labor organizations uh not only have you know have sort of gone through the the 20th century stagnation uh that I think most of us are probably familiar with but even and there's certainly in a they have a maybe like a cultural moment over the past 10, 15 years of resurgence that feels a lot more cultural than it does in terms of like actual workers being unionized, particularly in the US um and so it's a it's a tricky thing to kind of confront. And I think that some of the some of maybe our past influences or the the conversations around the ultra left have really tried to eschew this question of like unionized labor because it hasn't felt like a productive area in which uh things could could move forward. And so I think it is it's worth considering this question of like what to do with um with labor unions or labor unionism or whether there's something there or not um because it becomes particularly difficult to organize in the traditional format through labor conditions that are much more um precarious and divided where people are in workplaces where they uh maybe don't see their colleagues ever or people's schedules change so much that you can't contact them. And so there's you know I think the the terrain of labor is both one that's been you know a terrain of struggle ever since the origins of capitalism, but also one that's been shifting now that requires I think a reunderstanding of of what's useful uh in labor as a social relation to to sort of dig into as a way to get people to know each other and to you know sort of increase some level of uh social or political activity in there. And there's I don't think there's any easy answers but I think it's one that's you know that's certainly worth um discussing and I think hope hopefully sort of an angle that we can bring to heat wave and also that we're seeing with other really good print um outlets like long haul. Like I think they're doing a lot of that and you know whether it's like notes from below long haul's doing this stuff um kind of trying to bring this question of of labor activism from this other from this other angle in a way that I think is is exciting um but also not easy to resolve.

SPEAKER_04: 1:10:44

I think there was a uh in the in the question about the peasantry there's also this underlying question of like what does social reproduction look like and how and the peasantry was able to socially reproduce themselves without necessarily getting to capitalism they could but you know there was a way to sustain themselves. Not well not going to say it was a good life I mean this is coming you know my family was basically Mexican peasants until now so um but the like but but you know there was an outside there was a way they could organize there was these traditions of organizing outside of industrial labor and uh I think that you know and I see that in organized that type of organizing that type of moving around the world within my own family who are able to like keep these village ties together across borders and also in the way they're able to actually like get work for themselves through family connections uh like my father was the one was the first one to move into the US and he was able to get a job in construction and then got jobs and was working the same crew of people with the rest of with the entire family basically after they moved here and we've been able to keep that job working construction. It's shitty work I mean I fucking hate it but you know it is work and it's able to sustain itself and I mean that also is not that type of labor that type of day labor that's also I should say is also common here in the US you just don't see it that often unless you're like out in in meatpacking industries out in like dying towns which are being revitalized by uh by immigrants. My neighborhood yeah uh or you know and in or in like Amazon warehouses where it's you know extremely multicultural extremely global uh employment which is also you know poses a challenge for the traditional forms of labor organizing because oftentimes with in these communities they're very tied to their uh ethnic or national background uh but they do have an answer to the social reduction problem uh of like how do we stay connected in this alienated world I mean I'm not gonna say the values of that social production are necessarily good but you know it is one way and I think it's one way that I think it's one thing that's been often overlooked uh in just like how to be able to organize uh in this uh in this kind of like post-gig economy this like and then this like realization that the union at least in the United States in a traditional way just doesn't work I mean probably doesn't even work in Mexico but that's a different context that we're at right now but um yeah yeah I say this as a union guy and a rep but I I have also just come to the realizations that even if you look at the unions that have been successful in the last uh where most of the union growth is are where the union activity is right um union growth has been in TAs uh non-franchised service sector jobs like Starbucks and it created the illusion of a lot of movement um but it was an illusion but the those shops are tiny um they're different they're diffuse they're hard like you know I don't mean to be an asshole but like the world doesn't stop if Starbucks strikes people just go to the coffee house like um I don't know Americans love their treats fair enough I mean I but I know I think you go I I think you're making a fair point and it's also like this type of organizing I mean if we if people are able to kind of like tap into the networks into either the familial village or whatever networks of of migrants that have that they've done that they've made for themselves uh there is a way to like have slightly more impact I mean yeah if if nobody goes on the job for a couple days no one really uh in construction like no one really bats an eye but uh um but you know uh my family has stories of like people refusing to pay them or getting a street on a job and they just like smash the shit you know they they communally smash the shit up and then just kind of like demand payment and uh they're able to get protected because you know they have community networks to be able to like find new jobs if the motherfucker doesn't want to pay pay up or uh or also just you know oh like you can go to another town because you know this one person you know just like old union uh organization uh was like um you know the this type of organization doesn't necessarily have to come from union and it will come it will come about because people have to have some sort of like protection some sort of network of course the recipes are being lost in this new generation so it's say but I mean you know the masses are creative or whatever you know the masses learn in in the act of doing and in the act of working yeah yeah go ahead go ahead go ahead common no no uh I'll just just to add on that I think the there are lots of ways to see uh I think the more like formal unionism and also I also say this as someone uh heavily involved in in my own union but that like there are there can be like political dead ends to to this kind of work a lot of the time uh in the sense of it because you know the the trap is always that you get so invested in you know uh labor conditions as such that it becomes nearly impossible to see beyond a world where those conditions would be different.

