Episode 275 has as guest Emma River-Roberts to discuss class structure, habits, hierarchy, and possibilities inside the Degrowth movement and really pretty much all movements on the left. Why are working class people largely absent in ecological organizations and when present what do they encounter? For that matter why is discussion of such class issues largely absent and when present largely defensive and tortured. And, of course, what is to be done?
Episode 275 has as guest Emma River-Roberts to discuss class structure, habits, hierarchy, and possibilities inside the Degrowth movement and really pretty much all movements on the left. Why are working class people largely absent in ecological organizations and when present what do they encounter? For that matter why is discussion of such class issues largely absent and when present largely defensive and tortured. And, of course, what is to be done?
Hello, my name is Michael Albert and I am the host of the podcast that's titled Revolution Z. I hope you'll take a moment to visit our Patreon page at patreoncom slash revolutionz or our archive page on znetworkorg, as ZNET is our sponsoring organization, where you can access all past episodes and learn how to get automatic delivery. This is our 275th consecutive episode and in a way, it is an extension of our 273rd. That one was built around an essay titled Degrowth has a Class Problem, whose author was Emma River Roberts. This episode is called Degrowth's and Our Class Problem, and I am very happy to have as guest to discuss it Emma River Roberts. Emma is the founder of the international grassroots organization, the Working Class Climate Alliance. Her work is centered around raising awareness about working class forms of environmentalism, as well as strategies for movement building across various factions within the left. She is an affiliate of the Post-Growth Institute. So, emma, welcome to Revolution Z.
Emma:Thank you for inviting me.
Michael:It's my pleasure To start. Could you tell us why you wrote the essay I featured in the podcast a couple of weeks ago? Degrowth has a class problem. Why a class problem? What classes are involved? And well, what is the problem?
Emma:Yeah, and I'm surprised you liked it because I was really pissed off when I wrote it. So I'm glad it made sense. No, it did. So it comes out of this continued silence from so many people within the movement. But there's a lot of people interested in class but they just don't have that visibility. You know, in the scholarship, on the panels, in the articles, all of these things, and it's missing um. When you actually go into the literature, into working class and d growth, it's virtually non-existent um. So I think it was just more, I think, to raise the, the point that you know, not even, I guess, to make a um sort of a long argument in it, just to say like, where are they?
Michael:Well, okay, so how do workers, including of course, yourself, regard what you in the article called the PMC or professional managerial class, professional managerial class or what I call coordinator class folks, and vice versa? How do you think they regard you and other workers?
Emma:What's the interface like? So I mean, there's loads of cases where they do really get on, but when we look at things overall, the state of relations in their totality, it's not so great. And more often than not, workers view the PMC with a great deal of suspicion because they anticipate that they'll be mistreated, spoken down to being told that they're stupid for not being familiar with certain language that's used, concepts or not having read certain books, and that's a concern that's especially acute within leftist movements. You know, when people go really deeply into all of these theories and use language that's actually quite academic and exclusionary and that's not completely unfounded, because people have actually said in reading groups I don't quite understand what this means, and they've been actually told well, why don't you know what this means? Or they've asked a question and they've been told it's too simplistic. So it's very, you know, exclusionary. To the extent where they just anticipate it time and time again and where the PMC have been able to use their power and influence to alienate the working class in so many ways. This resistance has emerged in the form of oppositional values as a way for them to reclaim their own power, dignity and respect.
Emma:So pmc individuals tend to be painted um universally as devoid of empathy for their struggles, um as being completely out of touch with what's like, what life is like for those who aren't privileged. Um, and especially when it comes to those in leftist movements, you know, who seek a socio-ecological transformation, and they're seen as virtue signalers. Um, and it's fair to say, this is kind of justified when it comes to this utopianized form of class struggle that a lot of people within the degrowth movement still perpetuate. So when they, they do acknowledge it. Well, it's a struggle between the world's population and the elites. And if you talk about class tensions between workers in the PMC or workers in the middle class, whatever sort of terminology you want to use, they say well, no, that's divisive, we shouldn't be talking about this, but it's their history. So there's no consideration to what I suppose I'd call real, existing class politics.
