WEBVTT 00:00:16.534 --> 00:00:18.459 Two of my favorite people from history. 00:00:18.460 --> 00:00:23.385 My dad gets upset because they don't really teach science anymore in the public schools, 00:00:23.386 --> 00:00:26.326 and this is mostly because the Right Wing can't bear the thought of evolution. 00:00:26.327 --> 00:00:29.375 My mom gets sad 'cause they don't really teach history anymore 00:00:29.376 --> 00:00:33.203 and my sister fairly weeps because you don't get art anymore in the school system. 00:00:33.204 --> 00:00:37.878 But me, I'm like, “they just don't teach revolution anymore in those public schools.” 00:00:37.879 --> 00:00:40.039 [audience laughs] Am I right? Right? 00:00:40.040 --> 00:00:47.512 So this is like the basic political education that really, we all should have gotten, and really most of us didn't. 00:00:47.513 --> 00:00:51.888 And I start here with liberals and radicals because I think this is the main division. 00:00:51.889 --> 00:00:57.853 I think this is important because a lot of times in our friendships and our activist networks and even in our groups, 00:00:57.854 --> 00:01:02.700 and across broader movements, there are these tensions that can be really painful and profound 00:01:02.701 --> 00:01:05.896 and a lot of it really comes down to the difference between liberals and radicals. 00:01:05.897 --> 00:01:09.043 I, in the end, don't care which side of this you decide to land on 00:01:09.044 --> 00:01:14.306 you got to figure out which, you know, which world view actually describes the world as you know it 00:01:14.307 --> 00:01:16.531 (and that's up to you really). 00:01:16.532 --> 00:01:22.866 But it can really help to understand where these different perspectives are coming from because then when you have these conflicts suddenly you go, 00:01:22.867 --> 00:01:28.563 “right, that's liberal and I'm radical, and that's why we're never going to meet in the middle” because these are profound differences, politically. 00:01:28.564 --> 00:01:31.243 Doesn't mean we can't work together; lots of coalitions need to happen. 00:01:31.269 --> 00:01:36.564 I mean, I am not trying to demonize anybody here but these ARE different positions that people can take across the spectrum. 00:01:36.565 --> 00:01:41.803 I would say the main division between liberals and radicals is individualism. 00:01:41.804 --> 00:01:46.387 Liberals believe that society is made up of individuals. That's the basic social unit. 00:01:46.388 --> 00:01:56.736 In fact individualism is so sacrosanct that in this view, to be identified as a member of a group is seen as an affront; that's the insult. 00:01:56.737 --> 00:02:00.428 Totally different for radicals over on the other side of the chart. 00:02:00.429 --> 00:02:05.069 Society is not made up of individual people, it's made up of groups of people. 00:02:05.070 --> 00:02:12.915 In Marx's original version this was class, it was economic class. This is the debt that all radicals owe Karl Marx. It doesn't matter if you are a Marxist or not, 00:02:12.916 --> 00:02:19.162 HE figured this out. It's groups of people and some groups have power over other groups. That's what society is made of. 00:02:19.163 --> 00:02:28.087 In the radicals' understanding being a member of a group is not an insult. In fact it's the first primary step you have to take 00:02:28.088 --> 00:02:34.712 coming to a radical consciousness and then ultimately having effective political action, you have to identify as a member of that group. 00:02:34.713 --> 00:02:39.742 You've got to make common cause with the people who share your condition. That's how political change happens. 00:02:39.743 --> 00:02:44.511 This is both an active and a critical embrace of that group identity 00:02:44.537 --> 00:02:50.797 We radicals get accused all the time of creating this kind of “victim identity”, but that's not what's going on. 00:02:50.798 --> 00:02:54.388 We are more than what they've done to us, and we do have agency. 00:02:54.414 --> 00:02:58.798 But we do have to recognize that there is power in the world and we're on the receiving end. 00:02:58.799 --> 00:03:05.874 The other big division is between the nature of social reality. Liberalism is what's called “idealist”. 00:03:05.915 --> 00:03:11.524 Social reality, for them, is made up of attitudes, of ideas; it's a mental event. 00:03:11.550 --> 00:03:16.507 And therefore social change happens through education. Through changing people's minds. 00:03:16.508 --> 00:03:26.929 Materialism, in contrast, over on the radical side: society is organized by concrete systems of power, not by thoughts and ideas. By material institutions. 00:03:26.930 --> 00:03:31.018 And the solution to oppression is to take those systems apart brick by brick. 00:03:31.019 --> 00:03:38.161 The liberals will say, “we have to educate, educate, educate”, and the radicals will say, “actually we have to stop them”. 00:03:38.162 --> 00:03:42.440 Political movements need education, this is an educational event, here we are. 00:03:42.441 --> 00:03:49.087 And you need active proselytizing, the oppressed need mechanisms to understand political oppression, consciousness raising. 00:03:49.113 --> 00:03:51.412 This is all really profoundly important. 00:03:51.413 --> 00:03:58.302 But for radicals alone that does not change social reality. Because the world is not an internal state. It's not a mental state. 00:03:58.303 --> 00:04:05.149 The point of education is to build the movement that can take down those oppressive structures and bring about some kind of justice. 00:04:05.150 --> 00:04:10.347 If you remove power from the equation oppression looks either natural or voluntary. 00:04:10.348 --> 00:04:15.908 If you're not going to see that people are formed by these social conditions how else are you going to explain subordination? 00:04:15.909 --> 00:04:21.004 Well either those people aren't quite human, so they're naturally different than us -- that's why they're subordinate, 00:04:21.005 --> 00:04:25.620 or they're somehow volunteering to be subordinate. Those are the options that you're left with. 00:04:25.646 --> 00:04:33.090 For instance race and gender are seen as biological. These are supposed to be physically real. Well they're not, they're politically real. 00:04:33.091 --> 00:04:40.434 It's brutal, vicious subordination that creates those things. But it's ideology, and it is the ideology of the powerful that says this is biological. 00:04:40.435 --> 00:04:48.435 They make that claim that this is biological because how are you going to fight God or Nature or 4 million years of evolution? Well you're not. 00:04:48.436 --> 00:04:56.436 There are physical differences between people who are from northern Europe and people who live at the equator, just like there are differences between males and females 00:04:56.437 --> 00:05:04.437 but those differences only matter because power needs them to. It is power that creates the ideology and it's a corrupt and brutal arrangement of power. 00:05:04.438 --> 00:05:10.322 These are unjust systems that we are going to have to dismantle, and these are social categories we are going to have to destroy. 00:05:10.323 --> 00:05:14.626 Just like naturalism operates in the service of power, so does volunteerism. 00:05:14.627 --> 00:05:19.592 If you are not going to go the biological route, all you are left with is volunteerism as a concept. 00:05:19.593 --> 00:05:27.961 This is the thing that liberals do not understand. With power removed from the equation, if it looks voluntary you are going to erase the fact that it's social subordination. 00:05:27.962 --> 00:05:31.176 So here is Florynce Kennedy, “without the consent of the oppressed.” 00:05:31.177 --> 00:05:38.565 90% of any oppression is consensual. That's what it does. It does not mean it's our fault, it does not mean we are responsible, 00:05:38.566 --> 00:05:41.835 it doesn't mean it will somehow crumble if we withdraw our consent. 00:05:41.836 --> 00:05:50.439 All it means is that the powerful—the capitalists, the white supremacists, the masculinists, whoever—they can't stand over vast numbers of people 24/7 with guns. 00:05:50.440 --> 00:05:55.270 Luckily, for them, depressingly for the rest of us, they don't have to.