SPEAKER_00: 1:16:43

And we're not just talking about improving XYZ thing but a complete change in the social relations that create an employer and an employee under those types of um uh you know in in that type of power structure. So of course it becomes it becomes really difficult to do that. But what I will say is that you know I think our I think you know one of our hopes with with doing this magazine and trying to get out these different perspectives is that we can do it in a way that could also potentially relate to people that are getting sort of engaged politically through whatever sort of small waves of unionization or unionism that we see you know whether it's in the United States or elsewhere. Because I think that that these are often the places in which people build really important skills that they would need to do other political projects. But the problem is always that it also creates a certain politics that feels like it kind of runs into these limits really quickly. So it gives you all of these skills but I think the downside is that it can give you a lack of political imagination. And so how is it can we um connect with people that have some of those skills of like oh if we needed to organize a demo or like if we need to to get 10 people together to do something, like who could do it? How do you know how to do it? How do you contact people? How do you talk with people one-on-one? Like all of those basic skills can be really valuable in tons of other contexts outside of just doing union stuff. And I think the like to the degree to which there is institutional support to like train people, I think that that's not something that we should bat an eye at, but something that we we want to sort of like uh take into consideration and be like, you know, not only how do we get people to think um through other uses of their locals or of their internationals when it comes to their unions, but also um you know can we can we talk to people and engage with people in a way that once they once they get frustrated with their union and once they get frustrated with that next contract that like you fight so hard over and get you know next to nothing for then maybe they start thinking about doing other things and they'll have those skills and you know theoretically if like those are the kind of people that you're like okay what are some other things you could sort of orient your energy toward and use all those skills that you built up um you know doing this kind of work.

SPEAKER_05: 1:19:03

I think you know one of the things I'm thinking a lot about these days um and and one of the things I think maybe you're talking about here that that makes me really uh I don't know a mixture of uh hopeful and pessimistic simultaneously is uh there are now a bunch of people talking about de skill uh de-skilled proletariat de-skilled labor um and are I would sometimes say are select are are so specialized labor that they're effectively de-skilled like you you know um and also the amount of alienation in general society we see because we are having I mean like we are kind of having a crisis in social reproduction. And I'm not just talking about the bourbon crisis I actually do think that like I know there's a lot of pronatalists in my orbit weirdly but um that that's gonna work itself out. But you're having a crisis of like getting people to care about a future at all and that's bigger than just having kids. And uh I I do think this is most severe in places like the United States and Europe but I don't think it's just there. And as a left I I I do think we we are we uh have to confront this pretty in a pretty uh uh nuanced way and and I I'll bring up why so you guys have been talking about like peasant structures and peasant social reproduction and you know um I agree with you one of the things I learned like hanging out in rural Mexico particularly in the South um doing the whole white guy tourist thing um uh is you said it not me but I agree yeah um I have no I was I was integrated into the Norse community yeah I was just I was just an observer in the South um uh I won't go into the ironies of how much of the Zapatista's uh income was from tourists but um nonetheless um uh you know doing that thing um I was actually keenly aware I became aware particularly in Mexico that under modern conditions a lot of what marks talked about in the 19th century had been reversed so when I when I when I saw and you know and and was invited in to kind of participate in and uh southern mexican village life uh I I would not want to live there but I promise you if I was if I was to choose between being dirt poor there are dirt poor in a post industrial ranchero in the north give me the village life like without a question and that's the opposite of what 19th and early 20th century socialists assumed right um we have to ask ourselves a question though because because the peasant way of life is not particularly viable and doesn't exist at scale anymore as we've been talking about um what does that say for socialization of the proletariat and one of the things is like as frustrated as I can sometimes get with communization theory and their riots of everything tendency that they're finally moving out of um uh I do think they have a point about uh what Matt Christman also has called the Pringles in the cam problem of the post-industrial proletariat uh which is like the post-industrial proletariat well you know uh he he says um Matt Christman says um and and for all of his social democratic sentences this is actually key insight um when Marx complained about the the French peasantry being potatoes in a sack he was not really seeing the fact that today the post-industrial service-based proletariat is basically Pringles in a can um okay which is like mass produced in process but still pretty alone um and so I uh I think that is a real problem and it's something we have to somehow come up with to deal with the union form was a way to deal with it I'm not totally willing to abandon the union form because it's the only it was like an actual working class institution kind of this still kind of sort of exists um but we have to go beyond that because it's just not it isn't sufficient for the moment whether what you know no matter what we want to believe. And you know even even if you think about like if you read the work of Kim Moody or um or Joe Burns or any of those people and you start thinking about the implications of why they focus so much on logic on logistics the fact that they have to focus on logistics means that something has fundamentally changed in in the organic composition of industrial production that you just don't need that many people so you it's hard to imagine a mass strike without finding enough scavs to fill it in whereas there you still for now at least need tons of people in logistics that's why trucking is one of the largest industries in the United States um uh but in and of itself there's a lot of like not admitting that that's a problem for socialist strategy and for unions as a strategy because one of the problems that you have with logistics unions is historically speaking they're the most reactionary unions um for a variety of material input reasons right like uh a trucker works alone their incentives are totally different like uh or they own their truck or they lease their truck they own or lease their truck right like um they're even when they're wage laborers they're like semi petit bourgeois um uh the other areas of of logistics have not been allowed to unionize in the same way uh that came back to a head during the Biden administration um and there's you know obvious reasons for that uh as they said in the 30s national security so so to me this indicates that there is a failed ability to think beyond that but you know having seen riots and participated in them I just don't have um uh Jasper Burns's are are the late Josh Clover's faith that that forces people into a long-term sustainable community um so you know uh I guess this is the heart this is the hardest problem but what do you guys look at as a way to answer this organizational problem that is primary because you know what everyone says they say the party but then you go okay but how do you get there and forget yeah I guess I'll I'll say in in defense of communization to a degree that like we could look at it less as like the right is the easy answer and more as where do we see uh proletarians going on the offensive and not just fighting more like defensive struggles through a union that's got a no strike clause um and we see that when people take to the streets uh in various ways and we also see uh where that tends to go um and we have to be real about that too um I guess you know like like you're saying that where the terrain is viable for rank and file union militancy go for it but the terrain is increasingly non-viable um for that and I I don't know I don't want to just be like because again it's an easy answer to say like well crises will as they multiply um subsistence struggles will uh have to eventually develop a horizon that looks beyond capitalism or just die.