Michael:Can you perhaps give some of what working class men and women encounter from degrowth within meetings or sessions or whatever, or for any other movement that yields their views of academics, PMC coordinator class members, and why do they often feel distant enough from such movements that they're not in them to the extent that you would anticipate? Is there any way to try and get a finger, get a grip on that?
Emma:Yeah, I mean, in a lot of cases I think the most visible degrowth efforts have very much been, I guess, a build it and they'll come mentality. Where they hold these conferences or in their groups they have these, you know, reading groups anyone can turn up to. But when you don't see people like you in a given movement and considering that degrowth in the global north at least have so few working class people in it, they go. Well, it's not for people like us and it goes beyond just class. Here it's also very much to do with race. It's very, very white and people don't feel represented, you know, and that's difficult, and there are people trying to, I guess, to reach out to them.
Emma:But I think, because I guess we're almost like stuck in this position at the moment, like they don't see themselves in the movement, so how do you get them in? So they feel excluded, um, as if they're not sort of listened to or acknowledged, and I think of a lot of the things that sort of they perpetuate, I guess are supposedly quite abstract. I don't know if you're familiar with nautopias. You know this idea of creating this alternative, you know um way of living and they say, well, that is so abstract for us. You know, we can't even put food on the table, so they feel as if, yes, while some of their arguments are very good, the things that they're putting out are just not relevant to them. And yes, we can talk about democratic planning, for example, that affects us all, but again, it's so abstract people can't really kind of see what the point is.
Michael:I wonder whether how you'd feel about this characterization let's call it, to make it a little more bold. Could it be the case, or does it feel like people with these attributes background etc regard working people as dumb or ignorant or time-consuming and the like, and that, in reverse, working people regard the people with these PMC coordinator class type attributes as arrogant, privileged and also maybe a bit full of it? Are those possible? You?
Emma:know that there's in terms how the working class view them actually. Well, not full of it, but full of shit. I've heard a lot of times and I think, this, this belief that they're very arrogant, overly privileged people, especially when you look at their backgrounds and you know they've gone to very prestigious universities, and it's quite like uh, almost a defensive mechanism, people saying who are you to tell me how to live my life? Considering that.
Emma:I've never even been on a plane. I wouldn't be able to say that the degrowth movement sees them as dumb, because I don't know a lot of them. I hope they don't. Mainstream environmentalism when it gets things like extinction rebellion yes. Mainstream environmentalism when it gets things like Extinction Rebellion yes. I've seen that in process, but I've never come across being framed as dumb.
Michael:The term that you use is PMC and that arose you're probably aware of this, but maybe not one detail it arose from Barbara and John Ehrenreich in an essay they did. That was back when I was working at a publishing house called South End Press and the thing burst into visibility I think it's fair to say via a book called Between Labor and Capital that it was an essay in and the book was a debate. It was meant to be what's called a controversy series book. I know this because I typeset it. I mean, I was working on it at the time.
Michael:So the thing was that Barbara and John wrote the essay and they thought they were making an important contribution toward seeing how people are regarding one another and what's going on between these two groups, which weren't totally clearly defined. They were shocked when the essays came in and a number of them, the ones that we didn't. I mean we had essays that we went and got, not from famous people but from people who saw things like Barbara and John, famous people, but from people who saw things like Barbara and John, myself and some others. But the essays from the famous folks, all intellectuals, all in the universities were very hostile, very aggressive.
