Doug Lain is a fiction author and the anarchist podcaster behind the Diet Soap Podcast. In this interview, Doug and I discuss the intellectual roots of socialist anarchism, Paris in 1968, Silent Revolution, and Psycho-Geography. Useful links below:
Elinor Ostrom – Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics
Flickr Photo Map of a Bike Ride
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7 responses to “Episode #75: A 21st Century Anarchist with Doug Lain”
Frank. The original plan was for half of this conversation to appear on Diet Soap and I dropped the ball. Let’s talk again for my show. Shoot me an email?
Great podcast Frank! I have some thoughts on libertarian-socialism and land holdings.
From my perspective agricultural small holdings is pretty much a necessary scale for any ecological, knowledge/management intensive production systems. Look at Cuba’s more recent pragmatic farmland policy. They are emphasizing smaller units of farm lands in usufruct. That tends to lead to an investment in the land as if it’s privately owned but there’s no claim of ownership of that land after the farmer’s death/retirement. Private ownership of agricultural land has not seemed to lead to less tragic farming practices than “the commons”. It’s a matter of parity not property, we need not squeeze our farmers from all sides.
I imagine a directly democratic agrarian policy would have various levels of individual and collective land management, mechanisms for inter-generational continuity (somewhat similar to farmlink programs), accountability to the larger community, and informed prior consent of original peoples.
Bottom up agrarian reform is the task of our time (successful long term land occupations, with legal recognition, and participation of community in land expropriation). http://www.monthlyreview.org/090817rosset.php “This tactic of land occupation is one of the central tactics in the contemporary struggle for land reform. The MST has set the standard for other landless people’s movements around the world. They are noted for both their success in occupying land—as measured by the amount of land occupied, the number of people settled, and a rate of abandonment of the settlements that remains well below 10 percent of new settlers—as well as for the sophisticated nature of their internal organization. The MST uses a two-step method to move people from extreme poverty into landownership and farming. They begin by reaching out to the most excluded and impoverished segments of Brazilian society, such as landless rural day laborers, urban homeless people, people with substance abuse problems, unemployed rural slum dwellers, or peasant farmers who have lost their land. Organizers give talks in community centers, churches, and other public forums, and landless families are given the opportunity to sign up for a land occupation.
Step one sees these families move into rural “camps,” where they live on the side of highways in shacks made from black plastic, until a suitable estate—typically land left unused by absentee landlords—is found. Families spend at least six months, and sometimes as long as five years, living under the harsh conditions of the camps, with little privacy, enduring heat in the summer and cold in the rainy season. As the MST discovered almost by accident, however, the camps are the key step in forging new people out of those with tremendous personal issues to overcome. Camp discipline, which is communally imposed by camp members, prohibits drug use, domestic violence, excessive drinking, and a host of other social ills. All families must help look after each other’s children—who play together—and everyone must cooperate in communal duties. People learn to live cooperatively, and they receive intensive training in literacy, public health, farming, administration of co-ops, and other key skills that can make their future farm communities successful. When people used to occupy land directly, they usually failed to stay more than few months. But when they have first been through an MST camp, more than 90 percent of them stay on their land long term.”
Great episode of a great podcast.
Let me offer one piece of constructive feedback. Sometimes you go for long stretches using only pronouns to refer to what you’re talking about. This is confusing to listeners if they miss the first part of a conversation. For example you started talking about “anarchism” at 5:30, and then referred to “it” and “ideology” exclusively until around 7:20. I missed the initial utterance of “anarchism” so I couldn’t make sense of the discussion until I started the podcast over. That’s OK for podcast listeners, but radio broadcast listeners can’t do that.
Just something to be aware of. Thanks for your efforts.
Doug Lain: Here’s some of what you just said in this podcast…
“If you don’t have any participation in this silent revolution, you’re really uh, in an impoverished place, and actually, to be really honest, that’s the position I am in. I work in a corporate job, I commute, when I’m not working I’m either working on a podcast or trying to write, or spending time with my family. I have no relationship with this silent revolution, um, so, I’m not in a great position to talk about it. But I know, that if I could be involved with those kinds of projects, that it would be profoundly rewarding and I kind of feel like I should seek this out, uh — I just need to find the time for it.”
