RevolutionZ
RevolutionZ
Ep 370 Comments "Chomsky Reassessed" plus WCF 16: More RPS Ideas, Values, and Motives
Episode 370 of RevolutionZ mainly continues our sequence of excerpts from the forthcoming The Wind Cries Freedom's Oral History of the Next American Revolution. However, before doing so, it takes up various reactions I encountered to an article I wrote titled "Chomsky Reassessed." The followup discussion here raises some more general concerns and further ideas bearing on issues of "cancellation."
Internal movement differences, arguments, and even accusations can force a movement to constructively self examine and grow, or can fracture it. What damage is done when outrage outruns evidence, when cancel culture and circular firing squads turn activism into spectacle and drive away the very allies we need? What dynamics play out? When do they arise? How do they gain life and spread? How do they involve us and what might we do to address them?
After that rather substantial introductory section, this episode continues into a new oral history excerpt about how to build movement power and cohesion in which Bertrand Jagger and Lydia Lawrence further chart their respective journeys from atomized into systemic thinking. They describe their attraction to self-management as proportionate say, to equity as pay for effort and sacrifice, and to an economy redesigned to eliminate not only rule by owners but rule by the often-ignored coordinator class.
Bert takes us inside the illusion of choice that we often feel, where markets script our consumption and work options and productivity gains vanish into someone else’s ledger. He traces the subtle hierarchies that reappear in movement meetings, media, and campaigns when movement roles unintentionally subvert movement aspirations. He explains why balanced jobs, transparent information, and participatory planning weren’t rhetorical add-ons to RPS but at the core of its approaches. Lydia widens the frame to kinship and culture. She shows how hierarchies in patriarchal families, schooling, and media bleed into the workplace—and vice versa--how class hierarchies in turn contour kinship and culture. She shows why to change one domain of activity without changing the others reroutes power rather than dissolves it.
Along the way, we revisit a cautionary note from Bob Dylan—what happens when movements punish nuance and reward heat—and we ask how to create spaces where disagreement refines strategy instead of ending careers and silencing conversation.
So this episode is mostly about how two people were attracted to and navigated movement design, class analysis that extends beyond owners and workers, and turning diverse values into effective daily practice all in the new movement they became part of, the movement for a revolutionary participatory society.
Can their remembrances provide insights in our time and our place about attaining a clear, rigorous path forward? Listen, and perhaps share with a friend who’s organizing something big or small. Then I hope you will leave a comment saying what strikes you as useful and revealing, and what doesn't.
Hello, my name is Michael Albert, and I am the host of the podcast that's titled Revolution Z. This is our three hundred and seventieth consecutive episode, and since each episode is geared not to the news cycle of the moment, but to overarching issues and especially division and strategy. Supposing you are just now getting started with Revolution Z, I hope you will consider giving attention to earlier episodes as well as this one. In any case, this episode, our main content, continues the presentation of oral history of another time and place very like our own, that I hope can help us navigate our own time and place, odd and frightening as our current situation is. So this time we meet Bertrand Jagger in his office at Stanford University in a different time than our own, in their future time, and he and Lydia Lawrence, who we met last episode, delve still further into the values, motives, and feelings that underlay their world and times organization and movement for a participatory society, and their reasons for becoming a part of it. The material is from a forthcoming book of mine titled The Wind Cries Freedom. It is that book's sixteenth chapter, which means the other fifteen have composed the better part of fifteen prior episodes. But first, before presenting that chapter, I would like to offer some reactions to the reactions that I have encountered to an essay I recently wrote that has appeared in quite a few places as well as on Network on ZNetwork.org. It was titled Chomsky Reassessed. My main intent was to challenge not so much the specifics of his situation, I don't think Nome's legacy needs my help, but the approach taken by some progressives and radicals and revolutionaries to the situation and to my article as well. If what I offer here or earlier in that article isn't your approach to either him or me, great. Maybe my comments will prove useful when you encounter the approach. If what I describe is your approach, then perhaps what I suggest will shed some light on why you may want to reconsider any attachment you may feel to it. There is another aspect that contextualizes all of this, at least for me, that I should mention, which will perhaps explain my own involvement. I have heard from a number of people that they are depressed by the situation. This comes from two directions. Some folks are depressed by what they take to be Gnome's choices, and others are depressed by what they see as others' dismissive reaction toward Gnome. I just