Michael:Barbara was really shocked by it and it suggested I mean, it certainly shouldn't be the case Person one, person two, person one literally knows more about some area than person two. That shouldn't cause any great problem other than wanting to communicate and exchange information, but for some reason it does. For some reason oftentimes you might say on both sides, but I don't think it's even at all On the side of the ones who think they know a whole lot more. It comes out in a fashion that's not real conducive to communicating. Who encounter that attributed to bad genes or bad upbringing or something like that, or to something more like a class difference.
Emma:Um, I'd say a bit of both, because when people sort of come across this sort of hostile rejection, like sort of you guys did earlier, that time ago, they're like, well, they, they don't know anything, they're not grounded in the real world, their class privilege shields them from this. And, as some people have pointed out, these people who can sort of entrench class inequalities are not even always aware. For some people it's also egos as well, because they say, well, these people want to remain powerful, they don't want to, you know, sort of confront their own class positionalities. And, yeah, some people think they know more and people don't like sort of being told by those sort of below them that they're wrong. It's yeah.
Michael:Well, they do know more about some things, so for example they know more about what's in particular books and what page it's on and how to quote it, so they definitely know more about that. It isn't obvious what that's worth, but they do know more about it. What kinds of changes Suppose that the entire degrowth movement because that was the title of the article, but the entire any movement on the left, because it is quite prevalent was listening to you and said okay, what should be done to create an environment which is more conducive not just to working people, participating, being present, but leading, you know, playing an active role, participating fully. What would need to happen, do you think?
Emma:Well, I don't think it's ever going to happen organically, um, just just on the basis that people have been trying to say this for decades and it's just falling on deaf ears and you're effectively trying to appeal to these people to change. So what I think right now is the best thing that people can do, and it's something that myself and several other people and it's growing um are starting to do together. Um is we're just gonna effectively start by talking about it because we are at square one. Um, just to try and get people to acknowledge and recognize. It is a struggle, so we just need to start making noise and awareness about how class is experienced by different people in different parts of the world, especially when it comes to race, gender, disability.
Emma:Well, how does that affect how somebody is marginalized by the PMC?
Emma:However and I think a fair few people would be a little bit pissed at me saying this, but I would consider it to be, I guess, a resistance within the movement itself, because we're effectively resisting against people who have willingly abdicated their responsibilities to address real, existing class politics, who refuse to make way for other perspectives and lived realities to even be acknowledged, let alone heard, sort of alongside them and where it's gone sort of from this, I suppose, ask it's no longer an ask, we're demanding it. So I guess it's a form of defiance and resistance, but it's a transient one, I would say, because once you sort of identify these needs and this awareness, that's when people's ears start to prick up and they say, oh okay, what can we do? Because I can't not myself or anyone else can sort of sit there and, I guess, offer all these solutions because it has to come from the workers, because I suppose myself I'm in actually quite a privileged position where I'm no longer working blue-collar jobs and my relationship with a lot of people in the degrowth movement is personal.
Michael:I wonder what you think of what we took back, I guess 50 years ago, when the Iron Rags ran the article and when discussions started, when Rikes ran the article and when, you know, discussion started. What we took from it went beyond I don't know what word to use, but it very much paid attention to the feelings of the different groups and their sort of modes of interacting, but it also asked for all right, if we're going to call this a class. If, if somebody asked what do we have to do in the movement to not be elevating owners inside the movement and that wasn't irrelevant then so, for instance, elevating there's no owner of the movement but there are fundraisers and there are donors, but there are fundraisers and there are donors. And so if we're going to do something inside our movement, efforts to not elevate them and subordinate everybody else, we would have said I think most people would have said well, we shouldn't have ownership, we shouldn't have people who have the purse strings and thereby can control the meetings and so on. And we began to feel like, what do these PMC or coordinator class folks have? What is it that they actually have that the working class folks coming in don't have? Now, the coordinator class folks or the PMC would say we have knowledge, we have intelligence, we're just better equipped. Of course we're making the decisions that makes the economy, that give them confidence, skills that are relevant to decision-making, and information relevant to decision-making.
