Ep 382 Book Burning, AI, and WCF Beyond Capitalism

Episode 382 of RevolutionZ continues our sequence of chapters from the soon forthcoming book, The Wind Cries Freedom: An Oral History of the Next American Revolution. This chapter's title is "Beyond Capitalism, Classlessness." But, before we get into that, and  as with other recent episodes, first we briefly take up two current issues of interest, cancel culture and what to do about AI. 

A publisher decides to pulp books it once praised. The publisher moves the word “cancel” from being descriptive to being vicious. What should we make of that? Perhaps best to consider a real case. 

A German anarchist-leaning publisher removes from its list four Noam Chomsky titles. We ask the uncomfortable question, how can that be true? Even if Chomsky or any other writer behaved really grossly, as Chomsky didn't but many others have, should anyone, much less an anarchist-leaning press, judge their books by their actual content, or should we all  perform some kind of purity test on their writer and dispense with the writer's books? 

Put differently, should we publish or for that matter read books for their content or just to celebrate or denigrate their authors? When a crowd, or a part of a crowd, gets angry at an author, is it appropriate to dispense with the author's books to avoid annoying the crowd? Is that anarchist behavior, socialist behavior, or feminist behavior, or is it fascist behavior?

What happens to truth, organizing, and our own moral spine when outrage becomes a reflex, when “guilty until proven innocent” turns into a culture, and books become targets to cancel? The first part of  episode 382 argues a position that ought to be self evident. A book is not its author. Pulping books is just a less graphic version of burning books which is true even when leftists light the fire. And finally, cancellation behavior perverts its perpetrators as well as attacks its targets. 

After that, we take up some matters of artificial intelligence to apply a practical, political focus. Best case, AI helps cure cancer, reverse global warming, and expand human capability. Worst case, AI intensifies surveillance, makes manipulation mandatory, assaults the planet, un-employs millions, and weaponizes itself to the point of AIs hunting humans for sport. How can we conceive AI policy demands to make now, including enforceable oversight, bans on dangerous uses, limits on energy use, and economic rules that turn productivity gains into shared well being rather than into private profit? How can we usefully think about demands to guide ethical AI, algorithmic accountability, the climate impact of AI, and even AI's collateral soul-stripping impact on its totally well-meaning users in their daily lives?

Finally, this episode moves into another “report from the future.” Interviewees  describe building classlessness through RPS organizing. Their accounts get concrete about attaining a new, worthy, viable economy that includes balanced job complexes and self-management that actually shares power, They talk about RPS steadily enlarging its working class membership and leadership, and about the hard cultural work of confronting coordinator-class arrogance without blowing up needed solidarity. 

Various interviewees from The Wind Cries Freedom  describe their economic organizing experiences to offer insights on all these matters. From future Amazon sit-down strikes to a broad shift among professionals toward choosing “for the people” roles, this episode's chapter argues that the path to economic liberation is built on carefully considered strategic practices.

Transcript

Welcome And Episode Setup

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, my name is Michael Albert, and I'm the host of the podcast that's titled Revolution Z. This is our three hundred and eighty second consecutive episode, and it presents chapter twenty six of the Wind Cries Freedom, which is titled Beyond Capitalism Classlessness. But before that, I continue our pattern of adding to the book excerpts a commentary or two on topics from our own time and our own world. This time I add two topics I've been thinking about yet again very recently AI and canceling. In particular, how do we take stands regarding each? So first, I thought about canceling. There is a publishing house in Germany called Unrast Verlag that recently came to my attention. I think it is an anarchist aligned or at least anarchist supportive publisher. It appears to be quite well established as their site lists about six hundred and fifty authors. I can't read the German at all, but I heard from a friend that they had published a German translation of a book of mine, Practical Utopia, and I had published German translations of four books of Gnomes. That's Chomsky's. I call him Gnome. My friend brought this to my attention because in late February this publisher announced, and this is a quote direct from them, quote, UNRAST publishing will remove Noam Chomsky's works, the climate crisis and the global Green New Deal, Hope in Times of Decay, the terrorism of the Western world, and focus on Palestine from its catalog, and will no longer and will no longer distribute them. The works were published in German translation by Unrast Publishing. This is a cancellation. So how do we assess such an option by any publisher and more generally? Let's assume, for the sake of discussion and against all reason, that Noam had done something really heinous. Okay, this that's actually absurd. No one asserts it. So let's assume Unrust had published some years back works by an actual pedophile, or perhaps a head of state who had