SPEAKER_02: 1:27:28

I mean and that could just be it is right but um but I guess I don't see a place where like we feel like well read left can just sort of assert like here's what to do and put forward like an organizational form that's ready made for um for what lies ahead. But it's not maybe a good answer but it is a it's a very extremely difficult question.

SPEAKER_00: 1:27:57

So oh yeah I mean I I think and and maybe maybe in defense of of Jasper and Joshua a little bit like I think it's really like the the the riot for them was really like an essential component of what class struggle or or revolution would look like um and you know not the end all be all like it's not like like the riot that never ends and then everything is like somehow just like burned to the ground and then like there's some sort of like clean slate start over but but then and I think that this is something that that Phil Neal actually talks a little bit about in the theory of the party. I think one of his recent pieces um where like class struggle is probably going it like sort of has to be confrontational to a certain extent and those confrontations often uh will take this form and I think you know to that's you know one of the one of the a sort of a simplified version of of Joshua's riot strike riot is that like there's a there's a reason in this period today that those confrontations look like riots more than they look like strikes and that they look like strikes in a previous era because of certain compositions of the working class and of of course the the reflection of that is capital composition. And so you know I think like the the the degree to which class conflict looks more and more like a riot today the the question is not so much um like the riot is the only true expression um but that we'll likely see lots of various like class struggle look like that. And then the question is how do you engage with that? Participation is certainly one of the the many things that can the of like a way to engage with it. But I think the question that you're you're asking which is you know the a million dollar one is like well what happens next right and I think the you know if you know I'm not I'm not like the you know the most well read in the communization theory world but I think that line was always like well you just you kind of make it grow or like can like you know commun the communism is the immediate reproduction of life as communism without these sort of transitionary steps. And I think sometimes that vision makes it just seem so so simple and so easy like it feels like this clean answer. But I think actually trying to do that is really complex. And I think that one of the things that at least just personally that I've reflected on a lot is is more like what kinds of institutions can be created so that when like class antagonism and things like riots or otherwise take place, that people can relate to them and understand them beyond just the few days where like the riot actually is successful in the sense that the the group of people that can engage in that activity can hold the police off in order to do enough damage to basically like have It be a riot because it doesn't that portion can only last for so long. And even in countries where we've seen the sort of like the riot form depose the government, you're also then still in this, you know, we haven't seen them depose the government and the military. Like, so then there's the military, and you have to figure out how to navigate that. And so, you know, I think like the the only thing that I can think of, and this is, you know, part of why I'm invested in this magazine, is because it feels like there needs to be some way to get people to to not only uh think, have a different like sort of um theoretical relationship to to what class conflict looks like and how to not look at it as at this as this bad, scary thing, but something that's actually like pushing like the history of humans forward to a certain extent, but also how to have institutions that can support that kind of activity and support the efforts and energy that goes into those things without just assuming that like that type of antagonism in the form of a riot is going to continue forever. And so it's it can't just be raising awareness, it can't just be this like consciousness-raising activity, but it has to be something that has an institutional support behind it as well, because it needs that social reproductive component. And I think for some people that's the commune form or or something else. And you know, I'm that like sort of that makes sense to me too. But I I think that the sort of like the minimal, the sort of like the the whatever kind of like humble contribution that I feel like I could, you know, personally add would just be somehow blending the material and institutional um with some kind of like knowledge or reframing of what's taking place.

SPEAKER_02: 1:32:31

Yeah, a lot of a lot of my friends come from like a more like anarchist political background. And um I guess one of the things like so they're kind of an audience I have in mind, or people who I'm in dialogue with when I when I think about writing. And so um I guess to bring up another communization group, I mean the the TC concept of the glass floor is like pointing out like a huge limit that we see with riots is their inability to extend themselves into the realms of production and reproduction and to begin uh you know reproducing society in a in a different way. And and I'm not talking about like 2020 for I mean, I don't think that movement had the force to do something like that, but you could look at Egypt. I mean, you were I think you were there for the big one. Uh is that right? Like over a hundred police stations burned, people kind of taking the city, and we talk about um you know not breaking the armpower of the state. Um, but I guess what I'm trying to say is that there's movements that we've seen where the potential was there to begin um a radical reorientation of the production and social reproduction. Um but I don't think the will is there. I don't think I think a big problem with ultra-left is a tendency to project our politics onto participants in street movements. Um and uh I think I guess it's not just that people don't why don't they start communizing things? They don't want to. I mean, like that idea is just like alien to people, I think. So um yeah, sorry, I kind of rambled there.

