November 13, 2024 • 16 mins
This is a teaser preview of our first Radical Read, made exclusively for our supporters on patreon. You can listen to the full 68-minute episode without ads and support our work at https://www.patreon.com/posts/e94-radical-w-if-113750155
First of our new series, Radical Reads, in which we team up with Jasper Bernes to discuss Vincent Bevins’ 2023 book, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution.
Welcome to ‘Radical Reads’, the second of our two new series of Patreon-only content.In Radical Reads, we hope to discuss political texts – both old and new – that have either influenced us here at WCH, or texts that we generally think that people involved in radical and working-class movements should be engaging with, discussing, and using to inform their activism.
Our Radical Read for this episode is Vincent Bevins’ If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution, which we discuss with Jasper Bernes, author of an excellent article in the Brooklyn Rail, ‘What Was To Be Done? Protest and Revolution in the 2010s’. It’s a review and critique book and when we read Jasper’s article we felt that it really put into words some of the thoughts we had about Bevins’ work.In our conversation with Jasper, we covered not only what we see as some of the main issues with Bevins’ book, but also broader questions around social movements, revolution, the threat of cooptation, and what it means to win. And as Jasper says, understanding what we can learn from the movements of the 2010s is one of the most important questions we can be thinking about right now. In that sense, then, If We Burn is a valuable contribution in starting that conversation, even if we have some disagreements with its conclusions.
Listen to the full episode here:
More information
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/working-class-history--5711490/support.
First of our new series, Radical Reads, in which we team up with Jasper Bernes to discuss Vincent Bevins’ 2023 book, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution.
Welcome to ‘Radical Reads’, the second of our two new series of Patreon-only content.In Radical Reads, we hope to discuss political texts – both old and new – that have either influenced us here at WCH, or texts that we generally think that people involved in radical and working-class movements should be engaging with, discussing, and using to inform their activism.
Our Radical Read for this episode is Vincent Bevins’ If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution, which we discuss with Jasper Bernes, author of an excellent article in the Brooklyn Rail, ‘What Was To Be Done? Protest and Revolution in the 2010s’. It’s a review and critique book and when we read Jasper’s article we felt that it really put into words some of the thoughts we had about Bevins’ work.In our conversation with Jasper, we covered not only what we see as some of the main issues with Bevins’ book, but also broader questions around social movements, revolution, the threat of cooptation, and what it means to win. And as Jasper says, understanding what we can learn from the movements of the 2010s is one of the most important questions we can be thinking about right now. In that sense, then, If We Burn is a valuable contribution in starting that conversation, even if we have some disagreements with its conclusions.
Listen to the full episode here:
More information
- Read Jasper’s article: ‘What Was To Be Done? Protest and Revolution in the 2010s’
- Buy Vincent Bevins’ book: If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution
- Thanks to our patreon supporters for making this podcast possible. Special thanks to Jazz Hands, Jamison D. Saltsman, Fernando López Ojeda and Jeremy Cusimano.
- Edited by Tyler Hill
- Our theme tune is Montaigne’s version of the classic labour movement anthem, ‘Bread and Roses’, performed by Montaigne and Nick Harriott, and mixed by Wave Racer. Download the song here, with all proceeds going to Medical Aid for Palestinians. More from Montaigne: website, Instagram, YouTube.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/working-class-history--5711490/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
As you may know, Working Class History doesn't get any
sort of funding from any wealthy benefactors, corporations, governments, or
political parties. Our work is funded by you, our listeners
and readers on Patreon. In return for their support, patrons
get access to exclusive content and benefits like ad free episodes,
(00:22):
bonus podcast episodes, and a couple of exclusive podcast series
called Fireside Chats and Radical Reads. So here's a little
preview of our latest episode for our patrons. You can
join us, help support our work and listen to the
whole thing today at patreon dot com slash working Class
History link in the show notes. Hope you enjoy.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
As we come. Margin Martin in the Beauty of the Day,
a million dark in Kitchens, one thousand mil, last grade.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Hi, Branden by.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
The Beauty is Sun, Sun Discloses, and the people Heresy Bredden, Roses,
bread and Roses.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Hi, everyone, and welcome to our first installment of Radical Reads,
a new series where we talk about different political texts
both old and new, that have even influenced us here
at wh or texts that we generally think that people
involved in radical and working class movements should be engaging with,
discussing and using to inform their activism. We're going to
be producing occasional Radical Reads episodes as well as other
(01:36):
discussions as part of a new range of Patreon only
content that we're about to start rolling out. This is
basically motivated by two things. First, there's a bunch of
stuff that we'd really like to talk about, share and
discuss with people that doesn't really fit into the standard
episode format, so basically this is a way for us
to produce that kind of content. And second, we also
thought it'd be a great way for us to show
(01:57):
our appreciation for all the support that you guys give us.
