298 – Q&A: How To Make Library Socialism Now – Transcript

Hey, man. Did you hear that the Srsly Wrong podcast has a new library socialism Q&A talking about transitionary steps towards a library society?

Wow, really? Transition all the way from here to there? They have steps? I love that. You got the goods. Can we listen?

Oh, yeah. I just got this tape in the mail directly from Srsly Wrong headquarters. They sent me... I, I'm an advanced tape subscriber, so I've, I get this, these tapes.

Hoo! That's a beautiful tape. And the packaging it comes in? Wow, those wrong boys really care about what they're doing.

I'll just slide this here into the tape player and pop that closed. Are you ready to listen? This is gonna be quite the little journey for us.

I'm excited too. And thank you for listening to this with me, for not just doing it by... Yeah, thank you. Please. I can't wait.

Do you want to both, uh, like, put our pointer fingers together and then move our two pointer fingers, which are touching the whole time, towards (laughs) the play button and press it at exactly the same moment?

Yeah, I would like to do that. (laughs) Thank you for asking.

Here, let's just put these fingers together and just-

And this is in touch, and then move-

... make sure that they're fully aligned and no gaps and-

Towards the play button.

... there we go.

And eight.

There we go.

Are we seriously wrong? Are we seriously wrong?

Hello, everybody!

Hi.

And welcome to the Srsly Wrong podcast. We are... (laughs) That, that was Aaron, this is Shawn. As usual, uh, you're in the zone.

Or, the, the Srsly Wrong zone? The Wrong Boy zone?

Yeah, I don't know. I was thinking it was like a after school, like, hang out kind of, like, tree house.

Oh, okay.

I was thinking of the, The Zone on YTV. That's what I was thinking of.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The childhood.

Like, the little between the shows they would have, like-

Cool people talking about-

Yeah.

... whoa, I don't know about that.

I don't even know what they would talk about, but they had, like, a cool set with a lot of, uh, stuff in it, like a TV covered in, like, goop or something.

Totally, yeah.

Yeah.

Canadian childhood stuff. So, this is the Srsly Wrong podcast, and today, we are doing, uh, another library socialism Q&A session, and this is tackling a sort of cluster of questions that I'd say are probably our most common questions. Uh, so many people have asked variations of this, and the question is, how do you make library socialism? How do we take library socialism from a, a utopian idea to something that is actually a practical movement that is going to transform society?

Yeah. The question of, like, how do you get there is something that I think political radicals of pretty much any, uh, group get asked a lot. Like, "Oh, you want a Marxist society? How you gonna get there? You want an anarchist society? How you gonna get... You're a utopian? How do you think you're gonna get there?" Well, if you want to know how we think we're gonna get there, uh, keep listening, 'cause you're... (laughs) You're in luck.

You're in the right place.

Yeah.

Yeah, this is obviously a really complex question that's got a lot of different possible contingencies. There's different scenarios that could arise. There's no one answer, but we are going to strive to answer every possible contingency in all parallel universes for all strategies, uh, to create a perfect and complete answer to the question that will make it impossible for us to not create library socialism as a species as we release it out into the world.

Yeah. A lot of the time when people get asked this question, they're like, "Oh, we can't predict the future. How could we possibly answer a question that has, like, so many contingent factors? And we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, let alone map out the entire transition to an entirely new society that would probably take a minimum decades, maximum, you know, hundreds of years potentially. How can you predict all that? People don't know the future." Uh, and to that we say...

Cowards.

(laughs) Yeah, cowards. Uh, people... We can predict the future. I don't know why you think you can't, but you probably could.

Uh-

All you have to do is prepare for every single possible contingency in a branching web of if this then that, if that then this, that lasts for, uh, however long it takes.

And you might be asking, "What about black swan events? What about unexpected things? Would anyone have predicted the global coronavirus pandemic back in 2008? Can you really strategize over decades with black swan unexpected events, things like wars breaking out, pandemics, and so on?" And to that we say simply, yes we can.

Yeah. All you have to do is say, "If global pandemic, then do this."

Exactly.

Yeah.

Uh, so yeah, obviously... I think probably obviously, we're joking about the possibility of naming every possible contingent scenario, but we're gonna do our best, uh, to make sure that people have the information that they need to see this as real, possible, and maybe even get started on it.

