It Could Happen Here Weekly 32

could happen here. I am Robert Evans. This is a podcast about things falling apart and sometimes how to put them back together. Today this is another episode about the war in Ukraine. UM. It's going to be eventually an interview with a Ukrainian anarchist militant who is fighting on behalf of of of Ukrainian people UM in that conflict.

But here's a little introduction first. So anarchists are all about the elimination of hierarchy, and since the state tends to be the hierarchy ist thing around, most anarchist act this tend to either seek the destruction of the state or at least snatches of a life lived beyond its bounds.

The most joyful moments, and anarchist organized protests tend to be those brief liberatory windows where anything seems possible, and even say middle class suburban moms might feel briefly like they could tear down the walls of a federal courthouse. So the idea of anarchists joining and fighting in a national military, commanding and being commanded in the hierarchy of

the state's defense forces feels like a pretty big contradiction. Yet, when the Russian Federation launched a massively expanded invasion of Ukraine in February two, many Ukrainian anarchists announced their intention to fight on the side of their government. Organizations like rev DIA formed militias which have been integrated into Ukrainian

territorial defense forces. In one statement I found on the website enough is Enough, a militant representing rev DEA explained their feelings this way, Ukrainian anarchists are at war with Russian expansionism, fascists, and the government. They have created their

own arm and call on us to join them. Every anarchist collective and organization that understands the revolutionary task and the internationalists struggle must transform its general anti war position into a position of engagement by participating in or strengthening the anarchist Ukrainian guerilla struggle without suspensions and by attacking the Russian economic and political power. Victory in arms for the anarchists in Ukraine who stand against Russian imperialism, fascist

paramilitary groups and the democratic government in Kiev. Solidarity with the Russian and Belarusian anarchists who are crawling in the democratic dungeons trying to stop the war. Let us give space to the people and not to the imperialist dreams that divide the planet into plots. We are forever with the invisible people of the world who are fighting for

an inclusive, self organized and anti hierarchical world. So anarchists with Reveda and other Ukrainian organizations are very much acting in line with more than a century of anarchist tradition in Ukraine. During the Russian Revolution, famed Ukrainian anarchist war lord Nestor Makno was forced to make a tough decision.

Ukrainian nationalists threatened the central government that had arisen after the fall of the Czar, and Makno and his comrades decided to defend the democratic socialist government against the nationalists from the book Anarchy's Cossack quote. That decision faced the local anarchists with a problem, for it had them support governmental forces here, which, even if they were of the left,

were nonetheless potential enemies of the masses. Autonomy Makno reckoned at the time that as anarchists, we must, paradox or no paradox, make up our minds to form a united front with the governmental forces, keeping faith with anarchist principles. We will find a way to rise above these contradictions, and once the dark forces of reaction have been smashed, we will broaden and deepen the course of the revolution

for the greater good of an enslaved humanity. Roughly one month into the expanded Russian invasion, I had the chance to sit down and interview an anarchist in Ukraine who was participating in the resistance to Putin's regime. We conducted our interview over the course of several days as his fighting schedule allowed, and we did so over voice messages

in signal. His audio quality was thankfully quite good. I have condensed some bits of the interview, particularly my questions, to make things easier to understand, and I moved some stuff around a little bit. I hope this is still pretty clear. Now here's our source introducing himself. What I would start you to tell about my story is um, let's call me Iliah. I am an anarchist from some neighboring country, but live in Ukraine for civilary several years.

I had to leave my homeland because of the political repressions against anarchists there ah and for me participation in this conflict. It has several dimensions, uh once like the the first and simplest thing is that Ukraine, even though it's like highly imperfect state like with clear new liberal stuff and some nationalists and var right influences in the politicum, but still is more like gray zone and more like

um how to say, pluralistic and free space. The state here has much less control than in Russia and Belarus, for example. I wanted to start by asking them about the elephant in any room where people are discussing left wing resistance in Ukraine, the neo Nazi as Off battalion. I've think it's important for people to like just talk about as Off and and and whatnot, and not whitewash

what's going on. There, But it strikes me that they have a really effective social media campaign and they're they're sneaking a lot of videos and a lot of combat footage and whatnot out into kind of Western mainstream media without people realizing Nazis Well. To be honest, of course, uh, far right movement is much more massive in Ukraine than any libertarian leftist movements at the moment. This I think

is obvious for you. But at the same time, sometimes conscious or unconscious pro Russian propagandists try to portray the situation as if it is Nazi state or something like all the resistance is far right or something, but actually

general part of the state. And also, which is more important, of the grassroots popular resistance is just a political in sense that like most of the army, are not in the politics, even though of course we aware that army is political institution itself, uh, and especially all those people in the villages who are now taking up arms to guard their lands against the occupiers, they are also not

politicularly affiliated. Somehow, Ilia and many of his comrades see anarchist participation in the struggle against Russia as necessary for two reasons. The most basic is that Putin's regime is a threat to their life and freedom to the secondary reason is that if they don't fight, they will have no ability to influence what happens in their country after

the war. Today. This invasion, it really constructs the threat for the whole existence of this society, more society than to the states itself, because this is a kind of attempt to export this totalitarian hell which are constructed in Russia more or less. And to confront this just not let it happen is already a task I think. But of course to come to to defend some land against some occupation, for me is too simplistic for the anarchist

and revolutionary approach. So there come like more detailed reason reasons. I would say, first of all, I really believe that if Putting will be confronted intensively and successfully here, then it's very possible that it will break the spine of this regime in Russia, which may lead to revolutionary changes both in Russia and Belarus, because Belarusian dictatorship exists, like

realize very much on put In support and so on. Uh. And another dimension is that any force which wants to be like really politically meaningful in Ukrainian society should take sides in this conflict. All people who say some dogmatic things like we are against all states again or worse, this is not enough. Now, this is not a position

now uh. And now this is really popular resistance. Like if you do not, if you do not join it for whatever reasons, then you exclude yourself from actual political process because the main questions will be like where are you and where were you in these events? And of

course the right side is to confront this imperialist occupation. Uh. This can really give an opportunity to like for future and not not for future, actually already today for organizing and mobilization of revolutionary libertarian forces UM and constructing ourselves as some considerable significant movement. Like for example, now there is this unit of territorial self defense which enarchies participate

in actively. UM. This is now already around fifty people. Well, it was unlike unimaginable the recent years and months to have some gathering of fifty enarchy antifascialists and so on as some joint unit. But now this is the reality, and this mobilization is made because of this invasion. Actually,

so this is something that makes sense. Ut my opinion, and another interesting thing I think in context of comparing for example UH far left and far right participating in Ukrainian political life and the current events, that of course for us any collaboration with the state is much more problematic than for the Nazis, because even they're like UM ideology and mindset, as far as they can evaluate, it pretty allows them both any relations with the state structures

and also any dirty schemes both with the state, with the business and with criminal sphere. Like UM UH, our approaches are much more puristic, which is partly good of course, but also have some consequences for us to be much less adoptable as the movement to the real social, political,

economical realities. And for example, now currently this is still a question for anarchists should we join, for example, the Territorial Defense UH forces, which is even though somehow militia like localized institution, but still of course like state affiliated force orchestrated and arranged by the state and subordinated to

state army hierarchical system UM. But we still believe that in current events UM this participation like it UH less compromise us, but more give us the tools to organize to get experience and to get subjectivity, if we can say so in English, like to to to become really an actor. UM. And still this, within this frame is still possible to maintain UM political independence and even some sort of structural independence. So this is not just people

are going and joining the army and that's it. They are now just units UM at least up to the moment. This is not our story and this is something at least me personally reflecting on a lot. First, I would like you mentioned you came to Ukraine from a neighboring country where repression of anarchists was more severe. I am interested prior to, you know, this stage of the invasion.

Obviously the first invasion happened, but prior to this escalation, how would you describe state repression against anarchists in Ukraine, the degree to which anarchist organizing was opposed by the state, by the police in Ukraine. UM. And then the follow up question to that would be, as you guys saw this war building, could you elaborate on some of the discussions that happened about what to do, about whether or not to form militious whether or not or to what

extent to fight alongside the government. UM. So about state repressions against the anarchists in Ukraine in recent years, I would say that they were, of course UM much less

hard than for example, in Belarus and Russia. UH. Also because like for different reasons, because of in general of course more pluralist political culture and political situation in Ukraine, but also partly because the anarchist movement in after my Dan period was not that organized and not that combative to really draw drive attention of the state to itself.

And also what I need to say that in maybe two thousand nineteen and twenty, this attention grew dramatically after several direct actions were taken by anarchists, for example, some sabotage against UH cell phone towers of some Turkish affiliated company when Turkey invaded Rojava in UH the late autumn of two thousand nineteen and often and also several actions

against some police stations UH. Some of these statements were placed in anarchist fighter website and telegram channel UH, and so police and secret services got, how to say, very energetic in their attempts to find the people who did this, even though they didn't succeed. Actually, so several house rates taking place. They also tried to depart one anarchist from Belarus, Alexey Brenkov, who UH stayed in Ukraine for several years while decided to move out from Lukashenko regime and so UH.

But they didn't depart actually, and also their house rates were not successful, so they didn't succeed in the in their repressions. So in the last couple of this picture, UH would say vegetarian picture of zero attention of the state to anarchist movement. It changed, so it started to be like a different way before it actually also was some direct actions believed to be related with revolutionary action anarchist group. It was if I am not mistaken around

to Southern seventeen and so on. UH. And this also verse somehow UM prosecuted by by Ukrainian secret services. Also about organized participation of different anarchist faction UH in the current resistance against the Putting East imperialist aggression. Like about the most organized initiative you all in most numbered you already know, but there are several others, smaller groups like more like affinity groups or several friends participating in different units.

We even cannot count it because we even don't know about everyone who participate. At this point, he started talking about an anarchist militant named Igor wala Chow, who had been killed by a rocket in Kharkiv a few days earlier. Before the war. Wala Chow had expressed a desire to organize a network of co ops across Ukraine. He had also been active in providing support for anarchists jailed in Russia.

Ilia referred to him as having been martyred. He was participating, I don't know, either individually or with some of his friends from Karkiv, but for example, I knew nothing about their group and their participations. There is also Black Flag, anarchist group from Reliev which now as far as I know, participating in territorial self defense of Kiev. At least they

released several photos and some short statement. This is something organized which I know about, and apart from that, I know, just as I already Telt told you, several affinity groups, groups of friends. The overall picture he painted of anarchist resistance in Ukraine was extremely atomized, due in part to pre war concerns about avoiding state repression and the myriad

doctrinal differences between different kinds of anarchists. The war seems to have had a catalyzing effect which has made larger militant anarchist organizing possible for the first time in recent memory. Eliah was cautiously optimistic about this, but he and his comrades also recognized a danger here. We are trying to avoid attention from the state services, from secret services, even though we still have to collaborate UH somehow with the

military hierarchy and so on in this situation. But of course we understand that if we will attract undesirable attention, than probably some forces would try to destroy us or somehow assimilate subjugate us. None of these scenarios are good for us, and we aware of it. So we try to have some publicity and at the same time to act ourselves in the way which will not drive repressive

attention to us. Like immediately. So up to now, within this frame of territorial defense UH and UH like some civil volunteer activities and some other quite conventional activities of participating in this conflict against the putting east Side, we believe that we can take the ground for the new conceptions and programs of lack of libertarian cause and also some organizational developments, some organized structure which are of course

not necessarily should be illegal from from the very first steps, but to establish some organizational basis and maybe hopefully ideological basis which will help us to act more actively both during the war and after war. Could you go into a little more detail about the ways in which you all do your units do kind of interface with the state. I went on to ask how they organized their combat units and whether or not this reflected their broader beliefs

about horizontal organizing. His basic answer was that the militias have to operate within a military command structure and thus have to be broadly organized in the same way conventional military units are. However, being a regular their life outside of battle was much less regimented than what regular soldiers experience.

So about military hierarchy in general, of course, territory defense forces are set by the state and they are included into the general structure of a military hierarchy of regular army. In this sense, we are of course generally not autonomous, and what is what's been issued by superior command we should implement in life and should um fulfill these orders. However, now territorial defense forces I would not speak about all of them because I limited since the very start of

war within my own experience with this unit. These forces have like a lot of time for constructing itself, like our internal life not that much regulated by the higher command. And also there is a sort of space of communication with some commanders which are a little bit higher than us. So we have like good people who our comrades, who set this opportunity for us to get organized within this

frame of territorial defense. This was just our old friends who decided to join some territorial defense structure as officers already before uh this situation started to happen. Um So, I think these people do really good job, and they provide for us options to feel ourselves like comparatively free.

Of course, not in operational sense, because uh, like operational frame is being set by the higher command and like as one picture, one scheme, and in this aspect we of course just the one of the elements of the general plan of the fighting. Uh they put in regime invasion here. Um so, I mean, yes, as a unit we are governed by the military command, but this is really rarely that we see anyone apart anyone of some officers or I don't know, generals or somebody else from

above the military hierarchy. We here now occupied with the training, with the organizational constructing and with like improving our internal life, not being like really orchestrated by any military military hierarchy. People. Um, so what about internal structure. It is still supposed to be organized on the traditional army scheme, So every section has a commander, unit in general has a commander. And this is not an elected people. This is not like

really controlled from from below people. Um. Maybe unfortunately or maybe this is necessary in the current situation. This is really hard to estimate to evaluate at the moment. Uh. In this manner, our internal structure in sense of like military structure is more or less traditional for the territorial defense. At the same time, of course, we have more democratic internal culture. In general territorial defenses people mostly organized on

local basis and also out of volunteers. So people who came here are on their good will and not on some constrict conscription or some contract which gives you a certain money or privileges. So because of this, you already supposed to be somehow more free, uh and more up to express your opinions UM and so on. And of course we as somehow UM leftist affiliated anarchist unit. Of

course we encourage the internal discussion. Everyone including all the commanders inside our regiment are subjects to critics and discussion UM, even though maybe final words in the operational questions are

up to these people UH. And also it's important that we maintain a total political autonomy, in sense that all the groups and individuals who constructs, who construct the unit we are part of, they like absolutely free to express their analysis, political analysis, and conceptual conceptualization of both these events and our participation in them, according to their like analysis, their attitude, and so on. I also asked what it was like to fight ostensibly on the same side as

neo Nazi elements like ASOF. While Iliah and his unit are not anywhere close to the as OFF battalion, I wanted to know how he and his comrades dealt with the weird reality of being in the same broadside as people they might have battled in the street. At one point, I would say that before war, of course, there was a lot of tensions between UH fascists and US, not directly with us OFF, because as OF is um like

military unit. Like this is not the guys you meet and fight in the streets, but of course there is like they tried to set like their own how to say, mafia, political empire I would call it, or mafia like they had some businesses, some criminal stuff, some patronage from the Interior Ministry uh and also very different how to say, far right groups which the leaders of so called as of movement, which is much broader than as of Battalion itself,

they tried to utilized and instrumentalized to reach their own goals. And with some of these groups, so of course we had like just street fights for example, the elements closed to this as of movement, they try to influence a lot the Belarusian diaspora, like a position of diaspora in Kiev.

For example, in the one year anniversary of the protests of twenty twenty in Belarus, there were there was fight in Kiev between anarchists who came to participate in demonstrations in this demonstration and the Nazis who attacked them in like aiming to somehow push them out from the Belarusian movement to influence it in their own way. Like also

just usual street confrontation also took place. All this time there is quite visible and active Antifa movement in Kiev which confronted Nazis on the streets UH and blocked sometimes uh UM several of their like initiatives and so on. And also of course informational and propaganda struggle was held by us by us UH during all this time, since my then and of course before as well. About the current military situation, like, of course we are now actually part of one army with the right sector as of

and so on. People, we are under the same military command UH, and if we will be tasked to fight in the same place the same enemy, we will be actually like the same UM like part of the barricade. But this situation we need to deal with. Like there are different opinions amongst our comrades, and here about as off and all the parietists, they differs from that they are actually our enemies like both now and also in

any future Ukraine, in any future scenario. Because these people promote like quite obviously absolutely opposite political and social goals, then we UM other people say that another like other people say that now there how to say, general deadly threat we are facing and we should fight regardless of left and right and something like this to fight the imperialist invasion. But I personally me I do not support this second assumption and position. I see this quite not

really politically smart at my opinion. But what we here can agree on is that if we want to confront uh Nazis UH and far right parts of the Ukrainian political and also military spectrum, then we need to develop

our own strong structure, our own strong actor UH. And also this um somehow connected with the question about p R you mentioned that like we need our own pr, our own publicity and media work, and also our first of all, our own conceptions and ideological blueprints which we can um suggest to Ukrainian society and present both inside Ukraine and abroad. And this is the work, this is the challenge and duty which we need to fulfill and hopefully like not hopefully, but actually we are working on

this already now. So if you want to combat us off now is UH not the time maybe to accuse them UH in some public statements, but this is time to develop alternative structure which will be able to really confront this reactionary currence. What it could happen here a podcast. Have heard me introduce like probably wow, probably like seventy or eighty times by now. But yeah, you you have heard me introduce this podcast enough times. You probably know

what it's about. If you don't, it's about things following apart and then putting it back together again. And today we are doing a historical things trying to go back together and then fell apart again episodes And with me, I'm your host Christopher Wong, and with me is Nicholas Scott, who is a PhD candidate in Latin American history at u v A. Nicholas, Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Yeah,

I'm excited. I'm excited to have you. And today we're gonna be talking about something that we've we've mentioned before on a few other episodes that that we've done about Chile and about the all end a period. But I think like, well, we definitely have not given enough attention and I think gets less attention in the sort of mainstream like left analysis of what happened to Allende and what was going on in that period, which is the cordonas and Nick has written about this a lot and

is also writing more about this and is doing research. Actually, do do you do you care? Do you mind if I mentioned that you're in chi leading research right now? No, totally. Um, you know that's where I am. I'm here two years after the pandemic took me away. I found being able to come back and resume my research. Yeah. And so, Nicholas, I think in your work. The thing that I think is is different about it than a lot of the the stuff that you'll read about I end in about

the Cordonats is the sort of historicization of it. And so I won I was wondering if if we can start back, I guess in the sixties and talk a bit about the sort of political situation that gets you to this sort of revolutionary moment. Yeah, that's great. I mean, I think that it's important that we start at an earlier moment to really understand how the Cordonas emerge as a speci cific um culture, a specific urban space across

the city of Santiago. Uh. You know, the English translation of the Cordons industrialist would essentially just be industrial belts. So you can think of these as sort of sectors of the city where the majority of sort of heavy industry had been based UM, and then these specters themselves were sort of roomnants of the nineteenth century UH, specifically the railroad lines that would UH sort of the main

thoroughfares into the city of Santiago from the countryside. UM. You know, over the course of the early twentieth century, as you have the development of industry in in Chile and in Santiago specifically, these are the same areas then where these factories are are being developed because you have pre existing sort of transportation networks that they're able to take advantage of. UM. The problem is is that you know, industrialization happens sort of in fits and starts in the

history of Chile UH. And the other sort of problem is the problem of transportation itself. So, for example, in the nineteen thirties, there's an urban plan that gets developed for Santiago Centro or the central part of Santiago, and they bring in an Austrian urban planner, Carl Bruner, to

help with this UH. And while Carl Bruner essentially tries to do for Santiago UM what Hausman did for France, right, widen boulevards make the city more accessible to new forms of transportation, right, ideally the car buses, things of that nature. The problem is is that he limited his work and his studies, as I said, just to the center of Santiago itself. Uh. The other problem is that once Brunner leaves Santiago, the plan that's actually put into effect um

isn't necessarily all of his plan. It was sort of a patchwork that legislators um sort of pick and choose from when they put this plan into effect. And so in between the thirties and the nineteen sixties, you know, a lot has had Uh. Primarily you have the sort of twin processes of industrialization, sort of rapid industrialization that's taking place, which you also have this other process, which

is rural migration, sort of internal migration. And this isn't a process that's limited to just Chile, right, this is a region wide process that's happening all across Latin America. And you're having sort of two factors that play in this viggration. Right. You're having the push factor from the countryside, right, the lack of opportunity, lack of jobs, lack of secure

employments um from the countryside. And then you're also having the poll factor, which is you know, these industries that are springing up in the city, as well as the sort of infrastructure that a city would afford relative to the countryside. UH. And these two processes sort of come to a head in the nineteen fifties UM in Chile, and by the end of the nineteen fifties UH, it's clear to a growing set of people UM, including jan Paiochia, who is an architect, UM, that something needs to be done.

There needs to be a new urban plan for the city of Santiago UH. And this urban plan what they try to do is it's the first time that there's a sort of intercommunal which communal in this sense would be a rough translation to municipality UM in English. So it's really the first sort of inter municipal urban plan that tries to link networks together. And this is actually the first time that this word corbone industrial appears in

like an official government document. Right. That's the first time UM, that urban planners themselves are thinking about zones of the city that are going to be specifically for industry. And so the idea is that they want to move a lot of the industry that has sprung up in those intervening years from the early twentieth century that was located more in the center of the city. They want to move it out of the center of the city, you know, largely for things of pollution, safety, all of the things

that go along with heavy indust street. They want it further on the periphery. Uh. And so that's part of this urban plan that essentially tries to zone basically zone um these uh, these sectors. And so that's really where my disportation starts. That's where my research really sort of starts. The stories and um, the late nineteen fifties, early nineteen sixties,

when these urban plans are taking effect. And so what I'm interested in then is, you know, how did the creation of these specific sectors of the city as industrial zones, how did they then give rise to an urban culture that will then manifest itself in a very revolutionary moment

once end comes to power. Yeah, And I think that that's an interesting way to look at it because I think, you know, because the process of sort of industry moving from the center of the urban core outwards is something that happens it really across the world, but mostly after that period, and that that was one of the one of the things that struck me about it. That's interesting.