I know we say it a lot, but it really
is true and bears repeating that without your support, we
really wouldn't be able to keep this project going, and
we're basically insanely grateful that you guys help us to
do it. So making this extra Patreon only content is
our way of saying thank you well at the same
time keeping the majority of our content free for everyone.
(02:19):
We're doing this on a trial basis for now, so
please do let us know what you think if you
enjoy it, if you don't enjoy it, any changes you
think we should make, should we make more. Should we
delete this and pretend it never happened, et cetera, et cetera.
Our radical read for this episode is Jasper Burns is
excellent article from the Brooklyn Rail What Was to Be Done?
Protest and Revolution in the twenty tens. It's a review
(02:40):
and critique of the recent and very popular book by
Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, The Mass Protest Decade and
the Missing Revolution. And when we read Jasper's article, we
felt that it really put into words some of the
misgivings that we had about Bevins's book, so we invited
Jasper on to talk about his article. It was a
great discussion. We covered not only what we see is
some of the issues with Bevins's book, but also broader
(03:02):
questions around social movements, revolution, the threat of cooptation, and
what it means to win. And as Jasper says in
the discussion, understanding what happened and what we can learn
from the protest movements of the twenty tens is one
of the most important and vital questions that we can
be thinking about right now, and in that sense, If
We Burn is a valuable contribution, at least in starting
(03:24):
that conversation, even if we have some pretty big disagreements
on its conclusions. We'll put a link in the show
notes to get hold of if we burn, as well
as Jasper's article and an lecture series that he produced
on workers' councils. But before we begin, there are a
few acronyms and names that we mentioned that people might
not be familiar with. So firstly we mentioned the PT,
(03:45):
which is the Workers Party in Brazil. The PT or
a left wing social democratic party and currently the party
governing Brazil. Lula de Silva, who we also mention, is
a former metal worker and union leader who is now
the leader of the PT and the current president CCIDENT
of Brazil. At a time of the events that we
discussed in this interview and which Bevins discusses in his book,
(04:06):
Lula had just completed his first term as president, with
massive approval ratings and having lifted many millions out of poverty,
but not as we discuss, without criticism from some of
Brazil's social movements. He was also subsequently imprisoned on corruption charges,
which were eventually annulled after it was proven that the
judge was actually biased against him. Many believed that the
(04:27):
corruption charges were an attempt by the Brazilian right to
stop Lula from running for reelection and so paved the
way for their own victory, which it did with the
election of Jaia Bolsonaro in twenty eighteen. We also mentioned
the MST, which is Brazil's landless workers movement. The MST
mainly campaigns around land reform, organizing direct actions like land occupations,
(04:49):
and is one of the biggest such organizations in Latin America. Anyway,
with all that said, I'll stop talking and let you
get stuck into the interview itself. Just to start off with,
I suppose maybe if you could just introduce yourself.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
I'm Jasper Burns. I'm a author of various types of books,
and I just finished a book called The Future of Revolution,
which first is going to published next year, just about
communism and revolution. And yeah, I live in Oakland. I
teach at UC Berkeley.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Yeah, that sounds like a really interesting and interesting project.
I suppose is some of the article that you've just
written that we're going to discuss now, I suppose some
of those thoughts maybe are going to go into the book.
Speaker 4 (05:33):
Well, not not really, I mean the book is finished.
Actually it's it's more or less written, so it's it's
more the other way around that. My thinking about revolution
and writing this book it formed my criticism of the
of the Vincent Baben's book. So you know, I've spent
a lot of time thinking about revolutions and what they are,
(05:55):
how they happen, how they fail, and what what it
like for them to succeed and so yeah, so it's
definitely certain of those thoughts informed my criticism of the
Bevins book. But I've been thinking about this kind of
stuff for a long time.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
I mean, part of why I think your article spoke
to me so much because I think it's since the
kind of resurgence of kind of social democracy as a
kind of political force in at least in the anglosphere.