SPEAKER_04: 1:34:30

No, no, that's fine. I mean, I I kind of wanted to talk about the ear. I mean, well, first our answer to the problem of organization is the magazine form, uh, which you can fill out on our Patreon. Uh no, no, no. Um, but um to talk about you earlier about like the de-skilling of contemporary labor. Like, I mean, I think that's a real issue, especially I don't know, seeing people that don't know that fruit goes on trees, uh, you know, you can just pick out, you know, like people don't know where food comes from, which to me is like a very like in you know, just unbelievable thing to like not know, but you know, this is the reality we live in. Uh, which I think, you know, this is why people kind of have these cottish core fantasies, because people kind of like think about these different ways of living where they can feel more, you know, they're more active in the construction of their daily life. Uh, of course, cottish core shit. I mean, you know, it has its own bucket of problems. You know, one that's you know, I I'm not really fond of farm work in general, as much as I love writing courses. I'm not, you know, I don't like farm work. And I like the amenities of modern society, like the internet. I like my anime.

SPEAKER_05: 1:35:45

Well, I mean, the thing about the cottage course, half of this uh like stuff you encounter on TikTok or YouTube anyway, which means they have even if they're farm setting, yeah, that they somehow have modern internet.

SPEAKER_04: 1:35:56

Well, exactly. Exactly. Not to mention just the you know, the gender dynamics uh that underlying uh underlying all of that, which is his own issue that we you know in social reproduction that we that we also should have to deal with. I mean, you know, uh not you know, not in the social justice, you know, guilty way, but you know, like a real we should always be critical of our own behavior, especially as it pertains to organizing, uh, which I mean, you know, we all have our faults and we all have to try better to be you know just better social creatures. Um but um but it but in that I mean we do have to uh uh we do have to try to kind of like I don't know, these type of organizations which kind of like bring a better dignity to daily life, like these, you know, these skills that we learn to speak better, to talk to people better, to you know, to just live a life to be like more intellectual, like the like uh work some or organizations in the past have done, you know, reading during the job, like have someone read pages out of like fucking capital during the job. Um, and I mean as much, you know, I'm a total pessimist, but uh as much as we want to give a positive vision of what to do and what to organize, part of that is by just trying to show by doing a better life, you know, uh a better life, a better way of doing things, like to show that like there is like the future doesn't have to be tied to what is what is happening right now, to what is to the now, I guess. Um and uh yeah, and we and we kind of and and a start to that could be the riot, which is like this the the riot as the start of something better, as the act first act of of destruction of of this life, of this world, uh and as the first creative act in building whatever you know we actually want to create, which I'm I'm pretty hesitant myself to just have a positive vision, just because coming from like a state in the deep south, people already have a hard time just wanting to like destroy a cop car for some reason, or just have to even say the desire that yeah, cops suck. Um, even in racialized uh populations, uh which you know I mostly live. I don't really, you know, unfortunately I have to interact with white people, but you know, luckily I live a life where I, you know, do live around people of color. But you know, there is like you know, this reactionary, you know. I mean in Sophie Lewis wrote an interesting piece about trad life uh influencers or whatever. And uh the example that she chose was like two was a person of color, like a couple from like living in the UK or some shit. But it was but like it was interesting that like, oh, these like were people of color that want to live this white life, and that's kind of like the reality in many parts of like a very diverse South that you know that people often forget, you know, in the diversity of the South, there's also a diversity in uh reactionary tendencies. Either they either you know latch onto the reactionary sides of our like homeland cultures with the diasporic cultures, or they like latch onto uh an assimilationist you know campaign. And these are like kind of like uh the currents that we're kind of like fighting against or trying to fight against and have to kind of like try to provide an alternative. I mean, I'm not necessarily saying heat wave will provide this alternative view, but at the very least, we'll have like some sort of like intellectual kind of like base to try to think of and promote like alternative. I mean, you know, that that's kind of like for the people who pick up the magazine, and when they're able to connect with other readers or other people in their own daily lives, uh, you know, maybe that's like a project you can do. I mean, you know, or something that you can do after you read the magazine and are in and maybe you know, you're inspired by these ideas and want to do something. You know, you don't necessarily have to join some existing organization. It'd be cool, I guess, depending on how cool your organizations are, but you know, these things don't necessarily have to have like come from what's already existing, you know. We are, you know, we are communists, we are collectivists or whatever, but you know, there's still a lot to be said for the individual and our own capacities as an individual to extend uh our collective power.

SPEAKER_02: 1:40:46

Oh, I think go ahead. I'll just throw in the I haven't read any of the drafts yet. I I think though that for heat wave number three, there's gonna be several articles. Um maybe kind of the focus of the issue will be on talking about organization and what that means today. Um yeah, and I'd also like uh like Chris had mentioned, I I plug um Phil's Theory of the Party essay that was just published, and I think half of it will be on ill will, and maybe a follow-up will be in Heat Wave or something like that. Um yeah, so some thought-provoking stuff.

