Ep 370 Comments "Chomsky Reassessed" plus WCF 16: More RPS Ideas, Values, and Motives

Episode 370 of RevolutionZ mainly continues our sequence of excerpts from the forthcoming The Wind Cries Freedom's Oral History of the Next American Revolution.  However, before doing so, it takes up various reactions I encountered to an article I wrote titled "Chomsky Reassessed." The followup discussion here raises some more general concerns and further ideas bearing on issues of "cancellation." 

Internal movement differences, arguments, and even accusations can force a movement to constructively self examine and grow, or can fracture it. What damage is done when outrage outruns evidence, when cancel culture and circular firing squads turn activism into spectacle and drive away the very allies we need? What dynamics play out? When do they arise? How do they gain life and spread? How do they involve us and what might we do to address them? 

After that rather substantial introductory section, this episode continues into a new oral history excerpt about how to build movement power and cohesion in which Bertrand Jagger and Lydia Lawrence further chart their respective journeys from atomized  into  systemic thinking. They describe their attraction to self-management as proportionate say, to equity as pay for effort and sacrifice, and to an economy redesigned to eliminate not only rule by owners but rule by the often-ignored coordinator class.

Bert takes us inside the illusion of choice that we often feel, where markets script our consumption and work options and productivity gains vanish into someone else’s ledger. He traces the subtle hierarchies that reappear in movement meetings, media, and campaigns when movement roles unintentionally subvert movement aspirations. He explains why balanced jobs, transparent information, and participatory planning weren’t rhetorical add-ons to RPS but at the core of its approaches. Lydia widens the frame to kinship and culture. She shows how hierarchies in patriarchal families, schooling, and media bleed into the workplace—and vice versa--how class hierarchies in turn contour kinship and culture. She shows why to change one domain of activity without changing the others reroutes power rather than dissolves it.

Along the way, we revisit a cautionary note from Bob Dylan—what happens when movements punish nuance and reward heat—and we ask how to create spaces where disagreement refines strategy instead of ending careers and silencing conversation. 

So this episode is mostly about how two people were attracted to and navigated movement design, class analysis that extends  beyond owners and workers, and turning diverse values into effective daily practice all in the new movement they became part of, the movement for a revolutionary participatory society. 

Can their remembrances provide insights in our time and our place about attaining a clear, rigorous path forward? Listen, and perhaps share with a friend who’s organizing something big or small. Then I hope you will leave a comment saying what strikes you as useful and revealing, and what doesn't.

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