Michael:And the working people in their situation whether it's in a factory or it's in the movement or it's in the movement have positions that do the opposite, that cause them to be not as prepared, not even as inclined, to participate in decision-making. And then if you put on top of that that the knowledge and the information is dolled up in academic language that nobody can understand without going to some elite school for four years or eight years, you can see a real barrier. So we thought maybe we have to change something about the way the movements are structured, just like we have to change something about the way the economy is structured. In addition to saying, well, okay, you have to start acting like a human and interrelating equitably and respectfully. In addition to that, we had to do something about some people are in.
Michael:Well, we were in a publishing house. Some people are packing up the books and some people are doing the editing and similarly, throughout the array of tasks, some people are doing ones that elevate them and empower them, and some people are doing ones that exhaust them and, you know, take away their confidence. Well, when those kinds of views were made, you can imagine the response from the people who were running the organizations. It wasn't very favorable, and I think that's probably what you're running into also.
Emma:I'm wondering does that you know?
Michael:does that resonate at all?
Emma:Yeah, oh, yeah. Yeah, it's not gone down well, I think in certain circles, but at the end of the day, if it was just myself saying this, then that would be reason to reflect. Am I being belligerent or am I seeing things in a different way? But you know, having been contacted by many working class people, many middle class people or PMC people from the global south saying, well, actually, yes, um, this is how we see it as well, then I'm like, well, okay, well, let's go. But I think in this case it's kind of inevitable and, at the risk of sounding, I guess, a little bit belligerent, I've gone past the point A little bit what Sorry.
Michael:A little bit A bit belligerent. A bit of a dig, a belligerent. Oh yeah, you're not going to sound too belligerent to me, but go ahead.
Emma:I am no longer interested in trying to appeal to certain people who have already been confronted with this kind of crap for years and they're just going no, no, so we'll create our own space over here. If you're going to lose your shit over there, good for you. We don't care, because I think that some people are just gonna throw up their toys out of the pram. They what? What you say, especially in academia? Um, have you ever tried to tell a professor what to do? Um, they don't like it. You know there's big egos and, yeah, it's the. I think there is an element of that as well no-transcript.
Michael:They don't travel in the same circles and they don't have mutual respect. I mean, is it that bad or is it not that bad?
Emma:It is fair to say that academics, but from the global north, dominate the movement and its trajectory. I think it was fairly recently the Feminisms and Degrowth Alliance wrote an article and in it they asked how has one strand of degrowth become a proxy for a much broader whole? Because most, when you say degrowth to most people, they think eurocentric, white, middle class or pmc, you know, academic. So I personally feel that it has dominated discussions because when you actually look at the panels and the blogs and the books and all the things that they have access to, why are there no people, no working class people there? You know people who have never even been to a conference before.
Emma:But if you want to talk about the benefits of a universal basic income, which they advocate for, why not get someone on the fucking panel? You know it's not rocket science and yeah, and in terms of like, where workers stand in it, the working class people that I know deliberately shy away from all of that because they're just like. These aren't spaces for people like us. Um, we're not going to get into another sort of battle with another group of people, but it comes down to values as well and to them they see it as exclusionary and they see it as willingly exclusionary because these people can control who's sort of seen by others and they say that's just not how we are. Everyone's the same. Everyone should have an equal say.
Michael:Could it be the case that the let's call it a monopoly on empowering situations and on what appears to reflect that? So knowledge, skills, confidence, etc, etc. Is made to seem inaccessible, is made to seem, is actually made forget seem, is made overly complicated, overly dependent on words and sentences and paragraphs that normal people just don't use and aren't attracted by totally unnecessarily. What I mean by that is, you know, physics, biology, various things that have a highly technical aspect, and there is some vocabulary to learn and so on. But I suspect that for the most part, what's needed on the left to talk about society and what to do about it is far less technical and far more capable of being communicated in normal words and with sentences that don't run on for a page and so on and so forth. And if that's true, is that just habit that people do that, or are they defending something?