I think there's a lot of a lot of the
arguments that Bevins makes are kind of crystallizing a general
(06:39):
kind of attitude. I feel that that was kind of
about But I guess maybe before we before we get
into that, maybe could could you kind of introduce Bevin's
book and kind of what the main argument is.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
So the book is written by Vincent Bevins, and it's
called If We Burn, I believe. The subtitle is the
Mass Protest Decade and the miss Revolution by Mass Protest Decade.
He's referring to what I would call the cycle of
struggles circa twenty ten, which kind of began with the
(07:11):
Arab Spring. It's unclear when it ended in some ways,
probably with the pandemic. But he's sort of writing about
these movements during that period of the twenty tens, you know,
and there is a kind of distinct pattern to these movements.
So Vincent Bevins is a journalist by trade, you know,
known for writing kind of books informed by journalism and
(07:34):
by his position in the world. He lives in Brazil
and he participated in some of the events there that
are the form part of the book. But the book
is written through I think dozens, you know, probably one
hundred or so interviews, and he asked participants to kind
of say what happened, and more importantly, what went wrong
(07:58):
and what they think should have been done. And so
to the ex said that the book has an argument.
The sort of argument is written through a kind of
synthesis of these accounts of what went wrong and what
should have been done, and the book identifies the problem
as originating from this kind of ideology that it describes
(08:20):
as horizontalism, which it claims was kind of the dominant,
had a force within these protest movements and was a
kind of disorganizing and disempowering ideology.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
What are some of the positives that you see in
the book.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
Well, I mean, I was very excited about this book,
and I should note that it's a very popular book,
and you know, and I think that that indicates something.
People really love it, including many many people I know,
get a lot out of the book and are quite
excited by it. And that's in some ways what kind
of motivated me to identify what I think thought were
(09:00):
the problems with it. It's appealing, it's really well written,
it's engaging, and you can learn a lot. And I
and I think it's you know, really asking the right questions,
how do we win, what would it mean to win?
What was it that these movements wanted? And how could
they have achieved it? You know, asking why these movements
(09:21):
failed is a good question. And it's also taking a
kind of big picture look at things and writing from
kind of global and comparative perspective that is pretty rare.
There's not a lot of people who feel they have
the kind of authority to kind of write a synthetic
book like this, because it's very hard. There were a
couple of books that came out, you know, in the
(09:42):
twenty tens, but certainly I can't really think of anything
like it that's often that's kind of reflective, that's a book.
There's a couple, there's a couple of things in other languages,
and certainly there's articles written by kind of like very
far left magazines that you know, investigate similar questions. But so,
you know, it's it's I think that the peer has
to deal with the fact that this is these are
(10:03):
really interesting questions and these social movements are vastly important,
and understanding them and how they could have succeeded is
I think one of the most important things we can
be doing. So, you know, I think that I really,
I really admire that, and probably it's because I think
those are the right questions that I am very concerned
with getting the answers right.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Yeah. Also, I think for listeners that haven't read the book,
because I was also really excited to read it as well,
because he interviewed I think two hundred and twenty five
people in I can't remember how many countries, like ten
or eleven, and it covers a selection of big struggles
from the twenty tens. And the questions that he said
(10:48):
he was putting to people are very similar to the
questions that we ask when we're doing a podcast episode
with participants in social movements. So we were very well.
I was reading it very interest did to see what
these people had to say, and I guess we're going
to get but yeah, I think, like you, they are
these are really important questions, and I think, like you,
(11:08):
I was a little disappointed as well. Something I found
really disappointing with the book as a whole, actually that
with these interviews with two hundred other people, I was
I was reading getting the introbute, I'm really excited to
see these interviews and see what these people say. And
then I kind of got about forty five percent of
the way through on my kindle and I was like,
I'm kind of feeling like, I'm not actually going to
see these interviews, you know, because yeah, because I was
expecting it to be more the words of the interviewees
(11:31):
rather than those kind of used behind the scenes that
you don't see, which he then says he's used to
construct his narrative, which, yeah, you know, I guess that's
just how the book was put together. But it's hard
to see then what the people said to make him
then have that opinion, because and how much of that
is based on his preconceptions.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Yeah, I don't know, Jesspa if you wanted to, if
you wanted to go into maybe what some of the
main problems you saw with the book, and it's kind
of main arguments I think.
