WHAT IS POLITICS?

The leaders of the Russian Revolutions of February and October 1917 sought to establish socialism: a deeply democratic economic and political system where the employee/employer relationship is abolished, and where workers control their workplaces, the means of production and the government via the “free association of the producers”. Instead the revolutions resulted in the establishment of the Soviet Union: an authoritarian state where the government became the sole employer and the state controlled the workers instead of the other way around.  This then became the model for “communist” countries around the world.   Why did the Soviet Union fail at socialism?  What can we learn about this failure to apply to our political struggles in the present and future? ALL MUSIC BY STARSIXNINE PLEASE SHARE AND LET PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT THIS SERIES!! I purposefully don’t monetize my channel in order to spare you the annoying ads, and it takes me weeks to make these (this one took 4 months!), so please help if you can! PATREON (PER EPISODE DONATIONS) KO-FI (ONE TIME OR MONTHLY DONATIONS) PAYPAL (ONE TIME OR MONTHLY DONATIONS) BIBLIOGRAPHY TRANSCRIPT VIDEO VERSION tweeter https://archive.org/download/11.1-RUSSIANREV/11.1%20-%20RUSSIAN%20REVOLUTION%20I.mp3

Why has every communist country so far been a one party dictatorship?   Is it something inherent to Socialism or Marxism?   Is human nature incompatible with political equality?   Has “true” communism never been tried yet?  If so, then why not? Is it “capitalist encirclement”? Richard Wolff can’t answer this question for some reason. Neither can Freddie de Boer.  Yet the answer is very simple, and we can learn a lot from it.   Listen, and find out… ALL MUSIC BY STARSIXNINE PLEASE SHARE AND LET PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT THIS SERIES!! I purposefully don’t monetize my channel in order to spare you the annoying ads, and it takes me weeks to make these, so please help if you can! PATREON PAYPAL ONE TIME OR RECURRING DONATIONS BIBLIOGRAPHY:    TRANSCRIPT VIDEO VERSION tweeter https://archive.org/download/11-communism/11-%20COMMUNISM.mp3

In this episode we cover the rest of chapter 3 of David Graeber and David Wengrow’s book The Dawn of Everything. In this chapter, the authors claim that the seasonal social structures of the traditional Nambikwara, Lakota and Kwakiutl were the result of conscious choice, grand theatre, play and expedience. In doing so, they repeatedly invent various things that they attribute to famous anthropologists like Clause-Levi Strauss and Marcel Mauss which those authors never said. They also claim that those authors attribute social phenomena to conscious choice when in reality they attribute them to material conditions. We also discover that Claude Levi-Strauss goofed up Nambikwara social organization. And we look at materialist explanations for phenomena such as: Why did the traditional Inuit have private patriarchy and private property in summer but gender equality and communal property in winter? Why did the Lakota have an Akicita police force that would punish crimes and enforce rules in the buffalo season but not the rest of the year? The similarities between Nuer prophets and ancient Israelite prophets in the Old Testament. Finally, we apply the authors’ logic about conscious choice and seasonal social structures to McDonalds employees and have a good a laugh. all music by *69 PLEASE SHARE AND LET PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT THIS SERIES!! YouTube channel TRANSCRIPT RSS FEED PATREON (I refuse to monetize my YouTube because I don’t want to subject you to ads, and it takes me 2-6 weeks to make one episode of these, so please help out if you can!) BIBLIOGRAPHY tweeter https://archive.org/download/10.4-McDonalds/10.4%20-%20RONALD%20McDONALD.mp3

We cover the first part of chapter 3 of David Graeber and David Wengrow’s book The Dawn of Everything: ”Unfreezing the Ice Age”, and we investigate the authors’ claims that human inequality has no origins based on archeology from upper paleolithic europe.    In doing so we also look at the difference between dominance hierarchy and democratic hierarchy, and what the necessary criteria are in order to establish a a dominance hierarchy.   We also discover that Graeber & Wengrow actually have no arguments for why human inequality supposedly has no origins! all music by *69 *PLEASE* SHARE AND LET PEOPLE (ESPECIALLY MATT CHRISTMAN) KNOW ABOUT THIS SERIES!! TRANSCRIPT BIBLIOGRAPHY YOUTUBE CHANNEL (live action! graphics!) RSS FEED PATREON tweeter: @worbsintowords https://archive.org/download/10.3-smurfs/10.3%20-%20SMURFS.mp3