Emma:I think it is habit, because sort of looking at sort of the influence that I guess degrowth has had from people in ecological economics it's become very technical to the extent where master's students have gone. I have no fucking idea what these people are talking about, um, and they have a very advanced knowledge of degrowth. Um, I think there is still a thing, as you mentioned yeah, defending it where they go. Well, this is our way of doing it. If you don't like it, do it another way. But that's very hard, I think, to really justify when you know we're doing it our way or they're doing it their way and the movement is effectively very stagnant in terms of who's attracted to it. Um, it's only ever gonna, I guess, bring a very narrow sort of mindset of people on board, at least certainly where I'm based.
Emma:Now there are efforts. People are really trying to make degrowth more accessible in terms of the language, especially when it comes to the activists. But the problem is what's already existing now, if you actually look at everything that's been written on degrowth over years, they've kind of gone through this like identity crisis. They talk about post-growth degrowth. Um, now it's eco-socialism, democratic eco-socialism, to to explain the same thing. So somebody goes back through, um, you know the things that have been written over years. They don't know where to start, so I think they're kind of. Some people feel a bit stuck now like well, how do we actually reverse that trend?
Michael:and make it easy for people.
Michael:And, in my view at least, the truth is that. Well, I used to have a friend who critiqued television and said the more you watch, the less you know. So the more you watch the news, the less you know about the world. But there's a very real sense in which the more you learn, sometimes the less you know. Learn sometimes, the less you know. So, yeah, they know about some equations which barely are relevant to real life and in some cases are about obscuring what goes on in real life. But ask them what it's like to work in a corporation and they don't know.
Michael:A great many of them can't describe that, much less describe it as intelligently and as perceptively as people who do it, who work in a corporation.
Michael:And it's not that dissimilar to if you have a movement that has nobody who's black in the United States, its understanding of racism is going to be weak and its attention to dealing with racism is going to be probably pretty pathetic. And that's been the case at times and it's been improved upon not perfectly, but improved upon. It hasn't been improved upon, I think, in the movement you're concerned about very much the ecology movement, let's call it, or the green movement, or the women's movement or the anti-war movement. When we're talking about class, there's some improvement about race and gender not enough, but some. But there's very little about class, as you say. It doesn't even get mentioned, it doesn't even register as an issue for a great many people. They just seem to say, well, we don't have enough working people in the movement, with no notion that that might have something with the character of the movement as compared to the character of working people. I mean, is that what it feels like? Because that's what it looks like to me.
Emma:That's not what it feels like, that's what it's like and it's really like. I understand from the point of an activist if you've lived a very sheltered life, and I don't mean that in a derogatory way. Some people just haven't been explode, exposed to tensions. But when it comes to academics, you know these people have gone through years of training, you know phds, you know these fellowships and these fucking clowns can't do like a bloody literature of you know that this is basic stuff, um, and I I just people have asked me like why? And I can't, I can't think of why, I don't know. Maybe if you've got a a better clue here, because we're not just talking about people writing their books and their theories. These people are trying to build a movement, but it's in complete defiance of what they're saying. So my brain's just like, oh yeah, why? It's just yeah, I've heard you know. Oh well, there's better things to critique degrowth on, it's divisive, there's only two classes anyway.
Michael:I'm just like no, no, no recently I was interacting with somebody about the situation in Israel and they were describing to me or they described in print, it wasn't to me personally. They described in print that there were a significant number of people who had been before Hamas' action, had been supportive of Palestinians, even volunteering to help at the borders and so on and so forth, who then switched over in a very short period of time to being fans of massacre, basically to in some cases actually in a considerable number of cases criticizing the government for not being violent enough. And the person who wrote this described interviews in which what came out over and over again was they're ungrateful. So the idea was that Israeli liberals and even progressives should be appreciated for their volunteering in some sense to help Palestinians. And when the Palestinians had the audacity to do something that reflected not thanks but anger, those people felt sort of abused and moved to the right.