Speaker 4 (12:01):
I guess the main problem is that Bevins rates all
of these movements as failures, but he doesn't really define success.
He describes the present era as you know, one of
kind of unwritten ing failure for protest movements, but he
(12:22):
doesn't do so in relationship to you know, he doesn't
give us an example of some era where things weren't
just failure, and he doesn't tell us what success really
looks like for the most part. And then when he
does define success, it's quite problematic as I see it,
and I'm not sure that these things count as success.
(12:43):
And I think that for the movements themselves, they were
felt as semi failures, and so it raises a number
of questions. But the result of this that he kind
of doesn't define failure is that a lot of the
problems he identifies as kind of particular to the kind
of mass protests decade aren't really particular to that mass
(13:05):
protest decade. And they're problems and kind of failures that
you see in pretty much every era of social struggles.
They're quite they're quite common, and inasmuch as so in
some some things are particular to this era and some
things aren't. But because he's not, he's not kind of
giving us a comparative approach. He tells us about the
twenty tens, but he doesn't tell us about the kind
(13:27):
of previous era or the kind of classic period of revolution.
He doesn't define a revolution. He doesn't really have a
theory of what a revolution is because he doesn't really
periodize this stuff in relationship to what came before. He
identifies a lot of problems as particularly this era, that
are actually common problems, and as such, the kinds of
(13:47):
conclusions he arrives at are commonplaces because they're like common,
they're just very common responses to common problems. And it's
not that they're wrong the things he says, it's just
that they're kind of banal, actually, and they are the
kind of things that pretty much every revolution from every
period would tell you so, and that's a lot of
what you end up hearing. And it's not that they're wrong,
(14:08):
it's just that it's sort of you know, I mean,
everybody thinks, hey, I wish we would have been better organized.
I'm not. I'm pretty sure that there's not a single
you know, revolutionary who wouldn't tell you some version of that, right.
And you know, in pretty much every period that you
look at revolutionary period, if we're talking about capitalism more
or less, what we're looking at our various kinds of
(14:28):
failures right from the standpoint of the working class, and
with a standpoint of communist revolution, you could sort of
rate any decade of revolution as an ultimately an era
of kind of missing revolution, even the places where it
went the furthest in Russia, you know, I mean that
decade was defined as an era of missing revolution precisely
in Germany and these other countries where the revolution was
(14:49):
supposed to spread. And so I don't know, it's it's
so I think that that's the big problem.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
That I have.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
I would agree with that as well, because the one
ex he does pick out as a success is in Chile,
whereas I think partly the issue is when the book
was published, which I think was late twenty twenty three October.
So by that point in Chile, following the big protest movement,
the government agreed to rewrite the constitution and that was
(15:18):
going through the process of being rewritten, and I think
his book came out in October twenty twenty three, but
then in December they had the referendum on the constitution
and it lost, so actually there was there were no
concrete results from that, and I think the perspective of
the Chileans that I talked to is that it was
(15:40):
a failure. But you know, I guess by his criteria.
Speaker 4 (15:44):
And they even tell him that they even his own
his own his own interviewees tell him that they feel
disappointed in Borich.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Borich is the current president of Chile. He was a
leader of protest movements in Chile in the early two thousands,
and he he subsequently became president at the end of
the decade.