Yeah, I think it's more important to talk about ways of approaching the transition or ideas for what transitionary institutions or ideas might look like, or, like, how to think about approaching the particular circumstances of where you are or when you are, uh, or what the world situation is like at the time; if there's a pandemic or not a pandemic, if there's wars or not wars, or how much those things are currently affecting you and the other activists where you are. What's the political situation in your city like? All those things are gonna change what you would actually need to do to start a transition or continue a transition or, like, push for these ideas, uh, in different situations. Uh, so there's like... You can give some amount of practical advice, but yeah, obviously, like, I think the more important thing is thinking about different examples as a way of getting at, like, a way of thinking about how to approach these different problems, because the way that you handle complexity isn't to make a roadmap with every single different possibility laid out. It's to... A mindset of, like, how to approach different problems from a particular perspective. So yeah, that's what we're trying to do.

Yeah. And while our advice is aimed towards, uh, kind of our current inherited situation, so, you know, we assume about the present, the people listening, what the situation that we're facing is roughly more or less.

You know, we have an imminent and ongoing climate crisis, record global inequality, economic inequality, and widespread democratic disenfranchisement. Uh, we trace property rights extremism as a major source of all three of these sort of major crises, which is why we propose usufructian property relations as one of the answers and one of the solutions out of this mess. But we're also in a situation where people who want to resist the current order are under surveillance, they're outgunned, they're outspent, and in very practical terms, they're typically busy with keeping themselves alive. So, the deck is slanted against us as people who want to transform society into a library society, but one of the things that's also unique to the present, that's unique to the last couple decades on this planet Earth, is the incredible information communications technology, the ability to share information online, to collaborate with people around the world, and so on. So, our advice is tailored to that context, but I think a lot of our advice would also apply if, you know, we lived in a really radically different society, or if unexpected things happened and stuff. But we're kind of- we've got that in mind. We've got that world in mind. Do you want to maybe ... we could start with just defining briefly library socialism and help contextualize some of our vision of how this transition might happen.

Library socialism is a utopian political movement that wants to take the logic of the lending library and apply it to society at large, uh, in order to create a democratic egalitarian society. So, one of the major components of that is usufructian property relations, which is, like, uh, very similar to what you would see at a library. Basically that items would be held in common and lended out to people to use when they need to use them, and then returned to a library when they're not in use.

The benefits of this are that you get access to a lot more stuff that you need when you need it, and we would need to produce far less stuff overall to meet all people's needs. Because there's many things that you only use, like, a couple times per year. No need to have one of those, store it, to produce enough that everybody has one of them. If we can share them broadly amongst the population, produce far fewer, and reduce the ecological cost. Uh, so by engaging in usufructian property relationships, you make people more wealthy in the sense of having access to more strategies for meeting their needs, while at the same time reducing production, reducing environmental costs associated with production and overproduction and energy use.

Yeah, so we take that- that core idea of usufructian library relations as a means of addressing social and ecological crisis, and to that we expand to include also the idea of an irreducible minimum, which is a certain level of affluence that no one falls below, uh, and also an end to coerced and unfree labor, which is tied directly to poverty because our society uses poverty to coerce people into doing labor at a rate and at an amount and for a price that they might not otherwise negotiate. And we also advocate the ethic of complementarity.

The idea that differences among humans are generative, uh, that different people or types of people aren't better or worse than each other. It's not worse to be disabled than abled and so on. And that actually, in fact, these differences are generative, and we should structure society with that logic of complementarity in mind rather than institutions of hierarchy, of command, control, and punishment. From that, we also hold that a sufficiently adequate participatory democracy would take advantage of cooperative difference and swarm intelligence in a way that works better and outperforms our inherited legacies of rulership. I don't know, I think that's a pretty good summary of-

Yeah.

... what we're rattling on about. So, without further ado, maybe let's open up with a zinger of a first- of- of a first question, you know, omnibus.

So the first group of questions I'm gonna read out here are about the bigger picture of transition to library socialism here. This is- this is a smattering of stuff on a theme that we got. "How do we get to library socialism from here? What are some personal and societal level things that can be done?" "How do the Wrong boys envision the transition from capitalism to library socialism?" "What will the first steps be, for example, in your country of Canada?" And, "What would a library socialist movement look like in its very early stages in a capitalist society?"

So these are great questions.