Michael:Now I'm wondering if there's something like that with this class issue and, if I'm right, you may have encountered it as in. I mean personally. Why aren't working people this sentiment would be more thankful to us for fighting or for demanding changes on their behalf and for aligning with them in those ways, and they're ungrateful. Why is that? And it's a kind of a paternalistic attitude. Instead of working people as I don't know dumb and emphasizing that, they regard themselves as voluntary benefactors, paternalistically and working people as ungrateful. Does that make any sense?
Emma:I've come across that myself. I um ended up really pissing someone off um a while back. Who, again, um, who organized um a conference and they it was a big fucking conference and they asked me how it went. And to front load this, I was like I made real effort to put the good things first, so it didn't sound like I was just coming in and attacking, but I said you're, you're staging this conference aimed at movement building. But not only was there no working class people there, both you know in the audience and speaking, or, if they were, they were hiding. But no one spoke about class.
Emma:And this person started being like oh, what do you know? How long do you think this took us to do? You know, uh, to put together, you know how would you do it better than you know? What would you have done? Um? So I think, when it arises, there tends to be this like, almost like sacrificial lamb, um kind of mentality that we're supposed to just go. They tried their best. When there's nothing wrong with critiquing things when critiques need it, um, but I tend to find that for the most part and I don't know if this is maybe, I guess, more in environmental spaces, but when people get, or the PMC get, pissed at the working class. In many ways, I find that this anger stems from the fact that their power is being challenged. You know this self-imposed.
Michael:Stems from, I'm sorry, stems from the fact that They've had a challenge to their power. Yeah, okay.
Emma:And, you know, a challenge to their knowledge which they see as superior. You know this idea of the enlightened educating the masses which, while it may be a stereotype, in a lot of ways it is justified. You know the people with their professional credentials, their roles in positions of influence and so on, all of which are necessary for people to be considered as legitimate disseminators of knowledge in mainstream society and, by extension, having their thoughts seen as legitimate as well. And it is really really bad in environmentalism. And, yes, we need these people.
Emma:But when it comes to discussions in science, you know, I think any rational person would say let's leave that to the scientists. You know, I think any rational person would say let's leave that to the scientists. But the problem arises is when they throw their toys out of the pram when they're challenged. Because if you take away sort of, I guess, the idea of sort of knowledge from a PMC person, what are they left with If their knowledge is no longer superior? It turns out they're the same as everyone else. Because, you know, that's really the only thing that differentiates. And I don't mean just knowledge sort of here, I mean in terms of skill as well in jobs. I think it's undermining of authority.
Michael:If we're going to say that there is a class difference, there are employees, right, so there's owners and employees. And if we're going to say that among the employees there's really something important, there's a class difference between those who you're talking about and workers. It does seem to be a. It seems to involve knowledge, like you say, confidence, skills, et cetera. But where does that come from, see, they might say.
Michael:Some of them might say well, it comes from the fact that we worked hard enough to get it. Or they might say it's genetic. Who knows exactly what? They might say it's very rare that they're going to say we stole it, because that's the truth, that is to say, the, the. The reason why there is this, a this gap, if you will, is because one side is monopolizing something and making it more and more difficult to attain, and not only that, they're perverting it in some sense and making it less relevant to actually changing the world and more relevant to maintaining it. On. The other side suffers from that. So that's a harsh way to put it, but I think there's some truth to that.
Emma:I agree because even though people can't control the system at large, they can open up space for people in light of that. So I think I've mentioned sort of the panels, because that's, I think, a key grievance with myself and a fair few people now it's probably the easiest way that you can, I guess, undo this sort of systemic sort of injustice and, as you say, the fact that knowledge has been taken and all this power.