Speaker 4 (16:03):
And then he's at the end, he's like, yeah, they
seem to have kind of come around, and then he
tells and then he basically talked back to them, and
there's like, well, you guys are lucky that you know,
Borges came along and recuperated your movement, because the alternative is,
you know, Brazil where it's you know, the kind of
bolson Aristas that take over.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
That brings us to the end of this episode. Preview
to listen to the full thing and help support our
work researching and promoting people's history, join us at patreon
dot com slash working class History link in the show
notes
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
As you may know, Working Class History doesn't get any
sort of funding from any wealthy benefactors, corporations, governments, or
political parties. Our work is funded by you, our listeners
and readers on Patreon. In return for their support, patrons
get access to exclusive content and benefits like ad free episodes,
(00:22):
bonus podcast episodes, and a couple of exclusive podcast series
called Fireside Chats and Radical Reads. So here's a little
preview of our latest episode for our patrons. You can
join us, help support our work and listen to the
whole thing today at patreon dot com slash working Class
History link in the show notes. Hope you enjoy.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
As we come. Margin Martin in the Beauty of the Day,
a million dark in Kitchens, one thousand mil, last grade.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Hi, Branden by.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
The Beauty is Sun, Sun Discloses, and the people Heresy Bredden, Roses,
bread and Roses.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Hi, everyone, and welcome to our first installment of Radical Reads,
a new series where we talk about different political texts
both old and new, that have even influenced us here
at wh or texts that we generally think that people
involved in radical and working class movements should be engaging with,
discussing and using to inform their activism. We're going to
be producing occasional Radical Reads episodes as well as other
(01:36):
discussions as part of a new range of Patreon only
content that we're about to start rolling out. This is
basically motivated by two things. First, there's a bunch of
stuff that we'd really like to talk about, share and
discuss with people that doesn't really fit into the standard
episode format, so basically this is a way for us
to produce that kind of content. And second, we also
thought it'd be a great way for us to show
(01:57):
our appreciation for all the support that you guys give us.
I know we say it a lot, but it really
is true and bears repeating that without your support, we
really wouldn't be able to keep this project going, and
we're basically insanely grateful that you guys help us to
do it. So making this extra Patreon only content is
our way of saying thank you well at the same
time keeping the majority of our content free for everyone.
(02:19):
We're doing this on a trial basis for now, so
please do let us know what you think if you
enjoy it, if you don't enjoy it, any changes you
think we should make, should we make more. Should we
delete this and pretend it never happened, et cetera, et cetera.
Our radical read for this episode is Jasper Burns is
excellent article from the Brooklyn Rail What Was to Be Done?
Protest and Revolution in the twenty tens. It's a review
(02:40):
and critique of the recent and very popular book by
Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, The Mass Protest Decade and
the Missing Revolution. And when we read Jasper's article, we
felt that it really put into words some of the
misgivings that we had about Bevins's book, so we invited
Jasper on to talk about his article. It was a
great discussion. We covered not only what we see is
some of the issues with Bevins's book, but also broader
(03:02):
questions around social movements, revolution, the threat of cooptation, and
what it means to win. And as Jasper says in
the discussion, understanding what happened and what we can learn
from the protest movements of the twenty tens is one
of the most important and vital questions that we can
be thinking about right now, and in that sense, If
We Burn is a valuable contribution, at least in starting
(03:24):
that conversation, even if we have some pretty big disagreements
on its conclusions. We'll put a link in the show
notes to get hold of if we burn, as well
as Jasper's article and an lecture series that he produced
on workers' councils. But before we begin, there are a
few acronyms and names that we mentioned that people might
not be familiar with. So firstly we mentioned the PT,
(03:45):
which is the Workers Party in Brazil. The PT or
a left wing social democratic party and currently the party
governing Brazil. Lula de Silva, who we also mention, is
a former metal worker and union leader who is now
the leader of the PT and the current president CCIDENT
of Brazil. At a time of the events that we
discussed in this interview and which Bevins discusses in his book,
(04:06):
Lula had just completed his first term as president, with
massive approval ratings and having lifted many millions out of poverty,
but not as we discuss, without criticism from some of
Brazil's social movements. He was also subsequently imprisoned on corruption charges,
which were eventually annulled after it was proven that the
judge was actually biased against him. Many believed that the
(04:27):
corruption charges were an attempt by the Brazilian right to
stop Lula from running for reelection and so paved the
way for their own victory, which it did with the
election of Jaia Bolsonaro in twenty eighteen. We also mentioned
the MST, which is Brazil's landless workers movement. The MST
mainly campaigns around land reform, organizing direct actions like land occupations,
(04:49):
and is one of the biggest such organizations in Latin America. Anyway,
with all that said, I'll stop talking and let you
get stuck into the interview itself. Just to start off with,
I suppose maybe if you could just introduce yourself.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
I'm Jasper Burns. I'm a author of various types of books,
and I just finished a book called The Future of Revolution,
which first is going to published next year, just about
communism and revolution. And yeah, I live in Oakland. I
teach at UC Berkeley.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Yeah, that sounds like a really interesting and interesting project.
I suppose is some of the article that you've just
written that we're going to discuss now, I suppose some
of those thoughts maybe are going to go into the book.
Speaker 4 (05:33):
Well, not not really, I mean the book is finished.