I want to ask you about which is so to what extent is this Is this a different process than the kind of like, you know, the kind of suburbanization that you see of of industry in the US, for example, in like the nineteen eighties, or is it closer to well, you know, I've talked I've talked about this, I guess on the show in the Chinese context to where you have i mean mostly pollution stuff has seen like some industry sort of like I mean just literally getting pushed

into into rural areas. Is it is it like is it like those same kind of impulses or is there a different kind of um like relation, I mean, like how far out of the city, Like is this stuff like getting pushed to That's a great question, It's a wonderful question. Um. And you know it is actually important. This is important to remember that at this time the city of Santiago, um, you know, just outside the city

of Santiago is is still largely rural. Right where where the first cordon will emerge on the southwestern side of the city is still a largely rural part of the city itself. Uh. And so it is very similar to the dynamics that you're describing, and that it is pushing you know, away from where people are living, right, two more rural places where there is more land both to build, right, So there is the availability of space, but there's also

less people living in that space. So from the planner's perspective, it's considered better because the sort of you know, chemical and heavy metal runoffs from a lot of the metal working factories, all of these things and the pollution from smokestacks, etcetera, um, you know, are less harmful. The problem then becomes, however, Um, the as I mentioned the rural migration and people that

are migrating to the city. You know, there's not space in the center of the city for these people to live, right, so they're moving into the same areas. So in some senses, the sort of historical dynamics of the region are undercut the sort of success of the planners when it comes

to making these zones away from the city itself. Um. And I guess I guess that that would be something also that that's interesting about this, which is that I think because like you know, the sort of like decentralization of industry and that the push into rural areas, I think largely did not produce a kind of like radical

working class culture. But but but it seems like you have this kind of veiling factor here, which is that you have a bunch of people who are like who are who are coming into industrial work for the first time out of the countryside, which tends to be a very radical faction. Like is that one of the things that gives you this sort of radical culture instead of the kind of like total disintecreation of the class that you see in the sort of later versions of this.

This is such a beautiful question, and this this question really lays the heart of my research. So if we scope out just for a bit and think about this historiographically in Chile, there is a vein of historiography that is very concerned with these rural migrants, which once they arrive in the city are referred to as pobladores right which we can roughly translate this sort of urban poor,

right um. And they're considered a sort of capital s social subject that is distinct from a worker or from a working class um, from a sociological point of view, right um. And the reason this is because a lot of them. Um. While they are workers, you know, they are part of the working class. Functionally, they're sort of social concern and the social movement that is bound up or known as the sort of peblad or movement, is a movement for housing right. Because they are arriving at

these sort of vacant parts of the city. Um, the they bring with them the sort of as you mentioned, their own histories of struggle from the countryside, of which the sort of main tactic is the toma or seizure right. And so what they will do when they arrive in these places of land is that they will seize these

lots and they will erect a structure on it. In doing so, then they would use that to stake a claim to as a claim of property rights right, as a claim for their own proper home and everything that would go with it within um, within a city, infrastructure right, utilities, sewage, etcetera. Um, that's what they would leverage them as a claim for that.

And so my project is essentially trying to break down this analytic barrier that has separated the popelador from the worker in the historiography, specifically in the historiography of things like the Cortonas and the popular Unity years during all end because as I mentioned, many of these people once they're moving to the cities and you know, moving into

what would be referred to as either complimentos or potionists. Uh, you know, they're looking for work, and they're finding work at a lot of these factories that are nearby where they're moving. Now. In doing so, however, they're coming into

contact they're sort of mixing. Wi if the older generation of migrants that migrated from the north of Chile, right from the mining sector in the north of Chile following the Great Depression, which is the sort of historical birth of the labor movement in Chile, the nitrates sector um in the far north of cher Chile, which, following the development of sort of synthetic forms of explosives, nitrates are not saltpeter specifically, is not as high in demand anymore

since you have a lot of people migrating to the

city to begin working in the industries there, right. So those sort of older working class who also have their own sort of history of struggle, history of tactics, etcetera, and this newer form of worker there right are mixing and they're sort of mixing in these areas in specific and that, uh, to me, is why it's so important to think about the Cordons is more than just an organization that emerges in the early nineteen seventies and really think about him a a space, as a geographic space

that developed their own unique forms of local culture informed by these larger, more macro historical processes. Yeah. That that that that seems like a much more I don't know if I don't know if productive is the right word, though it is, but I think, yeah, I think that is a better way of thinking about it than what you usually see, because yeah, that that kind of the fact that, Yeah, the fact that you have multiple different essentially like you have you have multiple difference is like

sociological classes mixing. You have, you have their tactics sort of fusing, and that developing its own culture. That's that's distinct, I think from a lot of the you know, because this this this is a business a period of time like the late nineteen sixies, early seventies is like the golden age of the factory occupation. And I think, you know, I think you can draw similarities between that in between

the don'tice, but I think, I don't know. I mean, it'll is a version of this that that that I know the best, and that one, I guess sort of also has a simpilar gynamic of you get you get a bunch of that, you have this mixing of of sort of the old urban working class, but that you have a bunch of um you have this huge labor migration from from the south, from the rural areas, that

that mixes in there. And I'm wondering, I guess, like when when you talk about sort of the culture of this, how how much of that is something that you think is like a distinct product of like this exact configuration of of so social class is hitting each other, and to what extent it's kind of like a process that we've that you find in other places where you have you have these sort of market worker like first generation

market worker basis hitting these sort of older industrial working classes. Yeah. No, I think that your spot on, right. I think that this is um a larger global history. Right, this is a moment in which you are having a lot of migration from countryside into the city worldwide. Right, you have a lot of French intellectuals at this moment thinking about sort of what does it mean that the city is perhaps becoming the new focus, the sort of new locusts

of social movements and social actions. You know, what does it mean that the city is dominant over the countryside? Um? And things like that. But I think it is different, or not necessarily different, but perhaps unique in the Chilean case, um, is that this is a you know, you have a culture in Chile that is known world over for its

political culture. Right, everyone at this moment was thinking and talking politically, uh, and talking about big you know, grand ideas of politics, not just you know, sort of everyday politics, but how did everyday politics inform these larger sort of social struggles. Right. This is still a moment when socialism is on the table, right, Um. And so you have you know, not that this is different than other places in the world. Clearly, as you mentioned, in Italy, socialism

is very much still on the table. Communism is very much still on the table there as well, um. But in Chile, what is different is that there is this idea that one could perhaps legislate socialism, right, or that one could use the means of democracy to achieve socialism. Right. That's what's going to make the Illende government so unique in this moment um. But what also makes the courtons unique is this sort of relationship between social space and

physical space in the city. So, for example, the very first court zone that emerges in nineteen two Studios Mai Poo as I mentioned earlier on the southwest of the city, that one, as I mentioned, because it had such close contact with the rural sector on that edge, had a lot more solidarity between rural laborers and factory laborers, such that by nineteen seventy three you have factory labors going out of their factory and helping world labors sees their

properties and hold their properties um away from the landowners essentially right and claiming sort of a redistributive um you know land for those who work at type of strategy. This is say, different from the cordon that my dissertation is focused on Facuna Mcana, which, as as I mentioned, a much larger segment of popolodors living nearby it, right uh. And so you have a much larger solidarity between the

popolodors and between factory workers. And what makes that even more unique in this case is the role of the Catholic Church, and this is really one of the sort of new things that my dissertation is trying to do

is what is the role of the Catholic Church here. So, for example, of the Catholic Church historically within the and within the historiography as well, UM has always been associated with the popelodoor movement, right because of this sort of connection to the countryside, because of the churches sort of you know, missionary kind of work and going out into the population, you know, poorer populations, especially following Vatican to UM that in which they begin to sort of have

more outreach into the poor sectors. UM. But it's never really seen or rather very few scholars have thought about or looked at what does this mean then for those individuals who may have lived in a position but who worked in a factory. In other words, what was the relationship between the sort of social pastoral message of the church and the sort of socialism of a factory worker. Uh. And in the case of the Aquamacina, there's actually very

strong links here. So specifically, the San Kayatano parish, which is located just to the west of the Corvillone proper Um, was was fundamental in helping some of the workers established unions h and in the cordon. So, for example, the Sumar Textile factory, which was functionally a city unto itself.

This this textile company had a series of different factories within its property, so it had a cotton plant, had a nylon plant, a silk plant that had a polyester plant, and each of these different plants than each had their own um unions. And in Chile, in the labor code in Chile from the nineteen thirties, there were two different

types of unions per factory or per plant. You had the industrial union, which we could think of as the blue collar worker union, and then you had in platos union, which we can think of as a more white collar union. These would be the sort of professionals in the factory, the sort of technicians, uh, the engineers, right, not so much the manual labors, but everyone else in the factory and in the case of sum A specifically the cotton

plant itself. Um in the late nineteen sixties, when they're trying to found their union for the first time, they don't have anywhere to go to find it, to to found it, right, because they can't do it in the factory itself, because management, the bosses will crack down on it.

They don't have their own local yet because they haven't founded a union, and so what they ultimately do is they reach out to the parish priest in San Kayatano, who is you know, who offers them help and in doing so offers them a space to hold their first union vote. Uh. And that's actually how the Union of Sumar gets founded. Sumar will go on to play a major role both in the cordonus and then after the Cordonus during the dictatorship. It's a it's a very um,

very important factory uh in this history. Um. But it's often overlooked that, you know, the church played a very fundamental role in the sort of larger history of the working class formation of the Sumar workers. I mean, it brings us to one of the things about this period

that's I guess becoming to be better understood. But I think if you're a person who has not spent time looking at this might look kind of weird, which is that, Yeah, it's just that the Catholic Church in this period in a in a lot of Latin America like takes especially

Adican Tubia like it. It takes this like very hard left turn that yeah, I mean has all of these causes that like you know, like you get like the the Italian version of it, is like you get a bunch of priests who are just like like like clergyman literally doing kidnappings of like random government officials. And I think, yeah, I guess in in in in this context, what what's

interesting to me, I guess is yeah, like how how much? Okay, So, like what is the you're you're talking You're talking about the sort of like the sort of pastoralism of this the sort of like social gospel message. Is there is there like a divide between the way the just working in the city and the ways working in the countryside or is it just sort of like it's all shifting left but they're more the influence of the church is larger in among sort of royal and natural people. That's

actually really good question. And this is actually where I'm in the midst of sort of trying to figure this out. Specifically, UM. For the past three weeks, I've actually been working in the church archives here in Santiago, UM and so that's actually the documents that I'm sort of sifting through as as we speak. UM. And so one thing I can say for certain as of now, what I've been able to sort of uncover is that, you know, the Church was not homogeneous, and it certainly wasn't monolithic, not in

Latin America and definitely not in Santiago. Uh, you know, in the region itself. Following Vatican to you have the Episcopal Conference of Latin America's second conference that takes place in the nineteen sixties in Medallian and that's where the

sort of the idea of liberation theology is born. Right falling Median then in Chile, the the Episcopal Conference of Chile then is basically tasked with determining a way to fit its own pastoralism, its own sort of pastoral plan within these new structures that they are a party too, because they are part of this larger conference in Latin

America itself. And so, you know, one thing that I have uncovered in the documents is that this is very much you begin to see a divide amongst the bishops, amongst the church hierarchy here that um are very you know, interested in following this new plan of action, but they're also wary of some of the discourse that is surrounding this. So one example that comes to mind here is the

idea of liberation itself. Right, we often talk about liberation theology, and we often talk about it is that it was just sort of accepted wholesale by the church in Latin America. Well, a lot of the documents that I'm encountering here are there's a great debate over the use of liberations, specifically because the idea of liberation is so tied up with Marxism, right, and that is, you know, at this time, the Catholic Church as a global institution and Marxism as a global

ideology are scene its antithetical. And here the idea that in the Church's view, at least from these documents, the idea of Marxism that it's talking about when it's using Marxism is very much the Soviet Union, Right, It's very much the sort of atheistic approach to the church to religion that comes out of the early form of Marxism Leninism from early twentieth century. And so there's a great

debate on whether or not to use liberation. And ultimately, you know, those supporting this discourse went out um and and it is decided that liberation will be the words and the sort of discourse that the parish priests UM will use. But the other big thing that comes out of this in addition to this sort of discourse of liberation, is this new idea of UM Catholic based communities. Right, is this whole new framework for UM sort of understanding

a Christian community. Right. Prior to this innovation of the base community, you know, a Christian community was defined by the hierarchy of the church. Right, you have the sort of congregation, you have your parishes, you have the different UM sort of structural and bureaucratic UH designations that sort of link from a parish upward UM to the sort

of church hierarchy itself. But the based community essentially is saying that, you know, wherever a few people gather and are studying the Word of God or reading scripture or having theological debates, that that should be considered, you know, part of the church UM should be considered that part

of the church. And so in that sense we can look at sasan Kayatano parish and the work that it's doing with workers and a sum Our factory and sort of this has me thinking about, you know, what does it mean you know, what do these based communities look

like in practice? Is it possible for us to conceive of workers who are reaching out to their local priest for assistance as perhaps their own Christian based community or furthermore, you know, at this time in Chile, in addition to the leftist political parties the socialist and the communist, which is you know, a majority of workers, the Christian Democrats

are also a large force. Right in nineteen sixty four, President at What Pray is elected as a Christian Democrat and he's the sort of what will initiate a process that will culminate with Allende's election in nineteen seventy UM, and by that I mean he initiates what he refers as to a revolution in liberty UM, which is sort of a communitarian reformism that is essentially seen as perhaps forestalling Marxist revolution, Socialist revolution from taking place, but it's

incredibly popular amongst working class and workers UM. And the Christian Democrat party itself was a very wide ranging party that encompassed right wing elements but also left wing elements. Can we can we talk a bit a bit more about like what the Christian Christian Democrats are because this is a thing that like doesn't really exist anymore, but was I think like a very important player. Like I mean, there's there's there's very powerful topocratic parties and you're upre's

very powerful Chusian depocratic parties like across Latin America. Yeah, can we can we talk a bit about like what that is and how that's different from like, you know, how it's different from just like your your generic your generic sort of socialist party, and how it's different even from your sort of like I don't know, you're like

labor party social democrats. Yeah, no, I mean this is this is a great question, and you're right, this isn't something that is sort of exists in the present moment.

So it does seem very foreign to us. Um. But really with the sort of way or that the Christian Democrats make is that you know, in theory, they agree for the need for structural change, right in theory, the alleviation of poverty, a more a more just distribution of wealth, right, But their ideas of justice and things, and this is where the Christianity part of the Christian Democrat comes in, right, is that it is justice as understood in a Christian sense of justice, right, not in a sort of more

radical egalitarian sense of justice. That's stay a socialist or a communist would believe in, you know. So, for a socialist or a communist, the sort of motor of history is class struggle. Right. For a Christian democrat, the motor of history is God and his son Jesus Christ. Right, And that is the sort of would be I guess

you could think of as the main difference. And then how that plays out in practical terms would be in a for a communist, for a socialist, right, you want a sort of radical communist some dictatorship of the proletariat. These types of forms are very stagist movement through history. For a Christian democrat, however, it's much more of a

communitarian ethic. Right, It's much more of a harmonization between say, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, rather than an overthrowing and an eradication of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat, as it would be for say a socialist or a communist. Yeah, and I guess that that's something I want to like.

I want to move a bit talking about all end a briefly, because I think that's an interesting one of the things you're talking about earlier is ill End talking about Okay, well we can have a democratic path of socialism. And what's what's very interesting to me about both Allende and what's happening in the Cordonas is that like, okay, so like that that that is a that idea has been around for a very long time, and like there are a lot of people who take power who are like, okay,

we're taking an amocratic path of socialism. And then you know, like what a lot of whim are Like Germany right is ruled by by the German Social Democratic Party, and it's like, well you look at what they do and they're not really like socialist NG they're most I mean, you know, they're they're they're they're doing they're doing things like they're doing things like welfare reform. But that's a

very different thing. Well, and you know, and you can see like the Labor Party in in in the UK, for example, well like okay, well the nationalized industries, right, but you you don't see the kind of movements against like the the you don't see the kind of movement against property and that the movement against sort of like like you don't see an actual attempt to like eliminate which was he as a class in the same way

that you do about Chile. And so I was wondering, like, what what makes like, what was it about this moment that someone who claim that actually comes into power and starts doing it, and starts doing in a way that's not just the sort of like you know when most of the time when someone nationalizes something, right, it's okay.

So instead of instead of having a boss, that is, instead of having a boss whose job it is to like make money for the stock market, you have a boss who works for the state, and there there there's there's there's very little sort of like structural change in how and how the bureaucracy has run. There's no change. And like your your individual relation to your boss does not change. He's still your boss, and that isn't what happens in Chile, in in in the in the same way. Yeah,

I'm interested, why why why? Why this looks different here? I guess Yeah, No, I think this is a great question, you know. And and so to to get to end a it is imperative that we start with Fray in nineteen sixty four, and in some senses we can start even in ninety seven, which was End's first attempt at

running for president. At this time i End is running UM as essentially the last gasp, you could say, of the Popular Front which emerged in the nineteen thirties and into the nineteen forties and had successfully united a large

swath of the political parties in Chile. And this is what led to that earlier moment of industrialization, largely through the sort of policy known as imports substitution industrialization, when which you know, the national industries would be built, they would be protected via tariffs, price controls, and others that would stimulate local growth to produce products that would have

otherwise been imported. However, by the late nineteen fifties, things have begun to bottleneck right, largely in the Chilean case, because a lot of the countryside is still under control of the Latin Fundo of Grand Estate, right, and which means that productivity isn't necessarily where it should be UM.

But it also means that the labor force that's sort of stuck on the land as well isn't available then for the development of capital as in industry right, and the capital goods are what you need to really jump start industry whole sale. What Chila does really well is that sort of in a mediary phase of making goods for individual consumption, right, things of things of that nature. Uh. And so what End does in seven is essentially trying to first run on a platform of industrialization and to

fix inflation, right Uh. And he narrowly loses. He just barely loses the election. In nineteen fifty seven, Hill who wins is Alessandri wins. Uh. And he will essentially adopt a very classical liberal approach, free market reforms, repression of labor in some senses, freezing of any sort of gains of the labor movement, et cetera. This ultimately does not work. Right. And so in nineteen sixty four, you know, Shaker, you

have calls then for a more revolutionary approach. Well. Also, what's happening in en sixty or right as we're now in the wake of the Cuban Revolution which has taken place, which has put the America's as a hemispheric designation unnoticed that now it is possible to have uh, sort of a revolution via insurrection via guerilla warfare be successful, right, and not only be successful, but be successful in defeating

the hedgemon of the hemisphere, the United States. And so what the United States will then do is launched the Alliance through Progress, which is essentially a way of funneling money into reformist minded governments as a way to appease these calls for revolution m but prevent a sort of Marxist revolution from taking place. So in the case of Chile, the Alliance through Progress will funnel many, many amounts of dollars into the Fray administration. UM and Frey wins the

election handily. Now there's a great debate to be had on whether or not the UH or whether the involvement of the c i A and a sort of scare tactic and fearmongering campaign went on in the nineteen sixty four campaign. Unfortunately, we just don't have the documents yet UM for this period, like we do for the nineteen seventies, then the lead up to the coup in the nineteen seventies. UM. You know, hopefully one day we'll have a better sense of really what went on that explains such a lopsided

defeat of Agenda in nineteen sixty four. UM, So Frey will come to power in nineteen sixty four, and actually the agrarian reform in Chile will begin under the Christian Democrats under phrase administration financed in large part by the

Alliance Progress UM. Also the nationalization of copper, which will be fully nationalized under all End in the nineteen seventies, but it actually exists in a state of so called negotiated nationalization under Frey, or what Frey would refer to as the Chileanization of copper, in which Chile would take a very small right fifty one, you know, percent controlling in the copper companies UM, but would still have large the American copper companies Anaconda and Kennicott specifically, would still

be the ones responsible for running the operations themselves. That's that's an interesting I I guess weird historical thing because I know, okay, so like this, there have been a lot of times where the CIA has supported lander form, which is very weird, like that they do it in Japan for example, and you know it's seen as seen as one of these things. It's like, okay, well we have to do lander form in order to like stop and stop an actual revolution for happening. So we'll do

a sort of capitalist version of it. It's interesting to me that Chile does it because I feel like that that's not something that happens in most of the other Latin American states with the CIA gets involved. Um yeah, well it's also I mean, the Alliance for Progress is official government policy. Um. You know, it will be the one that starts the alliance and then it will continue into the LBJ administration following Kennedy's assassination. Um. And so

that is um. And you're right that regionally, the Appliance for Progress is largely a failure. There are, however, a few successes, and Chile was at the time held up as one of the successes and has somewhat been born out as one of the successes insofar as it is

what initiates Thegarian reform in Chile. So so I guess so okay, So what you're saying is that there are there there's there's there's a specific group of parties at the US backs at this period who are trying to do this sort of who are trying to do some kind of reform, um like, who are trying to do this sort of like the class collaboration reform to save off revolution thing. And then I guess the like later policy becomes just do the do kind of insurgency on

behalf of the landowners. Yeah, I mean the way the phrase you know, as the phrase administration continues, it becomes clear that his sort of reformist approaches is simply not working. Um. One is just not working on a macro economic level. Right. Inflation is still happening, which has sort of been the you know, enemy number one of the Chilean economy for

most of the twentieth century. Right, most of the twentieth century in Chile is presidential administrations and economic economists, economic advisors are all struggling to understand how to control inflation. Um. And you know, Frey thinks that they can figure it out via these sort of reforms, via the gray in reform. Be it the sort of chileanization of the great minding wealth of the country. Uh, in terms of factory or

industry level. They essentially proposed this idea of sort of workers enterprises that is somewhat modeled off the Yugoslavian model, which is a much more communitarian um approach. Right, as you were saying earlier, you know, the boss is still there. Workers do have a stake in control of the enterprise. UM, but private properties still exists, so I guess still the boss like with that, Like how to what extent is it?

Like if you have this on a scale of like on the one hand, on like the the extreme end you have there's like nothing or maybe workers can own a share of a company. And on the other end is like I don't know, like like in nineteen thirties, like like seven like anarchist commune in Spain, Like how how how much control do they actually like I don't know, like is this closer to something like the sort of like German code code determination system, Like how close to

like Yugoslavia? Is this? Sorry, I'm trying to get a sense of like yeah, this is a lot of this. No, this is fascinating. In fact, one of my sort of dream projects or sort of dream archives to get into an ultimately be the Yugoslavian archives or former Yugoslavian archives, because there is a lot of collaboration picking place between the Yugoslavian Left and Chileans at this time. UM. The problem is that a lot of this never really gets

off the ground in practice. It is a lot of sort of things that exist on paper, reforms that are proposed, but reforms that never really get implemented, which then has the effect of heightening expectations but not delivering on the goods, which pushes people further to the left right and pushes them to demand a more radical solution, which they find

in the nineteen seventy campaign of Salva end Right. And this is what really gets us to the to Ayends victory, which is the sort of failures of the Free administration

to achieve the sort of revolution in liberty that he promises. Also, the near the end of the Free administration, there's a massacre that takes place in the south of Chile in part the month UM that really UM solidifies or if you will, sort of the final push um or loss of legitimacy for the Fray administration, as well as a pushing the sort of more popular classes to um be opposed to the Frame administration via hosts the sort of

the Christian democratic message of reformantism and decides to sort of give revolution a chance. Uh. And it's into that moment that Salvador Allende reforms UM. The coalition that you know, the original coalition that he runs on was was referred to as the frapp Um. He forms a sort of new coalition in the lead up to the nineteen seventy election, which would be the Popular Unity Coalition UH. And it's a coalition of leftist parties, primarily the Socialists of which

I end is a member, and the Communists. And here it's important to remember in the Chilean case that the Socialists are actually to the left of the communists. Um. The Communists are a much more um reserved approach to revolution, and by which I mean they're very much um going to sort of have the you know, they're they're holding the party line right there behold into the common tern right. But they are also very much in line with the I in days, with the day's view of legislating socialism.