In this episode we cover chapter 1 of David Graeber & David Wengrow’s book The Dawn of Everything, entitled Farewell to Humanity’s Childhood; or Why This isn’t a Book About the Origins of Inequality. In doing so, we look at the following: How the book’s underlying thesis: that human social structure is ultimately a matter of choice and experimentation, is fundamentally incoherent, and how this idea sets us up for future dramatic political failures, similar to those of Occupy Wall Street or the Great Peasant’s Revolt of 1381. What the standard narrative of human origins actually is, vs. the caricature elevator pitch version that Graeber & Wengrow claim to be debunking. Why most anthropologists believe that human beings began as egalitarian hunter-gatherers despite knowing about all of the evidence that Graeber & Wengrow present in order to argue the otherwise. How and why Graeber & Wengrow flush down the toilet the analytical tools that they need in order to answer their own questions about how we got stuck in dominance hierarchies. How social structure actually works. How Graeber & Wengrow’s arguments are great material for right wing talking points. Why there is room for deliberate social change in a world where social structure is largely a matter of conditions and relative bargaining power, rather than a matter of “choice”. all music by *69 BIBLIOGRAPHY FULL TRANSCRIPT PLEASE SHARE THIS SERIES! YouTube Channel: live with graphics! Patreon: Help me make this podcast/channel all it can be, and help it be less torture and destructive for my income for me to produce these! They takes 2-6 weeks full time to put together during which time I’m not earning any money, so I need your help to continue! Audio Podcast : click the link on your device to open the audio podcast in your mobile app, or else search for “worbs” on your podcast app.  Full transcripts available on the episode pages.  Audio Podcast RSS Feed https://archive.org/download/10.2-ernie-and-bert/10.2%20-%20ERNIE%20AND%20BERT.mp3