Dude, shouldn’t that be your top priority? You’ve read and talked enough about anarchism… start doing it man!
You can make about $9000/yr in the US without paying federal taxes other than Social Security and Medicare. You can make several thousand dollars more if you have a child. Your better half can do the same. This is default tax resistance by way of “poverty”. You could be making around $20k/yr max as a family without directly supporting an obese government. That’s 3 days per week of wage slavery at minimum wage, or 2 days per week at $11/hr — 50 weeks per year. I don’t understand how you have no time for any practical work — gardening, small business, DIY building, appropriate tech innovation and manufacturing. Do you have some kind of enormous debt, medical expense, rent, or mortgage you are servicing?
There are hundreds of cities throughout the US, especially in the rust belt (Detroit, Indy, Cincy, Cleveland, Pittsburgh ~my choice~, Buffalo, Rochester, etc etc) where you can buy a house for less than $20k, or $5k really, and work a part-time wage slave job as long as you need it, with plenty of time for building your own home and garden and business, and thus removing yourself at least 50% from the cash economy, down to a level of less than $1k-$5k per year. This process is enormously easier if you have a group of people around you (within biking distance) who can motivate and collaborate. This is probably an impossible task to undertake in areas of high value real estate without squatting/inheriting your property, so just recognize this already and leave for cheaper pasture!
One look at the Argentinian factory saga is “The Take”:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8149373547373833649#
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Take_(2004_film)
A more holistic approach to co-opting capitalism to serve local people would be Mondragon. Here’s a fine old video on the subject:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7565584850785786404
An even less confrontational method is that of Paul Hawken, and a favorite case of his is the employee takeover of Springfield Remanufactouring in Missouri. The old video series including this story (“Growing a Business” on PBS) is good but hard to find, only VHS as far as I can tell. Jack Stack’s “Great Game of Business” is the first-hand account.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0671671642
http://www.amazon.com/dp/038547525X
But I much prefer the permaculture land-oriented enterprises, many described by Bill Mollison. A mind-boggling case is Willie Smit’s place in Indonesia.
http://www.barkingfrogspermaculture.org/PDC_ALL.pdf
http://www.ted.com/talks/willie_smits_restores_a_rainforest.html
I prefer permaculture too, but I still think we need industry and factories. Factories can apply the principles of permaculture as well, and should produce goods for local consumption.
Also, a recent podcast on Equal Time discusses worker-lead industry as well. Worth a listen:
http://equaltimeradio.com/?q=node/207
Regarding small business in socialist societies, the question isn’t whether the business is small or large, but whether it engages in wage-labor. Personally, I see no reason to privilege small business as “more human” than large business(and I’ve been a small business owner AND a socialist) – in fact, in my life, petty tyrants have been worse to workers than nearly invisible corporate ones. Economies of scale CAN be to a worker’s advantage. Appropriate size does not equal small. Ideally, I’d prefer cooperatives to “small business”, where all workers share the decisions, risks and benefits.
Likewise with land holdings. If you tend your land, are actually using it or have reason to hold it in preservation, I see no reason to “collectivize” it – even the Spanish collectivists allowed for individualists (who didn’t want to belong to a collective) to be alloted as much land as they themselves could tend. Any more than that is either wasting a valuable resource or allowing an individual control over the means of production and reintroducing wage-labor.
Labor in a socialist system is free, self-determined, democratic – not sold off in pieces for a wage. Goods can be bought and sold, but labor is not a commodity. In other words, if you want someone to work FOR you, you’d have to settle for someone working WITH you, with all the negotiating that partnerships entail.
And since the vast majority of production today is cooperative (social), most labor in a socialist world would also be cooperative, rather than individual. But, assuming no dire need for scarce land, I see no reason an individualist would be denied land for themselves.
I’ve taken a liberty of adding this episode on radio4all.net, you may also want to share your podcasts there regularly (it’s free, and you can link to the downloads rather than having to reupload the files)
http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/43528