overseen thousands of deaths, or a German Nazi, and so on. In that case, I think many people might reactively say, Okay, sure, pope the books, which is what Unrust Verlog told my friend they intended to do to their four Chomsky titles. I suppose it is their version of book burning. So this situation makes me feel ill. Why does it have that effect on me? There are many reasons, but I will keep this relatively short. A book is not its author. A book is a product of its author's labor. A book's contents may or may not reflect some aspect of its author that you don't like. Whether a book is worthy or unworthy is in any event a function of its contents, not of its author's life practices. When unrest Verlog published Nome's books, doing so indicated that they thought the books were worthy. Their actions facilitated the book's distribution and Nome's visibility in Germany. Their action therefore aided Gnome. Does that mean the publishing house is guilty of what it presumably thinks Gnome is guilty of? That is, knowing and not having attacked, in his case Epstein and their case Nome, because UNRAS knew and indeed closely attended to Nome and didn't attack him. Does it mean that taking Unras' assessment of Gnome and choice of what to do, to be like them, we should now pulp their entire publishing house? Similarly, when I published and also solicited and promoted Nome's works when I was a publisher, I was certainly guilty of aiding the distribution of Nome's books without denouncing him. So am I guilty? Am I not? As a writer, like many on Unrest Lists, I would bet, I have quoted Gnome, used lessons learned from Nome, and so on. So I am guilty, guilty, and guilty, and their odds, no? Should they pulp my book that they chose to publish in German? Should they investigate all their authors and themselves? If this discussion seems weird to you, good, it ought to. Not only because Nome is accused only of having been misled or had bad judgment, not liking, even reviling, even hating a person, though I would say not Noome, can be warranted. One would hope it would be based on something significant, but it is okay to react thusly when one thinks thusly. One can also not like or even revile a book or books due to what they say or what they urge. But does not liking or even reviling an author or even a book warrant urging or undertaking cancellation, as in pulping or burning their work? Can that inclination possibly be remotely legitimate? Anecdotally, a branch of a massive corporate publishing operation, Werner Public Warner Publications, a subsidiary of Time Warner, solicited a monograph, I think that's what they call this type short work, from Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman. Ed and Noam wrote and submitted it. The monograph was titled Counter Revolutionary Violence, Bloodbaths, in Fact and Propaganda. The Warner's branch prepared and printed it. But then someone in the larger sponsoring organization, Time Warner, got wind of the project and was horrified. They moved to stop it, to cancel it. There was a contract, so Ed and Nome had a case, but the parent organization of the monograph division hated their views. They couldn't break the contract without legal problems, so they simply disbanded the monograph branch and pulped twenty thousand copies of the work. Nome later asked if we, I was then with South End Press, would publish an enlarged version, and of course we said of course. It became the two volume set The Political Economy of Human Rights and After the Cataclysm. For them a monograph, for us two books. Of course, there was no translation involved, and this was a major capitalism identified American publishing house, not a well established, radical and even anarchist identified germed publishing house. But pulping is pulping, isn't it? Cancel culture in general most often involves a kind of rabbit hole dynamic. Something is said about someone, an accusation made. Perhaps true, perhaps not. A teacher affronted a student, or perhaps a genius associated with and even advocated Nazi policies, and so on. The accusation disturbs some people who get angry, nasty, harsh, etc. But they do so based on very little, if any, evidence, mainly outrage. Others say hold on, that isn't even true, much less as horrible as you are asserting. Each side digs in, tactics get ugly. To defend the accused is to in turn be accused. To attack the accused is deemed disgusting. Attention to facts and reason predictably exits stage right. One has to wonder, shouldn't to cancel a human be a profoundly serious business supposing it could ever make sense at all? The dynamics in these situations tend to not only often dispose of worthy people and their products along with unworthy targets, they also affect the person or in this case the book publisher doing the canceling. The agent is seriously bent by their own actions in a harmful manner. So let's return to Chomsky's case. The cancelers hear some accusations. They start to get steadily more aggressive. Before long they are claiming that someone who they yesterday admired is today and has always been an enemy of humanity. Sometimes this can be a reasonable assertion. Much of the time it is false, and even ridiculously false, as with Chomsky. No matter, having once hurled epithets, even tweets, even in tweets, it is hard for the cancellor to back off. Indeed, many tend to double down, even more reflexibly than they began their spiral. So why does this happen? Why did the folks, and I assume they are wonderful folks, at Unrast Publishing, not just rush to judgment, guilty until proven innocent, which would be bad enough, but then decide to pulp