That's I guess. Another interesting aspect of this is, like that's something I think also doesn't get discussed very much, which is this period where like a lot of the like that that was the party discipline being opposed from Moscow for like a lot of this period like is explicitly telling them not to like explicitly saying don't do a revolution, like hold and stabilize the situation. Um. Is that the case like so I because I I okay, this is this is again going back to me knowing Italy,

but I know Chile. That is that something like how how long has that been policy? Frow is? Is Is that like an old is that old popular front like stuff from them? Or is this is has it like because I know like like the U S policity Like so it's just like the Moscow line flips back and forth somewhat randomly depending on like what it's going, don't flips a lot, especially in that that nine three period. And and you know, once they established the idea of the

Popular Front, that sort of does become the line. The big change takes place in UM. There is a meeting of the Common Turn in nineteen fifty seven, and that's when the idea of individual national roads to socialism becomes the official party line of the Common Tern And that is what then authorizes communist parties across the world to seek their own routes to socialism. Right, so it no longer has to be a Leninist insurrectional model, It no longer has to be a Cuban revolutionary model. UM. It

can be its own. So that when allend A proposes this pluralist way of reaching socialism. That's what the communists will link to UM and and really that's what they'll hitch their wagon too, and will will tow that line throughout the three years, throughout the thousand days of the Allenda government, which will then ultimately put them into conflict with the left wing of the Socialist Party, which is pushing for a much more radical um a radical ship.

And that's really the sort of context that the cordonate is emerge out of in nineteen seventy two, is the sort of growing factionalism, growing secretary sectarianism within the ruling coalition of the Popular Unity. Yeah, and I guess this this is already going a lot of some of the way to explaining why this looks different than a lot of the other sort of like a lot of the other sort of socialist coalition governments you see around the world.

I mean, I mean, yeah, I mean partially just yeah, the influence of Yugoslavia is fascinating to me, because I mean that explained, That explains so much, right, Like that, that explains why there's a sort of democratic component to it, even in even in the sort of reformist periods and it explains why the expectation is that and not the sort of like even not even like like Soviet style

nationalization absolutely does not look like that. Yeah, so you're you're right that you know, these these multifaceted, multi layer influences globally as well as locally within Chile as well as regionally, UM produce something that is the first time that UM so, for example, in victory, is the first time that an openly Marxist candidate will be elected president of a nation, elected democratically in a free and fair election that is not contested UM or anything like that.

Now that said, he wins by plurality, he only wins by about in the thirty percent range UM. Now, historically in Chile, a plurality victory is not a problem because you demanded to the Congress, and the Congress typically will just rubber stamp the victory I end. However, you know, there's a lot of apprehension about what he means for the country, what he means for the sort of landed deletes, what he means for the sort of oligarchs that control the grand monopolies and she they uh, and so there

is a lot of tension. Well, this is also then where the actions the CIA backfire. UM. So the work of the National Security Archive has done great work for uncovering the sort of two track plan that Nixon and Kissinger have for subverting the election of Allende and then ultimately preventing him from assuming power. And part of those

tracks was to sort of foment some sort of crisis. UH. And so the crisis that they attempt to foment involves General Renee Schneider, and it is the attempt is that they're going to kidnap him and hold him hostage UM and use that as a way to prevent Allende from coming to power. Well, the problem is that goes horribly wrong. The people that are carrying out to kidnapping are clearly

unprepared for what happens. UM. Things can go haywire and Schneider is assassinated, He's shot UM accidentally and layer it dies UH. And the problem then becomes, you know, the nation is horrified, The Chilean nation is horrified at this UM took place. And as a result, then UM ranks are closed around by Ende and it has decided that they will approve his UM candidacy, his election and that

he will be affirmed as the president. Um. And you know, also what's happening in the background during the election and during the lead up to that vote is that the Popular Unity coalition has its program. You know, what we would think of as a campaign um sort of platform um.

But part of the platform in the Populunities case was what they referred to as the sort of basic agreement between the coalition and the both the people of Chile but also the political system, which in this basic agreement is sort of what we've been discussing this whole time,

which is that end would not change fundamentally the political system. Right, any sort of nationalizations, any sort of economic restructuring that they would at she for that they would try to achieve in Chile would be taken, would take place, would be used or one through the halls of concress. Right, everything would be legislated. Everything would still be from main um,

the sort of Chilean government as normal. Right. This is where you get ends famous phrase that the revolution is going to be with infant us and be tinto right with meat pies and red wine, um, which means, you know, it's essentially not going to be a revolution of deprivation right, it's not going to be a revolution that fundamentally changes the structures of everyday life in Chile. This has when

they could happen here. Join us tomorrow for part two of this interview, where we walk through the Chilean Revolution, the Cordons, and their lasting impact in society. If you want to find more of Nicholas's work, he has an article coming out in the next week or so and then made by History section of the Washington Post connecting the revolutionary period and the broader struggle for a dignity find Life to the modern inclusion of social rights in

the proposed new post uprising Leighan Constitution. You can find more of us that happened here, pond on Twitter, Instagram, And we have two new podcasts coming out. The first is Ghost Church, hosted by the inimitable Jamie Loftus. It's a it's a deep look at the historical contemporary practice of spiritualism and mediums who talked to ghosts. It is wonderful. Jamie is one of the best podcasters ever do it and the first episode is out right now. You can

find Ghost Church wherever find podcasts are distributed. Second on May Day, which is which is this Sunday, May one, the first episode of the Great Margaret Killjoy's new podcast Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is dropping. It's about well what the title says, that's the coolest revolutionaries, desperadoes and ordinary people in the right place and the right time doing extremely cool stuff. And it's happening every Monday and Wednesday from here on out. So go give it.

Listen when the traps on May Day. It is going to be great, and yeah, it is, it is. It is a great time to be podcasting. There are there are many podcasts, so go listen to them now after you're done with this one. Welcome to it Happen here a show that is once again today about the Chilean Revolution. Um, here's part two of my interview with Nicholas Scott. Yeah, I guess, I guess the next thing you should look at is like how how Yeah, it's exactly you know.

The Essentially, by the end of Allende's first year, things are looking very promising. So a few victories, more than a few victories, but a few key victories take place in his first year in office. In one he submits his plan for the nationalization of the nation's mineral wealth, which is voted unanimously in Congress, which speaks to the level of broad support for Chile having its own national

sovereignty over its own resources. Right. And this also then connects with sort of the theme that we've been developing this whole time, which is the sort of trends in regional and global similarities between Chile and elsewhere. Right. A lot of the Third World movement, a lot of countries in the so called Third World at that time are looking to nationalization as the way to extricate themselves from what they viewed as being in a relationship of dependency

to circuits of global capitalism. Right. You have this whole idea of dependency theory that comes out of Latin America in specific UM. And the solution then is seen to be able to control one's own natural resources uh and and use that wealth to develop its own national industry. Right. This would overcome the sort of bottlenext in the imports institution model UM as well as allowing for more redistributive UMM structure of wealth and or land within the individual

countries themselves. So he gets his mineral wealth UM nationalization past. The Popular Unity Coalition also wins a series of off fear or by elections at the local level, Um and wins them so successfully that they will eschew a alliance with the Christian Democrats, who are not part of the coalition, the popular unew coalition, but they are also at this time not part of the opposition, which is largely controlled

by the Nationalist Party. They're sort of somewhere in the middle, but they're also in the point in the middle in which they control a large share of the Congress as well as the courts themselves, so they will not So the Popularly Unique Coalition is sort of buoyed by that. What it sees is the success at the ballot box, and it sees its success is getting its plans passed, and so they will issue an alliance with the Christian Democrats.

And then the sort of other main thing that takes place in the ninety one is the ad is able to affect using macroeconomic policies that were functionally Canesianism right, Um in his economic Minister Pedro Guskovic Um will essentially allow for a redistribution of wealth in which workers received sort of um what they could what we can consider bonuses, right, but sort of automatic increases um that we're affected from

the top down in wages across UH. And the historian Peter Wynn who published the sort of landmark study UM that really dominated the field of the history and the historiography of the Popular Unity years. He published a book called The Leaverse of Revolution that looks at the Yor Textile Mill, which was the first mill that I in a nationalizes UM in N And what when found during his research is that, you know, IDAs policies in n allowed a majority of Chileans to purchase bedsheets for the

first time in many of their lives. That sheets were not something that the majority of Chileans used, despite the fact that a majority of Chileans worked in the textile industry right the textile industry was one of the most developed industries in Chile at this moment. And so all of these things sort of come together and by the

end of the nineteen seventy one signs are looking good. However, by the time sort of nineteen seventy two dawns and as we're getting into the nineteen seventy two cracks are beginning to appear. There's another series of by elections in which the Popular Unity Coalition does not win. The Christian Democrats win UH. The election for the Rector of the University of Chile is a shock defeat for the Popular Unity Coalition and the Christian Democrat wins that UM. As well.

As in nineteen seventy two, there is for the first time in the nation's history, the Central Workers Federation of Labor, the COOT has for the first time its own UM

open elections for its leadership. It was the first time the rank and file could elect the leadership of the National Labor Confederation, and the Communist win the largest majority and the Socialists come in second, but just below the Socialists, and at the percentage level it was functionally the same where the Christian Democrats, so much so that basically a court that the Popular Unique Coalition sees that a quarter

of the working class of Chile identifies as a Christian Democrat. Meanwhile, economically, things are beginning to stall out. Inflation is beginning to creep back up. UM production is not necessarily at the levels that UM the government would want it to be at. Right, so the idea of winning the battle of production begins becomes the sort of watchword or rallying cry in nineteen

seventy two. Uh, And if the successes of nineteen one had somewhat papered over the sectarian differences that we were discussing earlier between say, the minists and socialists, by nineteen seventy two, those secretary differences are really spilling out into

public view. So in mid nineteen you have the Communist Party, um member of the Communist Party is also a member of the allen A government, or Orlando MEAs Pens and editorial in which he essentially calls for the party, for the coalition to sort of close ranks, to consolidate its games, to reach out to the Christian Democrats, to make an alliance and use that sort of consolidated alliance as the

way to move forward on in the revolutionary path. The Socialists, however, specifically the left wing of the Socialist Party, which was sort of identified with Carlo Carlos Ultimarano at the time, takes the opposite approach and says that, no, the solution isn't to consolidate to advance. Uh. The solution is to

advance and consolidate by advancing. In other words, we shouldn't try to make an alliance with the Christian Democrats, because in their view, the Christian Democrats were just bourgeois right, that we should essentially align ourselves with the popular classes, with the world laborers that are meeting charge of the agrarian reform that's picking up speed rapidly in the countryside at this time right see, land seizures are taking place

much more rapidly. Now, we should also place our alliances with the popular working classes, which at that moment, at the moment that this polemic is playing out in the press of Chile, is the very same moment do you have the first cordoon industrial emerged in citys Maipo uh. And it's into that sort of fractured moment that you have workers from a couple of plants that just happened to meet serendipitous lee on the steps of the Labor Ministry one day in Um about May of nineteen seventy two.

They had both been on strike and had both been demanding their incorporation into what was referred to as the Social Property Area, which this was a Day's vision for creating a socialist economy, and this was a plan that he had submitted to the Congress to restructure the Chilean economy into three parts. There would have a social property area that would be owned and operated by the state, You'd have a mixed property area that would be a

sort of mixture between the state and private indistry. And you'd have a private property area which would just be

business as usual private enterprise. Um. Ultimately, that plan had been stalled out because of opposition from the Christian Democrats that vetoed it and submitted their own alternative strategy, which then I end a vetoed became a constitutional crisis that got remanded to the Constitutional Tribunal in Chile, which ultimately languished there through the end of the Enda government through

nineteen seventy three during the coup, has never really resolved. Nevertheless, workers saw the ability to be in put into the social property area as the solution to what they perceived as a revolutionary socialism, right to be in a socialized economy. And I mentioned earlier Peter Win's work on the Order Textile mill. That's exactly what the workers at Yard or

did they decided to do. Now that is in opposition to all End and the Popular Unity's plan, which was to put these sort of grand monopolies in the social property area, not necessarily smaller industries such as such as the yard or textile mill in particular UM. There were other perhaps textile companies that have inslated for incorporation. But the problem is that the workers successfully petitioned UM and pressured Allende and one there incorporation, and that unleashed what

Win would refer to as a revolution from below. And that's what allowed the workers who sees the Labor Ministry that day in nineteen to demand their incorporation into the social property area, because there was a a law on the books in Chile that stated that if there was an unresolved labor conflict of the factory, that the state could intervene and essentially make state control of that factory, which would be the first step to them being incorporated

into the social property area. And so it's out of that happenstance meeting on the doors to the Labor Ministry when they seize it and take it over, shut it down. UM. That then the workers of this industrial sector on the west of Santiago begin meeting, and they begin collaborating, and they begin organizing themselves territorially. And I guess this is a good moment to apologize to our listeners that never really gave a good definition as to what a court

owned industryal was in practice. Essentially, the sort of wager of this organization was that you could organize yourself territorially rather than by trade or industry right, which would be the traditional way that a union would be structured. Um, metal workers organized with metal workers, class workers organized with the class workers, textile etcetera, etcetera. Um, and never the twain shall meet in practice right, It's all through bureaucratic structures,

labor leaders, etcetera. As I mentioned, it wasn't until nineteen seventy two that the rank and file is ever able to vote themselves for their own national leadership. And so the idea of these workers is that they're going to create their sort of new form of organization, and after you know, deciding to do it, they seize the territory of so Smaipoo. They shut down traffic, and this road that they seize is one of the main roads into the city of Santiago from the west, which means that

the government had to respond immediately. As one worker, uh not worker one government official put it at the time, the workers were in the streets. We had to respond, right, you're you're a government that it claims to represent the working class. You're a government that it claims to be putting yourself on the road to socialism. And the workers have now cut off trans rotation into the city UM and demanding sort of you to fulfill your promise, and

so they had to respond UM. Ultimately, some of the workers that were striking at the time, specifically from the Perlack company, which was canning company UH, they did win

the incorporation into the Social Property Area UM. And however, other workers UM from other factories in the area did not win their incorporation, which then produced a march into the city of Santiago in late June, and it also produced a platform of struggle by what was referred to as the Workers Command of criosm PROU And that's really the first document we have UM that shows that there is this new structure that is demanding that the government

fulfill its promise, live up to its basic program UM. Now following that moment, however, there's sort of a period of demobilization that takes place in sort of mid ninet and it's really not until October nineteen seventy two, that you have the flourishing of this new form of organization of the Cortona industrial across the city of Santiago. And the reason that it takes place in October two is because that's the moment that the opposition launches its first

concerted effort to try and topple the Illenda government. That's what's referred to as the Boss of Strike. And essentially what happens is there's a localized strike of truckers in the far South of Chile and the sort of business elites of the country are successful in transforming what is a very localized strike in the far South into a

global lockout on the part of business owners. Right, so they'll shutter factories, they'll shutter distribution centers of food stuffs, they'll completely shut down transportation networks in the city of Santiago and other cities across the country. UM. So you

can understand why they would call it the Boss of strike. Um. And this is the moment then that you have workers in these industrial zones that we start began our conversation with using this model that emerged in the southwest of Santiago as this new model to seize their factories that they've been locked out of, to reorganize the production of their factories and to ensure distribution, uh you know, takes place of basic goods and services for local residents in

their community. It's really what allows the end a government to whether the storm of the October strike and the October crisis as it will also be known um ultimately you know, that will reach a truce in November that includes a cabinet shake up, also includes integrating the military into the cabinet um as well as Ada was able to deploy the military to sort of keep the peace

in some senses. So there is a historiographical debate to be had between you know, how much of it was the workers and the cordonis saving the country and saving the government, and how much of it was the military remaining loyal to the government that allows them to sort of reach was referred to as the truth of November. So I guess I want to back up for a second and talk about what is the intern organization of the criticize actually look like, Like are we talking about counsels?

Is this mass assemblies? Um? How how how does this actually work on a sort of like day to day basis the great question, and this is actually the question that has sort of dominated a lot of the scholarship on the Cordonists. Um Frank going to shoot, who is sort of the leading scholar of the Cordonists essentially used Marx's distinction of a class in itself and a class for itself to sort of unraveled this question. So, for

we're going to shoot. The Cordona in itself is the sort of territory, right that we began our conversation with. And then the Cordona for itself is essentially the workers Council, that is the governing body of the Cordona itself, which was composed of already unionized workers, right, so it already is a tier of working class above say just your general a worker that worked on the factory floor. So

it's already a unionized worker. And some of that occupies a power or a position of authority within the union, i e. Already a or on the directorate or president, vice president, treasurer, or secretary, so that main councils are elected within the sort of general assembly of the court on itself. Below you have then different commissions, right, you

have a sort of propaganda press commission. You have a Cultural commission, you have a sports commission, you have a security commission, right because at this time you had far right shock troops that would spark street battles and that would harass workers, that would also attack factories that had been seized, so that they had um Security Commission, frontline

Defense Commission. You also had distribution commissions, uh, and then you had other commissions that would essentially seek to coordinate all of this um that exists. So you had a sort of coordinating board just below the sort of general council. And then that's what was the mediation point between that sort of governing council and your different commissions. How how are the people who are like who are on these

commissions selected? Are they like, are they elected or is they just like whoever wants to be on this thing? So it's a mix of both, right, So you you're sort of main council itself is elected via general assembly. Um. In terms of the commissions, the smaller commissions, we sadly don't have great documentary evidence that you know, lays out

the process for that. So our best guests are our best understanding would be a mix of sort of volunteerism, as well as some sort of UM within the commission itself, some form of election excuse me, that would take place to sort of a point ahead of that commission that would then coordinate with the General Council itself. UM. You know, really what this you know what this sort of cuts the heart of UM is that the history of the

Cordinates is a very evervescent history. UM. It's really easy to see the Cordinates in action, right when they're doing things like seizing control of their territory and erecting barricades. But on that day to day level, it's a relatively opaque sort of structure. It's really hard for us as historians to get a view into that. You know. One reason the Good Shoot is able to you know, unpack as much as he has and uncover as much as he has is because he conducted a series of oral

history interviews, UM with many of the surviving workers. UM. And that's really one of the foundational source spaces we have. He published this in a book in which he published the full transcript of his interviews, so we don't it's not just like an interpretive essay, it's the full transcript UM.

And so that's that, in combination with some of these coordinates had local presses that we have existing UM documentary evidence from that sort of would give you know, your standard diagram of council commission, commission, commission lines connecting them and things like that. UM. But one of the other few documents that we have surviving documents we have is what's referred to as the Manifesto of Cordona Folcuna Macana.

And this is the document that my research really is at the heart of my research UM because while the Unamacana is recognized as sort of one of the most dynamic and strongest of the cordonas behind the original and studios, my poo, we really don't have a lot. We don't know a lot about what was going on in there.

In fact, my research was born out of a conversation the first time I was in Chile conducting research for my master's at toughs UM with good to Shoot himself who told me that, like, we really don't know a lot about what was going on day to day in Folcuna Macana, would be really great if we could somehow find a way to do that. Uh, And you know that kind of stuck with me, that really wasn't my

concern at the time. I concerned at the time was trying to understand how the cordonas had shifted from their emergence to the coup itself, because what I was seeing a lot of the literature was that people were using sources from late nineteen seventy three, once the Coralines are established and really showing up and press right, they're showing up in the archive a lot more by nineteen seventy three, and they're using documents from nineteen seventy three to describe

they're sort of founding in nineteen seventy two, and the historian and me was kind of like, m hm, you know, yeah, that's things change, right, and things change both over time and space. And so my original concern was, you know, what made the sort of changes from the western side of the Sydney to the eastern side of the city.

But then when I got to u v A and began my doctoral work, I really wanted to zero in on Facundamkina, And really I was, you know that that conversation with Frank was really ringing in my head, and so you know, I kinda at u v A had to do another master's essay as part of the program. They there, despite having already done a master's thesis when

I was a tough exactly exactly the thesis. But you know what it did, what it allowed me to do, was to uh, you know, kind of play with the sources in ways that I may not have had the ability to do otherwise. Right, And so I really sat with this manifesto for a long period time and really did a close reading of this document, which you know, a lot of times this document has shown up in previous studies. It's shown up as a this is a

document that emerges during the October Crisis. It's the document we know we have from this one corzone here, it is, right, But what I uncovered was that the document itself, the document that is headed as the Manifesto, is actually a reworked version of a document that had circulated previously during the October Crisis, that was produced by the Revolutionary Left movement, the Mirror, the Far Left Party and the aren't they rists?

They are? They very much are. This is the very far left UM party that has calling for a more insurrectionary model UM. It's also calling for worker peasant alliance. Right, So, it is this very much more traditional um socialist revolutionary in that sense, compared to the sort of aendeist vision of socialism that is being handed down from above. Right.

And so during the October crisis, there's this document that circulates by the opposition that's running the crisis that is essentially the petition the plago in Spanish should be the word, but essentially the petition of of Chile um and the mirror takes issue with the fact that the bosses issued a petition in the name of Chile, and so they issue a counter document that is the people's petition, the

Pliego del Pueblo. And it's a very long document, it's a very um It reads as a essentially a manifesto for a new revolution to take place, right, like how to transform the present crisis into a revolutionary and breakthrough

And as you're saying, a core various model. In the tail end of the October crisis, as Cordonacamacana is consolidating itself right, itself forms after a factory seizure at elec metal Um, which then unites these sort of two nodes that existed in the territory at the north end and the south end into one sort of communication and solidarity network that will then become known as the Cordon that has its first general assembly in which it takes this

document from the Mirror and begins to rework it. And that's then what becomes the Manifesto of Cordoncuonamacana. And so in my research and in my master's essay at the University of Virginia, what I did was, you know, I really compared these two documents and looked for where the differences. You know, what's showing up here that's not showing up in the mirors document. In other words, what glimpses can

we get of the local culture of Acunamacina itself. Um. And one of the key differences that I find is there's an entire section that begins the manifesto that was the crime of the bosses, the crimes of the bosses, and that exists in the Meryor's document as well. But

the crimes that are articulated are far slight differences. But the in the manifesto itself, the final crime that's articulated is that the manifesto reads that it's a crime that the basic few elite in Chile continue to use the country's wealth to support their privileges without giving a dignified life to a majority of joyance. And this doesn't appear

anywhere in the Mirrors document. And it was something about this phrase of a dignified life that really just like cued my analytical census that sort of raised the flags

for me. And this is what then led me down the road that I'm on now, which is the road of looking at things like the church and the Pope La Door movement, because the idea of dignity and the idea of a dignified life is a key discoorse that's circulating in the church's pastoralism right coming out As we were speaking about earlier, the discourse of dignity is really present in the church's outreach efforts, but it's also present

in this Pope La Door movement for housing. The idea of a dignified house as the end goal of their struggle is something that is, you know, rings out in the documents that we have access to and in the oral histories that we have, and so that really, you know, made me think, like, what is it then about the kunamakaina that is allowing gifts to appear here? And you know, what can we then learn using this as our you know, starting point and going out where and so that's on.