ten minutes ago replied to one such person this way, and here I'm quoting from an email I sent back to the person. I understand you're feeling depressed by the reactions to Gnome, and you are not alone. Quite a few people have expressed the same thing to me. One form is not just oppression, but also wondering do I belong in a movement that can sink this low? And I have to agree that the ease, speed, and outrage with which otherwise sensible folks rail at someone who they only weeks earlier, months earlier, years and even decades earlier, admired and learned from, based on so little evidence, spouting imputed assertions and motives as if they are known facts is indeed incredible. But we know, don't we, that such behavior is possible from humans, all of us, not inevitable, but possible. Even regarding gnome, it has occurred often before. Looking wider, witch hunts and lynchings of diverse sorts are well known. These are again seriously crazy times. So why not now? Albeit less violently, encrusted and multiplied, such behavior becomes tribal, and it can manifest in various ways, including what's been called of late cancel culture. I am unsure how to reach those perpetuating it, but I try. I am also unsure how to reach those targeted by it, or those so horrified at seeing it that they too suffer and even exile themselves. Tribalism, large and small, is a hard thing to address. So that was the email I wrote just a few minutes ago. Here is some more thought behind it. And I guess you could say also you can say also, it is the case, behind the article I wrote. Someone does or says something that you feel you wouldn't do or say, or that someone you appreciate says he or she wouldn't do or say. The thing that was said or done is called bad, inexcusable. You or your friend thinks it reveals the presence of some unworthy inclination. You or perhaps someone else conclude that the person who did or said the thing is unworthy due to being guilty of the presumed unworthy inclination. Indeed, you then settle on the most degrading and even horrible interpretation as the true explanation. You take your conclusion, your verdict to be undeniable. Your degrading dismissive verdict represents for you a kind of unchallengeable gospel. If someone suggests that your interpretation is contrary to the accused's past, you deem their commitment, their comment to be enabling the presumed horrible acts or words, and to thus also be horrible. If you think the accused words or acts slighted or hurt anyone, you conclude that so too do words or actions that question the accusation. To offer evidence, to disagree at all, reveals to you more culpability. Of course, this approach comes in many forms, I've described perhaps the most extreme. But in any case, what's the problem? It isn't just that your verdict could be wrong or is wrong, nor is it that you may be wrong plus that your approach assumes guilty until proven innocent, and also that to try and demonstrate an innocence is, by definition, to prove guilt, which together auger extreme judicial ignorance. And it is not even all that, but is also that your approach creates a spectacle in which your target fires back and soon there is a circular firing squad that repels potential allies who see it occur. So why does this happen all too often, in many shapes, and in different degrees of intensity? Is it literally disregard for evidence? Is it insecurity? Is it mob identification? Is the ostracism of the accused then abided by others who agree only out of fear of themselves being accused and ostracized if they don't agree? This approach is sometimes called a rush to judgment, sometimes sectarianism, sometimes bullying, and most recently often cancel culture. Yes, I know I have presented an abstract description of this approach. The article presents a specific instance, but I actually think the abstract issue is the paramount issue. If you think the approach never happens, fine, ignore my questions about it. If you think it rarely happens, give it a moment's thought. If you think instead that the approach happens so often that it is not just a serious violation of open minded thought and conversation, but a destructive force that tends to undermine progressive prospects. Maybe give it a little more time and speak out about it. But for now, let's continue on to this episode's main substance, the new chapter, which, like prior chapters and prior episodes, is quite related to this whole approach problem. To begin then, the interviewer, Miguel Guevara, asked Bertrand Jagger, Bert, you were politicized through the no nukes and antiwar movements, and you became a key advocate of RPS from the very beginning. You spent your life as a professor and contributor to theoretical physics, but also as a sharp and social critic and militant activist. You served as shadow vice president during Lydia Lawrence's shadow presidency, and later you took up that office yourself. What was your initial draw to RPS? How did you get involved, and why? I was drawn by the movement's soul, a soul woven from many threads. RPS didn't just cry for justice, it mapped it. It didn't just rage against power, it disarmed it with dreams. What caught me by the collar wasn't just its multidimensional reach or its clarity about institutional rot. It was the rhythm of its heart, its vision of the economy, and deeper still the values humming beneath. Before RPS, I marched against War and Empire, that giant with many boots. I worried about the sky catching fire and the earth cracking from within. But my compass pointed toward anarchism. Suspicious of