Actually it's it's more or less written, so it's it's
more the other way around that. My thinking about revolution
and writing this book it formed my criticism of the
of the Vincent Baben's book. So you know, I've spent
a lot of time thinking about revolutions and what they are,
(05:55):
how they happen, how they fail, and what what it
like for them to succeed and so yeah, so it's
definitely certain of those thoughts informed my criticism of the
Bevins book. But I've been thinking about this kind of
stuff for a long time.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
I mean, part of why I think your article spoke
to me so much because I think it's since the
kind of resurgence of kind of social democracy as a
kind of political force in at least in the anglosphere.
I think there's a lot of a lot of the
arguments that Bevins makes are kind of crystallizing a general
(06:39):
kind of attitude. I feel that that was kind of
about But I guess maybe before we before we get
into that, maybe could could you kind of introduce Bevin's
book and kind of what the main argument is.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
So the book is written by Vincent Bevins, and it's
called If We Burn, I believe. The subtitle is the
Mass Protest Decade and the miss Revolution by Mass Protest Decade.
He's referring to what I would call the cycle of
struggles circa twenty ten, which kind of began with the
(07:11):
Arab Spring. It's unclear when it ended in some ways,
probably with the pandemic. But he's sort of writing about
these movements during that period of the twenty tens, you know,
and there is a kind of distinct pattern to these movements.
So Vincent Bevins is a journalist by trade, you know,
known for writing kind of books informed by journalism and
(07:34):
by his position in the world. He lives in Brazil
and he participated in some of the events there that
are the form part of the book. But the book
is written through I think dozens, you know, probably one
hundred or so interviews, and he asked participants to kind
of say what happened, and more importantly, what went wrong
(07:58):
and what they think should have been done. And so
to the ex said that the book has an argument.
The sort of argument is written through a kind of
synthesis of these accounts of what went wrong and what
should have been done, and the book identifies the problem
as originating from this kind of ideology that it describes
(08:20):
as horizontalism, which it claims was kind of the dominant,
had a force within these protest movements and was a
kind of disorganizing and disempowering ideology.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
What are some of the positives that you see in
the book.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
Well, I mean, I was very excited about this book,
and I should note that it's a very popular book,
and you know, and I think that that indicates something.
People really love it, including many many people I know,
get a lot out of the book and are quite
excited by it. And that's in some ways what kind
of motivated me to identify what I think thought were
(09:00):
the problems with it. It's appealing, it's really well written,
it's engaging, and you can learn a lot. And I
and I think it's you know, really asking the right questions,
how do we win, what would it mean to win?
What was it that these movements wanted? And how could
they have achieved it? You know, asking why these movements
(09:21):
failed is a good question. And it's also taking a
kind of big picture look at things and writing from
kind of global and comparative perspective that is pretty rare.
There's not a lot of people who feel they have
the kind of authority to kind of write a synthetic
book like this, because it's very hard. There were a
couple of books that came out, you know, in the
(09:42):
twenty tens, but certainly I can't really think of anything
like it that's often that's kind of reflective, that's a book.
There's a couple, there's a couple of things in other languages,
and certainly there's articles written by kind of like very
far left magazines that you know, investigate similar questions. But so,
you know, it's it's I think that the peer has
to deal with the fact that this is these are
(10:03):
really interesting questions and these social movements are vastly important,
and understanding them and how they could have succeeded is
I think one of the most important things we can
be doing. So, you know, I think that I really,
I really admire that, and probably it's because I think
those are the right questions that I am very concerned
with getting the answers right.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Yeah. Also, I think for listeners that haven't read the book,
because I was also really excited to read it as well,
because he interviewed I think two hundred and twenty five
people in I can't remember how many countries, like ten
or eleven, and it covers a selection of big struggles
from the twenty tens. And the questions that he said
(10:48):
he was putting to people are very similar to the
questions that we ask when we're doing a podcast episode
with participants in social movements. So we were very well.