I decided to sort of take the story back all the way in nineteen fifty seven and look at things like the church, look at things like the Pope leot Door movement, but then also extend the story past the nineteen seventy three period, which is when the coup takes place, which is, you know, in the historiography seen as this hard line in this this break in in Cholyan history, that there's a before September eleventh, nineteen seventy three, and

there's an after September eleventh, nineteen seventy three, and very few studies crossed that line, especially studies with regards to the labor movement, the specifically the dignity thing is is really really interesting to me too, because so I didn't interview like, oh God, like a month the go sort of have lost track of time, but I didn't interview

with within with an Amazon organizer. And one of the things that that was one of the things that was like one of the things that he brought up is that one of the things that like we are fighting for his dignity, and yeah, that that does some things.

Typically I've been thinking about more because like I think we talked about this a bit in the interview itself, but like, like dignity as a demand is a thing that you that you see all of the time in like in in in you know if if if if you are talking to a bunch of people, like on the streets in the middle of a movement, you will hear people talk about dignity. I mean, I think, if if I'm remembering this correctly, this is this is one of the this is one of the big things. This

is one of the big demands. And like the modern Chilean protest movements, like that was one of their huge sort of focus. But it's but it's also something like I have never like at any I don't think I've ever seen like a communist party say the word dignity, like like I think it happens. I don't know if every once in a while, like maybe you see it if you get a document that's that's not produced by the sort of ideological engines, but it's produced by like

just a bunch of workers in a factory. But yeah, yeah, that that's fascinating to me because like, yeah, because that I don't know, it's it's it seems like the structive for dignity both yeah, like has this thing as like a very specific discourse from the church, but it's also something that shows up in a lot of movements where you're not dealing with the kind of like ideological rigidity that you get from you know, like the mirror not the mirror is a like that that you know, like

that that's that's a very like like this is a party, it has a line, it has a very sort of like yeah, yeah, And it's fascinating to me that that yeah, that that you you can see these differences where even when they have influenced the thing that gets acted as dignity, Yeah, I mean there is you know, I think that perhaps what has um pushed studies of leftism, socialism, and labor movement away from the idea of dignity as an analytic

object is there is tension here. Right, Dignity is a highly individualized concept, but the solution for a dignified life for all Chileans, as per this document were collective structural changes, and so there's this tension between a collective solution and an individual gain right. And so I think that that both um explains why this hasn't necessarily been a focus

of a lot of studies um before. But it also, you know, it gets to the historiography itself, which was you know, a large product of the history here, and so things like the Christian Democrats and things like the Church were seen as the enemy of the popular Unity coalition given the way that the you know, the coup takes place and things like that, and so anything that maybe had a whiff of Christian democracy or Christianity or things like that was seen as as antithetical or incompatible

with the study of the left. It also gets to the tension that you were doing a really great job of sort of unpacking, which is this tension between the national leadership of these parties and the national union leadership and then everyday workers on the ground, right. And you know, that's I think really where the strength. And this was really the argument that I advanced in my master's thesis the UVA is that one of the central contradictions of the all end A period is they were competing ideas

of socialism. So from the top down and from my end Day's view, socialism was the traditional Soviet union esque approach and so far as it was national economic planning, party hierarchies, things of that nature, right, discipline at the base and upward and upward planning from the top down. But what I think the manifesto and the history of the Quinmacina helps us understand is that for every day individuals, that their idea of socialism didn't have anything to do

with state economic planning. It didn't have anything to do with expertise and technocrats and things of that nature. It had to do with the idea that like I need sheets from my bed, I need food for my child. I need the ability to you know, have enough sleep to be able to get up and go to the

factory the next day. Right, I need to be able to live a dignified life, to be able to then you know, carry out my work, my obligation as a worker in the historical movement of socialism, and so I think that this is really what um This tension is then what allows for the sort of destabilization to take place um as the opposition consolidates and ultimately destabilizes the identic government in nine Yeah, I think this is a tension that like, I mean, I think there's there's different

versions of it too that you see sort of across the story. Like one of the ways that it manifests is this battle between the people who think socialism is about like is national like state national incorporation, that people who think socialism is about like direct control at the point of production by the people who are doing the work.

But but I think also, yeah, the question of dignity is it's like it's this, it's like, dignity is this expression that's like maximally bad for um, like if you're like you know, if you're like a you're you're you're a material you're like you know, you're a historical materialist theoretician. Right, It's it's it's the worst possible slogan because on the one hand, it's like it's not materialist, right, like what is dignity? There's no dignity has no class relation, like

what is that? You know, And it's it's it's simultaneously

like it's not with jerious enough. It's too reformist because like, oh, well, you can give people dignity by just buying them off for like increasing wages, or you could have a class compromise, and that can give you dignity, but then simultaneously it's the thing that's too radical because the problem with dignity also is it like, yeah, I don't know, like there's there's no guarantee that you're going to get dignity if like your factory is controlled by the state, like exactly,

and yeah, and this is why, like you see almost identically the state, different name, yeah, and and yeah, it's like it's why you see like the uprisings that happen um, I mean really starting in Hungary. But yeah, this is why, like that they're uprising in Czechoslovakia looks almost identical to

like the uprising that happens in France. It's because they're both like there there's you know, you're you're like you the factory worker in a factory in Czechoslovakia and you, the factory worker in the factory in France are dealing

with essentially the same thing. And so it's it's this kind of like I don't know, it's it seems like it's it's it's this perfect sort of like cipher for all of these kind of political differences that that that that manifests this this this really old tension in what the worker's movement is going to be that's been being

fought out since eighteen thirties and that. Yeah, but I think that like if we as scholars and if we use intellectuals, are really serious about when we say that we're going to study things from below, then I think that we have to take the workers at their word, right, And so like, for example, I presented a version of my of my master's thesis at a I studied was it a program in Bologna for a summer um And so I was presenting this and to the you know,

and the Italian leftists in the room, um really came you know, came down on this question of it sounds like what they're describing isn't socialism because they're much more interested in distribution and not interested in the point of production, which isn't socialist. And you know, and all I could say, and all I could respond to this is like, that's

what my subjects are using in the archive. And for me, it's far more productive to look for those slippages and look for those spaces and the archive when they are saying something that may be different than what we under stand it to be and that's a lot more productive avenue for analysis, and that, to me is really how we fulfill this obligation to study things from below, because we have to actually take them at their word and

understand and try to understand what that actually meant for them, right,

and what that meant on an everyday basis. And I think that there's a there's a sort of like practical like organizational like like you know, if if if you today want to do something like this, like I think I think there's there's an imperative there too, which is that like you actually do have to take seriously what people think and how that's different from the way that like you the organizer are thinking about this, because those are things that don't overlap and a lot of times,

like you know, and it's it is not enough to just be like, well, these people want diggity. What they actually want is socialism or like what they actually want

is the abolition of the classes. It's like you have to like believe them when they say that they want something, and you know, and and when you don't do that, and when you get these sort of disjuncts between like when you get these disjuncts between the sort of the sort of party bureaucracy on the top and what like people in the streets who are season factories want like, yeah, I think like things start to sort of come apart, exactly.

And I know I think that, um that if we don't, you know, depart from the perspective of staying true to what the archive gives us, then there's only a risk that we're you know, every historian, every scholar is going to inject their own interpretation onto a document, right, But the best way to sort of safeguard that is to, you know, stay true to what it's saying, and that you know, the same goes for an activist and an organizer as for an intellectual, right, Like, if you don't

depart from the perspective of what your constituents or what your group is saying, you know, what they're really saying, the word that they're using to describe what they're demanding, then you're only ever going to just be trying to sort of fit the you know, the square peg in the round hole. Yeah, and and that can go really

really really spectacularly broad. Yeah, exactly, And you know, and that is you know what then leads to know in the case of the cordonus that will then lead to tensions that will really break out into the open in nineteen seventy three, in early nineteen seventy three, when the um Orlando MEAs the same person that starts that polemic

in nineteen seventy two. By this point it becomes Finance Minister Um in the end administration and presents a plan to sort of devolve some of the factories that have been seized during the October crisis right back to their original owners. Uh. And then this creates a huge problem, huge tension between the base between workers and these factories that had sort of sacrificed everything and put their lives literally put their lives on the line to seize the

factories in the first place. Um. And so then you have another sort of moment of mobilization of the corzonies across the city of Santiago in early vent three. That's very much an opposition to the government. Now, can I can I ask a brief sort of framing question about this, which is that, like, okay, so we talked about this in in in the interview we did with some modern Chalian activists, but like, what what is the population of Santiago relative to like the population of the entirety of

Chile at this point, Like, how is it? Yeah, that is a great question that I don't actually have statistics like that. I can rattle no worries in my head. Um, but you know, I mean there's there is Uh, it is a great you know, Santia always the most populous region for sure, all right, and so rather the most populous city and then sort of metropolitan region itself is

very densely popular. And is it still like like a pretest nificant like population of the entire country or is it less It is a significant population of the whole country for sure. Um, but there is tension in this.

And then this is kind of the reason why I always try to steer somewhat away from these types of questions, because I'm sure this came up in your conversation with Chilean activists, is that you know, there is the phrase that Santiago is not Chile, and so there is a there is a tendency to rely on statistics of Santiago's population, of the metropolitan region's population to say like, oh, this is where the majority of people live. So if it happened in Santiago, then that must be true for all

of Chile. Um, and that just isn't the case, right, Chile is a huge country. It may be very narrow, this is very long north to south, uh and you know, it is very distinct across the many regions of Chile. And so I have very much on the side of those that argue that Santiago is not Chile. Unfortunately, in the case of the cordonis, the majority of them do

exist in Santiago. That said, in Concepcion. Um. You know, another Chile further to the south of Santiago, there is one of the other cities that we know for sure actually did have cordonias that were moderately successful as well. In fact, there is and now I'm completely forgetting her name, um, but there is a historian that has published a book

about the cordonis in Concepcion. This is one of the few studies that sort of tries to look at cordona Is beyond Santiago itself, you know, And a very well taken point um on on my part here that like you know, a lot of our discussion today has been about Santiago, and so it's very much limited to Yeah, this is a this is a problem that you get a lot with like large urban movements, like I mean, so I run into Tianamen all the time, where it's like,

you know, okay, so Tianeman, there's there's there's the big thing in Tianament. But this happens like cities all over China and there's just nothing. There's like almost nothing that has ever sort of like been written or has gotten out of what happened to everywhere else in the country.

And so you get this, you get this very myopic view of like what was happening that I think loses a lot of the sort of like I mean, a lot of the diversity and a lot of the sort of you get a reality that is shaped by the specific experience of one place, which is not the safic experience of every other place, right exactly So like in the case of like Santiago and Cordona's right, like the labor working class that's making up this is factory labor, as we were saying, at the sort of level of

consumer products. Right, Let's say, if you've had a cordon and say about Crazo, uh, the sort of coastal city of the ports city, um where you have a much different labor force, right with doc workers things like that, You're going to have a much different formation that's going

to take place. And so as much as like my initial sort of attempt to understand the differences within the geography of Santiago, um, you know, I think was important, I always have to remind myself that, like, it's still just this one city, which is very different from the

experience of a vast majority of chill lands. I mean, it's definitely a moment in which you know, there is still a very large rural population for sure, And I guess like that that brings me to so like, yeah, in in terms of sort of okay, I guess there's two directions here. One I guess is about what is the like, what is the rural population doing like while this is going on. And the second one, well, I

guess I guess we could start there. Yeah. I mean, as we sort of mentioned earlier, there isn't a growing reform that is happening, right, and you are having a labor movement that is picking up rapid steam in the countryside, right, and you are having land seizures that's that are taking place and picking up steam. Um, and so that's a lot of what's going on in the countryside is UH both UH an increase in land seizures UH and increasingly militant land seizures. Is that, But you're also having UM

an increased unionization. Right. So the labor code in Chile had a different set of regulations for rural labor than it did for urban or factory labor. Right. And so one of the things that on the end a period that we see is a sort of flourishing of organized labor in the countryside. So you are having a lot of party militants going out into the countryside as well as UH labor leaders locally in the countryside that are

organizing rural laborers. UM. So you are having mass um union drives unfortunately, and I will be the first admit that I am largely you know, and this is again a consequence of like being an urban historian, I am largely ignorance of the inner dynamics what is happening on in the countryside. UM. Scholars like Florencia Malon or Heidi

Tinsman have both produced outstanding works on this question. UM in terms of the relationship between land seizures and gender and indigenosity UM that is taking place on the countryside.

So I guess, yeah, so you know, okay, so we yeah, we can't get it too much detail on this, but I would would it be broadly like accurate to say that it's not true that you're dealing with a situation where there's a huge sort of divide in the level of mobilization organization between the city and rural regions like that. This this isn't like a sort of like like you're not dealing with like like a vonde peasant situation where you have this enormous sort of reactionary base in the

country side. Right, Yeah, you know, you definitely don't. Yeah, it's definitely not that UM. And you know there are attempts over the course of the illenda years, you know, the mirrors one of the sort of fronts that this is playing out in. But even the cordonates themselves, right, So, like one of the initial UM rallies and sort of mobilizations of the studios Maipu cordone is for UM the jailing and imprisonment of a series of rural militants and

rural labors that in the area of Malipia. UM there are some activists and workers that are jailed UH and those the cordon actually marches into the city of Santiago, into the downtown part of Santiago to demand their release. Um. And this is like a disparate geography here that we're talking about, and so UM it is you know, this is an instance in which he's trying to see these sort of links be both be made and strengthened between UH factory labor in cities and world labor in the countryside.

And I guess it brings me to the second point, which is like, Okay, so there is a right in Chile and it is not happy, um very much. Yeah. Yeah, And I guess one of the things I guess I wanted to talk about was so my my impression about a lot of what is happening in nine seventy three has to do with the fact that Chile's like trucker's movement is really right wing and that that has well, so part of that. Part of that is the CIA.

Part of that is just this like a like part of it is the CIA's ability to keep striking truckers afloat and they're not working on. Part of it also is a consequence from this moment in October, right, in which the national business elite and national economic elite in

Chile transform that trucker strike into the boss's strike. Right, So you do have this alliance being formed and strengthened at that moment as well, which will, as you're referring to invent three, there is another truck or strike that takes place that has even been more crippling in some senses than the initial one. Yeah. And then also also as I will mention literally every time, even though I I don't know if I can say that on air, but the part that I can say on air is um,

yeah to their eternal, ignominious non glory. The a f l c I O is also heavily involved in that which is fun and good and uh yeah, a f l c I Oh, please stop overthrowing governments, helping deference. It's a very it's a very afi c IO history in relationship is actually very fascinating because during the dictatorship they will actually be on the other side and actually helping labor get back on its feet. Um and as

a key point of resistance. So they're um in the late nineties of these organizing a boycott of Chilant products, which actually is a key point of pressure on the dictatorship to begin allowing for new um for a sort of new labor movement to begin emerging. Yeah, which that I at some point like I don't I don't think it can happen here, but I just did the podcast name, but yeah, I don't don't think. I don't think it

can be this time. But like, yeahs at some point I do want to take a deeper dive into sort of like what the a f l C I O is doing through this period because they are like they're all over like yeah, there's a fascinating history. Yeah, Like I mean like you know, like my my, my, my last a fl C what are you doing things for

this episode? Is so the fl C has the policy where like they don't like they don't associate with like like state union federations and they make one exception for it, and it's State Union Federation of the military died katorship in South Korea, which is like it like a good job, guys, like doing great here, this is going great. Yeah, but yeah, I guess can we can we get into sort of the the crisis is that like are the crisis that like precipitate the end of all end A totally yeah.

So by this point, you know, as I mentioned by the opposition is largely um disarticulated. You have the National Party, you have the sort of far right organization UM that would be translated as Fatherland and Freedom pot three. I delivered that, or I translated as father land and freedom because I think it has a better, it conjures it better. Others will translated as father land and liberty. UM. But I'm a sucker for a literative forms, and so that's

the translation that I use. I also think it conjures more the sort of fascistic elements, which this very much was a fascist organization. UM. Yes, No, I mean a lot of you know low Chicago boys will have ties to Pot three Oliver to that um. And so there have you know, rightest shock troops that are fomenting conflicts in the streets, um, that are also setting off bombs that are crippling the power grid, especially much later in

nineteen seventy three. UM. But following that moment in nineteen seventy one, when the Popular Unity government is choose the alliance with the Christian Democrats, the Christian that pushes the Christian Democrats to begin forming an alliance with the National Party. And what happens then is that the left wing of the Christian Democrats splits from that party to form its

own party of Left Christians. But then the consequence of that is that that means that the more rightest elements of the Christian Democrat party can consolidate their power and stream their ties with the national power. So that by you know, late nineteen seventy two, and very much by the March nineteen seventy three elections, which were sort of the key electoral moment that everyone was looking to. UM. At this moment, um, you have a you have a solid alliance of the right. UM. Now the end a

coalition will win the March elections. UM. And that is really the moment that scholars agree that the switches sort of flipped for an opposition and they realize that they can no longer defeat the popular unique coalition at the ballot box, and that they now need to use extra constitutional means right, and so they begin developing sort of

deploying the full force of those means. UM. And here is a point where the role of gender is very important because a lot of what the Right will do will be to mobilize the power of the power and symbol of women protesting um as a way to delegitimate the end a government and to de legitimate key figures

uh in the end administration. So earlier there is a key protest that happens, which is the march of angry pots um and this is a a very traditional form of protests in Latin America which the Castle Lazo right the sort of banging of pots and pans in protest um, but the Right organizes it to be largely carried out by women as a way to protest what is seen as a you know, a lack of supply of basic food necessities for um families in Chile, which you know,

we now know is a result of black market speculation in hoarding on a lot of the part of the sort of distribution centers controlled by the Right. Nevertheless, they essentially use this symbol of women heads of households marching in the streets in opposition to end. So that's one thing that happens later in nineteen three they will sort of reuse this tactic and deploy women to protest in front of UM the houses of key military figures UM that are in the Cabinet of End at this point UH.

This will then forced the resignation of some of these figures from the allend cabinet. And then one of the key figures that has then replaced in the cabinet is none other than a cost Opine Chat. It will be welcomed into the cabinet and specifically will be welcoming into the cabinet because he's seen as a strict constitutionalist in the Chilean military UH and is not seen as any

sort of threat to what is going on. Meanwhile, in late June of nineteen seventy three, there is an attempted coup that takes place in which you have a rogue regiment of the Chilean Army UM deploying tanks in front of Lamlada, the presidential palace in Santiago. UH. That is large that is put down. It's also one of the last moments that the cord donates themselves will mobilize and that all the Coresonists in Santiago will seize their territories,

erect barricade. It's cut off transportation to prevent any sort of large scale coup from taking play essentially to try and isolate that regiment just within front of LaMeta, to allow for the wings of the armed forces that are still loyal to the president at this point to put that down. So that has put down, and then in between late in June nineteen seventy three and September ninety three is what scholars, specifically Peter Winn for two, is

a creeping coup begins to take place. And the creeping coup has, you know, a multi fascist strategy. As I mentioned earlier, there is the bombing of electrical grids, so you have you know, increasing blackouts, instability, things of that nature, right,

fearmongering in very real sense, palpable senses. UM, you also have a shake up amongst different members of different branches of the armed forces, which those that are loyal to the constitution, that are the constitutionalists, are pushed out, and as a result, then you have the coup plotters that are ready to essentially overthrow the government. UM achieve positions of authority in which that they can give orders. And

this is a key factor. This may seem like a small factor, but the Chilean military had historically been trained in the Prussian model of military training. Right, So it was a very strict regimented hierarchical structure in which historically had been very loyal within that hierarchy. So it was important that the coup plotters would achieve positions of higher authority to be able to actually effectuate a coup, especially

after the attempted coup fails in June. So on the morning of September eleventh, UM, you have Hawker hunter jets that again bombing the presidential palace UH, and you have a deployment of UM military forces throughout the city to put down any sort of armed force or any sort of resistance. Right leading up to this moment, you had deployments of both the Chilean militarized police, the Kada brows,

which are actually functionally militaries. They're part of the armed forces in Chile, it's not just militarized in the sense of tactics and weaponry, to raid factories in the search of arms, right, things of that nature. So you already had UM this sort of daily occurrence taking place. In a consequence of that, right, is that then these forces know the weak spots in these factories, they know the

capabilities of these factories and things like that. Uh Cordlon Vacuna McCane will actually be the place that will witness some of the fiercest fighting of what would be referred to as the Battle of Santiago. You know, often when we talk about the Chilean coup, we talked about strictly a September eleventh, ninety three. UM. The Battle of Santiago

actually rages for a few days after September eleven. It's not just a quick UM you know, in and out mission there is there is, there are forms of resistance that take place UM, and the Namacana is one of

the places that this takes place. There are two Chilean historians, Mario Garces and Sebastian Laba, that published a masterful, wonderful book UM that is all about as UM called the kun La Legua and Lagua was a historic Pope Lacion that was just to the west of the Pacuna Macana factory and the workers of factories in Pocuna Macana, specifically

the Sumar textile mill that we mentioned earlier. UM will essentially lead UM a march gathering other workers, saving those that they can and essentially holding their ground for as long as they can in the Poplacion of La Lagua uh. In fact, I have some testimonies of workers and documents that I've uncovered. UM. One worker in particular described the battle that raged there is as being like hell on earth. UM. That they had helicopters firing from the sky, they had

tanks surrounding them. UM. So they were under fire from both the land up in the air, and so ultimately then the government is overthrown, right UM. I end. It's unclear to this day if I end a committed suicide, if he was killed, we just we don't know. We do know that he refused to leave the presidential palace. We do know that he delivers one final address, very

famous address UM over the radio of Chile. UM. And then after that week we know that that his corpse UM appears and a lot of the materials that the military will put out. Military takes control of communication networks. Many of the communication networks and press networks were already controlled by the right UM, so it's very easy for them to gain access to these methods UM to sort of spread their message. UM. And this is where things,

you know, historically speaking, get very interesting. In the difference between our sort of um conventional wisdom and what actually took place it or takes place. Right, The original structure of the military junta that takes command was designed as a tripartite structure that would rotate amongst different branches of the armed forces to prevent precisely what happens with the figure of Gusto Pinochet taking power himself, to prevent such

a thing from happening. Right. Uh. Ultimately, though, over the course of the nineteen seventies, you have Pino Chick consolidating power. Uh. In fact, if you've ever seen the image of him that's sitting cross arm with the sunglasses on, it's like one of the most recognizable photos of him from this time. That photo is actually the actual original version of the photo. You have the full junta behind him taking a picture.