Michael:Isn't there another component to? I mean, we can't you and all your friends and me and all my friends, we can't get rid of private ownership and that's a fundamental problem. But we can say we want it ended. We can say our demands and our actions should be oriented in part toward ending it and we shouldn't be catering to the people who have it. All that can be done, I think, regarding PMC or whatever we call this group, their monopoly on empowering, circumstances, authority, etc. I could say the same thing, et cetera could say the same thing. So you know, the movement can be demanding things and have as its ultimate goal, yes, what you just said, that there shouldn't be this group differentiated from everybody else, because they're just people and what they've got is something that they're holding onto, like owners hold onto property they're holding on to, like owners hold on to property they're holding on to knowledge and skill and all the rest of it. So that can be done. Anyway, back when the earnerics put this thing out, that's what we felt and we felt, for instance, that in creating organizations and actually degrowth is associated I think this is true with lots of organizations right Like projects, co-ops, et cetera, et cetera, so that in doing that. Not only shouldn't we have them owned, but we shouldn't have them having the division of labor into those with power and those without.
Michael:I wonder what you think of another dimension of this. I know you're not in the US, but because the US is the heart of an empire and imposes itself on everybody, I'm sure you're probably reasonably aware of the upcoming presidential election and Trump and all those dynamics and you have a variant of it in the UK also. I wonder what you think is the impact of class attitudes and class behaviors on these elections. I mean Trump polls among working people as well or better than biden does. And that's after my generation spent 60 years talking about capitalism, which makes me sort of miserable. But but you know what's going on. What the hell is he appealing to as a billionaire? That that not only attracts but even galvanizes working people?
Emma:So it's not all about taking back control, but this perceived and, in a lot of cases, actual loss of control over people's lives really is pushing them to vote for fucking Trump at the moment, because when you look at what he's saying, like, oh, we need to take back you know the usa, it's you know, conspiracy on me, they're out to get me. We need our freedoms. It's hard really to, I guess, from from that mindset, to argue against it, because all people have had over decades, lifetimes, generations, is things taken away from them. Um, you know their living conditions are terrible. Um, I know health care in the us is just um insane.
Emma:Um, and when you kind of, I guess you lose these things and there's been um quite a lot of studies in the social sciences that people say, when you've got nothing left that you can control, you will vote for sort of more radical means because you're angry against the system and despite the fact that Trump is the system, he positions himself very well, and that's not as a compliment, but as the person's of the anti-establishment type and for he, for the life of me, yeah, I don't know how billionaires manage to do it out of all people, but he, he does, you know, he kind of paints himself as this maverick. You know, I'm not gonna play to the political rules, I'll do what I want. Um, and he's managed to create, I guess, this culture of personality as well, um, which is what's the personality that it's that the cult is.
Michael:in other words, if you didn't know anything about the us and you didn't know anything about these guys, but you know all that, you know about everything else, right, and you came over here and you saw let's make it Hillary Clinton or Biden give a talk, and then you saw Trump give a talk, which one would feel to you as a working class person. That's someone who I might be able to go out and have a drink with. That's someone who maybe will talk my language.
Emma:Oh, could I be awkward and say personally, none of them, because they're just all weird lizard people. That's my favorite tinfoil hat theory, but I can see it. I mean, when you actually look at Biden and Clinton, they have all the charisma of a wet rag. And although Trump's charisma is very insidious and he's very insulting, he's entertaining for a lot of people. Like you can imagine him being more lively going for a drink than the rest, so I can see why I think a lot of people going oh, he's just like us.
Michael:See, I think he also doesn't give off the vibes of the PMC. He doesn't give off. You know, I'm an intellectual, I know what you don't know, et cetera, et cetera. And the Republicans are pretty good at this and have been for a long time. Started with the guy who was a vice president at the time, named Spiro Agnew, and he used to talk about liberals as being intellectuals and railing against them, and he would rail against the left the same way. He would be attacking anti-war, et cetera, et cetera, as bullet-headed intellectuals. And it was very effective because working people did, to a degree, identify with it. They felt that way about the people who he was attacking.