every authority not earned and not temporary, I believed in people. I believed in their capacity to make music together, not just obey. RPS to me was a song I had heard fragments of in my dreams, now alive in full chorus. It was the value of self management that grabbed me. A simple phrase but full of thunder. The right of each voice to be heard in the proportion that it will be touched. RPS didn't invent it, but it carved it in stone, clear, unshakable. That was my hook. What mattered wasn't just denouncing dictators or boardrooms fat with decisions made behind shut doors. RPS pointed its finger deeper, in schools that muted students, in homes where patriarchy whispered or shouted commands, in markets that sold freedom like a brand, and even in the gatherings of the left that claimed to oppose it all but mimicked its shape. I became a hunter of self management wherever it hid, and a witness to where its absence left people mute. Like Marxism or feminism that becomes so focused it forgets most of the world, I too had to unclench. Self management was a holy fire, yes, but it could blind as much as it could light. RPS helped me widen the frame. Miguel asks, You have said you were moved by how RPS found certain less obvious violations of self management and not just self evident ones. Can you give an example? If a boss tells you when to eat, when to sleep, and whether you can take a breath, it's clear your say is missing. But what if you choose your prison? I used to think, like many, that I picked my job, my shoes, my breakfast cereal. I believed I was free. I walked into the marketplace and thought look at all these choices. But I did not choose the array of products that was made available on the shelf. I did not choose the rules of the game. Imagine you were behind bars, walking to the commissary. It's a prison. You're behind bars, you're working to the commissary. You point at a snack, hand over your tokens, you choose it, yes, but you didn't choose what the shelves held. Outside prison, the illusion is grander, but often barely less hollow. Apply for a job and think you choose your per path. But if all paths walk through the same cage, is that freedom? The job's all near before bosses. The wages are shaped not by fairness but by power. When you pick your job, you pick from a poisoned tree. One day I stumbled upon the math of productivity, the silent numbers hiding in plain sight. When I was young, we worked forty hours a week to produce the wealth of the land. Then came better machines, then came more speed. Now we produce three times that, but we still work the same duration or more. Why? We could be working thirteen hours a week. We could be resting, reading, raising our children, tending the earth. But someone decided, not us, that the fruits of our labor would be hoarded, weapons instead of bread, profit instead of peace. No one we do made that call. No face to blame. It was the ghost in the machine. The institution of markets, of bosses, of competition, of property. The ghost made the decisions for us. It robbed us of our voices without itself ever speaking. RPS peeled back that curtain. It said self management isn't just a feeling, it's the ability to shape the world you live in. These examples opened my eyes. They gave muscle and bone to a value I once held only an abstraction. Miguel asks, what about within the left itself? Was there self management there? The left spoke of democracy. It chanted it, painted it on banners, but if you walked inside, into the meeting rooms and offices, into the press rooms and organizing circles, what did you find? Too often, echoes of the very world that it denounced, editors ruling like bosses, donors setting the agenda, lawyers and scholars and stars of the left whose words carried weight like anvils, while others barely whispered. There were moments of real flame, Occupy assemblies with their human microphones, hands waving in collective rhythm rhythm. But even there, under the tents and in the parks, the hidden hierarchies crept in. Charisma replaced structure. The same few made the calls. Even in campaigns, yes, even those that spoke of revolution, behind the words favoring grassroots and empowerment, the machinery remained old, a few pulling the strings, a crowd pulling the wagon. RPS did not just speak of self management. It sought to live it. It said don't just tear down the master's house. Build a new one with windows wide open and room for all. Don't just share power when it's convenient, share it when it's hard. And in the time that stretched from the storms of the nineteen sixties to the uneasy calm fifty years later, the wind carried the idea of self management on its back. It rustled in leaflets, echoed in slogans, stood proudly in the mouths of anarchists like me. But the wind didn't always plant what it carried. The words were there self management, shared power, horizontalism, but were they anchored in the earth? If you stepped into the heart of activist organizations, if you entered media spaces buzzing with dissent, if you joined unions, marched with the greens, the peace seekers, the dreamers of racial and gender justice, you often found a strange familiarity. Power pooled in the usual corners. A few made decisions. The many followed the current. Donors wrote checks and rewrote priorities. Editors and coordinators shaped the lines of what could be spoken and heard. In these spaces that were meant to break chains, the old locks still clicked. When self management left the poetry of rhetoric and entered the prose of practice, it usually wore borrowed