published work? How close is the analogy to Time Warner? It isn't the same, clearly, but is it seriously different? Is it even worse? Time Warner pulped something they actually hated. The direct analogy would be if Unras commissioned a book, received it, printed it, and then realized they did not like its substance, and pulped it. That would be like a left press publishing a work on, say, oh economic vision, receiving it, publishing it, and then sabotaging its distribution. In Unras case, though, they pulped what they actually liked. More like how various respected and notable left writers have rhetorically pulped what they admired. Nome. So why? The easy answer is optics. They didn't want to suffer criticism. They didn't want to be labeled a pedophile or better, though they were willing to label someone else gnome that way. They would call it wise. Someone else might call it cowardice coupled with hypocrisy. Whatever, once done, even entirely unwarranted or even ridiculous, the next step is typically to very, very rarely acknowledge the error, or much more often, to double down and slip side down into the cancellation rabbit hole. A bit more complex, perhaps the initial impetus wasn't so much to avoid criticism as it was to be on the momentarily winning team. Either way, there is not much to applaud, or maybe you can think up another answer. My other timely topic today, before offering a new chapter of the Wind Cries Freedom is artificial intelligence or AI. I have written about this quite a few times, mostly to explain it, explore its aspects, and enumerate its dangers. This time I would like to say something about what to do about it. Not to offer answers, but to offer some thoughts about a way to think about arriving at answers. What would be good AI focused demands to make, assuming AI doesn't drop dead, stop dead on its own due to some technical or other intrinsic limit? Well, what are the problems and potentials a good approach to AI should address to inform what we should currently demand regarding AI's future development and use? If we ask down the road in the future, what should be the use of AI, that is at least broadly pretty clear. Roughly, its use should be to benefit people, to benefit society, without incurring offsetting costs or intended or unintended collateral damage that outweigh its benefits. This calculus applies to AI or really to any innovation. The direct costs of AI are the resources, time, labor, and energy it eats up, but also the negative impact its production or its use can have on people and society. The benefits are the positive impacts its use can have on people and society. We currently know some of both. On the negative side, arguably first and easily most obvious, there is ecological and energy costs are, as AI is now developing, extreme. Also, however, there is the possibility of damage due to ill motivated use by people or perhaps even by AIs themselves. For example, to generate surveillance, abet manipulation, cause job loss, enable weapons creation and use, and for AI itself to undertake AI violence against humans. And I believe there is also an unintended possible collateral effect of wide use, the usurpation of human behaviors to AIs, with the consequence of AIs becoming more human like while human talents, skills, and emotional and creative depth atrophy so that humans become more machine like. In contrast to potential cataclysm, the potential benefits are helping humans to solve or even for AI themselves to solve problems that reduce or threaten humans and society. And for AIs to help humans and society do desirable but otherwise unattainable things. For example, to help humans cure various diseases, advance clean energy, develop means to reverse global warming, and more modestly, to aid individuals to do worthy things that they could not do without AI assistance. As a start then, what kinds of demands might the above inform? I don't want to, nor am I prepared to go on too long about this, but let me at least venture a few thoughts. Legal restrictions with oversight and intervention to prevent nefarious use is an obvious demand. Laws against an inbuilt guardrails to prevent AI use for surveillance, manipulation, and weapons creation and use, and to rule out AI violence against humans. Such demands would of course need to be given workable structure. The same can be said of investigation into an intervention to prevent ecological violations and cessation of ecologically damning steps until alternatives are found. But what about job loss? And what about AI usurping profoundly human defining roles and thereby crowding humans out of those roles? These are still more difficult issues to think through. Job loss occurs when workplaces replace human workers with AI and or related robotics. This is undertaken when owners consider it a more profitable option than employing people. So when this displacement occurs, we wind up with a workplace still outputting its products and generating by their sale more profits for its owners, plus a group of unemployed workers. What might we demand? How about something along the lines that whenever this type of replacement occurs, the ensuing extra profits are used to support the displaced workers and society more widely. So output is enlarged to everyone's benefit, assuming the workplace was supplying a worthy product. But then the ensuing profits are demanded to benefit everyone, and of course, particularly those who were displaced. The ill effects of a narrowly rational republi production step are removed. Obviously this is but a thought, but perhaps one worth thinking further about. And how about an