I was reading it very interest did to see what
these people had to say, and I guess we're going
to get but yeah, I think, like you, they are
these are really important questions, and I think, like you,
(11:08):
I was a little disappointed as well. Something I found
really disappointing with the book as a whole, actually that
with these interviews with two hundred other people, I was
I was reading getting the introbute, I'm really excited to
see these interviews and see what these people say. And
then I kind of got about forty five percent of
the way through on my kindle and I was like,
I'm kind of feeling like, I'm not actually going to
see these interviews, you know, because yeah, because I was
expecting it to be more the words of the interviewees
(11:31):
rather than those kind of used behind the scenes that
you don't see, which he then says he's used to
construct his narrative, which, yeah, you know, I guess that's
just how the book was put together. But it's hard
to see then what the people said to make him
then have that opinion, because and how much of that
is based on his preconceptions.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Yeah, I don't know, Jesspa if you wanted to, if
you wanted to go into maybe what some of the
main problems you saw with the book, and it's kind
of main arguments I think.
Speaker 4 (12:01):
I guess the main problem is that Bevins rates all
of these movements as failures, but he doesn't really define success.
He describes the present era as you know, one of
kind of unwritten ing failure for protest movements, but he
(12:22):
doesn't do so in relationship to you know, he doesn't
give us an example of some era where things weren't
just failure, and he doesn't tell us what success really
looks like for the most part. And then when he
does define success, it's quite problematic as I see it,
and I'm not sure that these things count as success.
(12:43):
And I think that for the movements themselves, they were
felt as semi failures, and so it raises a number
of questions. But the result of this that he kind
of doesn't define failure is that a lot of the
problems he identifies as kind of particular to the kind
of mass protests decade aren't really particular to that mass
(13:05):
protest decade. And they're problems and kind of failures that
you see in pretty much every era of social struggles.
They're quite they're quite common, and inasmuch as so in
some some things are particular to this era and some
things aren't. But because he's not, he's not kind of
giving us a comparative approach. He tells us about the
twenty tens, but he doesn't tell us about the kind
(13:27):
of previous era or the kind of classic period of revolution.
He doesn't define a revolution. He doesn't really have a
theory of what a revolution is because he doesn't really
periodize this stuff in relationship to what came before. He
identifies a lot of problems as particularly this era, that
are actually common problems, and as such, the kinds of
(13:47):
conclusions he arrives at are commonplaces because they're like common,
they're just very common responses to common problems. And it's
not that they're wrong the things he says, it's just
that they're kind of banal, actually, and they are the
kind of things that pretty much every revolution from every
period would tell you so, and that's a lot of
what you end up hearing. And it's not that they're wrong,
(14:08):
it's just that it's sort of you know, I mean,
everybody thinks, hey, I wish we would have been better organized.
I'm not. I'm pretty sure that there's not a single
you know, revolutionary who wouldn't tell you some version of that, right.
And you know, in pretty much every period that you
look at revolutionary period, if we're talking about capitalism more
or less, what we're looking at our various kinds of
(14:28):
failures right from the standpoint of the working class, and
with a standpoint of communist revolution, you could sort of
rate any decade of revolution as an ultimately an era
of kind of missing revolution, even the places where it
went the furthest in Russia, you know, I mean that
decade was defined as an era of missing revolution precisely
in Germany and these other countries where the revolution was
(14:49):
supposed to spread. And so I don't know, it's it's
so I think that that's the big problem.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
That I have.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
I would agree with that as well, because the one
ex he does pick out as a success is in Chile,
whereas I think partly the issue is when the book
was published, which I think was late twenty twenty three October.
So by that point in Chile, following the big protest movement,
the government agreed to rewrite the constitution and that was
(15:18):
going through the process of being rewritten, and I think
his book came out in October twenty twenty three, but
then in December they had the referendum on the constitution
and it lost, so actually there was there were no
concrete results from that, and I think the perspective of
the Chileans that I talked to is that it was
(15:40):
a failure. But you know, I guess by his criteria.
Speaker 4 (15:44):
And they even tell him that they even his own
his own his own interviewees tell him that they feel
disappointed in Borich.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Borich is the current president of Chile. He was a
leader of protest movements in Chile in the early two thousands,
and he he subsequently became president at the end of
the decade.
Speaker 4 (16:03):
And then he's at the end, he's like, yeah, they
seem to have kind of come around, and then he
tells and then he basically talked back to them, and
there's like, well, you guys are lucky that you know,
Borges came along and recuperated your movement, because the alternative is,
you know, Brazil where it's you know, the kind of
bolson Aristas that take over.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
That brings us to the end of this episode. Preview
to listen to the full thing and help support our
work researching and promoting people's history, join us at patreon
dot com slash working class History link in the show
notes
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