Michael:I have a feeling that pretty much the same thing is true of Trump. He gets a certain amount of support, probably a lot, that he'll stand up to and scream at the establishment, as you say, but that also he just doesn't come across in a PMC-ish way. He comes across more in a working class way. I'm not talking about his racism or his sexism, I'm just talking about manners and style and openness, or whatever you want to call it, and it appeals, and on comes fascism when I say he's entertaining, not that I enjoy watching him speak, but is yeah, he's a lot livelier livelier than biden um in the worst way all right.
Michael:well, um, we've we've covered a lot of ground. I wonder if there's anything that you want to express or bring up that I haven't asked about as we get near to the end movement, not just degrowth, but overall here, um, you know they talk about that.
Emma:They want to break down class society. They're anti-colonial, they're anti-capitalist and they need to start acting like it. They need to put it into practice now because it, when you actually look at, as we've mentioned, sort of the knowledge production dissemination, it's gatekeeping, it's capitalist production dissemination, it's gatekeeping, it's capitalist, it's very colonial in the sense that global north perspectives and voices are heard above all else, you know, in the global south workers and middle class. So it's yeah for me. I don't. Perhaps I'm a little bit disenfranchised with a lot of movements at the moment because they're just not putting into practice what they're preaching and you know it drives working class people away because they are interested in these ideas. But when they've raised them and they've been excluded, they go. Oh, I don't want to put myself in harm's way anymore. So it's kind of a yeah.
Michael:Having right knowledge when you're trying to change the world is important, but it doesn't get you anywhere if the way you couch the knowledge, discuss the knowledge, present the knowledge and provide space keeps away the people who would have to change the society. You would think that that would be when you describe it as off the agenda. You would think it would be the first thing on the agenda, right? If you're really trying to win and you're really trying to win change how can that absence not be at the top of the pile of things that you're concerned about?
Emma:It just doesn't make any sense and I've kind of I can never come up with any sort of cogent response to this because, yeah, for the people who have access to this knowledge, it's there. What are they doing that they seem, some people seem to be trying to skip this part because they're, you know, utopianists and we're all the same, but we're not, um, so it just is the most illogical and frustrating thing. Yeah, what the fuck, it's just.
Michael:Yeah, I know what you're saying and, having been involved with it for decades longer, I agree with you and I'll tell you the only two things I've been able to come up with, and I don't even like to say them.
Michael:One is what if people are not trying to change something, but are defending something, to change something, but are defending something? So, in other words, what if, like, it wouldn't be hard for us to understand and admit that if there were capitalists in the degrowth movement, the reason they were behaving peculiarly is because they were far more interested in defending the current system than in accomplishing something environmental. So that's one possibility. The other possibility is that people just don't believe they can win. And since they don't believe they can win, it isn't very important to figure out how to be strategic. You know how to address something that's uncomfortable, to address the relative absence of working people. I'm not saying that's right, but I haven't been able to come up with much other than that. So the fact that you're befuddled by encountering a wall is that there are other people who've encountered that wall also and haven't done that well yet, and you will, so um but yeah, I wish you the best thank you.
Emma:I uh, I'm gonna take a brick wall and just start smashing my head in it before before I start yeah yeah, well, don't do that but, uh, but don't let it get you down either.
Michael:It's not. You're right, okay? I mean, I know there's a tendency to think I can't be right. How could I be right, how could I be right and they're all wrong? Well, you know what? You're right and they're all wrong. It's true, and eventually it will get across.
Emma:The worst thing is like this is what working class people say. It's not just me, so it's kind of like yeah, what are you doing, Just? Speak to them. Watch a fucking documentary. It'll take you half an hour.
Michael:Yeah, no, all right, well, if you're ready, close it out. I will. Yeah, okay, no-transcript.