Yeah, and there's a few different ways to answer this. One important thing to note is that the idea of a transition to a library socialist society could take many forms, and, like, maybe there will be a specific library socialist political movement of people who think in those terms and use those labels wanting to move towards that type of society. But I think it's also possible, and it's also a win for us, for people who want this type of society, to see ways that these ideas can be integrated into existing social movements and existing political struggles.

The idea of expanding the purview of libraries and using library, like, property relations for more things in society is a goal that can come about in a lot of different ways. And also, like, library socialist elements could be used as, like, support systems for activist movements for a variety of things. Black Lives Matter, uh, LGBT activism, liberation movements. All kinds of ways that library socialism could be not specifically a movement in itself for that, but a way of thinking that can influence other types of political movements, other types of political engagements.

If you're engaging in municipal politics, there's a lot of stuff you can do to expand what libraries are able to offer communities right now, either by starting tool libraries or other types of libraries or expanding the purview of currently existing libraries. I wanted to start off with making that sort of distinction, 'cause I- I think there's a lot here, and there's a lot that I think you have down for what a specific library socialist movement first steps could look like. But that's not the only way to push for library socialist ideas in society.

Yeah. Our- our win conditions here are, like, the ideas are the win condition. So no one needs to wave a library socialism flag for us to be successful. There's a variety of ways that these ideas can be implemented, and if you reject some of them and take other ones, that's a win for us. And I think that's the way that library socialism as a movement should proceed also, is like, if you agree with us on these ideas, that's really what we're looking for. But if we want to talk about a capital L, capital S, capital M library socialist movement, I've been thinking about what first steps might be well-suited to this context that we're in, this inherited situation that we have found ourselves in. And I'll give kind of a rough idea of, if not the first steps, uh, very, very good first steps for a library socialist movement. And I think it starts with information, knowledge, and, uh, information and communications technology being utilized effectively.

The first step really is satellite research collectives or digital knowledge commons could be another way to describe it. Basically, groups of people getting together to share information with each other, to analyze things together, to challenge each other's ideas, focused on specific things, uh, related to library socialism like the climate crisis, inequality, and building everyone's knowledge and- and expertise up in a collaborative digital environment. I think this is basically what leftists use social media for currently, consciousness raising and so on. I would argue that we should consciously do this as library socialists. We should consciously create platforms, especially like open source, uh, non-big tech platforms that are private. Building up that knowledge is like the first, first step, something that anyone can do. Even if you're by yourself, you can join a satellite research collective, or you can get a few friends together and start a small one. And having a bunch of different satellite research collectives, at the end of the day, is going to benefit transitionary revolutionary ecological democratic politics, whether or not all of these different steps work out.

Transitionary concept number one: satellite research groups.

One of the major components of transformative politics is narrative and storytelling work. So that includes formal things like journalism, you know, media, podcasts, books, et cetera. But it also includes the stories that we tell each other about politics, the narratives we have about our inherited situation, and the transformation that's ahead of us that's required to escape these crises that we face, uh, ecological and social crises.

Our narratives should be fact-based. And because there's a lot of information to go through, there's a strong need to collaborate on the research necessary to get the facts right. And this can be done at multiple scales with small specialized groups on one end or large general purpose groups on the other, all feeding into one another. Some other research focuses could be understanding the inherited situation, designing and comparing utopian policies, and sharing summaries from books and articles to help raise collective collective knowledge.

Variations on the satellite research group concept are already happening in a lot of ways. All study groups, all reading groups, book clubs, they're already a kind of satellite research group in a way. Even just group chats amongst aligned people sharing information about topics they all care about is a type of satellite research group. But we should work to refine the format of SRGs and refine the platforms we use for this type of action over time 'cause it's so essential. Better informed activists will do better work, be more persuasive with more convincing narratives, and in the end will be more successful.

And this applies to any broad category of revolutionary agitation or activism, whether it's library socialism or not. Some form of satellite research groups are a necessary component. And for people who are looking for the first steps they can take to do something, they're a good place to start.