But yeah, yeah, and it's not so much even he did it, but it's that that photo just over time became so associated with him because it's such a starring image of him sitting there. Um that it it's sort of functionally recreated the sort of purging that heat takes

that he'll carry out essentially. You know, also what they will do immediately is that they will close the Congress, they will dissolve the COOT, the National Labor Federation that we discussed earlier, UH, and they will essentially dissolve the

UM conciliation councils that oversawing sort of collective bargaining. They will freeze any sort of petitions pleegos from factory labors, and they will begin to purge labor leaders across both the national spectrum of labor leadership as well as you know, through the course of and well into will be begin

purging factory level leaderships. UM. They will institutionalized torture, UM, they will institutionalized forced disappearance, and all of these things UM constitute how they're essentially able to hold onto path hour In those early days, there's a state of siege that has declared, which means that all civil liberties UM have essentially been suspended. And all of this is in the name of national security. And that's really the key thing, UM.

And so everything from the labor movement is shut down UM,

and then it will begin to re emerge. And that's really like where I think my research and my dissertation and of a key intervention that that I'm trying to make is that you know, seventy three wasn't the end of the story, Like, yes, it was the end of the Cordons induced to gothers with a capital C and a capital I. But the idea of a territorial labor organization will re emerge in the late nineteen seventies and in the nineteen eighties when protests against the dictatorship began

to flourish. And this is something that I mean, I guess this is the projecting into the future, but this is something that I was I don't know that thinking about,

I don't quite know how to think about. Which is the connection between like can we draw online between the Cardonis, the sort of the pro democracy movement that eventually, like through Pinochet's incompetence and their skill, like brings down the dictatorship and the sort of the really vibrant like me really for the last like twenty years, like incredibly vibrant sort of like student protests, but I mean just just sort of like like leftist street movements in Chile, because

I mean, like, I don't know, like I guess the impression that I got when I was talking to like the Chilean organizers was that like organized labor wasn't playing much of a role in this, and so yeah, I guess I was just wondering, like, how, how how do we think about sort of this trajectory? And I know this is like fifty years but no, I mean, I mean my dissertation is trying to the sort of branch

this full trajectory. And it's the beautiful, wonderful question. Um. And you're right, you know, the the activists that you spoke to. Um, that is a very common, um, commonly held view. And it's a commonly held view for a couple of reasons. One is that one of the what is seen as one of the main protagonists in the pro democracy movements that take place in the nineteen eighties are precisely those figures we talked about at the very

beginning of our conversation. The Popolodorus the Publodorus are seen as the protagonists that protests the dictatorship, largely because they are right. This is I'm not trying to say that they were not by any means, They clearly were. Um. We have great studies of this. Kathy Schneider's book Shantytown Protests and p H Chile is just a wonderful study of this um. They were protagonists and the geographic space, the site of the Pope lacon Is, is where a

lot of the protests are going down. UM. But labor did play a part, and labor did play a key part. And this is part of my argument is that not only does labor play a part, labor plays a key part in initiating the protests that begin in the early nineteen eighties. Now by the late nineteen eighties, the there people are certainly right that labor is no longer anything close to the power it was pre nineteen seventy three

or even earlier in that decade by any means. But in the late nineteen seventies and the early nineteen eighties, specifically in the space of a kunamakina and workers that are coming out of that tradition play incredibly instrumental and key roles. So, for example, there's a gentleman Manuel boost Dos. It's a member of the Christian Democratic Party. He's a worker at the Sumar Textile mill in the cotton plants. Specifically, he will at the time become president of Sumars Cottons Union.

He will then go on to along with other labor leaders found the National Union Coordinator where the c n S. You will become president of that and he will become one of the key figures along with other labor leaders that will initiate and lead to the pro democracy protests

that begin in the early nineteen eighties. So much so that he is UM at one point relegated, which this is a way one of the tactics the military used, UM would be to relegate uh perceived agitators or provocateurs two different parts of the country right out of Stay Santiago in the case of Bustos, so at one point he is relegated to the far north of the country. He's also exiled at a certain point. He's also jailed

at a certain point. UM. So even if we you know, even if we don't look at the archival record in terms of what Bustos is saying, what Bustos is doing, if we just look at what the military is doing to Bustos and to his colleagues in n S, then we that should tell us that they perceived them as a legitimate threat, and that they perceive labor as a legitimate threat. And this really, you know, explains why you

have a shift in UM. The dictatorship's policies with regard to labor between the early nineteen seventies the late nineteen

seventies and eighties. So here I'm drawing a lot on the work of Rodrigo Araya, who is a scholar here in Chile who has done a great deal in showing that early in the dictatorship you had a series of labor leaders who were opposed to Allende, who were still labor right, still pro labor, but anti Laftist and anti Allende, who take control of some of the key labor federations, namely the Copper Federation, and begin to sort of designate

themselves as the key figures of labor UM. And there's an attempt then by the dictatorship, who essentially make a corporateist model of labor and integrate them and control them

from the top down. UM. Ultimately that backfires because in doing so, they the military refuses to recognize some of these individuals and instill their own um sort of puppets, if you will, their own labor leaders, which then causes resentment, which then pushes that group to an oppositional stance UM, which then allows for more connectives to shoot more connections to be made between that group, which would be loosely referred to as the Group of ten UH and individuals

such as Bustos and others that are forming this National Union Coordinator. Those two groups will ultimately in the early nineteen eighties form a new group, which is the National Workers Command UM. And this actually group is formed at a point in which Bustos himself has been exiled out

of the country. UM. So, you know, there's a debate to be had with not the formation of the Command was an attempt to consolidate control away from the Union Coordinator and Bustos, which was much more open to working with members of the left and the communists at the time, compared to the say of the Group of Ten, who

you know, we're much more opposed to working with leftists. UM. So that's really you know, one of the big differences between labor and a pre nineteen seventy three period and a post nineteen seventi three period is there's still a struggle for labor rights, protection of workers in unionism, right to strike, right to collectively bargain. But what's missing in that post nineteen seventy three period, or rather what has

been murdered disappeared, tortured, executed by the dictatorship. Is a theory of power for unions, right, the sort of leftist influence, you know, you could call it Marxism, Leinism, you can call it sort of a social democracy, but some theory of power that animated unionism and animated the labor movement in the pre nineteen seventy three period, that is is essentially being purged over that course of the nineteen seventies

into the nineteen eighties. UM. But in addition to these sort of national level developments, which you know, for me, Boostos is the straight line that connects the territory of Kunamacina to this national level. Within Vucunumacina itself, you have two groups that begin to emerge in the late nineteen seventies nineteen eighties. The first would be the Solidarity Group UH and then the second would be Union Unity. And both of these new organizations emerging of Acunamericana and emerged

specifically as territorial organizations of labor. So they are in opposition too what BOOSTOS and others are trying to do, which is reform the sort of national labor hierarchy, hierarchy bureaucratic or you know, the bureaucratic excuse me approach to labor.

They're specifically opposed to that and are arguing that labor should be organized territorially because it allows a greater flexibility for the workers to respond to the new realities of a dictatorship, and specifically to the new realities of the new constitution that the dictatorship puts in place in as well as the new labor plan that they put in place through a series of laws in the late nineteen seventies in early nineties that severely curtail labor's ability to

both organize. So, for example, the closed shop is essentially done away with. UH. They also, UM will limit the ability to strike. You could you can strike, However, after thirty days UM the management can begin hiring scab labors essentially to break the strike. And if a strike lasted past sixty days, that the management was allowed to fire all of striking workers because after sixty days they were considered to have walked off the job and we're no

longer considered employees. Also, one of the key you know innovations that the sort of technocratic advisors to the dictatorship as um implements in the new labor Code is the individual labor contract, right, which means that workers now are contracted individually, which also then prevents any sort of national level union from bargaining on behalf of a sector wide or an industry wide contract. That is no longer allowed.

And so it's for all of those reasons that you have these two groups begin to emerge and saying no, we need to focus our efforts on the base, we need to focus them territorially. And for me, that is a straight line between the legacy of the cordonis and what we're seeing in the nineties, and then the other sort of discursive straight line, like if that's the material kind action, the discursive straightliness of these organizations are using the discourse of dignity and a dignified life in the

ex source material that we have. That makes sense, and I think that also, But that also, I guess partly explains why, like why organized labor like ceases after that point, because I guess it is just sort of like the it's the sort of the the anilable shifts in what's

happening in terms of the actual law. And then actually, I don't know, I guess I just should ask about this, like is there also a sort of like like you also get a sort of like like another sort of geographic shift in in how factories are distributed, like through the use Totally you have essentially a d industrialization, a policy of the industrialization, and you have a total reversion to what we can think of as a nineteenth century

economic export economy UM for Chile. Right, so you have much more focus and investment into commodity exports, be it UM, the fishing sector, the agricultural sector, things like that. Right. So, like, for example, if you go into your grocery store, uh and look at some of the fruits, specifically, say grapes, more often than not they're going to come from Chile,

especially in off seasons. Right. The benefit of Chile being in the southern hemisphere, for say, consumers in the United States is that then you have access to things that you wouldn't have access to otherwise. Uh. And so the dictatorship will prioritize this UM over the idea of industry. So you have a total reversion to UM, importing goods and services that would have been produced nationally or locally UM.

And so what this means then for a lot of the labor that happens in these zones right as you have massive layoffs. That's another innovation UM that the dictatorship and the Chicago Boys will introduce as the ability for management to fire UM at a mass level and have that be legal UM. And so you have high you have skyrocketing unemployment amongst factory label labor, such that like yes, by the nineteen eighties have a refounding of a national

labor confederation also the acronym being the COOT. The difference, however, is that it's under such a much different labor framework. It's also in a situation in which industrial labor is just not the main sector of labor UH and in its founding statutes, if the Coup pre nineteen seventy three was identified as the only national labor confederation, the statutes poste and in the late eighties when it's reformed, allows

for there to be other national confederations UM. And actually, this is one of the great debates that takes place between those organizations at the base Infocuamkina and these national level organizations is whether or not there should be one labor confederation or whether or not there should be many different labor confederations organized all ideological lines, which is essentially

a code word for anti communism. Right. That the idea of the ideological labor central was a way to exclude the left from gaining control in organized labor like it had in the pre nineteen period. And so by the dawn of nineteen nineties, when democracy, or rather when democratic elections returned to Chile, you have labor in a much

different position. Uh. And that's why you have this very weakening UM series or period under the Concert government, the ruling coalition, the governing coalition that takes power in Patricia Apo and winning the presidency. Um, it's just much different. And it's it's a strait jacket illegally because the ninete Constitution is still in place, right, it's still in place to this day. Uh. And that's actually been it's the period of Concert test that is the period where you

really have the most weakening of UM labor. It's also the period we have the most privatizations that are taking place, just former state owned companies. It's we could say that it's the period that is the most neoliberal period UH in Chile relative to the civilian The period of civilian

military dictatorship. Yeah, and I guess that's sort of like that that that's the thing that it just gets you to, Well, the last sort of twenty years of like of student led protests and of sort of ecological protests I make I guess you like Thempucha have always been like fighting, but the way that from from Spanish clone the only indigenous group that was never conquered by the Spanish, but

a gain. But I guess like like the axis on which the left is sort of like built on like through that period just shifts and that's I guess where you get the modern like that the sort of modern like configuration of the left that's been in the streets and last sort of like you do. And this is a this is the reason why I sort of draw a hard line ending my study in for two reasons.

One is that it's the is The first is the election of Pineta to the president city, Sebastian Pinietta as his first term in and so it's the first moment that someone from the concertson is not elected as the president they had governed sent from. So um that's really the what Peter Win and other scholars have referred to as the putch check period which extends all the way from three to that moment, is inclusive of the Concert

government because of fair um adherence to the neoliberal economic model. UM. That's when that period ends. Also a year later in eleven is when the student protests, and that's when you have a new cycle in Chilean social movements led by the students. Right prior, you know posted the return of democracy again, the return of democratic elections in nineteen ninety.

I think this is a very important distinction between a return to democracy and a return of democratic elections, which seems to be a confusion between not a confusion but a splippage between the form of democracy, a free and fair elections, and the content of democracy UM. And so a lot of people will referred to nineteen nineties to

return to democracy. But I think that the past thirty years of governments in Chile shows us, especially the past two years of uprising and resistance against that model, show us that democracy has yet to fully return UM. But in that period, you know, in the nine nineties, on street protests were not seeing as an affected effective measure UM as a as as the way to protest. Right, they obviously were effective in the period of dictatorship UM.

But after that there's no there there's a nut not necessarily discrediting of sorts, right, but there's not the emphasis on them that there was during the dictatorship, and certainly not that there was in the pre nineteen three period. It's not until the students take to the streets in eleven that you have this revival of the street protest as a as a viable form um of resistance and

protests in Chile. And you know, it's no surprise then that in October twenty nineteen, when the the s e though the uprising takes place, that it's students that were once again the vanguard of this UM. And you know when they're jumping turnstiles in the subways too, in protest

of proposed transportation hike. UM I was. I was actually luckily enough to be living here in early pandemic UM, and a lot of people that I spoke to UM at protests and things like that, were very quick to tell me that it was not thirty pos it's thirty

years that they were protesting. Yeah, And you know, and I guess that also like the left wing forces that took over the state like it's it's it's the reason why a lot of that wounds up sort of being about the constitution, because yeah, you know you still have this,

you still have Pinochet's like constition remains in fact. Yeah, yeah, And how I used to know the name of this is and one of the episodes, I think, I think like the guy who wrote it like it was like an enormous hyak fanboy and called it like the Constitution of Liberty or something. Yeah, it was. It was a hand it was a hand selected team of very few

individuals that was handpicked by the dictatorship to write the constitution. Um. You know, there was the there was a veneer of democratic support insofar as the dictatorship in nineteen eighty holds a referendum on whether or not to vote up, down, yes, or no for the new constitution. Right, um, the yes vote one. However, there is many sources at the time as well as scholars that have claimed that that victory

was not a valid victory um by any means. Um. But you know, right now, in the post twenty nineteen period, um, a sort of effect of the uprising that took places, there is a constitutional convention that's taking place as we speak here in Santiago, UM that's headquartered in the former National Congress. During the dictatorship, the h Congress has moved to the ports city of the Appraiso away from Santiago, but in the old National Congress building is where the

new Constitution provision has taken place. And actually two nights ago there was a marathon voting session in which a series of social rights were adopted into the cost into

the text of the new Constitution. And these social rights included, among other things, the right to unionization, the right to strike, the right to collectively bargain, the right for workers via unions, to have a say in the direction and business of an enterprise of a business itself, to participate in management essentially.

But it also included things such as a right to healthcare publicly funded healthcare system, the right to social security publicly funded and it included a right to housing, which specifically include the phrase of a right to a dignified, adequate home, as well as a right to the city that included the phrase that the right to the city is for the development of a dignified life. Uh. And so really that is kind of the epilogue UM to

to the story that we've been talking about this whole time. Now, you know, we don't know if the constitution itself will be adopted. Um. There's going to be an exit vote on September four of this year in which Chileans, under it's a mandatory vote, will vote up or down on whether or not to adopt the new constitution. So we can't say for certain if these rights will actually become rights of citizenship in Chile, but as of now, those rights are included in the text that will be voted

on in September. Yeah, and I think I think that's a pretty good place to end it, unless you have anything else that you want to know. I think that that's a really you know, there's a really nice symmetry there. Um. And you know, I stayed up are too late the other night watching that vote. I think it went to like two in the morning. Um, but it was you know,

it was an exciting thing to see. Um. And you know, it is an exciting moment to be here in Chile, especially after having to be away for two years during during the pandemic. Yeah. Um, yeah, well, thank thank you so much for thank you so much for talking with us. Oh, thank you thank you so much for having me. It's

been a it's been a real pleasure, you know. And I hope that um my ramblings are are sensible to your listeners, um and um, that they're able to take something from it, because I do think there's an importance in this history especially you know, this year is the fifty year anniversary of the Cordonos emergence, and so it's a great time to to sort of spread knowledge of this this moment in tril in history. Yeah, and I guess do you have anything like that you want to plug?

Uh No, I don't have anything specifically, Um. Yeah, no, still cranking away in the archives and working on my dissertation. So sadly I don't have a book to plug or anything like that. But you know, give me a couple of years. Uh, and I a book back on when it comes out. Yeah. Yeah. Well, in the meantime, you two can form a large section of industrial democracy in your workplace. Involves taking it over. Oh yeah, go go do that. This this has been they could happen here.

You can find us on Twitter and Instagram. It happen here pod. Actually, by the time this is dropping, we will be a few days away from Merket. Killdoy's new series Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, which is rad. You're gonna hear a lot of cool people doing cool things. That is dropping on May Day on May one, and after that we have we we we have another show dropping, which is which is which is a Ghost Church about ghost church eat things. It's It's gonna be good. It's

it's Jamie Loftus. It's Jamie loft Is doing Jamie Loftus things about a bunch of a bunch of the sort of like American ghost churches and people who talk to ghosts. So yeah, go listen to that. Have fun by everyone, Hello, welcome to it could happen here the podcast that is my podcast Now. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy and with me is the Webby Award winning Sophie Lichterman as our producer, as well as the actual hosts of the show, who go without mentioning because I don't see any reason to

include them. Can that just be the intro to every episode from now? This is better than our all of our regular intros. Oh I loved that. Um yeah, so what are we talking about today? Also on podcast, Garrison Davis and Christopher Wong Lou. Yes. So, so today we are we are talking about the sort of long and incredibly tragic history of Japanese anarchism. Well, okay, actually Japanese anarchism before World War Two, because after World War Two

was an entirely different story. And as much as I love people in construction helmets just like beating the ship out of cops with large sticks, uh, that story is extremely complicated. If you want to hear it, talk more about that story a little bit. Uh. The third part of my Nobasi Kikishi episode has a lot of people

in construction help us with sticks. But you know this is you know, okay, So the history of anarchism generally is the history of tragedy, but even by by anarchist standards, the the history of Japanese anarchism is just an absolute welter of heartbreak and loss. Um. Out of all of the people that we're going to talk about today, exactly one of the non Russian anarchist is going to live to see world the end of World War two, and

he's Korean. Every single other person is either going to be executed by the state, assassinated, kill themselves, drink themselves to death, so this is uh, this is this is an extreme bleak story in a lot of ways. Good to have one of those optimistic episodes every once in a while. Yeah, you know, I mean I think the gets thrown down a well. Uh, well, okay, it's it's unclear whether anyone got thrown down away. I'm sorry, I'm skipping ahead and I don't actually know. Well, we will,

we will get to the wells uh yeah. I also okay, so there's a lot of Japanese anarchists and we don't have that much time. So if you're like in a sawa u sakataro, stand um, I'm sorry, we can't cover all of them. Do you ever think about the history of anarchists in Japan? That is weird is that the beginning of the story pre dates they're actually being anarchists

in Japan, or specifically, they're being up in the anarchists. Um. There's this huge degree of sort of like cultural exchange and influence running between Japan and Russia by riche of the fact that they are, you know, next to each other, um, and especially in the seventies and eighties. This is one of the sort of this is important again because Russia in this period is like this is like the hotbed of anarchism, right, like they're they're killing, they're killing those

are they're they're they're doing all the things. They're going to the countryside there. The Russian anarchists are short of on the move, and a lot of things the Russian anarchists wind up like in Japan, baccoon In is there for like he like he has some extremely complicated arrangement who like he like sneaks on a boat and he like gets out and he beats one of the sort of like samurai like Beiji Restoration revolutionaries and they chat for a bit and then he leaves. So he he

you know, but you's not. This is when he was escaping Siberia. Yeah, well I think, yeah, he's get my Siberia. And then he somehow convinces like the American embassy or something to like let him on a boat to Japan. It's it's a very weird story. It's like all things bakun In are. But the most problem in anarchists to

spend time in Japan is uh Lev Meshnikov. Um Mashnikov is like he's like a pretty big deal in Russian Revolutionary circles like he's he's considered like okay, so the big sort of like anarchists left wing moving to Japan is the populist right. It's called the road nicks Um and there there's two big figures in it. There's uh Nikolai Turnachevski and uh this guy, uh Lev Menshikov, and you know, he's Manikov like he knows everyone he knows, like he's friends, was just like every single person and

we will get too more of his friends later. But like he's a kind of part of bakun in Um. He he has. He has a very similar career to Beacun in a lot of ways, where he just sort of like runs a especially like Eastern Europe. He's like runs around the world being in revolutions um, which is good work if you can get it. Yeah, yeah, it's it's pretty exciting. And he doesn't die, which is sort of incredible. Well, I love that for him, So he's

still around. Yes, this is very sad, you know, I mean he look, look, this is this is the goal of Russian cosmism. No is it actually cosmism? I have no idea. Yeah, the cosmonaut people, yeah, yeah, yeah, they would bring back all the dead people. Oh no, I don't know about this. I only know a weird thing

where there was like anarchist cosmonauts in like nineteen twenties Russia. Yeah. Yeah, so the their their whole thing was like, Okay, so they thought that the anarchists had like been defeated in the revolution because they were insufficiently committed to bringing the dead back to life, and that that that, you know, the whole thing was like they like they're there's some the people who were involved in the Soviet like rocket programs, and they're doing this because they want to colonize the

Moon and Mars so they can fit all of the dead poleteria they're gonna bring back to life. Wait, are you telling the truth to me? This is true? This is this is I've been trying to fight for the Anarchist Necromancer League for so long, which our slogan is um raised the dead to fight like hell for the living. That's that's It's incredible. But yeah, no, like the Russian cosmism,

it's a weird one cosmism. It's like a weird mix of like like natural philosophy quote unquote, which is just like different films or like folk magic or whatever, and like religion and spiritual stuff. But also it's like a predecessor to like the modern transhumanism. Um, it's an it's an interesting little collection of ideas that was popular at

the very beginning of the twentieth century. It's it's part of my thesis that no one normal has ever been involved in the production of a rocket like I mean yeast like on the so made in and then there's just like the Nazis and it's like, oh, zero normal people. I have no counterargument there was that because there was the guy who did all the multi stage rocketry, the nihilist who killed the czar, who built the bomb that killed the Tzar. He like when I talked about this

in my podcast, probably already listened to this. You have a podcast? WHOA, yeah, I really just I'm here. I'm gonna plug this every like five minutes. On this episode, um, you can learn about the bomb maker who killed the czar and his what he brought to the world in terms of rocketry and manned rocket travel. Anyway, please continue on what show Margaret? Well, okay, is this podcast that I'm recording on right now? When does it come out.