advisory that when possible, a requirement that AIs, including AI guided robots, are used by individuals and institutions only to facilitate humans doing creative and otherwise beneficial things that they would otherwise not be able to do, but in ways that enlarge human capacities rather than reduce them. These are, I know, vague and abstract thoughts regarding formulating demands for AI, but perhaps they can provide a basis for further thought. Okay, now we move on to this episode's report from the Future Revolution as Emiliano Farmer, Lydia Lawrence, and Alexandra Hanslet discuss RPS economic program and class practices. To start, Miguel asks Emiliano from his session in Chicago, what impact did new understandings of class have on RPS internally? What was the problem to address? The obvious problem was capitalism. Private ownership of workplaces, the old game where someone owns the building and everyone else works inside it. And they get rich off the labor. That had to go, no surprise there. But inside RPS, we hit on something deeper. It wasn't just about getting rid of owners. It was also about who was leading, who felt welcome, and who had power, even in our own organizing. We realized we had to elevate working class folks, not just as members, but as leaders. But how do you do that without alienating the twenty percent of the population in the coordinator class? Doctors, engineers, managers, who had useful skills, real knowledge, and reasonably often progressive values. See, some of them were on board from the start, but many weren't. Why? Because when they heard quote classlessness, what they heard was you're going to lose status, lose money, and have to clean bathrooms. And they weren't entirely wrong. In theory, giving up inflated income and power to live in a fairer society is a good deal. But most people in coordinator roles don't see it that way, at least at first. They're used to being told they're special, that they deserve their perks. It's not always malicious, it's just what they were raised on. And they think if we strip away their power, the whole system will fall apart. On the flip side, once working people do understand that their pain comes not just from owners, but also from coordinators monopolizing empowering roles, a real rage sits in. And it's justified. The smugness, the condescension, it builds up over time. Workers get sick of being looked down on, and when they're finally in a space where they can say it, they often say it loud. So now you've got two sides, one angry, one defensive. And we had to build a trust and solidarity without sweeping anything under the rug. It was a balancing act, just like addressing racism and sexism, calling it out without pushing everyone away who's got some learning to do. But here's the thing, almost no one had done this work before. Not at scale. So RPS was flying blind. We knew we had to walk the walk. If we wanted self-management in society, we had to practice it in our organization. That meant real participation, redesigning how decisions got made, creating ways for folks without elite backgrounds to build skills and confidence, making space for that learning, even if it meant underutilizing someone's fancy degree for a while. It wasn't just about policies, it was about behavior, language, style. Coordinator radicals often talk down to people without even realizing it. They mocked and dismissed shows that others watch, food that others like, newspapers that others read. Someone reads the New York Times and mocks the local tabloid. Guess what? Half the workers they're organizing with read that tabloid, or maybe moved on to also mocked podcasts. Even when radicals addressing nukes or oil, too for that matter, had the right position, say on nukes or climate, they'd undermine it by displaying much less concern about working class focuses, like jobs, or even health risks from coal mining. I remember one no nukes guy I talked to, brilliant on nuclear dangers, but he had zero interest in the lives of coal miners, like they didn't even exist. That attitude didn't help the movement. It hurt it. So we had to solve a puzzle. How do you confront class arrogance and keep people together? How do you lift up workers without throwing coordinators out the window? And how do you do it all without letting this class concern erase race, gender, ecology, or the fight to end capitalism itself? Miguel asks, so what steps were taken to deal with class differences inside RPS? Step one, we committed to balance job complexes and self management, not just for the future, but for right now, in our own chapters. That meant sharing the empowering work. It meant spreading out responsibilities, even if it slowed things down. It meant growing confidence on one side and deflating egos on the other side. No one said it would be easy, but if we were serious about classlessness, it had to be done. And we of course knew with the non chapter life not organized on RPS lines, empowerment would not equalize. Consider a college professor versus a janitor who works ten hour night shifts as but one example. So RPS also tried to address such differences as best we could, which was, of course, part of moving toward a new society. Second, we made a real push to To bring in folks from working class backgrounds, not just to join, but to stick around, feel welcome, and have real impact, even with all the junk life was already throwing at them. Third, we put working people in charge, especially when it came to shaping the internal culture. The parties, the jokes, the rhythms of social life, those things mattered. We realized trust and mutual understanding weren't just