SPEAKER_05: 1:41:26

Yeah, I think you know, um to be sympathetic to uh Jasper and uh Phil. I've had Phil on the show. I've uh I've never interacted with Jasper and well it's actually not true. Jasper and I have so have insulted each other on Facebook, um but but we um um uh uh but uh but I actually do like a lot of Jasper's writings. I will say that I feel like um for all that I think came down on Riot Strike Riot when it was pr when it was produced, I agree that the primary confrontation with both Capitol and the state right now is the riot because most other forms are closed off. Um and um I have been trying to think about what we do about that, except for hoping that some Hail Mary pass creates a party somehow, whether it's the sec form after its 15 millionth time finally becomes successful, or uh uh uh or um somehow we have a sleeper cell in the Democratic Party which blew it up and had it abolish the Senate and and the Supreme Court and the presidency overnight, and we are ruled by a unicameral legislature of which there are three parties, two of which are left parties, which broke from the Democratic Party long as Paul Schmidt route.

SPEAKER_02: 1:43:04

Is that the is that the mug dream?

SPEAKER_05: 1:43:07

Um I I don't know the mug dream. They want a new constitution. I mean, um uh the the mug dream seems to be we don't split from the democratic party that we just preemptively leave it and then we fight for a constitution. And on the yeah, the constitution is a limitation to socialist practice, it's even a libertation at this point to liberal praxis. Um I agree with them. I don't know how you do that.

SPEAKER_02: 1:43:35

Uh I mean, I feel like we're we're almost past the point where that matters when the Supreme Court is um partisan to such a degree that the Constitution is sort of, you know, it's just something that's there.

SPEAKER_05: 1:43:50

I was about to say, like, I uh the the last month has indicated to me that everybody who said they were defending the constitution don't know doesn't know what's in it or is just lying, and the constitution is not really in play anymore.

SPEAKER_04: 1:44:03

See, but they make sure to have a copy of their constitution on their Leto, that's either heart in that pocket or whatever.

SPEAKER_03: 1:44:09

Oh yeah, or under asked.

SPEAKER_05: 1:44:12

Yeah, in case in case I don't know, they get shot and it's got Kevlar in it or something. I don't know. Um the the uh it's interesting where we're at because I I the one thing I can say about the United States right now is that every side of US society believes it's in crisis. Like seriously, including the dominant winning one. You know, that's how they're justifying what they're doing. And uh and yet I would also say the dominant political imagination is nothing ever changes. It's not even like you know, Mark Fisher's capitalist realism, it's something you know, even more fatalistic than that. Um and I I include leftists in that. Now Bruno, I am also a super pessimist, as you probably know if you've listened to the show. But um I have been really thinking about what that means because it seems to me that stuff is actually happening, and I'm hearing people say nothing ever happens of all stripes. It's you know, like ultra-leftist, Marxist, Leninist, liberals, conservatives, super reactionaries who beat off to pictures of the Habsburgs, like they're all kind of thing, the same thing.

SPEAKER_04: 1:45:37

So I mean, stuff stuff always happens. The thing is, I always have to go to work the next day. That's true. That I that to me, this is how I solve the Hegeli contradiction. This is how your diabetics, you know, is this how I solve the problem of like nothing ever happens, but you know, it's always happening.

SPEAKER_02: 1:45:56

You know, like I've gone to work um on days where the wildfire smoke was so bad that we used to look around at the coworkers and be like, are we really just still doing this? Um in the Pacific Northwest. And meanwhile, my family chat, people in the southeast talking about like they're tallying how many houses are falling into the ocean right now in North Carolina. Um, and yet, like Bruno said, uh, back to work.

SPEAKER_05: 1:46:24

So suburbs are literally falling off mountainsides here. Seriously. Go ahead, Bruno.

SPEAKER_04: 1:46:32

Like, yeah, and we're well, we're building the replacements out here where we're from. So but you know, I mean, this is kind of like the attitude that I just grew up in uh for my parents. My parents were not political. I I'm not I'm like a first generation leftist or whatever what I call it, ultra-leftist or whatever.

SPEAKER_05: 1:46:50

I'm a first-generation leftist at all, so I feel you.

SPEAKER_04: 1:46:53

First generation anarchist. But um uh but this is like the primary mode of operandi uh in terms of political like upbringing that you know, my parents is like, you know, we grew up as peasants, and you know, whatever happened up there in the Palace of Power, we always got the short in the skin, and our lives just got, you know, we just have to keep working, you have to keep going to the fields, you have to keep looking for work, you know, whatever. Uh, and you know, this is like in the mountains of Chihuahua and the mountains of Coila. Uh and you know, generally it kind of like it breeds a cynism, but it also breeds a own, like I at least in the case of my family, it breeds like a self-reliance uh that I think has been very important in the way that I go around things and I like interact with people and a perspective that just seems to like not gel as well as other uh uh people, but you know, at least with certain respect, I guess, because you know, you know how to do shit at the very least. You know, at least I can ride a horse and also build a house, you know, which is more than a lot of people can say. And I can read in multiple languages, and I'm also constantly trying to learn. Like I'm hedging my bets with the rise of China because I'm learning Mandarin right now. Uh but yeah, but I mean, I think, you know, I I think this I guess this is to say that I am sympathetic and I think there is kind of like a sense of logic to this nothing ever happens mentality. Um, it's just then we have, you know, the question is okay, nothing ever happens now. What? You know, we want stuff to happen. How do we make stuff happen, even if we still have to go to work the next day? Um I guess the question is, I guess, how do we make it so we don't have to work the next day so you can do something else? Or do something else that we want to do? Because there are definitely other things we can do uh and not go to work next day, but it's still gonna suck.