When are you listening to it, dear readers. Okay, well, then next Monday you can listen to cool people who did cool stuff, which is my podcast. Yeah, I'm so good at my up. Anyway, my job is to interrupt you with please tell me more about the cosmos and how they relate to Japan. The Cols was actually nothing to do with this, unfortunately, but yeah, but lev uh lev Meshnikov like he also he like fights with Garibaldi to reunify Italy. He's just like all over the place.

But he's an interesting guy because okay, so there's like a lot of foreigners who go to Japan, but he like makes Japanese friends and like learns Japanese before he goes there, which makes him like utterly different than like the people who are writing like Westerners who are writing but Japan in this period, who like don't speak very good Japanese and never leave their houses. So nothing has changed. Yeah yeah, well like except weirdly this one guy is

doing better. Oh no, I mean nothing has changed from now no where. No Westerners actually they just pretend to care about Japan. Okay, yeah, it's a it's it's time. There's actually That's one of the brunning themes of these two episodes is like there's a lot of stuff about this, about anarchism and about Japan just like don't change. But you know, so one of the things that winds up doing is he winds up spending two years teaching at

this thing called the Tokyo School of Foreign Languages. And this this is a bunch of major impacts, one of which is on Masnikov himself, who he becomes heavily influenced by by the Major Restoration, which he thinks of as like this like but he looks at it, this is like as a revolution, like this is an anti feudal revolution. This is the most successful social revolution of the century.

It's like he thinks that it's like destroyed the sort of stratified class system and creates this like possibility of like mass social mobility for commoners. And Okay, so this is like not the best interpretation of what's going on with with the Major Restoration. Where I mean, so the Major Restoration sort of the field system in Japan, it does a lot of other bad things. What is it?

Like I don't know that much about this, yea, So maybe the audience doesn't either okay, so the major restoration is a thing that happens where so so Japan has been ruled by a shogun for like a long time, and the shogun runs the Fueld system. It's very elaborate. Everyone has at least sort of minute hard prodcasts. But eventually there's this kind of um like that, there's there's this sort of it's complicated. It's this kind of nationalist movements by a bunch of um like a bunch of

the samurai clans. Who this is? This is happening in the six season, they mobilized to overthrow like the shogunate and basically like restore the emperor to power. The emperor has been like a puppet head like figurehead guy for like two years and they bring it back to power. Because I'm a hack of a fraud and a fraud. I'm forgetting their exact slogan. It's some it's something like it's Revere the Emperor, and I can't remember what the other part of the slogan is. It's very similar to

that to the Box rebellions. Looking it's it's this sort of I mean, there's a lot of things going on here. It's kind of a reaction to so in the in the sixties, like Japan is sort of forcibly opened to the world by like Comma our Paris showing up with a bunch of like the largest gunboats anyone has ever seen. Um. And this like this forces Japan to sort of like

abandon its isolation dispositions. And yeah, and you know, and you get this sort of classic intellectuals you're looking at this and they're going like, Okay, if we don't do something, like we're gonna get colonized. And so they do. And the thing that they do is that they do this

revolution and they overthrow um, they overthrow the shogunate. There's all this like there's there's like a trillion anime set in this period because there's like that, There's there's like like there there are there are squads of samurai swordsmen like running around like stabbing each other in Tokyo with like kyoto and like it's it's wild, it is it is a it is a time and and this sort of this is what sort of consolidates the modern Japanese

nation state. Um. You know, I've talked about this in my Kishi episodes, but like it sets off this wave of colonialism. They like they conquer Okaido, they conquer the islands, they do all this horrible colonialism stuff. But there's there's it's really unclear what the revolution is actually going to mean because like there has been a revolution, right, like the sort of like feutal like class system has been swept away. There's all of this sort of there's all

this this energy and the masses. There's like one of one of the things that Meshakov finds is like he so he gets to Japan in like the in the eighteenth seventies um, and he's seeing like the first size of discontentment with with the sort of the major restoration um, which is the restoration of the emperor um. Because there's a lot of people who look at this and they're like, oh, hey, we're gonna we finally like defeated the sort of olig

Art class that like rules all of us. And then there's all do olig Art class and they're like wait, hold on. And so there's there's like there's a series

of like ex samurai rebellions. There's this whole sort of like like he he like Mashakov literally like gets there in the middle of an uprising, and he's just like in this rereaes he has nobody what's going on because the guy he'd been talking to winds up being in the uprising, and you know, so he gets there and but what what what he sees also is he sees upheople. But he sees that this enormous network of like cooperative movements.

I mean, he's a bunch of mutual aid groups. He sees like villages who are like pooling all of the resources they can send kids to like school in the cities. He sees like he sees the government failing to provide services for people because there's an uprising going on, and also the governments and so people are sort of people taking care of each other. And this has an enormous

influence on him. Um and he starts to you know, like the way he thinks about anarchism changes, and he sees, like he starts to think about sort of like anarchism is cooperation, Like mutual cooperation between people who like mutual aid enters the sort of lexicon. And Okay, so there's a there's a modern historian named show Kota She who

writes this book called Anarchist madernity, anarchist magernity cooperatism. Wait, hold on, yeah, anarchist magernity cooperatism and Japanese Russian intellectual relationship modern Japan. And he makes the argument basics, yeah, there's there's two there there there, it's a it's a better title than I'm reading it, because there's there's two.

There's like a heading and like a subheading straight because I'm flound But she's making the argument that this this is like this is actually like something that's very important to development of Marco communism because this guy he knows everyone, like did the anarchist geographer, like at least Rick LuSE. I can't pronounce his name. I think it's lu Yeah, I think so, but I can't not with a gun

to my head, I'm not sure. Yeah. Yeah, Like their roommates like they're like they're like they lived together for like a while, and like he he he writes the Japan entry and like the encyclopedia, he's friends with Kropotkin.

And after after his his sort of like thoughts starts to change about mutual aid, you start to see a lot of the same stuff, like you know, like this is like he's he's there before Karpokin writes mutual Aid, and then you see you see all the sort of mutual aid stuff popping up Kropotkin, And you know, I don't know how seriously to take the argument that like you're sort of seeing like that that a lot of this theory is sort of a rebound of reflection of

what they were seeing in Japanese society. But it's interesting, and I think I should mention it because I don't know, like there's there's this whole sort of intellectual sphere of people who were like associated with anarchistic the ever thing that happens in this period is that like, um, so there's a bunch of like Mashnikov like has a bunch of friends in Russia who all got arrested because they were in like terrorist groups, and he's able to get

like a whole bunch of these people too, Like he's able to get them like exiled, and their exile is they go to Japan, they teach with him, and so suddenly there's like there's like a bunch of people who are now like these people, these populists are like writing stories about like the stuff they were doing, and like

all the people who are still fighting in Russia. So there's suddenly there's all these people who are like reading about the Russian populists uh in Japan and and you know, and this is there's there's this kind of like anarchist cultural sphere that exists in Japan, like before there's anarchists, um like EXAs yeah, yeah for Japan as anarchist, they'll be like one like yeah, there's like a couple of Russian anarchists and like yeah, but like Mashikov leaves at

one of the other big thing with this is Tolstoy, who is like Tolstoy in like nineties like early nights, He's like he's the like he I think he's like the most translated author like on Earth in Japan. And it's they're not just reading his literary work, they're reading his like theology is political work, which is important because Tolstoy is like a Christian and reco pacifist right, and and this influences this. There's this kind of like there's there's a lot of sort of like left wing anti

imperial strains of Christianity that pop up in Japan. And this is one of the reasons for US because everyone's reading Tolstoy, and so you get the seeds of this anarchist movements that eventually sprout into a man named god. This guy's name is actually hard Cotu ku SHOOSI. I'm butchering the last part of it. I'm sorry. My Japanese does not extend to this many years and eyes in a row. But kotakudak he's an interesting god because so he hasn't so he has like a whole career before

it becomes an anarchist. He's he's like he's a very prep mint journalist, intellectual, Like he writes a newspaper. It's very famous. Everyone reads it, and he's the heir apparent to this other like very famous sort of liberal journalist who again, because Lev Meshnikov knows literally everyone was like a friend of Left Meshnikov. I don't. He knows every

single person on earth. It's incredible, you know that rules you know, unless he ever turned if you ever snitched to be terrible apparently never did so yeah, yeah, I mean it's still around, so I mean he still could snitch. He's still around. The last the chance, Oh, I guess everyone he was snitched on his dead so um makes it harder the epic Skipilaria area. Yeah. So Kodaku is like he's kind of like a standard liberal, but he

gets involved with with the anti war movements. Um, specifically this this is the the anti uh well is it does anti a lot of wars because the jet Japan is fighting an enormous series of wars and like the early nine hundreds, Um, yeah, they kicked Russia's as at that point. Yeah, yeah, fight uh Japan, They fight Japans. Sorry, they fight China. Yeah, and do you do you know who else is fighting China? I don't know. I'm afraid to know. The products and service assist the show. Are

we supported by American nationalism? Apparently? Yes? Question mark, And we're back with the first rush with the first actual Japanese anarchist. So in the neteen hundred Cutko writes this book called Imperialism Monster of the twentieth Century, which is like good yeah, yeah, and this certificate for a number of reasons, one of which is it like this is one of the first major like books about imperialism. Like there there are some other Western writers who stuff like

predates this, but like this is not hter. This is before Lenin has written about imperialism. This is before like Hobson, this is before Luxembourg, and I'm just gonna read it a little bit from it because it rules. So this is from the first section. It's called imperialism a wildfire in an open field. Imperialism spreads like a wildfire in an open field. All nations bow down to worship this new god, sing hymns to praise it, and have created a cult to pay to pay it adoration. Look at

the world that surrounds us. In England's both governments and citizens have become fervent acolytes of imperialism. In Germany, the war loving emperor never loses a chance to extol its virtues. As for Russia, the regime has long practiced to policy of imperialism. France, Austria, and Italy are all delighted to join the fray. Even a young country like the United States has recently shown its eagerness to master this new skill.

And finally, this trend has reached Japan. Ever since our great victory in the Cio Japanese War, Japanese of all classes burned with fervor to join the race for an empire. Like a wild horse freed from its harness. So you know, the one thing that he got incorrect, as as I understand by spending a lot of time on Twitter, is that actually only the United States is imperialist and any actions especially by Russia. I was very confused that he included Russia as the I can't finish the sentence of

the straight face, Um what Russia? Also, how could it be imperialism if Lenin hadn't yet defined the term for us? This is okay, this is the whole thing. Okay. So so Kutko gets like a lot of ship from this book because for like from later on, having his leftis because like he's insufficiently materialist. It's like, yeah, he is mostly just talking, like the books, mostly about like how patriotism and nationalism like create this stuff. It doesn't look

at economics much. But like, okay, there's a whole problem here, which is that if you try to apply Lenin's definition of imperialism to Japan, it doesn't work because like, like what would Japan is invading China? They have like I

think it's like fifty total factories. Yeah, like that the everything is completely backwards, Like it's like yeah, and like you know, it's like like like Lennon's imperialism is supposed to be like the highest stage of capitalism, but then you go to Japan, Japan's like barely started the position to capitalism, like if Lettin's imperialism is supposed to be about like debt exports, right, but Japan is just conquering countries while they're just literally like borrowing massively from whether

states of funder industrialzations. Everything does nothing, None of it works, and Kodaku gets like again he has he has like a lot of ship for this, but it's like no,

she's right, like letting is letting is wrong. Lettings analysis, if you try to apply in Japan, does not work, and Kodas does so yeah, and you know, Kudako, I think like he's keyed into things that the Marxists aren't, but like specifically about like about the power of nationalism, because you know, I mean like obviously if you if you go a bit later, it's like, well, all of these people who are like, oh, imperialism is the highest age of capitalism, and then all of their parties vote

to go to war with each other in War one, like you know, okay, Cutico I think like gets this because his relationship with socialists an NTI imperialism are like backward from the Marxist right where the Marxists arrived at engine imperialism, like from their Marxism. But Kutko like becomes a socialist because he sees it as a way to stop wars. Like that's like his big thing is he's in the antiwar move when he want he's wars to stop.

And that's the right direction to do. Ship. You should do ship because like you don't pick the label because what's cool. You pick You figure out what you believe, and then you pick the label that fits what you believe,

and so of the other way around. You know, yeah, and and you know it means that he's less sort of like he's less dogmatic than like his successors, because you know, I mean because because he's he's working off of his actual principles versus sort of like this like dictation stuff, and I mean he's he's he in the you know, three, he publishes the Ess of Socialism, which is like this is like the first like socialist like

book written by Japanese person. It's like one of the I think there's maybe like one or two other ones that are before this is this is like the first big one and he he he's also like he's involved in founding the Japanese Socialist Party and then he gets like arrested and sent to the US and something happens when he's into you. I don't know, there's I've seen like sis conflicting accounts, like I've seen accounts to say he joins he joins the i w W. I I

don't know. I've seen other people said he lived, he lived in a commune, like he definitely read gropocket, he becomes an anarchist, let's deciety, he did all of these things. Yeah, lived in a commune and tried to organize the communy with the i w W. But you know, I mean he this guy is enormously influential in history of Japanese left. Like he's the guy with when he comes back and act you know six, He's the guy who introduced the concept of the general strike Japan. Like he's the first

guy to write about it. He's very cool. He he also like, yeah, you know, he starts pushing this and started this. He starts pushing anarchism in direct action as like instead of like doing proliamentary stuff, and he translates like Corpocket's work in the Japanese. He translates the like the comedy's manifesto. He's his labor organizing. He's sort of like all over the place, and you know, like labor and the ant one movement are like two of the

big currents are proucing anarchists. But the the other like big current that's making anarchists this period is feminism. Because okay, so I stop me if this isn't any way surprising, but the late eighteen hunters and early neteen hunters are not a time to be a woman in Japan. Really. Yeah, it's not a good time like anywhere, but it's not not even now. It's not the best. Yeah, I mean I will be improved. I will say it's it's it's

better than this. This is like sure, like the major regime is sort of like consultating self is as just consultating itself. It gets like progressively more like patriarchal, misogynist. I'm gonna I'm gonna read from the book Reflections on the Way to the Gallows, which is this It's a great book. It's it's an awesome collection of yeah, well so that that's uh God, I forget one of the Japanese anarchists whose about to die, Like that's the title

of like a piece that she wrote. Um, and they this book is like a collection of of Japanese feminist writings, mostly from people who get killed by the state, because that's what happens when your feminist Japan in this period. Um. Oh yeah, it's bad. Okay, So I'm gonna read a quote from this. In eight two, the government forbid women to make political speeches, and in eighteen ninety made it illegal for women to participate in political activities whatsoever. Women

were forbidden to even listen to political speeches. The Police Security Regulations of reinforced these strictures. Article five of the regulations prohibited women from forming any political organization whatsoever. Jesus. Yeah, it's like that's like a level of restriction that like I'm not sure I've ever seen like that explicit level of no, you can't do this. Yeah, I feel like

it's usually implicit in a lot of Western rays. And then also like one of the things that really strikes sticks out to my about that is that I'm so used to thinking about I think people tend to think about like this like linear progress model, where like you go back really far, like all women and all other oppressed categories had it terrible and then it just slowly gets better or whatever. But if they're passing these laws in nine hundred, there's an implicit it was a little

better before. Yeah, yeah, it's very specifically gets worse on them.

Like so one of the things with the eighteen nine legal coaches that didn't like it literally just legally enshrines like patriarch control the households and this this is this is a massive reactionary shift in in serve of jeoparye like domestic and political culture like this, like that that kind of patriarchal control the household was like a thing in some Samurai families, but like it wasn't a thing for there's a huge number of popular classes like just

that didn't exist and they just legislated into existence. And like you know, I mean like the things that the things that they're applying here, like women need consent of their father to marry. Um is for another quote for the book what are the provision has held that quote cripples and disabled persons and wives cannot undertake any legal action. Fucking he huh. Yeah. So this is this is this

is an incredibly reactionary state. And there's also like there's a lot of sex trafficking going on, like like actual like there's a lot of people just being grabbed off the street. Um, it's a it's a it is a disaster, and it is into this patriarchal mess that like several generations of Japanese and ARCA feminists step into. Um. The most famous of the first round is Kano Sugako, who's she she's a socialist author who conversed to She originally

social listen. She conversed anarchism, which is like a thing that happens a lot in this period. And she she's working as a journalist and you know she she's she's like she's a very sort of controversial figure in the government like hates her. So she meets Kotuku and they have an affair. And this is like one of the other things that keeps happening here is there's a lot of like free love stuff going around the Japanese anarchist

circle at this time. And this this has two conseq which is one is a lot of men use it to be really shitty and means there was like there is a again, this is this is this is this is the big like nothing has ever changed in the anchist movement. There are so many relationship drama things nothing. There are so many times this last circle like like they are two different times when the most famous Japanese anchist man and the most famous Japanese ancists women wind

up in a relationship. Uh it ends with it with them explaining the movement and then both dying in prison. Like this happens twice. Exact sequence happens twice. It's nuts, like they're they're just they're just doing polyquel ship Like it's, oh, they just need better mediators. Yeah, well, and I mean this is this is the thing with like the Japanese like the Japanese anchist movement like has a huge feminist wing, but like the men still suck, like you just keep

being bad and so you know what. The over thing about this is that Kono Sugako is like enormously more militant than like almost every other any other anarchists that's alive in Japan at this point. And so in the nineteen ten she gets involved with the plan to assassinate the emperor Um and this becomes known as the high Treason incidents, and the state like gets wind of this. They arrest her, they arrest uh Go Taku, and they

arrest like twenty two other two yeah, twenty two other anarchists. Um. Now like five of these people are like even tangentially involved in this plot, um, but they this is okay, So I can't say that that the Japanese government only does this to anarchist because they do this a fascist

like once. But like they do this thing where okay, So they have a bunch of people that they want to execute, right, So they find one person who's like an ideological figure and they're like, okay, you're now in the middle of this and you're the link between like this group and this other group want to kill. This other group want to kill this other group want to kill And so they convict uh like jo Um and uh Ku like they they all get convicted and they

all get executed. Yeah, And so this case is also interesting because there's a bunch of people who the state like wanted to kill but they couldn't because they'd already arrested. They'd already they like, this is like two years after like a mass arrest of like half of the Japanese

nargist movement. And so they have all these people who are in prison, and it's like even by like the standards of the Japanese state, it's like, Okay, how are we going to convict all of these people who have been in prison for two years of trying to of like being a part of this plot to kill the

emperor that was like organized outside of the jail. And so this this is the thing that saves like a huge portion of the Japanese anarchist movements, that saves it from literally so like this the Hydragenon incident kills like most of the famous anarchist of Japan, but it leaves like like a couple alive. And that's why they're alive because they were all in prison. God, wait, how are they going to kill the emperor? The plant didn't get

very far. I think they were trying to use a bomb, but the police got wind of it very very early, not classes so that they never really got much like past the planning stage. Um, this is a shame. Yeah yeah, And do you know what else never gets very far plass past the planning stage when they're trying to assassinate the emperor of Japan. Is it the ads because they don't know how to do direct action because they're too in mestion in capitalism? That is, that is actually exactly

what we were talking about. Margaret, thank you so much, and we're back. I was genuinely trying to see if I could like think of a of a company that had like tried to kill the Japanese emperor, and I couldn't think of one. And I was like, hmmm, this says something about society. This does. This is a real, real solid critique we have here. I really hope that ten years from now this all seems very dated. You're like, of course someone's major company has tried to never mind,

one can dream so kinda. Sugaku is dead, Kotaku is also dead, and this this means that it's time for sort of like another generation of of anarchists to try to fill in the gaps. So they're executed. Yeah, yeah, they're dead, Like they just die and they kill, they kill, they kill like twenty two of the anarchists or something. And I mean this is a this is a huge purge. Mean, they don't wind up executing just like there's just like a like a sympathetic like Buddhist priest. It's executed. Um,

I when is this? This is nice and eleven sorry, yeah, this is nice un eleven um and actually there's nothing to think about this kind of Sku becomes the first woman ever executed by the happening state. She will not be the last, like oh boy, um feminist, yeah, I mean equal rights, equal fights. There's another like very influential market feminist who's emergence slightly after, like just like in

like nineteen four nine is each on no way. She's an egoist anarchist who eventually last, finally, finally we bring it up. That's all I have to say about. That's like almost all I had to She she she takes over the editorial position of this, uh, this magazine called Blue Stocking Magazine, which is like Japan's and I think it's it's like this is like the most important feminist magazine in Japan, and she takes over the editorial staff

about it. And her work is really interesting in a lot of ways because it just it just straight up is contemporary feminism in a way that like a lot of the stuff in this period isn't like if if you go and read the arguments she's having, she's arguing that sex works should be legal and that everyone should be should be able to get abortions because women should

have autonomy over their bodies. Yeah, it's like, yeah, this is this is not going to end well for her, but you know what, it doesn't end well for any of us in a long enough timeline. You know, like all that matters is the time of what we do. At this time, we are gularly bad. Okay, fine, yeah, so yeah, I think so she's able to do this for like a year, and the Japanese state looks at this, it is like absolutely not and shust the magazine down. Um, so she she gets forced to move on to other things.

And the other thing she moved on she moves on to is being extremely heavily involved in the free love movement of course. Yeah yeah, and and but also, and this is the thing that's that's interesting about the sort of periodge of Japanese anarchism is that like the egoists are all also Nicholas yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah.

And she's so she she's like heavily involved in labor organizing, and this is how she comes into contact with her partner, who she's like cheating on her imprisoned husband, who will later form the Japanese Communist Party. That's a lot of stuff happening. There's there, there's so much, there's so much beef. It's incredible. There's there's this like we haven't even gotten to the wild part of this relationship yet, okay, which

is so so okay. So she she comes in contact with her partner or person who would become her partner, Osaki Sakai, who is like dating another very famous Japanese arca feminist, who she stabs him in the neck over the fact that she's in multiple relationships at once. So this isn't really a free from her point, Yeah, this is this is the thing that keeps happening with free love of this period. It's like you gotta like, you gotta lay down, you gotta make sure everyone's okay with everything.