shoes, temporary, makeshift, borrowed from spirit, but not sewn into the structure. Collectives would rise, their fire lit by the will of those who knew the ache of domination, but not by blueprints that could endure the long march. Intentions outpaced architecture. Even in the great wave called Occupy, where hands rose in rhythm and voices circled back in human microphones, the pattern repeated. Some rose to speak more often, to steer, to shape. Assemblies were vast, the faith sincere, but the machinery of permanence, of complexity, of accountability was absent. A house built without beams, warm for a time, but vulnerable to the weather. Not long before the pulse of RPS was first felt, there was a strange season of twenty sixteen. The Sanders campaign spoke of bottom up politics, of movements and not messiahs, and though his words had weight, the bones of the machine were still old, a few decided, the many were inspired, but not empowered. There was a debate that seemed eternal, looping in circles like a snake biting its tail. Tight, top down control or the illusion of radical openness were all waved hands, but no one laid foundations. Neither touched the real meaning of self management. RPS began to shine a light not just into the halls of power, but into the corners of our own movements, where the dust of hierarchy had long gathered. Among us anarchists, suspicion of authority was our anthem, but sometimes our melody turned sour. The cry of individual freedom too often became a drumbeat drowning out collective need. We riot because we want to. We don't owe you agreement or coordination, as if to be autonomous meant to be oblivious to consequences. As if freedom and from domination meant freedom from solidarity. Rules were scorned, agreements forgotten. Everything had to be born anew in every moment. But sometimes this wasn't rebellion, it was convenience dressed in revolutionary robes. RPS's early voice was clear, like a bell struck in a quiet valley. It reminded us of what anarchism once promised, not selfish anarchy, but a world without masters and without slaves. A world where decisions were shared, not only in theory, but in habit, in structure, in the muscle memory of daily life. RPS helped us remember, and in remembering we grew stronger, not all at once, and not without conflict. But the seed of anarchism, when warded by RPS's clarity, bore new fruit. Miguel asked, your words upset more than one target. Yes, I know people can bristle at it, but look, if you have an aim and you go decades and you don't get there, you should welcome critique. How else do you get better? Miguel asks. You said that another aspect of RPS ideas that attracted you, not just its multi issue approach, but its prioritization of institutions was its approach to the economy. Can you explain that? Before RPS, the economic map was drawn in two colors the capitalists, the ones with the keys to the factories, the machines, the farms, and the workers, those who owned nothing but their hands, their backs, their time. The bosses and the bossed. This was the story we told, the battle we fought, and there was truth in it. But RPS held up the mirror and said, Look again. It pointed to a third face, one long hidden in plain sight. Among those who worked for wages, who didn't own factories or banks, there was a group with power not born from capital, but from control, from their place in the machinery of the economy, from their tasks. The doctors, the engineers, the planners, the managers, the editors, they were not bosses in name, but they shaped the rhythms of others' labor. RPS called this the coordinator. Class. They sat between the owning and the working class. They did not own the tools of production, but they controlled how the tools were used, who used them, and to what end. And they were rewarded with comfort, status, and insulation. This wasn't a new idea. The early anarchists had glimpsed it, but we had let it slip through our fingers. Most of us on the left, until RPS arrived, still walked with two eyes closed to this third class, even as we bumped into it at every turn. The division of labor, RPS argued, wasn't just about efficiency. It was about shaping minds, bending spines, about giving one group the skills, the networks, the confidence, and the authority to command, while giving the other group monotony, exhaustion, fragmentation, and silence. It was not a detail, it was a design. This was a revelation, a crack in the wall. It forced me to look again at visions I had long held sacred. Visions of socialism, of liberation, where owners were gone, but coordinators remained, where the faces of power changed, but its structure did not. RPS asked, How do we build an economy where no class, owner, coordinator, or worker, has dominance? How do we dismantle not just the wealth of the few, but the hierarchies embedded in the very structure of our daily labor? It wasn't just about refining our understanding of exploitation. It was about naming the structural ghost in the machine, the silent mechanism that, even in movements of the people, recreated the divisions we swore to end. This was hard, not because it was hidden, it was all around us, but it asked us to see with new eyes, to let go of familiar comforts, even familiar heroes, to ask what kind of economy could birth real equality, real self management, not slogans but systems, not purity but practice. Miguel asked, difficult even though it was all around. Yes, difficult, but not technically hard or obscure. Difficult like a river flowing against old maps. Difficult because it meant walking away