Everyday Anarchism

Tomas Rothaus joins me to discuss his book Argentina, A Tale of Two Utopias: Anarchism, Soccer, Neoliberalism. We talk about the way that true soccer clubs are anarchic: they represent a community coming together and organizing around something. By contrast, billionaire-owned sports franchises are just corporate business. Tomas tells his story of being part of both anarchist and soccer organizing in Argentina, the amazing victories won against neoliberalism 25 years ago, and the rise of the new "anarcho-capitalist" regime in Argentina.

Here's a link to the book: https://pmpress.org/product/argentina-a-tale-of-two-utopias-anarchism-soccer-neoliberalism

Nathan Gelgud comes back on the show to discuss No Concessions, the next volume of his cartoon strip about a radical cell of Marxist cinephiles trying to create a revolutionary society by screening films the right way. Nathan and I talk about everything from "selling out" to the meaning of progressive politics to the films of Abbas Kiarostami.

You can find Nathan on instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/gelgud/

Buy the book here: https://drawnandquarterly.com/books/no-concessions/

And check out Abbas Kiarostami's early films! https://www.criterion.com/boxsets/8309-eclipse-series-47-abbas-kiarostami-early-shorts-and-features

If money is just made up, can't we solve the problem of poverty by just giving people money? This radical idea feels new, but Thomas Paine proposed it as a revolutionary solution during both the US and French revolutions. Alberto Tena-Camporesi joins me to discuss Paine's radical idea, its relationship to current ideas about UBI, and why this idea just keeps coming up in radical (and right-wing) circles.

You can find Alberto's work here: https://scholar.google.es/citations?user=FMpnSa8AAAAJ&hl=en

Here's a direct link to the article we discussed (might be behind a paywall): https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-10213639

And here's Alberto's book on the topic (in Spanish): https://postmetropolis.com/producto/los-origenes-revolucionarios-de-la-renta-basica/

The audio recording of a talk I gave at Oriel College, Oxford University. Thank you to Nick Gaskill and Oriel for inviting me!

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

Ruth Kinna joins me for the Fifth Anniversary Episodes! First, an announcement: I wrote a book to be published by PM Press introducing everyday anarchism. No publication date yet, so more later on that front!

Ruth and I discuss just what anarchy and anarchism is, and why anarchy is actually always all around us. This means that everything from Donald Trump to the Roman Empire are, in some key way, running on anarchy, and it means that attempts to eliminate anarchy from politics, from those of Hobbes and Plato to the US Constitution, will always fail.

Thank you for listening!

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

Here's Ann's website: https://annleckie.com/

Rhiannon Firth joins me to discuss Journey Through Utopia, Mary Louise Berneri's anarchist survey of utopian thinking. Rhiannon and I discuss why so many utopias seem so totalitarian, and how we can imagine a better world without falling into that trap.

Here's a link to the Berneri book: https://www.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1008

And Rhiannon's book Disaster Anarchy: https://www.plutobooks.com/product/disaster-anarchy/

It's generally accepted that there was an "age of revolutions" in Europe in the 18th and 19th century. Sometimes the American revolution is added. But there were many, many revolutions in the Caribbean and Latin America in that same time. Shouldn't we have an "age of American revolutions"? And if so, doesn't that mean the American revolution (or "United States Revolution") was just one American revolution among many?

Arturo Chang joins me to discuss A New World of Revolutions, his book about the rise of "American political thought" and the various revolutions across the Americas that sprang from these political ideas. We also spend a great deal of time talking about how looking at history as the story of states prevents us from seeing what was actually happening across the wider landscape.

You can learn more about Arturo and his book here: https://www.arturochang.com/

This episode is part of the "Radicalism in the American Revolution" series

Amit Chaudhuri rejoins me to discuss his new novel/memoir/essay, Chateau Rouge. The book is about a writer who finds himself in a region of Paris, Chateau Rouge, filled with immigrants and their small business hustles, not cafes and patisseries. Shocked by how different Chateau Rouge is from the Paris of Hemingway and Proust, the narrator has to find a new way to understand what Paris is and what it means, without reliance on Parisian cliche.

Amit and I discuss all of this, and also the broader question of how you find the meaning in the mundane. We also conclude the interview talking a bit about the filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu, whose films were also about the meaning of the mundane. I recommend starting Ozu with his film Good Morning, linked below. Amit recommends I was Born, But... also linked below. And you may be interested to learn that Good Morning is Ozu's own remake of I was Born, But...

Chateau Rouge: https://flyleafbooks.com/book/9798896230878

Good Morning: https://archive.org/details/good-morning_202012

I was Born, But...: https://archive.org/details/i-was-born-but