They should have seemed to in theory, but in practice they sure, yeah, sure do fall apart? Huh yeah? And this two divides the Japanese anity. But does she win, did she succeed, did she kill him or did he survive? That Okay, yeah, I'm just I have there's a special

place in my heart for split slit throats of patriarchal man. Anyway, So most like Kai is also very heavily evolving labor organizing, and he he's one of the guys who like turns anarchists labor into like a serious political force, which is maybe it's good that they survived. Yeah, like it's probably net good. But all of the guys in this story like suck except do I haven't except here? What about the Korean guy? Who? Um oh yeah, we get to him. Yeah,

he's he's kind of like I think he's actually fine. Yeah, I think maybe the end this story gets weird. Yeah we'll we'll we'll get to them in a second. Um. But yeah, So Saya Sakai has like he has he has this like fusion of like egoism and syndicalism, where like the individual ego will be liberated through collective action, but the goal of the workers movement is not to just like end poverty, it's to like liberate the individual

and give themselves developments. And he's also this like incredibly fierce like like one of his big thing is that like he does not want intellectuals anywhere you're the workers movement does absolutely not. Yeah, and this is because like again he's been around for ages, Like he becomes an anarchist around the time when Um Kotaku doesn't like that's no six, So he's been like arounded. He's one of the guys who survives the high Trees in the incident

because he was already in prison. Okay, all right, and so he like he's one of the people who like keeps the sort of flame of anarchism alive after like their fashion nineteen eleven. But unfortunately for him Um and for eacho, no way, they get caught up in the Canto earthquake, of which is this like this earthquake between Yokohama and Tokyo alone kills two hundred thousand people. It is like it is like it is one of the worst like natural disasters. It's it's really bad and in

immediately gets worse. The state wouldn't use a natural disaster to try and further its aims through extra legal means. Yeah, So okay, I'm gonna start with one of the ways that the genocide of Korean people in Japan at this time starts is so there's a bunch of Korean workers in a long turre union that's been organized by this builit in like left his union guy named Yamaguchi Saka and okay, so like they're in this long shore union. There's this disaster. They start doing mul a. They start

going out. They started taking care of so if I

started giving people food. But you know, they're they're like waving red flags and stuff, and the Japanese police lose their minds and are like, oh my god, there the jet the Koreans are doing socialism and they just start killing them and they there's this whole thing about like there's these rumors started like Koreans are raping Japanese women and it turns into this thing about like looting, and then like Korean malcontents are supposed to be like overrunning

police stations and the lynch mobs. The lists are mostly targeting Koreans, but they're also tart, like if you're Chinese, if you're from Baku Islands, like they're killing you. Two um, they kill two thousand Koreans in Tokyo and another two thousand in Yokohama, and like two thousand Koreans in Yokohama, that is half the Korean population of the city. And these people die like horribly, like because it's not like

so that the polices are actively hunting them down. Like the entirety of Japanese society like remembers that they really like killing people and they really like fighting, and like you have people like taking their like ceremonial swords from like their ancestors who are in the major revolution, Like they're taking their katanas going industry and murdering people with them, like people just like have fish hooks and they're just

murdering people in the street. And this goes on for like this is on for days, and one of the things that happens in this is um, well, okay, so the one of the other things happens in this period that the Javits government just starts like arresting random left iss and executing them. Yeah, and that's what was supposed to happen to know to Echo no A and Osaka Sakai. But they get arrested by squad and military police led by mashachikom Akasu who just she just murders them. Um.

There's like conflicting stories of how this happened. I there's there's one version of it where like he kills them and like their six year old nephew and throws their bodies out a well. There's another version of it where they get strangled and that he strangles have been prison and this is like a huge outrage, but it's not huge at range because he murdered them as a huge

outrage because he's supposed to wait for the trial. H I mean, and yeah, And this is one of the things that like this is this is part of how like fascism comes to Japan, is that like he becomes a hero for the fascist right, Like he goes to prison for ten years supposedly, but he only serves three and then he gets out. He becomes a hero, and then he becomes basically the head of like the sort of fascist secret police in the like Maenturian puppet state.

But on the upside, he when would Japan loses to war, he kills himself. So when I with the story I had heard was that the Throne in the Well story, and I remember it. It's stuck with me so much because the first time I met anarchists from Japan, they gave me a zine and it was like Japanese anarchist martyrs, you know, like the martyrs of our movement or whatever.

And I was like looking through it and we're all of these children, and it just like really emotionally affected me that I was like, oh, y'all's martyrs include all of these like literally not like like literal like like six year olds and stuff, because you know they came and killed not just the grown up anarchists, but the baby anarchists or whatever as well. Um, I know that this has happened lots of places, but it just it

really stuck with me. So whether it's true or not, the story I heard was this story about the well, and then it's stuck with me. Yeah, I mean, like the level of repression in Japan, like it's it's unlike anything I've ever seen that's not in a country that's literally in the middle of the civil war, like they

just they just like murder people like constantly. Yeah. And then this is one of the other things, like one of the things that starts the right wing like turn in Japanese society is when is when the earth work happens and the government is like like they're like the police are being like, it's the Koreans. You need to go fight the Koreans, and so they do and like I mean yeah, like wait, they like blame the earthquake

on the Koreans. Yeah, well, so everything is there's this fire, the fire kills like sixty people, like it it consumes they're like they're they're the urban core of uh, what's the name of that city, h the urban core of Yokohama just goes up in flames, like six people burned to death, and that's the government needs some explanation for. Yeah, it's horrible, but like the governments are explation for it.

They're like, oh, we'll blame the Koreans. And then suddenly all of these people are just like like the whole of Japanese society just goes into this total mobilization like kill mode thing and they just murder enormous numbers of people and this and like that this has this enormous sort of like like cultural affection, shifting people back to the right and shifting people back towards militarism because now they've like you know, like they've they've tasted blood, they've

like they've gotten this sort of sense of it yeah, it is brutal um and before we go, we're gonna kill off one more anarchist the team. Can we kill off the other team instead? Unfortunately, no, none of them die in this story. It's the worst. All of the assassination attempts fail. It's so sad. Yeah, I'm sorry sight

me what I happened. I forgot how depressing this because I was I was remembering part two of this, which is just like absolutely hilarious, kind of pointless like ideological battle over like things that are kind of dumb, and then I forgot about the first part of the story, which is everyone gets executed. So the last person who we're talking about he gets executed is is Fumiko Konako.

Who is Fumokko? So she she she's a nihilist anarchist, but she's different from like everyone else we've talked about today so far because when she's a kid, she gets sent to live in Japanese occupied Korea, and so she goes there and she gets like horribly abused by her family, which leads to become like leaves of her becoming a nihilist, but it means to like, okay, so like like a lot of the anarchists like in Japan talk a big game again about anti like imperialism, right, and like they

will do things like yeah, like they will go fight police to try to stop a war for happening, but they don't really talk to people in Korea very much. And Fumio Kanico was like the exception to that because you know, she lived there for a long time. Um and she she winds up marrying pack Yol, who is a very influential Korean anarchist, and they they do a bunch of organizing the specifically like that their their thing is.

They're trying to like get there, trying to enter the Japanese occupation, and you know they're they're doing great work. And then unfortunately, after the earthquake, Uh, she and pak Yo are and uh, stop me if you've heard this one before, they are sentenced to death for a supposed plot to kill the emperor. Wait wait now, yeah, we already did this part. You're just repeating, Yeah, yeah, they

do it again. This is the second time. Like they just keep doing this and this one it's unclear if there was actually a plot, and if there was a plot, it's unclear to what extent form can code was like involved with it. But while she's gonna get arrogated, she's like, oh yeah, no, Like I hate the Emperor. I was absolutely involved in a plot to kill him, Like I was making a bomb to kill him. Uh. Also, I'm an anarchist. And here's like an incredibly detailed sketch of

like all of the oppression in Japanese society. But I'm just gonna tell you, like the person she's like the court examiner, who's like and and you know, there's there's anything that happens where she and Pacuole are like are handed pardons as like the sort of like mercy of the Emperor thing, and paciol like takes it but go kind of co like they hander the paper and she

chears it to shreds in front of them. And it's so embarrassing that like the record of what happened is like sealed until after World War Two because it was a big like, um, it was like a big media scandal, all of the stuff with them being arrested, right, And I'm basically I don't actually know more, but I watched a movie once. There's a great movie about this called Anarchists from Colony. This part of it. Yeah yeah, and she yeah, and like yeah, it's just the whole thing,

and like that. The government also kind of doesn't want to assassinate them because it looks really bad that. I mean, they've they've they've picked, they've they've arrested to random people who like have done nothing, and they're just gonna kill them. But for mechanicals like no, like, I believe in the things that I believe in, and I will literally like

tear up this parted and die for it. And so she tears out the pardon and so she goes to prison, and she lives long enough to write like the greatest entry in the in the genre of an archi feminist a Japanese narchi feminist prison memoirs, which is an entire genre. There's like multiple books because it keeps happening and these people get arrested and set the prison. It's called the Prison Memoirs of a Japanese Woman. It's great, everyone should

go read it. It's it's also extremely depressing because her life sucks, but yeah, it's it's it's good. Um. Yeah. And so now having killed off the leading intellectuals of anarchism again for the second time in a generation. You would think that this would this would kill the movement, like I think, I think like movements like if if you kill they're leading intellectuals, like all of them, like

twice in like twelve years, like the movement collapses. Yeah. That, but at the very beginning there was the guy who said keep the intellectuals away from the labor organizing. Maybe he is right, well, but this, this is this. Yeah. The incredible thing about this is no, it doesn't it doesn't kill them. They keep going like and they have they have one last glorious, glorious and absolutely baffling hurrah. Okay of like in fighting, extremely weird and funny in fighting.

So yeah, that that's what we're gonna be talking about next episode. All right, Yeah, is it time for the plug of the plug? Yes? Oh oh, Margaret you who have a new podcast about that? It's on this very network, Cool Zone Media, on this very network. I have my own podcast. Is it called cool People Who Did Cool Stuff and Doesn't Believe? So? Does it come out on May second? And is it produced by the webby Award winning Sophie lie German? Uh? Perhaps? And do episodes drop

every Monday and Wednesday? I think they do. Uh, that is super, super exciting. And you can find that wherever you get your podcasts, remember quickly anywhere you get them, Like if there's a peddler on the corner who sells you podcasts, your pain, get your podcast, get your podcast. It's half off today to two for one exactly. And where and where can people follow you on the interwebs? Uh? Well, for now, you can follow me on Twitter before the

mass exodus h at Magpie killed Roy. And you can follow me on Instagram, which we've all known for a very long time is owned by evil people, and that is Magpie. No, Margaret killed Roy because I wasn't clever enough to get my own name in both places. I don't know why I'm explaining this to you, but you can follow me on social media and that's where I am, and I post pictures of my dog that keeps barking in the background while I'm trying to record this episode.

But but if you, if you follow Margaret, you'll see her dog and you'll understand that it is worth it because he is handsome, very nice and agrees. Well, I'm very excited to start listening to cp w DC as just the best. Uh is that the episode episode? I guess I'm starting this one. Hi, welcome to take it happened here. It's a show. If you're listening to this episode, you probably listen to the last one. You know what

it's about. Yeah, please do don't start. I mean, I guess you could start with this one because this one is sort of wildly different than the last one. But this one we're rewriting it so they all survive. Yeah, I mean, I don't. No one gets executed this episode. Yes, that is that is a win. And the cosmists come, the Russian Cosmist come, and they resurrect at least Canikofumico um, the rest, give or take whatever. Maybe the children could

be resurrected. That's how I would prioritize it in that order. That makes sense. Yeah. Um. And that voice you're hearing is Margaret Killjoy, host of Cool, host of cpw DCS Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff Cool Medio podcast that is launching its first episode on May second, and episodes are every Monday and Wednesday. I did it? Okay? Who? That's true? All the things are true, except the cosmos part that the cosmists I don't know. Maybe maybe maybe they'll still pull it off as as if yet, so

we're gonna go back a little bit. Um. We ended

last episode with everyone sort of dead. Um. But the reason that also didn't wipe out the the anarchist movement was that there's that does another sort of wing of it, and the other wing of it is in in nineteen eighteen, labor movement in Japan re emerges, and it re emerges because there's the war, like Japan fights to over one, and there's just like mass inflation and deprivation, and so even though striking is like unbelievably illegal, people do it

anyways because the underdative is just starving to death. And so there's this reformist trade union that eventually becomes Japanese Confederation of Labor that swells and numbers to about thirty thousand people, and actually much like thirty thousand people is like it doesn't sound like that big for a union. I think this is the biggest any union is going

to get in this period. I think this might get slightly bigger than that, but like, yeah, most of the unions don't crack twenty k because the size of the Japanese industrial working class isn't that big, and also the amount of oppression is unbelievable. But you know, having having thirty people in your union means that your union is now the site of Japanese intra left conflict, which is wonderful. People there is actually like people up, Yeah, it's great.

There's like, you know, there's a period where everyone kind of gets along, like like all of there was like everyone of the Japanese Left knows each other, like all they're all dating each other, like if this is true, Like you know, we've been talking about all the interest dating each other, but the Antics and the Communists are all dating each other, like the Reformists are also dating each other. Like they're all sort of like everyone knows each other, and for like a bit they're sort of

able to get along all right. But with with with the the Japanese Confederation of Labor. This last for like one year, and the anarchists and the Bolsheviks has split

over the question of the USSR. After the Anarchists published like Emma Goldman writing about how it's bad actually, and suddenly these two factions are like, yeah, these actutions are like fighting tooth and nail for control of like the entire left, because like these these groups are like the anarchists, the communists are in every social movement, like they're they're in there in labor, they're in the feminist movements, they're

in this movement. They're like we haven't really talked about, but it is going on the background of all of this, which is the burak Kuman liberation movement on the burk Kuman or this like this like hereditary class. I'm pronouncing that extremely badly and I apologize um, but the hereditary class and like the old fuel system, which is like technically abolished in the Lady two hundreds, but like discrimination against them continues. It's it's very similar to like like

the untouchable like touchables in India. And so they have this sort of movements and the anarchists back it, and the communists like waffle on it because the Bolsheviks it tastes like a while before they're like no, no, no,

We're we're fully backing this now. And so yeah, I mean that gets wrapped up in this this giant battle for the control of the left, and the battle for the control of the left leads to like one of history's most common alliances, which is Bolsheviks allying with reformists who like also favor like centralized control to fight the anarchists who don't want centralized control. Yeah, there there are

many new things, yea, in the labor movement. This this plays out in this battle over like where power is supposed to be in a union confederation. So you know, the question basically is it supposed to be in the federation bureaucracy like the people are like the sort of high level of the bureacracy itself, or is it supposed to be in the unions who are like the part

of this federation. And and this has real consequences, you know, like it a lot of sort of centralized union federations, like the central union bureacracy that the people who decide if you can strike or not mhm. And you know, this is extremely useful to both reformings bureaucrats who want to make sure nobody goes on strike because have their deal with the capitalists and they don't want to refolution happen.

And it's also very useful for the Bolsheviks who want to make sure they can purge anyone who they don't like and also want to make sure. The Union movement is just like an extension of their politics. And so there's this huge battle and it ends with basically like both the Bolsheviks and the reformists pull out of the Union. Whoa, so the anarchists win. Oh yes, sort of, well they victory.

There's nothing. Yeah, well it's not. There's nothing. So like twenty thou members go with the reformists, like twelve thousand go with the Bolsheviks, about eight thousand go with the anarchists. So it's not the best, but they rebuild and and into this phrase steps arguably Japan's greatest anarchist theorists of this period, Hottest Shoes. Oh and this guy is a character,

like he's he's he's barely known in Japan. I mean there was a sort of like renaissance in how to shoeso scholarship when this one guy named John Krupp wrote this book called Hottes SHOESO How does Shoes? In Pure Anarchism and into Wards Japan, which is a mouthful of a title, But I'm just gonna keep plugging this because like this is the book that made me an anarchist. Like this is like I checked this book out from my library and I read it and I was like,

oh my god, I'm an anarchist now. So yeah, he has he has like A because she has a wild story. Um he's born in He's born in Japan in December six and he sort of like bounces around like different manual labor jobs in Tokyo, and like at one point he wants to be like A. He tries to be like I don't know if it's long trou he wants to be like a sailor. So he gets on a boat and he's going to be a sailor and then he after like one sale ride to Taiwan, he immediately

decides he doesn't want to be a sailor anymore. So he just gets off the boat and leaves and doesn't come back. I feel like that's what I would do if I decided, Oh yeah, like that job, especially like the nineteen like twenties, that jobs, he's awful. Yeah, You're like, I want adventure, and then you're like, oh, adventure means bad things happen. It's like maybe I I I guess I understand why all these people are anarchists, because like that is a terrible job. But yeah, so she's so

winds up sort of just like wandering around Taiwan. And one of the things that happens when he's wanting aroun Taiwan, by the way, is a Japanese colony at this point, um okay. And while he's wandering around Taiwan, he becomes a Christian and he like goes to school, it's like a theologian, but he drops out, but then he somehow still becomes a pastor because I don't know, this guy's career is wild. No, she's always not like a noble pastor.

He rapidly starts pissing off like everyone around him because he's like every All of his sermons are just him and taggetizing rich people and preaching this like very very left we rided in the Gospel. Read the Bible. Yeah, yeah, it's incredible that this is a great quote from Howdaeschizo and pierre anarchists into war Japan about this time as a pastor from like someone who was there, it was Pastor Howes. His sermons were superbs, so much so that I thought it was a shame that more people we're

not there to hear them. It was like the Bible talking in the spirit of pure socialism. And one of my friends admired pastor hates so much to the assid to celebrate his marriage. Yeah, and you know this like this does not go around. Yeah yeah, he say, Well, it's funny because he starts like as a Christian, right, but like he just like progressively keeps getting more and more left wing and keeps realizing that like okay, so there's the Kingdom of God in heaven, right, but like

what if we did that here? And like as he's getting like as he's pissing off more of the church, um and as like they're they're they're in fighting, gets bigger, he's becoming just more and more of an anarchist. And by the end he just like gets up, he gets booted out by his church and he's just like okay, I'm an anarchist propagandist now, and soo he just like leaves and he's like, well, I'm anarchist now. Um and

Shizo becomes what's known as a pure anarchist. And this is something that is like entirely unique to Japan that like there there's nothing there's this doesn't exist anywhere else, um, and this is different than like like basically every other anarchist, theorist and movement in Japan util this point has been like something you can find parallels with other anarchist movements around the globe, Like there are nihilists and lots of

countries as egoists everywhere, like their cynicalists literally in every country has ever existed, and they mostly sort of believe the same things. Um, you know, you get some like like oh us Kai is like combination of egoism and syndicalism is like it's cool, but like just I like

that idea. Yeah, yeah, it's a good idea, but it's also not like it's like he's not's not like he's not the first person to ever do this right, And like the Japanese synicalist movement is built in the mold of like the French syndicalists in the CGT, which is

this big union. Uh actually they're still around today there so in like the very early eighteen hundreds they were there, they were sort of Anarcoisy Nicolas Union and like like you know six they have this famous charter about like anarchists, but then they go reformist and they like they vote for World War were one and now they're famous for there's been like twelve things that probably could have been a revolution in France if the CGT had ever a

single time went to the barricades. And they never do. Wh's never ever, that's like their whole thing, like like they set out by sixty eight, like that's the rest of Yeah, this is the union. Yeah yeah, and they set out by sixty eight. It's like it's incredible, but you know it's the But you know, in like ninety know six, right, the Japanese are looking at like cynical, looking at this like oh my god, this just this union has like millions of people in it, like it's enormous.

It's a cynicals union. Yeah yeah, And like you know they they the Jeman's anarchists do is sort of their standard cynicalist things like that they're building up democratic unions. They're like working cords in general strike the season means their production. They're like fighting for a society or production is run by workers themselves. Blah blah blah blah, I shouldn't blah blah blah blah. That's actually it's it's cool, it's fine, but pure anarchism is not that I'm dying

to know what pure anarchism is. This new anarchism just dropped. I'm excited. It's it's kind of a it's it's a version of whocomunism. But like what if you like really really rigorously applied in arco communism and and this is

this is the thing. It doesn't exist anywhere else because everywhere, like in the West and in Latin America, like syndicalism and anarchist and anarcho communism just like fuse to the point where like they're not really they're like but there's not really they're not really separate tendency, like nobody's written in an arco communist theory, and like a hundred years like like they started, you know, they've basically ceased to be separate tendencies. But in Japan, the cyndicalists of the

and comps like fighting it out to the death. And if this this produces pure anarchism and it rules can talk about what it is because it's both wonderful and incredibly silly at the same time. So okay, so to understand what they're arguing about, because this is this is this this causes like a huge fracture in the annex movements. Um, I think we need to sort of like go into like the vulgar bark disconception of class structure that's kind of shared by the syndicalists. Okay, So okay, okay, so

you're you're okay. The important thing about this is that, like this doesn't work at Japan, like the the vulgar theory of like Marcus class structure, right, is that like, okay, so you're supposed to have the great industrial proletariat, Like it's that's supposed to become a majority of the population.

It's supposed to be unified and organized by like the discipline of the factory system, and the entire world is supposed to reduce to two classes like the boors, the borgewisi, and the proletariat, like one class of people who have nothing to sell but their labor. One class of people who exist purely too like extract wealth from people because like you, who you entirely supportless on my owning things.