And from there, I think the next... The main function, the main type of library socialist outreach that I think we should do is to form groups of various sizes, but small groups are fine. There's often a tendency to think that a bigger group is better, but a small group of people can achieve a lot. And these groups are structured around the dual strategy of agitating for library socialism, providing information about library socialism, sharing information that comes from the research collectives with the public. But also doing outreach that's aimed, squarely aimed and very intentionally aimed, at providing a benefit to people who are outside of your collective. So, something like, you know, distributing food on the street corner like Food Not Bombs does is a great example of that kind of thing. So you're handing out food, someone comes up to you, "Hey, nice, free food. Thanks. Thanks for the ice cream sandwich. Hey, who are you guys? Oh, we're library socialists. Here, read our pamphlet. It's made out of research that we've done in our satellite research collective if you want to get on our mailing list," and so on.

But there's a huge amount of things that you can do in that spectrum. Stuff like clothing swaps, community bulk food buys, gardening on people's l- If... Like, in the suburbs where there's a lot of lawn space, people might want to have a garden, but they don't have the time to do it, and you could create a cooperative mechanism for adept gardeners to use all the gardening space in a community and split the fruits of it. There's also really, like, library socialisty library library versions, like community libraries, systems or structures, uh, where people can put their goods into a shared circuit and have an accountable process for, you know, borrowing lawnmowers from each other in a local area, et cetera, running a file sharing site, something like Anna's Archive and stuff like that.

It'd be awesome to get a site like Anna's archive that was, like, agitating for library socialism also. I think it'd probably be the greatest propaganda operation in library socialist history if you could associate those things. And I think critically one of the things unique to the moment we're in with the climate crisis too is an organization that's providing climate mitigation information and helps people to do things in their own community.

Like, if you have a freak snow storm, having a list of people, a mailing list that you can ping to be like, "We're gonna go salt these roads and shovel these roads because our city, our municipal government is not used to doing this sort of thing and they're not gonna show up for us, and people are going to be stuck for the next couple of days." That happened in Vancouver. Was it last year or the year before? Just people were stuck everywhere. I think the last two years.

I mean, it happens kind of every time it snows in Vancouver, but yeah, it's been a lot last few years.

So yeah, I think that kind of, that kind of org could be really good. So you have to look at the context that you're in, and what you think people might respond to, and what expertise and abilities exist within the networks that are related to these satellite research collectives. But the general through line is, like, doing something for other people in a public way where you're seen being nice, you're seen being helpful. I think that is a powerful way to do good in the world and also at the same time build library socialist consciousness and the library socialist movement.

Yeah, I think that doing things that benefit the community is, like, such a crucial way to think about how activist groups in general can engage with the public in a way that naturally creates goodwill, and would naturally encourage others to want to participate and to see the ideas that you're talking about as the source of something good and useful and beneficial to the community. Because, like, the proof is sort of in the pudding. It's in what you're actually doing. Because, like, you can have all the, like, beautiful, nice ideas, interlocking sets of logical, philosophical, ideological beliefs about the world and what it should look like and how to get there and whatever, and, like, you could have your activist group that's trying to spread awareness about whatever particular thing just on the power of ideas alone and being like, "Look, look at our pamphlet. Isn't this such a great idea? Doesn't this sound nice? Isn't, doesn't this seem like the right way to go about things?"And, like, you might get some people on board doing that. You might intrigue some people, but I think for the most part, people aren't gonna care that much about your ideas unless they have some kind of hook. And if the community presence of an activist group is consistently providing things to people that they wouldn't have otherwise, or that they're providing it to them in a way that is more accessible than the sort of typical societal way those things are being provided currently, then you're piquing people's interest on a level other than just pure philosophical, "Oh, that's an interesting idea. Yeah, it would be cool if the future was like that." You're like, "Oh, these are people who are doing something, like, actually useful, like rubber meets the road, concretely useful. And what's causing them to do that? What's behind that?" Like, they, they're... When you get to the ideas through that route, there's a sort of, like, natural inclination to want to be like, "Oh, like, who are you? What's, what's behind this? What kinds of people are out here doing these things?" Using that as the main focus of your activism and having the ideas as being the thing that's behind it, uh, is a thing that's sort of like social proof of what you're talking about. That's the sort of, like, way to approach things that I think can work in basically any situation in the world, at any time in the world, because it just involves looking at your local community and what you can offer that you would offer if you have, like, the people that you need, like a group of five friends or whatever to make your affinity group to go out and, like, do these things. How can you help? Be a helper. And then when people ask why you're helping, you can say, "This is why. Like, I think we should do more things like this. This is what our group is about."