built in debates or marches. They were built sharing food, laughing, watching a game together, or arguing over music at a potluck. Miguel asks, okay, but what did these entail in practice? In your local RPS chapter, for example, what did all this translate into? And what difficulties had to be overcome even once you were doing the above? For starters, everyone in our chapter had responsibilities. It changed over time, but even from day one, we had a lot of moving parts, setting up meetings, making snacks, cleaning up, creating agendas, researching campaign ideas, recruiting and writing outreach stuff. Later on it got deeper, prepping campaign strategies and educational materials. We didn't just talk about balancing the work, we did it. That meant spreading out tasks, so the empowering stuff didn't all land on the same people. In fact, we sometimes intentionally reversed the imbalance. People with more confidence or experience would take on more of the road tasks, cleaning up, photocopying, whatever. And of course, some folks grumbled. Some even tried to sneak into the more glamorous roles, writing op eds or giving speeches. We dealt with it. Now about self management, it wasn't just voting. It was about making sure people could actually participate before we ever got to a vote. If one group dominates the preparation work, the framing, the conversation, then voting becomes window dressing. So we set a rule no vote unless members with working class parentheses disempowered jobs and circumstances collectively said they'd had their say and were sincerely heard. At first that made some people uneasy, but over time it built real respect and actual unity, not the fake kind you get from paper thin consensus. Another piece, we needed everyone to understand social change, RPS's vision, and be able to talk about it. That meant training, practicing public speaking, practicing listening. So we started doing workshops and skill shares. And here's where things got interesting. You'd assume, wrongly, that the gap between say a doctor and a mechanic was all about knowledge, that the doctor just knew more and was more suited to lead a conversation about society. But when we look closely, that wasn't true. There was a gap, yes, but it wasn't always in substance or ever unbridgeable. It was largely in language and confidence and style. Doctors and lawyers spoke with big words, workers didn't. But when you stripped away the gloss, you saw that working people could have just as much insight about social issues, and sometimes more due to their experiences. Their words were different, their tone was less polished, and yes, sometimes they were unaware of some facts due to the effects of disempowering circumstances and background. But their meaning was often deeper, more grounded, and the lacks could be bridged once relevant knowledge differences were not treated as unbridgeable chasms. I'll be blunt. Coordinator class folks could talk for ten minutes and say nothing. They had the vocabulary, but not the clarity. Ask a working class person about RPS ideas and they might freeze up at first, nervous, unsure. But once they warmed up, they brought lived experience that blew the doors off the room. They didn't just know about injustice, they'd lived it, and they knew what needed to change, even if they didn't use the right terms. That was a huge turning point. It shattered the illusion of coordinator superiority, and it let more people, especially working class members, find their voice. It also made the R ideas sharper, because now we were rooting them in real life, not just theory. Now about recruiting. This one was tough. For example, my local chapter started with 14 people, nine from coordinator backgrounds, five working class. We agreed we had to flip that ratio. RPS had to look like the world we wanted to believe to build. So we made a rule. For every one coordinator member we recruited, we had to bring in two or even three working class members. And here's the kicker. We didn't want to block coordinator folks from joining, but we did want to prioritize the right balance. So we put the pressure on ourselves, especially on working class members, to lead the recruiting. That wasn't easy. Coordinator members couldn't just invite their friends from grad school or their yogurt class. They had to slow down, focus on recruiting among workers. And that wasn't just about numbers, it was about building power from the ground up. Working folks already had jobs, families, tight schedules, and little energy. So if we wanted them to join, we had to make it easier to participate. And we realized we could. Within a chapter, there were all kinds of skills, people who could help with child care, who could set up shared shopping or meals, people who knew how to handle bureaucracies and could help with paperwork, housing issues, and job stuff. We collectivized tasks to save time and money. When chapters got big and split into new ones, we pushed for networks across chapters to share resources so no one got left out. That wasn't charity, it was smart organizing. If you want people to show up, you've got to clear the path and sometimes shovel it yourself. And we pushed for larger social issues too. Shorter work week, public childcare, housing assistance, but in the meantime we made changes ourselves. We did what we could with what we had. Miguel asks, Lydia from the session at her home in St. Louis, what about class writ larger and society? It was and it remains the same problem, though on a different scale. And the larger scale has had positive and negative aspects. Positively, there are many more ways to address issues