SPEAKER_05: 1:48:42

I was gonna say you could you could be conscripted, that that's generally uh not going to work next day. Um but um yeah, I mean I I I will also say like to to to back up your point, when I was in when I was both in Mexico and in in uh in Egypt, um you you you'd be surprised how much of like quotidian life, including going to work the next day, continued when the government completely failed. Like it wasn't just like um you know uh weird government changes. It's like no, no, literally there's no water in the pipes today, you know, and yet things kind of go on. Um and I guess my thing is sometimes that isn't always true. And I think in the I I also think maybe there's a difference between the uh what you're describing as you know, nothing ever happens, uh, for people who've like lived in rough significance, you just get up and go to work the next day, and then people who say nothing ever happens and they're students. Um true.

SPEAKER_04: 1:49:59

Uh certain poverty too soon in life, so might say.

SPEAKER_05: 1:50:04

Um where I'm just like, you know, I I kind of get it if you're if you if the life goes on, because as I've told people, even in like dire civil wars where like five to ten percent of the population is dying, for for 70% of that population, life is still going on. Like, until it's not. I mean, you know, basically, until it's right at your doorstep. And um I I I I think we've been hurt by imaginaries that are uh either quotidian or apocalyptic. So the the I mean, you know, you would think the apocalyptic the apocalyptic would breed political imagination, and one time I thought it did, but I've now decided it kind of doesn't.

SPEAKER_04: 1:50:54

Um I mean, wasn't the rapture supposed to happen last week or something?

SPEAKER_05: 1:50:58

Yeah, last week again. I I as a southern, um uh as a southerner, um, I'm from the southeast United States myself. I grew up in Georgia. Uh, do you know how many rapture predictions I've lived through? At least 15. Probably to say 12. Yeah, at least 15. It was an entire industry when I was a kid.

SPEAKER_02: 1:51:21

So yeah, I I want to be the guy who who repaints or re-decals the rapture van, like the one with the billboard on the side, um to get it ready for the next one. That's a cool job.

SPEAKER_04: 1:51:33

I mean, isn't that just uh this is the the poster that um that Heat Wave has that's like I want to believe, but it's in the tendency for a rate of profit to fall. It's like, oh the crash will happen sometime. That's our millenarianism.

SPEAKER_05: 1:51:49

Yeah, uh yes. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_02: 1:51:53

Well, this is like kind of apocalyptic, but in terms of nothing ever changes versus things change. I mean we have, I guess, lived through the end of the Holocene epoch and are now entering something new. And and there's an argument in anthropology that it wasn't just agriculture per se, but it was the stable climate of the Holocene which made um persistent inequality class society possible in the first place. Um so I guess it's an interesting question to ponder is that if we're moving out of the kind of climactic stability that made civilization or class society even possible, uh what does that mean? And and what ideas and forms are adequate to I mean it's almost like beyond thinking.

SPEAKER_05: 1:52:49

Um I have the backup of warlordism if all else fails.

SPEAKER_04: 1:52:53

So like I hope it's an end to the uh indigenous apocalypse that we live through right now. So for sure.

SPEAKER_05: 1:53:02

Yeah, that would be great. Um uh in my warlord band, uh, all are welcome, particularly indigenous people who know how to deal with natural food waste. Um don't don't typecast indigenous people like that, yeah. Um man, uh white people and magical thinking about brown people is actually one of the weirdest phenomenons I think I've ever seen. But anyway, that's not relevant to today, but really not, really um uh it's it's it is something that I constantly think about when I talk about like when I talk about when I do my anthropology shows, I'm like, who's gonna take this away and go like, oh, so the two percent of the population that's left is gonna magically save the entire planet? Because I do meet people who will I mean I argued with a with a leftist from the nether uh American expat in the Netherlands about like he's like, Well, if we spoke indigenous languages, there would be no wars, and I was like, What the fuck are you talking about?

SPEAKER_02: 1:54:09

Yeah, like if that was the only change.

SPEAKER_05: 1:54:14

Well, I the the the the idea is that the the structural changes of language would force changes about the conceptual times that would force other changes, but I'm just like that's I'm I'm just like a that cipher warfism on uh some uh some deep crack and b DMT um and B like Do you not think indigenous people had wars? Are had like our class societies? I mean a lot of like never mind. I mean it was just like what what kind of weird flattening out of the past have you done?

SPEAKER_02: 1:54:50

Um but it's another easy answer though to imagine, and that's what's captivating, I guess.

SPEAKER_05: 1:54:59

Well, it's an easy answer, and I think it comes from a place of like partial realization of guilt, because you know, European capitalism and the fact that that space is white has uh although that might change, um you do have to deal with that somehow, you know. Um uh if it's that or the angel of history is gonna make everything okay or whatever. Like, I mean, there are people that embrace the uh the colonialism in America.

SPEAKER_04: 1:55:33

Well, that's true right now.

SPEAKER_05: 1:55:35

I mean, that that is a way to deal with the cognitive dissonance, is just to go back and say it was good. I mean, you know, it's like okay, well, we'll just we should do more of that, even.