from the paths I had always walked. But when I finally began to see the shadows of power even in places I once thought pure, when I began to listen not only to the words but to the silences, it became a fire in my bones. That fire led me deeper into RPS, into its heart. Miguel asked, did it impact your life choices outside RPS? Yes, it did, but not without a struggle. I was a physicist. I lived in a world of equations and accelerators, but also of prestige and privilege. My title said professor. I walked the halls of a major university. I worked in laboratories glowing with brilliance and hierarchy. In those halls, well known scientists were paid more. They held the keys, they held the influence, they were the coordinator class, and I was one of them. So I faced the mirror. Would I go on enjoying the comforts I had taken for granted? Comforts that had felt like my birthright? Or would I stand with those calling for change? Would I accept the call for equity not just in theory but in my own workplace, even if it meant letting go of some of what I had? The push came not from above but from below, from students, young scientists, technicians, janitors, from those who scrubbed the floors and maintained the labs. Those who made our work possible but were kept voiceless, faceless, nameless in the institutional script. At first we professors resisted. We clung to our chairs. We said this is absurd. We've studied, we've trained, we've earned this. We feared the collapse of productivity. We feared the death of science. We imagined disaster. But we were wrong. Wrong even about productivity, not to mention justice. Justice once you dared to look clearly was not a puzzle. It was obvious. All it required was seeing each person was fully human. But the productivity part, the part we thought was our best defense, crumbled too. Labs that embraced what were in time called balanced job complexes, where all shared responsibilities were more harmonious. They flowed better, they had fewer walls, fewer whispered rivalries, the work improved, the learning deepened. And yes, I changed. I became not just a voice for equity in theory, but in the room, in the lab, in the corridors where my shoes echoed. I changed slower than I now wish I had, but faster and more completely than many others did. Because the world we lived in was undeniably sick. A world where being fully human was a rebellion, a world where no one escaped being malformed by the roles they were forced to play. So the crime wasn't to be flawed. The crime was to see the cracks and turn away, to let the blindness continue once you'd seen the light. Miguel asks, Lydia, were you as attracted to RPS's elevation of values as Bert was? And did RPS's new values toward class play a role for you as well? I suspect most people who found their way to RPS did so in part because of its values. And yes, I was one of them. But for me, the hook was RPS's emphasis on diversity, not as a buzzword, and not as some liberal PR campaign, but as a foundational value. Coming at things as a feminist, I was already attuned to the endless variety of life patterns, how we love, how we nurture, how we raise children. So when RPS didn't just acknowledge but celebrated diversity, it hit home. And when I saw the same principle radiating out of ecological thinking, that diversity wasn't just beautiful, it was necessary, that expanded my view even more. Now RPS didn't invent empathy or solidarity. Those ideals had long been carried by radicals, feminists, unionists, freedom fighters of every stripe. But RPS married those values to a deep understanding of how institutions work. That was new. Or if not new, at least rare and precious. Take solidarity. RPS didn't stop at saying solidarity is good. It asked what roles in society actively block solidarity? And then it pressed further. What would we have to change structurally, institutionally, for solidarity to become a natural social current instead of a rare outburst? Same with diversity, same with self-management. These weren't posters on the wall. They were working principles. So we'd ask, does a market economy, where everyone's out to outwit and outbid everyone else, foster solidarity? Of course not. But instead of shrugging RPS pushed, why not? And what could replace it? Or take the traditional family structure, with a man in the father role and a woman in the mother role, two positions carrying different expectations, power and visibility. Does that foster equity or solidarity? No. It fosters division. It creates hierarchy and miniature. I hadn't grown up steeped in the ownership is everything mindset. So when RPS started challenging old conceptions of class, I didn't feel personally attacked like some did. Still, those ideas mattered a lot to me, and they played a big role in how I acted and organized. See, RPS says that the economy shapes not just how we make and exchange goods, but how we think, how we behave, how we treat each other, even when we're far away from a workplace. You do a job every day that alienates or empowers you, and you carry the residue home. You bring it to your relationships, your ballot box, your kitchen table. And guess what? Kinship does the same. It teaches us how to love, how to obey, how to rebel or not. And we bring that residue with us into the rest of society. Economy encompasses. So does patriarchy. So these aren't isolated zones. The workplace and the family, the church and the mall. They all bleed into each other. That's what RPS showed me. The whole society is a mosaic, and each tile presses against the next. If one tile is