and more resources to bring to bear. Training is easier, for example, as is working out class task assignments when there are more tasks and more people. On the other hand, the impersonality of dealing with people you don't know makes things harder. In any case, RPS applied the same kinds of thinking to society and its components as we applied to a chapter or assembly of chapters or even the whole organization. We had campaigns for accountability in a great many workplaces, but even more importantly, for job redefinition to spread empowering tasks in whole workplaces and later even whole industries. That meant battling for workers' power and day-to-day decision making on the job, and regarding broad social policies as well. Sometimes via union battles and sometimes via workplace councils, which were often, in some ways, just larger versions of workplace RPS chapters. It also meant applying the same participation and leadership norms to broad RPS campaigns and events as we were opting for in local chapter-sponsored campaigns and events. Perhaps the largest example was the massive campaign RPS undertook for a shorter workday and work week. We fought for this in ways highly attuned to working class and not coordinator class needs. Of course, this wasn't entirely new, but it was larger than ever. So the campaign began much like earlier campaigns around minimum wage increases. Workers in particular industries, in this case Walmart, Amazon, and a few other mass suppliers, began to agitate for more time off. Initially, this was about vacation time and forced overtime, but relatively quickly it matured into more general demands for a thirty hour work week. But workers quickly imposed added elements. They could not afford to work three quarters as long as before for the same hourly rate as before. That would mean their total income dropped by a fourth. And since it was already way too low for living, well, that was simply unacceptable. If the campaign required that kind of loss of income, working class support would dry up. So seeking a shorter work week had to mean hourly wages had to go up so that total income did not drop. And that meant an hourly wage increase by one third. If you were earning$15 an hour earlier, then after a switch to a 30 hour week, you would be earning$20 an hour. So your total income per week would not change. But wait a minute. What if you were earning$150 an hour? Should you now earn$200 an hour after? No. If your income was too high before, why not have the battle for a shorter work week to bring things more into line? It couldn't yet seek to cut a cut in hourly rate for high paid employees, that would come later. But it could rule out any raise in hourly pay going to those who are already overpaid. So now the demand was that everyone would work thirty instead of forty hours, but only those earning less than, say, thirty dollars an hour would also get an hourly pay increase of one third. How would owners manage this? By taking less profit, of course. But what if to avoid that, they employ they imposed overtime to raise output to try to make up for their change costs? Okay, said workers. Let's allow overtime, but always optional, not forced, and with overtime pay being not time and a half, but triple time. There was another exemplary aspect. Consider doctors in a hospital. After the change, the owners would have them working thirty hour weeks and would have to pay triple time to get more labor from them, which labor the hospital might well need. What would happen? The answer was either the owners would pay the higher overtime rate, supposing doctors were willing to work the extra hours, or they would have to redefine work to get more doctor like contributions out of other employees, mainly nurses, and to start to pressure med schools to produce more doctors. Again, these are trends that impact class relations positively. And it wasn't just hospitals, it was throughout the economy. Take law firms, for example, which notoriously worked young lawyers ludicrous hours, just like hospitals overworked young doctors. The logic in each case was to keep the number of doctors and lawyers down and socialize them into their roles, to later keep up their relative power and incomes. Once it was too expensive to persist in doing that, since you had to pay triple time, and even more in many cases, because now the young doctors and young lawyers could legally work only thirty hours, and attempts to force them to do more were illegal and punishable by severe fines on profits, as well as by the growing militance of the workers involved. Policies had to be reconceived. That is just a taste, of course, of the kind of struggles that develop. Miguel asks, Alexandra, from her session at a conference in Cleveland, Ohio, did the effects to challenge class division work? What was the turning point toward real success? They're not done. But yes, if you look at it honestly, at what we were up against, at how long those systems had been in place, I think it's clear that our efforts worked incredibly well. Class division wasn't the side issue. It was a foundation. It helped shape everything. And we were challenging that foundation, not over centuries, but in the span of a few decades. And not only that, we were doing it while also challenging equally foundational patriarchy, white supremacy, ecological devastation, and corporate control. So yeah, given all that, I think we did damn well. As for a single turning point, I'm not sure there was one. Movements aren't fairy tales. There's no one magic moment. There were waves, sparks, cascades of organizing that built on each other. But okay, if