040: Everything Must Change: A Conversation

The Future Is A Mixtape

In this, the second part of our double-album release, we return to our familiar conversational format to discuss the ideas and diagnoses put forth in CrimthInc’s poetic manifesto, To Change Everything. The 48-page pamphlet documents a dizzying array of morbid disorders from the same sick nation-states that give you endless awful B-sides, such as: “Disney’s Manifest Destiny,” “Healthcare, Sometimes,” “Bootstraps Best for You,” “Lock’em & Cock’em,” “Student Debt Meets Mr. Ramen,” and finally, “Do the COVID-Collapse.” Many of the threatening obstacles and dangerous injustices diagrammed in CrimethInc’s proclamation adhere, like super-glue, to the plastic surface of the U.S. petroleum project. And so, the collective’s polemic is always aware that the solutions required must be bigger than one state, one nation or one continent to contemplate, fathom or undertake. The manifesto stirs with telling details and insightful observations about what we know and what we wish to ignore in this, our shared reality that spins like a deranged compass. And while To Change Everything functions as a good primer to anarchist ethics and its attendant traditions, it’s worth noting how little it offers in the way of clear, practical, and focused solutions—like The Golden Square—or what Jesse & Matt like to call the “No-Bullshit Blueprint for Socialism” explored in Episode #031. The promise of anarchism is not some grand plan, or some self-righteous political dogma that will magically release us from capitalism’s death-grip, but its values demand us to make a clear paradigm shift away from the dizzying maze of domination and violence that perpetually blocks humanity from having any nice things. Anarchism points towards a deep-system critique and an egalitarian ethics of rights and responsibilities that we so desperately need in our institutions and social relations. By flipping the script on a world built on a logic of forced scarcity and do-or-die competition, we can instead design a world of mutual cooperation and shared abundance. As CrimethInc writes, “Every order is founded on a crime against the preceding order—the crime that dissolved it.” But we can’t commit that righteous crime with a fetishization of poetic ambiguities; we must work in solidarity to build dual power—abolishing institutions of state violence while we build new institutions of care & freedom at every level. Above all else, if we are going to survive together on this fragile planet, we must decommodify life and democratize society. And to do it now, we must start by changing everything.

Comprehensive Show Notes Can Be Found at thefutureisamixtape.com

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