In this episode we read and critique the conclusion of Chapter 2 of Dawn of Everything, “Wicked Liberty: The Indigenous Critique and the Myth of the Noble Savage”, which was previously released in French in 2019 as La Sagesse de Kandiaronk. Given that the conclusion of the chapter is a tirade against the concept of “equality” we first examine what the world equality means in a political context, and what the term “egalitarian society” implies, followed by an examination of the history of the anthropological literature on egalitarian hunter gatherer societies.   We also cover material from Graeber’s Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology and On Kings in order to look at how his treatment of egalitarian societies over his career routinely ignored 50 years of research on extremely egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies, a practice which he and Wengrow continue in this chapter.    all music by *69 PLEASE SHARE THIS SERIES! Bibliography YouTube Channel: live with graphics! Patreon: Help me make this podcast/channel all it can be, and help it be less torture and destructive for my income for me to produce these! They takes 2-6 weeks full time to put together during which time I’m not earning any money, so I need your help to continue! Audio Podcast : click the link on your device to open the audio podcast in your mobile app, or else search for “worbs” on your podcast app.  Full transcripts available on the episode pages.  Audio Podcast RSS Feed   BIBLIOGRAPHY / SUGGESTED READINGS   GRAEBER AND WENGROW Graeber & Wengrow 2021 – The Dawn of Everything Graeber & Wengrow 2019 – La Sagesse de Kandiaronk (deepl or googl translate will give you a decent English translation) Graeber & Wengrow 2015 – Farewell to the Childhood of Man Graeber & Wengrow 2020 – Hiding in Plain Sight, Democracy’s indigenous origins in the Americas. David Graeber 2004 – Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology David Graeber and Marshall Sahlins 2017 – On Kings David Graeber & Andrej Gubačić 2020 – Introduction to Pyotr Kropotkin 1902 – Mutual Aid   CRITIQUES OF GRAEBER AND WENGROW Chris Knight 2021 – Did Communism Make Us Human? The Anthropology of David Graeber  Christ Knight 2021 – The Anthropology of David Graeber (video) Camilla Power 2018 – Gender egalitarianism made us human: A response to David Graeber & David Wengrow’s ‘How to change the course of human history’   GENERAL  Robert Kelly 1995/2014 – The Foraging Spectrum  James Woodburn 1982 – Egalitarian Societies James Woodburn 2005 – Egalitarian Societies Revisited, in Widlock & Gossa (eds) – Property and equality, Volume 1: ritualisation, sharing, egalitarianism Richard Lee 2004 – Power and Property in Twenty-first Century Foragers: A Critical Examination Richard Lee & Irving Devore (Eds.) 1968 – Man the Hunter Richard Lee & Eleanor Leacock (eds) 1983 – Politics and History in Band Societies CENTRAL AFRICAN FORAGERS Jerome Lewis 2017 – Bayaka Elephant Hunting in the Congo Lewis, J., 2014. Egalitarian Social Organization: The Case of the Mbendjele BaYaka Morna Finnegan 2013 – The politics of Eros: ritual dialogue and egalitarianism in three Central African hunter-gatherer societies Hewlett 2017 ed – Hunter-Gatherers of the Congo Basin Colin Turnbull 1961 – The Forest People   KALAHARI BUSH PEOPLE Richard Lee 1969 – Eating Christmas in the Kalahari [“Shaming the meat”] Richard Lee 1979 – The !Kung San: Men, Women and Work in a Foraging Society   Richard Lee 1982 – Politics, Sexual and Non-Sexual, in an Egalitarian Society Richard Lee 1984/2013 – The Dobe Ju/Hoansi Helga Vierich 2021 – ‘Hunting is boring and unreliable. Let the men do it!’ (video)   HADZA Frank Marlowe 2010 – The Hadza Hunter-Gatherers of Tanzania Frank Marlowe 2004 – Dictators and ultimatums in an egalitarian society of hunter-gatherers, the Hadza Fearless & Far 2021 – Asking Hunter-Gatherers Life’s Toughest Questions (video) Coren Lee Apicella 2018 – High levels of rule-bending in a minimally religious and largely egalitarian forager population   NAYAKA Nurit Bird-David 1990 – The Giving Environment, Another Perspective on the Economic System of Gatherer-Hunters Nurit Bird-David 1999 – “Animism” Revisited: Personhood, Environment, and Relational Epistemology   BATEK Kirk & Karen Endicott 2008 – The Headman Was a Woman: The Gender Egalitarian Batek of Malaysia   MONTAGNAIS-NASKAPI Eleanor Leacock 1981 – Myths of Male Dominance   CRITIQUES/DEBATES ON FORAGER EGALITARIANISM Alan Barnard 1992 – The Kalahari Debate, a Bibliographical Essay Edwin Wilmsen 1989 – Land Filled With Flies Roy Richard Grinkger 1991 – Houses in the Rainforest Richard Lee & Mathias Guenther 1991 – Oxen or Onions? The Search for Trade (and Truth) in the Kalahari Ted Kaczynski 2008 – The Truth About Primitive Life: A Critique of Anarchoprimitivism   https://archive.org/download/10.1-equality/10.1%20WHAT%20IS%20EQUALITY%2C%20MANG.mp3