SPEAKER_02: 1:55:44

Um well, the other thing about that that language, if we all just everyone just started speaking a different language. I mean, first of all, it's not very easy to learn a lot of languages. Um, but but second, like any kind of political imaginary that just starts with if we all just suddenly started doing things totally different, is not rooted in, you know, we have to have politics that are rooted in the struggles and and lived experience of people today and that that flow from that. And uh, you know, it's like and and also the the sort of tendencies of capital that dominate us. I was just listening to an interview on some other podcast. I don't want to name it or whatever, but but it was an eco-socialist basically saying, like, oh, we just we all basically are gonna do co-ops. I mean, and this was an idea from like the 70s. We're gonna have these federations of co-ops, and they're slowly gonna spread and expand, and it's gonna build a world alternative to capital.

SPEAKER_04: 1:56:51

And I'm just like, I don't know, come on, like in capital, um pure idealism, yeah, right, exactly.

SPEAKER_05: 1:57:01

And uh you know, it has been tried, it was called national syndicalism, and I can tell you where it ended up. Um like um yeah, you know, they were part of the fascist coalition, um, so which is not to say that any of this inevitably leads to anything. I you know, I actually don't believe in that ideological genealogy critique either. Um, but uh it is fascinating to me. Uh I guess you're right. That we a lot of what the left has to deal with today uh um is the fact that we really want easy answers um that are immediately sellable, also because there's this weird belief that somehow popularity dictates the future, which is a very strange understanding of how politics works, because I literally don't think that's ever been true.

SPEAKER_04: 1:57:55

That's a very democratic understanding of history, right?

SPEAKER_02: 1:57:59

Um and democratic in the stupidest sense, like this is I thought about this when I read Vincent Bevan's book because he was basically saying that like a more Leninist party would have been the answer to like the struggles of the past decades. And uh to me, the more interesting question, even if that was true, is in all of these countries all around the world, those parties do exist and they're extremely unpopular. And so, why is that? I mean, and his answer is just Hollywood ideology, um, which is I don't I don't think I don't think an adequate answer to that.

SPEAKER_05: 1:58:41

I mean I read that book and I was actually vastly disappointed by it because um he makes a lot of good critiques of like uh left-wing journalism and like uh horizontalism and this and the other, but then his answer is and he I also say he doesn't actually even come out and say, I will I would want a Marxist-Leninist party to run this, but I just have to, you know, has to say, like, one, those parties exist. Two, why did you think anyone turned to horizontalism in the first place? Like, like, why did that become a it's Hollywood ideology, it's the ideology of elite. Uh at one time Marxist layernism was an ideology of elites in in liberal circles. It was in during the popular front period. Um, and it remained so in the developing world, I mean, in some places even now, and yet it also didn't produce what he wanted it to produce. Uh, and I'm just like, are you just mad at the hippies you had to deal with in college because this feels like and then you saw screw up things in Brazil?

SPEAKER_04: 1:59:48

Um I mean, look, I do find hippies annoying, so I can agree with him on that one. Can't blame him on that one.

SPEAKER_05: 1:59:57

I mean, there there's there's a lot of there's a lot of left discourse that seems populist that if you break it down, it's like, oh no, you're mad at the people that you work with who are more like you. You don't know much. I mean, like, Bevins at least did the work the footwork as a journalist to talk about some of these areas. I'll give him the credit for that. Um, but like, you know, one of the reasons why I just don't care about the PMC versus anti-PMC debates is I'm like, this is all led by professors who are just mad about which elite is dominating everything. And you just had a stark reminder that the center actually does not run the world.

SPEAKER_04: 2:00:31

I mean, yeah, I mean, I think this is like with heat wave. It's like we're not trying to kind of like sell the masses as as an answer. We're trying to kind of like um find the like nuances within the masses or within the people, within our world to kind of like find where. Like the fault lines are to find where uh like our moments of rupture can be done, or where moments of ruptures have happened, and you know what can we learn from that? Uh you know, there's a lot to be learned from where people gather and what where people where lots of people do the same thing, but that doesn't mean that that's an answer, or like just because a lot of people are doing something doesn't mean that's like the direction we should take. You know, we should always be self-reflective about this. Some may call it you know self-critic, self-critical self-critique, but you know, we're also not Maoists, so we're not gonna call it that.

SPEAKER_05: 2:01:23

Yeah, yeah. I don't know. Maybe you should culturally appropriate auto-critique. Um uh no, I I uh it's called recuperation. The situation in sense, the recuperation of autocritique. Um, so I I really enjoyed this conversation, and I think people should check out your work. I'm gonna be covering more of your articles. I have actually like three or four in my hopper to cover on radical engagements, but I also have like hundreds of articles to cover. So, but I do plan on doing more of them. Um, because I do think we need some interventions right now. Um, I I think the left isn't a particularly bad rut um at the moment, uh, whatever it is, whatever the left is. Um and uh I do sort of feel like we sort of wasted a decade. So um, but maybe we haven't. It's always hard to call that. You always feel that way when you're going through it, and then you know, you look back uh 10 years, and maybe like seeds that have been sown as early as last year and as far back as the 70s finally come to fruition. It's hard to say, honestly. Um uh, but uh it does seem like uh I don't know. I I I wonder what it's gonna mean now that now that people have been disillusioned with Bernieism and now Corbinism because your party has gone kind of uh belly up very quickly.