I had to name one major spark, I'd say the Amazon sit down strikes. That moment was historic. It started, what? A decade after the first RPS convention. We were still finding our footing even after that decade, but then suddenly, bam, first thousands, then tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands of Amazon workers sat down at their stations and refused to move. Not only that, they refused to let anyone take their place. They didn't just walk off the job, they stayed on the job, but they shut it down. Miguel S suddenly bam? Oh, don't take it so literally. Geez. There had been years and years of Amazon organizing, intermittent strikes, and even local sit downs. I mean suddenly in the feeling of the giant impact we all felt outside of Amazon, not within it, where all the years of engagement and struggle and then prior work for the event itself occurred. In any case, I remember it vividly. I remember seeing the first videos, workers lined up between towering shells, arms crossed, determined, quiet, but powerful. I remember rushing to a local warehouse to stand with them. The energy was electric. Something seriously shifted. These workers, who had been made invisible, were now center stage. We had all been part of that invisibility. We clicked buy now and packages just arrived. We didn't think about the people inside those massive buildings, walking ten miles ashift, pissing in bottles, working under surveillance. But now? Now they were standing up. No, they were sitting down to stand taller than they ever had stood before. And what they were saying was our poverty is not our fault. Our exhaustion is not natural. Our labor deserves dignity. That was seismic. Miguel asks, how did people react? At first people were stunned. Wait, how many Amazon workers are there? What's happening? Is this real? And then the power of it sank in. Friends and families brought tents, students formed supply chains, people rallied outside warehouses and city after city. It became a national moment of solidarity, and of course, the bosses tried to crush it. Police were told shut it down, enforce order. But their neighbors and inside the warehouses, workers said, You come in here, we're not going with you. We'll resist, and you'll lose. One worker on camera said what we were all feeling. We are Amazon's workers. We are not the cause of our hardships. Amazon is. Capitalism is. Market competition is. We have repeatedly organized, struck, and now we will not move. Scabs will not replace us. Enter this warehouse and we will wreak havoc. Invade this warehouse and we will dismantle it. Our work is not what it could be. We are going to redefine it. We are going to take it back. We are going to make it ours. Photograph us. Send cops to find us. You didn't need to take the photos. You could have had them use their family albums. Do your worst, but we are here to stay. We will not be moved. That clip went viral. And then came the standoff, police outside, workers inside, and thousands of supporters surrounding the police. I was there, we linked arms, I gave an interview where I said Bosses, do as you will, but like the workers inside, we too will remain. We are students, lawyers, and mail carriers. We are cooks, farmers and assemblers. We are nurses, doctors, custodians, and yes, off duty cops. Amazon workers have our hearts. We have their backs. Cameras were everywhere. That was the turning point. Because suddenly force was off the table. Not because they got kind, but because they got scared. They realized if we go in there with batons, we will lose more than we win. The movement had grown too strong, too visible, too committed. And that was the real lesson. If you want to prevent repression, make repression counterproductive. Make the price of suppression too high for the system to bear. That's how you win. And when we did, within a week UPS workers joined, then FedEx, the economy teetered, the bosses caved. New hours, new pay, new dignity, and everyone watching knew this is just the beginning. Miguel says it couldn't have been that easy. Of course it wasn't easy, but solidarity grew. Mutual aid spread like wildfire. Sympathy caught like sparks in dry grass. The scale of collective action, the sheer potential of it, was too much for the elites to contain. Amazon had to fold, new work hours, new compensation systems, and more than that, we walked away with something even more transformative, renewed belief in our own power, a belief that we could win again and again. And the truth is, once we realized that, it was the owners who looked weak, pathetic even. But I'll say this, sometimes the speed of the victories masked the real difficulty behind them. I was scared the night before I joined the action. I couldn't sleep. My chest was tight, my mind was racing. I kept thinking, what happens if they arrest me? What if I get hurt? What if everything changes tomorrow? Some people throw themselves into risk with fire in their bellies. Courageous, maybe even a little reckless. Not me. I was afraid. And I knew one way or another, my life would never be the same again. But the owners, they were cornered, and not just by us. The police too were split. Officially they were supposed to follow orders, but personally, a lot of them resonated with the workers. They too were tired of their brutal hours, tired of low pay, tired of being used. And equally important, we didn't treat them like enemy robots. We treated them like people, like workers, like neighbors. Yes, they were trapped in roles that too often made them oppressors, but they were still people, and we tried to talk to them like people, not to excuse