A critical reading of “The Wisdom of Kandiaronk, The Indigenous Critique, the Myth of Progress and the Birth of the Left” from David Graeber & David Wengrow’s upcoming book The Dawn of Everything. In this chapter Graeber & Wengrow argue that: The European Enlightenment was heavily influenced by Native American critiques of European culture. That European intellectuals reacted against this by developing the theory of “stages of human progress” where we went from from egalitarian hunter-gatherers to pastoralists to farmers to market civilization. That Jean-Jacques Rousseau synthesized the Native American critique and the stages of progress theory into a seemingly egalitarian critique of European social hierarchies which resigns us to accept hierarchy as the price of civilization.  That this synthesis was the birth of the “intellectual left”.  That the concept of human equality has no meaning and should be discarded [these guys *really* needed to listen to this podcast before writing this…] TRANSCRIPT BIBLIOGRAPHY: Graeber & Wengrow 2019 – “La Sagesse de Kandiaronk, la critique indigène, la mythe du progrès et la naissance de la gauche“, chapter from The Dawn of Everything (2021), published in French in Journal du MAUSS Sally Roesch Wagner 2015, How Indigenous Women Inspired The Feminist Movement, Bust Magazine PLEASE SHARE THIS SERIES! YouTube Channel: live with graphics! Patreon: Help me make this podcast/channel all it can be, and help it be less torture and destructive for my income for me to produce these! They takes 2-6 weeks full time to put together during which time I’m not earning any money, so I need your help to continue! Audio Podcast : click the link on your device to open the audio podcast in your mobile app, or else search for “worbs” on your podcast app.  Full transcripts available on the episode pages.  Audio Podcast RSS Feed https://archive.org/download/10-kandiaronk/10%20-%20KONDIARONK.mp3

Interview with Arnold Schroeder of Fight Like an Animal, a wonderful and endessly fascinating show that looks through 20 years of experience of hardcore climate activism, at why left political movements are so weak and ineffective and how to change that, and which covers everything from history, to political psychology, to anthropology, psychiatry, animal behaviour, religious cults, and much more.   I highly recommend everyone check out his show, and dig deep into the extensive bibliographies for every episode, which in and of themselves are a gold mine. And look for my interview on Arnolds show in the coming days All music is by me. www.againsttheinternet.com Fight Like an Animal Patreon What is Politics Patreon What Is Politics Video Channel (video version of this interview and all episodes can be found here plus other stuff) https://archive.org/download/arnoldschroeder/INTERVIEW%20WITH%20ARNOLD.mp3

The terms “cancel culture” and “political correctness” are used to delegitimize ideas like gender equality and racial equality by conflating them with toxic dominance behaviour practiced by up-and-coming elites who disguise their power plays in egalitarian social justice language. In this segment, by seeking to properly define these terms, we look at: The Class Filter: how ideas that are a threat to power historically get mutated into tools of power once they pass through elite institutions, in this case Ivy League universities, and corporate HR departments.   The Interloper Left: how elites and aspiring elites (who by definition are right-wing actors) will disguise dominance behaviour in egalitarian language in order to gain legitimacy and prestige in democratic societies. Poison/Sugar Pilling: how elites will de-legitimize popular ideas which are a threat to power by conflating them with unpopular ideas, and how they will convince people to accept things they don’t like by associating them with popular terms. How egalitarian language and ill conceived “anti-racism” trainings like “White Fragility” are being used in the corporate world to divide workers and prevent them from banding together in defence of their rights.  How to spot some of the red flags that distinguish movements rooted in equality and solidarity from toxic “cancel culture” and “political correctness” power plays. FULL TRANSCRIPT   link to share this podcast (opens the audio podcast in your podcast app on your device): http://www.podfollow.com/worbs YouTube Channel Patreon tweeter: @worbsintowords   https://archive.org/download/SPITBALL02/02%20-%20CANCEL%20CULTURE%20IS%20YOUR%20MANAGER.mp3

The foundation of “cancel culture” and “political correctness” is the wage labour employment contract. ARTICLES QUOTED: Corey Robin, Chris Bertram and Alex Gourevitch 2012 – Life at Work, Crooked Timber Amanda Hess 2013 – How Sexy Should A Worker Be? The Plight of the Babe in the American Workplace, Slate Yvonne Abraham 2015 – Tom Brady has more rights than most American workers, Boston Globe link to share this podcast (opens the audio podcast in your podcast app on your device): http://www.podfollow.com/worbs YouTube Channel Patreon tweeter: @worbsintowords https://archive.org/download/SPITBALL01/SPITBALL%2001%20-%20EMPLOYMENT%20CONTRACT.mp3