And you know, eventually these are supposed to, like if you if you read your communist manifesto, Eventually these two classes are supposed to like meet themselves in like a final conflict or the proletariat defeats it's called yeah, yeah, yeah, and you know, the propitiy defeats them, and then they abolished the conditions of their own existence as a class and you get stateless class list butey in this society, it's like a free association of workers. And this is

what communism is. And famously this never happened. Yeah, and about what about the immortal science. Yeah, you know the well, the w the wortal science. Yeah, this, this is the This is the problem with the immortal science is that one, instead of unifying the industrial politariat, capitalism like divides it and just sort of like like literally spatially like kicks

them into suburbs. And you can get this sort of like the system where instead of like unifying everyone into one class, everyone is now just like completely alienated, like boomer living in a suburb, even if it's still work in a factory. And the other problem is that there's never just two classes. And this is the problem that like, yeah,

all the other ones are our enemies. Yeah, this worried too, you know, but this is a real problem, right because like the Marxist running to this in Russia where it's like okay, so we we did our thing, we did our urban poultry revolution. But like there's all these peasants and they don't like us because we keep taking their granted gunpoint and but but you know that you have, you have this one problem and popular, yeah, it goes great, right if not nothing bad ever happens, they don't famously

have to kill enormous members of these people. But then like you know, there's something weird happens, which is in China, u Stalin managed to get like the entire or like the entire urban Chinese working class like builitic working class killed, and so Mao has to like make a revolution with peasants, and so you know, peasants become the sort of like you know, this this sort of like this, this is what the actual refolution stutuct of communism wants up being,

like from like China, Columbia. It's these peasants. But like you know, okay, so your your theory of the industrial politariats already down the toilet. And this is what Shuzo is reacting to. Like he looks at Japanese society and there's like five people who you wage labor. Mostly there's this enormous like fourteen million people who are tenant farmers who are like trying to support their families and these

like tiny plots of rented land. But you know, and like in center Marxis theories, like well, okay, these people will inevitably be absorbed into capitalism, right, but they will be driven by competition or whatever to the market. But like they're not, it's not happening. They're just they're sitting there and they're still just really poor in paying their landlords. And yeah, yeah, well you just gotta wait for all of Japan to be like annihilated. Yeah yeah, yeah, it's

it's it's it's going great. But and it's also like there's all these other like classes to you, Like there's there's these classes of like there's just like petty traders for example, or like the like low level like really low level government officials like like you know, you're like like a clerk for example, who just don't fit into this sort of class scheme at all, Like if it marks some things about like like small like I don't know, people who like cut wood and then go into a

town and sell it, like they're like, well, there's these people are petit bourgeois like their reactionaries blah blah, And there's this whole history of like anarchists organizing people like this who marks just sort of like steer At, Like Bolivia has this where like anarchists organized these like these indigenous like like they're not really these indigenous artisans whose things like they go to market and they saw their craft. And the Marxists were just like a, why do we

care about the people? Like why yeah, workers, And it always seems like the better I don't know, whenever I was presented with the basic analysis of like, okay, we've got the proletariat who have terrible lives and factories, and then you have the lump and proletariat who refuse that kind of work and are like beggars and thieves and people doing work outside of the traditional system or whatever. And then you have the petty bourgeoisie who are like

you know, owned stores or artisans or whatever. And then you have the bourgeoisie over it. And it is always funny to me because I look at I'm like, well, clearly, the only ones that would be worth being would be lumping proletariat or pett like they're the only ones to get to have any fun Like, yeah, you know, and I think like like that this is a problem that that chooso sees. And I'm gonna read part of um Krupt's book about his solution to this because I think

it's really interesting. Um. Given the failure of the available methods of class analysis to capture the subtleties of Japan's social structure, how To developed the notion of the propertyless

masses as an alternative concept of the proletariat. That the propertyless masses was a wide ranching term which encompassed tenant farmers, small traders, petty officials, artisans, and even wage laborers when they are prepared to forsake their preoccupation with narrowly defending advantages that accompanied their urban lifestyle and we're ready to throw in their lot with the other oppressed strata. Yeah, that makes sense. That's just you know, it's the like

or just the haves and have nots. It's like, okay, well it's it's kind of but but there's there's a crucial difference here, which is that like, okay, so the other like the really big thing about the pure anarchist that they don't believe in class struggle, Okay, and The reason why they don't believe in class struggle is that they think that, Okay, so they look at the history of the union movement, right, and it's like, okay, so has the union movement ended capitalism? It's like no, So

like okay, what what does it actually do? And the answer is it gets people slightly more money under capitalism, which is nice too, Yeah, which which is nice. But it's also like choose a like adopted tub that there's no other Japanese anarchists who who has this beta for It's like he he compares it to like people fighting inside of like a bandit king, where it's like, okay, so if you have you have like fight, like the bosses of the bandit gang are obviously exploiting like the

lower level people in the bandit gang. But you know, I even even if even if the lower level people in this bandit gang like take over, they're not actually gonna stop being a bandit gang, right, It's just that the the distribution of where the bandit gang wealth is

going changes. And this is a big thing for for for the puranicist because the pior anarchists are you know, they're they're looking at the industrial working classes like this is tiny and they're they're all exploiting in the countryside m hm. And so because of that, like they they look at this, they look at the the union movement, and they look at it at like class struggle, like classical TM like class struggle, and they're like, well, this

doesn't cause a revolution. All this does is just like sort of reorients like who's in power inside of Uh that's what the Bolsheviks did, right, Yeah, But but it's it's not just what the bulls so they paily this is the Bolsheviks. But like it's also like there's analysis of what a union is is that you're like class struggles just defending your position under capitalism, but you're also

fighting very specifically narrowly for your class. Right, So if you're like a factory worker, right, you're fighting for you and the other factory workers. You're not fighting for like I don't know, like a tenant farmer. You're not you know, even fighting from like for like the guy down the

tree to Bate's bread. It's like you're you know, the these these things that are like that are but they look like instruments of class struggles, like your workers council, your unions, your Soviets, Like they don't actually get rid

of class. It's just now another class has power, and it doesn't matter if it's sort of like this is what they're arguing, is like, it doesn't matter if it's like democratic, It doesn't matter if it's like you know, like there there there's no difference in how the actual

eventually the class and amics will play out. It doesn't matter if it's like you know, like Lenin making like Stalin making himself dictator, or you have a bunch of democratic like Soviets, because they're both so instruments class power. They're both sort of just going to reproduce this, this whole system. And yeah, and so they have this thing that they counterposed, which is like class struggle is just

about what stuff is happening inside the system. But that's different revolution, which is like destroying this the system entirely.

And this is where you get into his stuff about the division of labor, which is I think it's really interesting because it I think this this sphere of pure anarchism got to a bunch of critiques of stuff that people have gotten to now, but they got to it in where Okay, so she's always like one of his big things is that like the division of labor is inherently exploitative because it like it destroys sort of rural community living and it replaces it with the centralization of

expertise and the central relation of power. And he also thinks that like science is like a capitalist engine that's used to like create the division of labor, and then it's used to create like mechanization, and it's used to create like labor exploitation. Yeah, that's that sounds like modern. A lot of like stuff that I read more modern. Yeah, yeah, yeah, except this is like they're doing this in like like nineteen twenties seven. Ye else is a capitalist engine of

exploitation products and surfaces the podcast industrial complex. It's true, and we're back with more things that are exploitative and the theoretically theoretically yes, yes, but we we we we have we have to get through. We have to get

through the last exploitative thing, which is the thing. I talked a bit about this earlier, but like the Puranicists argued that like cities inherently are this concentration of wealthy resources and power, and so like farmers and workers need to work together to destroy all forms of power, including cities. And this sounds a lot like primitive, is yeah, it does, although you know they wouldn't necessarily be like repping the farmers. And I think I think primitives might be the wrong term.

But it's definitely a lot of like the anti tech stuff. And well it's it's interesting, okay, So they have they have like they threat this needle where so like there are people in this period who want to just go back to pure rural agrarianism and don't want their to technology, and the pure anarchists are like, no, we still want technology, but we don't want the division of labor. So they're like, we like our raping machines so we don't have to work as much when we're farming. We just don't want

everyone to live in apartments. Yeah, I mean even the reaping machine. I don't know, Like it's kind of unclear to me how this is exactually supposed to work, because like, well we'll get into this. I guess we can just get into this now, which is it? Like, Okay, so they really don't like the division of labor because they think the division of labor like well, Okay, they have, they have like there's like three critiques of but one is that like when you have a division of labor,

labor becomes like mechanized industrialized. And when that happens, um labor because like it gets reduced to just like a cog you put in a machine m hm. And they see this is like this is like an inherent like thing that happens with labor specializations. You just end up like being a person who makes more repetitive moving a factory over and over again, like you're not free because

of this UM. And they also argue that like specialization means that people only care about like labor that they do and so this gives you like an identity that that divides workers from one sector. Like say if you're if you're you know, you're like a coal miner, right, your daily experience is so utterly different than a baker. And it's not just like your experience, it's like it's like your knowledge is different. The other person is not gonna,

like the baker is not gonna understand what you're doing. Um. And you keep wanting to argue against this political position that no, no, that misunderstands the nature of specialization at all, you know. But then I'm like, all right, I can't

go back and convince these people. Yeah, I think, like I think, okay, this is I'm gonna I'm gonna, I'm gonna put on my my my marks, my like weird left calm mars, noise and critique not a platform, which is not they they actually wanted as a platform, but like, I think it would have been a great critique and not a very good platform. Yeah, they're the platform. Yeah, I mean I think I think there's there's the interesting

elements of it. Like they have this argument that like, okay, so if if you have your like your your syndicalists like society right where Okay, so you have a bunch of like, you have a bunch of like coal miners, you have a bunch of people who like make pots and pans. But you need to coordinate your labor because because you you have you have like specialization, you have branches of labor. And their argument is that, okay, so well,

the cynicales why you do this. You have coordinating committees, right you You like, elect a person you like, send them to a coordinating council, and the coordinating council like coordinates stuff, and she was just like, well, that's just gonna choose those like things like that's just gonna turn into a state. Like you're just going to create a permanent class, even even if ap rotate people. You're you're you're creating an administrative body that's going to like rebuild

the state again. And yeah, like okay, like I'm makin this like shrugging gesture that the audience cans like yeah, I got you know, Yeah, I I don't. Okay, So, like I don't think he's right about like most of this, Like I think he's sort of wrong about like almost all of it. The thing, the thing that stuck with me phil when I read this is like his specific critique of syndicalism, which is that it maintains like the

structure of the old world. Because if you're a syndicalist and your your society is based on unions running their workplaces, then you've maintained the division of labor, but you've also maintained like the basic like geographic, physical, technological, and organizational structure of capitalism, like all of the like all of that stuff is still in the same place, and you're still sort of like going there to do your job, and I think there is an interesting sort of like

like I think there was a genuinely interesting critique there of yeah, like how how do you make sure that you aren't just sort of reproducing that stuff? And like like I mean, I don't know, like the critique of why would you want to build a society like structured along the lines of production? Like why why do you want to structure your society around work? Like that's awful.

I I like that about the pure anarchists, where they were kind of like let's let's let's throw away the Marxist ship for a minute and like just actually like figure out what we want, and like I I like that about it, But I I dislike the idea of like, well it's it's it would be my problem with syndicalism, and most of the syndicalists I met believe in syndicalism as a method and not an end result. Right, Um, it's a way of building workers power, not a way

to create a society. But but if syndicalists were like everyone must wake up and go to their work job and then make eight widgets, but it's collectively determined which widgets that you make right like fun that, but also if it was like everyone goes and wakes up and goes to their collective farm and maybe we use raping

machines and maybe we don't. And it's just like I get so unexcited by It's like one of the reasons that like a lot of the like nitpicky branches of anarchism don't they interest me, but I don't like subscribe to any of them is because I'm like, well, what if some people like this ship and some people like this ship like and you know, maybe they're could be fucking different. Imagine that we could have a plurality of

economic models systems. But you know whatever, um I'm now arguing with that people who I probably would interesting like, well, I don't know, because these guys like they they have like the maoist thing going on where like they will like attack other leftist groups who like don't like follow

their line. And so this is where this whole thing is wild, because it was one of the everything is like the the pure anarchists are like completely convinced that syndicalism is like a sort of like well they think it's it's just like it's not an anarchist thing. It's just like a tendency to labor movement. And they also think that like it's basically like a bastardised form of Marxism because they're not like entirely wrong about either of

those things. But yeah, except in a different places and times. Yeah, but it's like the thing, the thing that they have about it, like because they're they're completely convinced that syndicalism will inevitably just like turn into like Soviet communism. It's

like it's incredibly silly. Um, but like like this, you know, I like, on the one hand, like that they are kind of inventing a lot of the sort of like like they're they're inventing a lot of the sort of like some okay, some bad arguments about like specialization and stuff like like some anti work stuff too that like is going to be around later. They're also inventing a lot of stuff that's like and you know, initially this kind of like new theory doesn't have this doesn't have

an enormous effect. Um. In six, the Federation of Black Youth or COCODA and has its first public meeting and they have a bunch of cool slogans, the slogans rolled they have. The emancipation of workers must be carried out by the workers themselves. We insist on libertarian federation, destroy the political movement, get rid of, reject the Poltarian party, get rid of professional activists with all oppressive laws and ordinances.

That is an entirely based platform. Yeah, sweet, it's it's good. Yeah, And you know there were things despite the fact that it's called the Federation of Black Youth, this is like not a youth I mean, I mean there's like youth in it, but like it's it's this thing's backed by like remember those those printers unions that I was talking about last episode that as like, hi, you have like

set up. So they're all heavily involved in this um and they do a bunch of cool labor stuff, Like they they get involved in like, uh, there's a bunch of tram worker strikes, they get involved in the there in this, uh, the Japanese Musical instrument company strike, which is like there's like over a thousand people on strike for like over a hundred days, and there's there's this great split where like so the leadership of the union is Bolshevik, but like a bunch of the like a

bunch of the ordinary people in the union are anarchists, and so you have the there's there's like there's this fun tension going around there. They're they're they're they're doing the stuff. Um and then the anarchists form um Zengoku Gaterrand, which is the All Japanese Libertarian Federation of Labor Unions, which is a it's a federation of twenty unions. These are the pure anarchists that you're talking about that are

doing all this. So sorry, at this point, they haven't split yet, okay, because it was like this sounds like all the stuff that they said that they don't want to do. Yeah, well, this is like the other the other wild thing about this is that like, okay, so the entirety of like of like pyrannicist theory, right, is about how like unions don't do revolutions and that class struggle, but like they still do strikes, like they still do

all the normal stuff. It's kind of wild, Okay, I kind of like that, yeah, you know, and like and and this that that's sort of how they're able to get along in this early period and these unions like okay, so there's like a lot of printers unions in this because the prints unions are just really anarchists. But there's

there's like there's a tenant farmers union. There's a loutch of like rubber unions, and it grows to like fifteen workers almost immediately, and yeah, they're they're doing a lot of cool stuff, like they have they have these huge demonstrations in support Saco and Vinzetti, uh to the US is killing for being anarchists, and also Italians just like yeah, the one time anti Italian racism was real and a hundred years ago ship was real different than it is

now and it doesn't yeah yeah, yeah yeah. And for for for one year, this like this works great, you know, like the yeah that the unions up to like I think they get up to like thousand members, like it gets pretty big. But then intense conflict between the syndicalists

and the anarchac and the pure anarchists breakout. And this gets so bad so fast that like the International working Man's Association, which is the like like the giant international like Federation of Cynicalist Movements like sends them a letter that are like, hey, cynicalist and Archer communists get along every literally everywhere else on earth. Their chilk. You guys

like chill and the anarcha communists in Cocaduran. Uh, their response is, h we are fighting quote the betrayers, opportunists and union imperialists in Zengoku Juran's ranks can't have nice things. You know, it's great, it gets better, it gets better.

So they lose. Yeah, okay, look in the conference so uh Enoka Juran which is the Union federation, like they have they have a conference, they have the yearly conference, and there's just like giant battle over like what the organizations platform is going to be a thing that doesn't matter at all, except it's a proxy ideological fight. And uh, both sides to start screaming at each other. And I'm gonna read this description from Ardashizo and Pyannicism into War Japan.

Cocona and members barricaded the barrack to the anarchy. The anarchist syndicolist jeering and cat calling them, and the proceedings degenerated to the level where it was almost impossible to hear the speeches. Eventually, the anarcho Synicholas decided they had had enough unflirling their black flags, they walked out of the hall to a chorus of taunts such as believers, blind, believers in Central authority, Bolsheviks, and betrayers, Oh my god,

got over yourself. Oh my no, okay, to be fair to the pure anarchists, one of so, okay, a bunch of the cynicals yount start leaving and all one of them does actually join the Bolsheviks, but like all the other ones don't because they're not and you get this period there's like they have like the cynical list and the periodicis of dueling magazines. Uh, there's won't call black flag.

There won't called black battle. And like so Cokerran, which is like the youth mid thing, like the cynicalas and the anarchists are still in it together, and they like they start just like fighting each other in the street when they run into each other, because the the this is more oppressing than everyone getting murdered after the earthquake,

not the anarchist killing part. Yeah well, I mean yeah, yeah, it's it's like it's incredible, you know, and like yeah, they what's interesting about this though, is that like the inarchal communists, like when the union splits, like almost all of the people stay with the communists, even though the inucer communist like explicitly saying we're not fighting for like wage increases, we're just fighting for revolution, and fine, I'm

alright with that. Yeah. Well, but there's interesting stuff too worse, like like they're also so be be because they have this thing that's like, okay, so that the urban workers are like exploiting the well, okay, the line about it's complicated because it's like they think the urban workers are exploiting the countryside, but they also don't think that the solution to it is to just like turn it the

other way around. They think that like the workers and the tenant farmers just worked together to like make the oppression go away, which is like a reasonable stance on it. Yeah, but it means that, you know, they're interested in, like they're interested in the royal movement in a way that

like the other Japanese lefe stupments aren't. But unfortunately, you know, Okay, there's a big debate as to whether this split like actually like like how big a role this split had in the collapse of anarchism, because like bye bye by, like by like nineteen thirty one, Like the fascists have just straight up taken over Manchuria. Like I think things have gotten so fascist that it's like it's unclear whether

the split matter at all. Yeah, um yeah, but you know, they run into this problem where like like coke and like the state really hates them, and they are a bunch of them get arrested and that they you know, they respond to being arrested by like getting more militant. But then that just you know, that fuels the cycle of them getting arrested for and people just leave because they're like, well, okay, if I'm in this organization, like we're all just gonna like get shot. I mean that's

the spiral. Yeah yeah, And you know it's his real problem, and like how does Chesu himself becomes just like incredibly depressed by the depression of the movement. But actually thirty two he just leaves like he's just out. He like renounces his anarchism. He abuses his wife because this is the story of a bunch of guys who sucked and then he drink Yeah, well I guess okay, he he did it to him. Yeah, he drinks it. The death got it done. On his own. Yeah, and you know,

so he he dies and he like kills himself. Well I don't think he was doing a purpose, but he just dies from drinking too much. Four and that year, actually the anarcho communists narcos niklas like get back together. But it doesn't matter because by this point the fascist such a start different power. And yeah, the anarchists they do, they do one last world uprising and they fight a lot of cops and then all of them get arrested and anarchism just sort of dies until the end of

World War two. And yeah, it's you know, okay, anarchism does really emerge after the war, but that's like that, that's a whole another story and entirely. Uh what I will say about is if you see those those construction hats from the protests, and you see one that's just all black, it doesn't have like a name written on it, like those are the anarchists whistle around um and you know,

and anarchism of Japan like survives to this day. There there there's a book called the Manual for a Worldwide for a worldwide manuk revolts that like one day, I swear to God, I'm actually gonna read. But he is really big in China. Well, okay, I said really big in China. It's very influential in a very small subcultural

anarchist scene in China. But I'm talking about them because it heavily influenced Like the people who wrote the Lying Flat manifesto, Um, we're like, we're very heavily influenced by this stuff. Oh okay, okay, So we would just episode about this a while back, but Lying Flat was this thing in China, I guess still going on, but like people were just like it's kind of it was kind of the version of anti work or most people like discovered Diogenes and or like what if I just didn't work?

What if I just like lived on, like I worked like one day a month and then lived on like nothing so I didn't have to work, Or if I just quit. What if I just like stop doing all of this capitalist stuff, and what if I like stop having to deal with this patriarchy. What if I just like, you know, yeah, and it takes kind of like yeah, yeah,

they're they're great. They've loss of one Diogenes quotes, lots of like the the manifesto they released is like very it's like very anarchist and yeah, like that thing, and that was like like this, this is a big enough social movement that like like she jumping like mentioned it in a speech, okay, and so yeah, like Jeffrey's anachism.

Still for them, they were had kind of concerned about like the same way a whole bunch of like oligarchs got concerned about the anti work stuff, and you saw like anti work hit pieces in the past like six months. It was it was like similar things, being like, well, this better not catch on more because that could really

suck for us. That's as optimistic of a note as you could possibly get out of the story, which is that they're still around and they still influenced things that matter, so and hopefully they don't fight each other more than the state. Yeah, don't don't do that, Like I like, yes, I guess I will make my controversial Sometimes it's okay to stab an abuser under the throat stance. But also, don't urge all your syndicalists because on the accusation of

Bullshevism hot take, don't purge all your classes. Yeah, yeah, don't systematize violence like that. You know, you're like this individual guy just did this thing, and I'm real upset that he just did it to me, And there's like a throat. I'm not actually making an actual advocacy. I'm talking about how sometimes when that has happened in history,

that seemed kind of cool. But yeah, not the not the systemic kick out all the people who have this minor I mean, it's really funny to me because I'm like, I'm like huge anti infighting. Then people are like, don't you spend all your time fighting tankies on the internet, And I'm like, they want to make a state that's different. Yeah, they believe that they everyone should be thrown in jail.

That is a different thing. Um. Also, I don't like you've got to manage to polycuele drauma, Like you've gotta manage. It's got to be kept under control. You cannot allow your retired you seem to be factionalized over rival policels and anarchists control your polychuel drama quotations and partisis impossible. See, that's why you just need more. Maybe it's not true, it's like you need more multi generational anarchists because I think people in their forties give less of a ship

about a lot of the drama. But then I'm like, maybe that's not true. Maybe people on their forties it give just as much of a ship about all the drama. Anarchism, wonderful idea Yep, yeah, it's good. And speaking of wonderful ideas, it is time for us to do the plugs. Um. First, I just want to plug Jimmie Loftus is new Cools one media podcast Goes Church by Jimmie Loftus. Uh. By the time this drops, episode one will be out in Episode two will be dropping the next Monday, I believe,

yes exactly. And we also have another podcast on Cools and Media with one Margaret Killjoy called Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff? Margaret, you wanted to tell us about that? Oh? Should should I start working on that. I'll get it done by monday. Okay? Cool? Um, I have a new podcast called Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, which is as about cool people who did did cool stuff, and you might like it if you like stories about people who. Um, I can't say cool stuff again, I'll have to use

come up with more synonyms. Really, it's just all a competition to see how many synonyms for cool I can come up with without using the word based, because I feel like I'm too old to use the word based without really, this is what you are here for. So I'm much more eloquent on my podcast, which you can catch every Monday and Wednesday wherever you get your podcasts, probably wherever you got this podcast is where you can

find it. And the trailer is out now, so you can go and you can listen to the trailer where I talk about some anarchist bank robbers who broke out of prison, because why would you be in prison when you could be outside of prison, which is generally the preferable position to be in, with the exception of like every now and then, like people break up out of jail by like someone goes to jail on purpose, but they have like hacks all blades in their shoes and ship.

That would be cool too. Um So more breaking your friends out of jail and less chasing them out of the room jeering at them is my general rule. I hate to make rules, but if I were to make one, it would be that. And you can hear me talk

about those kinds of stories on the podcast. Well, thank thank, thank you so much for joining joining us today, for for Chris to talk about the wonderful, wonderful history of Japanese and the very the many deaths that are associated in those poor people and yeah, the like so basically like a like a mini Korean genocide. Yeah, yeah, intense. Well that's it for us today. You can find this on Instagram. It Happen to your pot in cool Zone Media. Uh, see you next week and go listen to podcasts. We

have many of them. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat Death of the Universe. It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.