oppressive, it pushes its logic into the others, and vice versa. But that also means, thankfully, that if one tile changes, it can help pull others with it. That's the hope. That's when I realized this third class RPS was talking about, it didn't just reside in the economy. Its footprints were everywhere, in education, in culture, in kinship, in religion. It explained power in places where we'd often been told there wasn't any power. Miguel asks, Bert, what about the last key social value that RPS was initially emphasizing? Did equity as a value also resonate for you? I came to equity slowly, more slowly than I did to balance job complexes. And honestly, I think that was because it threatened some of the core assumptions I hadn't yet interrogated. Assumptions I'd inherited from my past political identity. RPS says that a person should get income, really, their share of society's total output, based on the duration, intensity, and onerousness of the socially valued work they do. Work longer, harder, under worse conditions, do it usefully, then yes, you get more. But if you happen to have special talents, or if your job happens to be more valued by society, or if you use tools that boost your output, or, God forbid, if you own the means of production, then no, you don't deserve more of any of that. You should get compensated for your effort and sacrifice. That's the rule. Another way to frame it is everyone should enjoy a blend of leisure and labor that leaves them with roughly equal social benefit, not privilege, not value added, just fair balance. Nowadays that sounds obvious to most folks in and around RPS, but when we were just getting started, the idea rubbed a lot of us the wrong way. Why? Because for people like me who came out of the anarchist tradition, there was one guiding slogan etched into our moral DNA, from each according to ability to each according to need. It actually came from Marx. It was our creed, our compass. To question it felt like betraying your family. So when RPS came along with a different formulation, I didn't just hear a new idea, I heard an attack on my identity. I bristled. But eventually, I had to admit, the two ideas weren't as far apart as they first seemed. The anarchist advocated norm assumed an economic system that would enable those values to flourish. It just never got around to specifying what that system would have to look like. And more than that, it carried this unspoken belief that any structure or rule that limits someone's options, especially in terms of work and consumption, must be inherently authoritarian. I started to see how strange that belief was. Why shouldn't my choices be shaped, at least in part, by how they affect others? Isn't that, well, social? My old way of thinking began to seem oddly individualistic, even though that was never my intent. For me, the old slogan meant do what you can, take what you need. Beautiful words. But when I asked, how do we make that real? Things got murky fast. Work to ability? Okay, who decides what my ability is? Consume to need? Who defines need? If I decide it all myself, then the norm becomes work however much I like on whatever I choose and consume whatever I decide I need. That's not anti-authoritarianism. That's entitlement. There's no structure, no mechanism, no accountability. So as RPS laid out its model, effort and sacrifice as the basis for income, it felt less like a betrayal of my principles and more like their practical evolution. I started to see that my beloved slogan had two central problems. One was visible, and lots of people had already wrestled with it. The other, the other was deeper, more subtle, and once RPS brought it into view, I couldn't unsee it. The first problem was simple, glaring, and pretty much fatal. We can't all just take what we want and do only what we choose. The moment you try that in practice, the contradictions come home to roost. Let's say I want to produce pottery, even though I'm clumsy and can't make a bowl that doesn't leak. Should I get to do it just because I feel like it? Or suppose I'm a fantastic carpenter, but I decide I'd rather spend my time writing haikus. Maybe I write great ones, maybe I don't. But who decides whether that counts as productive? And then on the consumption side, what if I want more than I can reasonably justify? What if I want everything? Top shelf wine, penthouse views, spa days, and so on, without putting in extra work. And if I get what I say I need, why shouldn't I say I need everything? The slogan from each according to ability to each according to need assumes that people will make choices not only about themselves, but that somehow those choices will line up harmoniously with social need and shared fairness. But what if they don't? What if people strictly obey the maxim, but also act purely in their own interest, as they're perfectly entitled to do under its logic? You get a lopsided world, massive demand, minimal supply. The whole system caves in. When I voice these concerns, the defenders of the slogan usually hedged. Oh no no, we don't mean literally take what you want or produce what you choose. We mean do what's fair, do what's needed, take what's appropriate to your needs. Fair enough, except again, what's fair? Who decides what's needed? And how do we know what's appropriate? Those thoughts were the turning point for me. I wanted to hang on to the slogan, I had wrapped my identity around it. But RPS folks wouldn't let it slide. They kept pressing. How do we know what's fair? What if someone says it's fair to be paid according to what their property