harm, but to convert power. That approach mattered. We weren't naive about it, but we were strategic. Instead of reinforcing the divide, we started chipping away at it, rallying, reasoning, making the case. This isn't just our fight, it's yours too. And bit by bit, some police began to refuse repression. Not enough yet, but it was a beginning. And then there was a second, related turning point, one that started not in the streets, but in the halls of privilege, Harvard Medical School of all places. It began with a campaign to raise wages for low income campus workers, custodial staff, food service workers. At first, it was just a coalition of workers and undergrads, but it caught fire, and most of the students, they were RPS influenced. A good many were RPS members. They saw the campaign not just as a way to win higher wages, but as a political educational opportunity and opening. Yes, they were fighting for better better pay, but they were also asking why does society reward a lecture more than it rewards keeping that lecture hall clean? Why does comfort get paid in prestige while exhaustion gets pennies? The conversation spread. It started in dorm rooms and classrooms, and before long it reached the med students, and from there the whole thing exploded. You had students, future doctors, lawyers, architects, engineers, suddenly rethinking what their careers were supposed to be for. Not just how to succeed in the system, but how to transform it. It wasn't all students, but it was a great many. The for the people movement, doctors for the people, lawyers for the people, professors for the people, it was powerful. It reminded some older activists of the sixties, sure, but this time it had teeth. It didn't stop at sentiment. It dug into power. And look, there were still old habits, elitism, ego, resistance. That's always part of the mix. But something fundamental had shifted. Many people in the so-called coordinator class, the managers, the professionals, the credentials, started questioning not just their roles, but their purpose, their pay, their responsibilities, their allegiance. I remember hearing law students at a rally say, quote, we law students know that we harbor bad habits of entitlement that operate obstructively. We know that we face intense resistance from any classmates, faculty, and the media. Let's face facts, money grubbing is not yet in history's wastebasket. Nonetheless, we seek to be lawyers for people and not for corporations. That kind of thing used to be less than fringe. Now it was mainstream, a movement. And the thing is, when professionals start choosing solidarity over status, when they start organizing their labor in service of liberation, that's a whole new chapter. I'll never forget what Andre Goldman said at a rally at Columbia. It went violent. It was printed on shirts. I still have mine. He said, I will not justify low wages, unemployment, and alienation. I will not rationalize profits over people and celebrate growth over sustainability. I will do economics for workers, not for owners, for people, not for profits. For the planet, not for the plutocrats. Do likewise. Be humane, be true, enough boot licking for corporate owners. Enough is enough. That summed it up. That was the spirit of the shift. And sure, maybe other people would point to other moments, but for me, that wave from the Amazon sit downs to Harvard's professional reimagining, that was the line in the sand, the point of no return. The class struggle wasn't over. It still isn't. But the direction was clear. People saw it, they felt it. Class wasn't just going to be reformed, it was going to be dismantled. Not a nicer boss, no bosses. Years later, when I eventually became a shadow labor secretary, I had no doubt that we were building classlessness. It wasn't a dream, it was a plan. And sure, there was still work to do. So much of it. But it felt like that moment when you stop wondering if you will succeed and start figuring out how. That's what a turning point really is. It's when the struggle doesn't get easier, but the vision gets clearer. You don't look back, you push forward, downhill or uphill, it doesn't matter. You're on your way. For the economy, for the people, no bosses. Miguel asks, but the struggle is complicated, isn't it? What works and what doesn't? And that's where the chapter ended. But here's a new song from Jesse Wells, performed by Jesse with Joan Baez. No hatred, no violence, no starvation, and no greed, and no kings, no kings, no kings. No lies, no bullets, no bombs, and no need, but no kings, no kings, no kings. No walls, no judgments, no oppression cowering to kings, no kings, no kings. Every color, every culture, every language, every creed, and no kings, no kings, no kings. No more dine in the clutches, no more dine underneath, no kings, no kings, no kings. No more dine for the causes no one asks for, no one needs, and no kings, no kings, no kings. To all the dignity, the love that they deserve and need, no kings, no kings, no kings, the pursuit of happiness, the right to life and liberty, and no kings, no kings, no kings. No child going hungry and there's a pl and there's plenty enough to eat, with no kings, no kings, no kings. May I recognize your soul, that you may see the soul in me. No kings, no kings, no kings. Close your eyes and listen, so that you may truly see no kings, no kings, no kings, that the killing of my foe indeed destroys a part of me. No kings, no kings, no kings. No hatred, no violence, no starvation, and no greed, and no kings, no kings, no kings. And that said, this is Michael Albert, signing off until next episode for Revolution Z.