SPEAKER_02: 2:03:00

Um almost almost bizarre how they instantly botched that. I don't understand, but yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 2:03:05

I was like, man, that's not even competent for that. Like um that like you make George Galloway seem competent, that's impressive. Um, but yeah, I don't know. And so maybe this is a moment for reflection. Uh, but a lot of what I have seen come out of this time period, which I think deals with what you're addressing, but in the worst way, is weird hybrid ideologies. You know, I mean, the most obvious one and weirdest one is like MAGA communism, but there's tons of them. I mean, like, how many weird forms of anarchism have come out of college dorms lately?

SPEAKER_04: 2:03:38

Um I mean, I mean, way back too. I remember in 2016, you know, 2013, 2012. Um, I mean, I mean, this is also I think just an effect of the isolation, social isolation isolation in general, that an alienation that we we're experiencing, where the internet is like the main form of communication and information gathering. So this kind of like schizophrenia in the fucking uh Delusian, you know, or the Guatari sense, Delusian Guatari sense is like the dominant form of like idea making instead of like an active engagement with uh the world like social world in a physical sense, in a physical presence where people actually have to like where people actually get the shit be out of them for saying the wrong shit.

SPEAKER_02: 2:04:30

Yeah, yeah, I think that's good to bring it back to and point out the the conditions that kind of produce this and social media, especially where you like you're incentivized to uh say extreme or odd things and uh and to almost identify yourself through like an increasingly niche uh set of uh genres basically that we call political tendencies.

SPEAKER_01: 2:04:57

But yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 2:04:59

So yeah, thank you for having us on. Yeah, thank you for coming on. Where can people uh find your work work?

SPEAKER_02: 2:05:08

Um we are on I think pretty much all the all the social media platforms, and then our website, let me make sure I don't say it wrong, is heatwavemag.info. Um I also would like to encourage people to to consider submitting um or or dialoguing with us. Um you know, even if and maybe even especially if you don't consider yourself like uh ultra-left or or whatever, um we're interested in uh conversation and uh dialogue and uh and uh I guess pieces that uh like submissions that don't necessarily adhere to like any standard um line. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 2:05:58

Yeah, and uh you can subscribe on our Patreon for uh physical copies of magazines once they release. We're aiming for a quarterly schedule in terms of release date, but um I don't think that'll change. But the schedule is just we're we're like having printer uh scheduling stuff. Um and if you want a physical, if you want a physical issue of the first uh issue of the magazine, then go to haters shop.haters.life for a copy of the first issue. They are running low, so if you're thinking about buying one, do it sooner rather than later, because the uh we're kind of running out of the physical issues. Um and uh yeah, yeah. And if you subscribe to the Patreon, you also get access to the Discord server. So if you want to uh for whatever reason talk to people, talk to other heat wavers who are also too online, you know, that's another perk you get for subscribing.

SPEAKER_02: 2:06:59

Right. And I think uh I think uhy from Antifada and another comrade want to start a an online reading group uh for heat wave related stuff on our Discord. So if you get on there, you can participate in that whenever that gets going.

SPEAKER_04: 2:07:16

You too can be part of yet another reading group. This is the main form I socialize outside of the reading group.

SPEAKER_02: 2:07:25

Yeah. Um Chris, do you do you want to add anything?

SPEAKER_00: 2:07:30

Uh no, I think we covered it. Um we got the Patreon, we got the Discord, we got the website, the physical magazine. Um yeah, thanks for thanks for having us on, Barn. It's been uh it's been great chatting, and um I'm I'm a fan of the the work that you're putting out. I really like the intro to this podcast too. Just like combining everything through the the matrix eye. Um, so I like the I like the like universal synthetic approach you've got going.

SPEAKER_05: 2:07:59

Yeah, thank you. A lot of people got missed my old intro, which would likely get me removed from YouTube and hassled by ice now. But um uh sometimes it's gotta be out there.

SPEAKER_04: 2:08:14

Come on, depends free speech.

SPEAKER_05: 2:08:17

It's really it is really easy to get removed from YouTube these days. I was on Cosmonaut magazine and they had someone dancing with a Kalasnikov from a classic uh uh Russian um play uh from the Soviet era, and that got them banned for promotion of violence.

SPEAKER_01: 2:08:37

God damn, I didn't know it was that bad now.

SPEAKER_05: 2:08:39

It's that bad now.

SPEAKER_04: 2:08:41

Um see see here, I grew up with like videos of cartel killings, yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 2:08:47

Yeah, well, I mean, also they didn't do shit about Charlie Kirk getting blown up on every social media platform, but anyway.

SPEAKER_02: 2:08:53

Um that note, just thank you so go ahead, go ahead, say what you're gonna say. Yeah, I just want to say thanks to echoing everyone else. Thanks for having us. And uh I've listened to your show a lot and actually like a subscriber, and so it's almost bizarre to um to actually be on the show now, but uh yeah, yeah, it happens.

SPEAKER_05: 2:09:13

You never know with me. I I'll interview anybody I find interesting because I because I kind of don't care about I I I just don't care about all this matrix you're supposed to care about in this. I'm like smart people will find it, and if they don't, then uh I obviously screwed up.

SPEAKER_03: 2:09:29

Like that's right.

SPEAKER_05: 2:09:32

Um all right, thank you so much. Cool, yeah. Thanks. Take care. Take care.

SPEAKER_00: 2:09:37

Thank you.

SPEAKER_05: 2:09:39

Oh, yeah, and listeners, I'll put the information about the magazine in the show notes. Bye bye.