earns? Or what if someone insists fairness means getting paid in proportion to how valuable society thinks their output is? Anarchists reject both. RPS rejects both. But does the slogan alone actually rule them out? More importantly, even, if I do have a solid moral sense of fairness, how do I act on it if I don't have the right information? If I don't know what others need, what others are doing, what the impact of my work or my consumption on others actually is? That question broke it open for me. It wasn't just about ethics. It was about information. For fairness to mean anything, people have to know what others need, want, and contribute. Otherwise we're just throwing darts in the dark. That's when I realized the RPS view compensate people for how long and hard and harshly they work at something that others value isn't only ethical, it's also operational. It gives you the tools to be fair, not just the desire. And yeah, later I saw even more value in it, how that information was crucial for planning future production. But the ethical clarity is what got to me first. Miguel asks, I have been asking folks to recount an event, campaign, or situation during the rise of RPS that was particularly inspiring or meaningful for them. Could you do that too, please? Sure. There were a lot of campaigns that shaped me, but if I had to point to something that dug in deep and stayed, I'd have to admit it was Bob Dylan. I was eighteen, around nineteen eighty four, visiting a girlfriend, hanging out, listening to music. She put on another side of Bob Dylan, and I was only half paying attention, until I wasn't. The music grabbed me by the collar. I remember hearing chimes of freedom, and suddenly everything else in the room dissolved. That moment opened a door. After that I listened to everything. Subterranean homesick blues on repeat, trying to decipher the lyrics like they were ancient scripture. I didn't Google the words, I wanted to hear them, feel them, the way people first did. Some songs took a dozen listens before I could catch the rhythms, the cadences, the layers. It was the first time anything intellectual hit me with a wave of emotion. Dillon wasn't just clever, he was right. He laid bare the hypocrisies, the madness, the aching beauty, and the grinding cruelty of the world. And he did it in verses that sounded like riddles and revelations all at once. Honestly, Dillon was probably my most sustained literary education. His music, more than any book or teacher, shaped my moral compass. It taught me to see through the lies, to name injustice, and to feel a kinship with everyone being crushed under the wheels. Listen to that song. I could go on for hours about the lyrics. I probably read some of my own thoughts into them. Who doesn't? But that's what great art does. It reflects you back at yourself, sharper and stranger. And and it reflects you back at yourself, sharper and stronger. I've always wanted to write about Dylan's impact on my politics. Some day I might. But for now, if I could just say one more thing, it's this. Everyone knows Dylan sang about war and greed and racism. What's less known is that he also threw the critics of same is that he also saw through the critics of that of same. He wasn't just railing against the system. He was sometimes calling out those who thought they were opposing it, but were really caught in another trap. He had this way of expressing truths that seemed to leap out of some deeper well than he consciously knew. You hear it and you think, did he even know what he was saying? Could he have put it into plain prose if someone asked him? I'm not sure, and that to me was always a mystery. Here's an example from a song titled Farewell Angelina. On the surface it's him breaking up with Joan Baez, but underneath, I think it's him stepping away from the rising movements of the time, movements that Baez stayed close to. Dylan pulled away, not out of indifference, but disillusionment. Or maybe just maybe because he saw something the rest of us were missing. Something that RPS years later would finally begin to reckon with. A verse went The machine guns are roaring, the puppets heave rocks, the fiends nail time bombs to the hands of the clocks. Call me any name you like, I will never deny it. Farewell, Angelina. The sky is erupting. I must go where it's quiet. For Dylan, we were the puppets, even the fiends, and he did seek quiet. And the movement of the day largely lost their most compelling political wordsmith, their loudest political troubadour, though Dylan's social brilliance went on and on. Art perseveres, but to do so it had to fight and to change, too. And so ended the chapter sixteen of the Wind Cries Freedom. I wonder if Bert Jagger's words resonated at all for you. Did they clarify? Did they seem like they could indeed come from someone recounting the lessons he took, the values he aspired to, that caused him to embed himself in movements to revolutionize society and life? If so, perhaps bring some others to hear him as well. And what proceeded maybe too? If not, okay, fair enough. What did he say that rang false? What was wrong with his understanding? Would you let me know, either way, your views on the substance? And perhaps one last question to wrap this up. A question leading back to the beginning of the episode. Does the response of Dylan to the movement fifty, sixty years ago ring at all familiar to the response that I mentioned of some people to the circular squad firing squads that we see around us? And that asked, This is Mike Albert, signing off until next time for Revolution Z.