And then you have people saying, "Oh, yeah. Library socialists. Yeah. I met some of them. They were really nice."

Right.

Incredibly valuable. In, in geopolitics they call that soft power.

And then if you get- keep getting people being like, "Oh, how can we h- I have, like, three other friends and we all want to help you." And you're like, "We got this little thing we're doing here. Why don't you start your own little group and do something else, and we can, like, communicate with each other and coordinate when we need to."

Yeah.

"You don't necessarily have to join our group. If you got, like, three other friends, you can start your own other group."

"We'll have some people who are experienced join you and your three friends, and the five of you are gonna set up XYZ program that we're interested in doing but we haven't had capacity for, and we'll be confederated." And it... What it creates in the end ideally is a self-reinforcing system of free association, direct democracy, mutual aid, and public sentiment being positive towards you.

Transitionary concept number two: the confederation of helpers.

The basic unit of mutual aid activism is helping people. We propose a confederated structure of small groups doing complementary projects that aims to aid people, members of the public, as part of a strategy of agitation for social transformation.

Projects could include free food distribution, community tool libraries, community pantries, clothing swaps, and other strategies where coming together has a collective and individual benefit. And in places where these types of projects are already being pursued, those groups could be potentially integrated into the confederation.

Library socialists want to build a good reputation based on acts of service and effective coordination around community needs, and structure our work at its core for free association, collaboration, direct democracy, and first and foremost, making a positive difference in people's lives.

And confederation as an organizational structure allows for more smaller groups that can be lighter on their feet and more focused on the task at hand, collaborating together on larger projects when necessary.

Sometimes we think of confederation as a step down the line after direct democracy, and I've got a subtly different perspective on that, in that I think we should embed confederation at really early stages of organizing. So instead of having one big group of 40 people, I would have five groups of eight people. It wo- it just works well for everyone if you have agency over your own work and avoid a backseat driver culture that doesn't respect volunteer effort. Stuff like that is why we should practice the art of confederation earlier in the process, because basically, the bigger and more powerful and more confederated you are, the more power you have to throw around, and the more organized and engaged you are as a community. And the more organized and engaged you are, the better for everyone, the better the political outcomes.

In any category of revolutionary agitation or activism, library socialism or not, groups focused on helping people materially and socially are a necessary component of any movement. And when confederated into a free associative confederation of helpers, they have a sincere potential to challenge the inherited situation and promote a deep social transformation.

I also imagine a kind of specialized role that exists. When there's a bunch of infrastructure in place that can provide beneficial things, there's kind of a specific outreach role that can arise in that context, uh, which you could call, like, a neighborhood connector. You could call it whatever you want. And I envision this as a role where someone is, either through phone calls or through door knocking, being like, "Hey, I'm with the Library Socialists. I'm here to help. Do you need any help? Do you need any food? Do you need warm socks?" Or whatever, you know, like, whatever the spectrum of stuff that is provided by this organization. Like, think about how Amazon got so deep in our lives. I'm not lionizing Amazon as a whole, but their basic premise of the soft power of giving people what they want and building a positive affinity with them is exactly what an activist organization should seek to do in their own way with their own resources, their own structures, and ethically, of course. But, so yeah, imagine that person coming to your door. He's this nice guy. He says he's part of a so- like, socialist organization, and he's just offering you, like, some stuff that... if you need it, right? And he's like, "On Tuesday, we have dinner here that you can come to," or, "There's this barbecue," or whatever, and just like, "Anyways, well, if you need anything, you know, use this contact form."

Yeah, "If you ever need any lawn tools, hedge trimmer, leaf blower, I don't know if you got all that stuff, but, you know, we have a l- tool library here for like, these few blocks or this area of the city. You know, it's just, you won't have to go buy your own if you only use it every once in a while. Like, we, we have that here. Just wanted to let you know."

"And remember when it snowed like crazy last year and no one could drive out of this neighborhood because there's hills in every direction and our city doesn't have any snow mitigation? Well, would you be interested in signing up on a list of people who would help shovel? We've got like 20 people, but, you know, you seem like a strong guy and it helps the community. Are you interested in that kind of thing?" I bet you a lot of people who you ask that directly would be like, "Oh, yeah, sure. No, that's a great idea."

Right.

You know?

Yeah.

And it's like, that's, that's the kind of spectrum that we want to be in organizationally, is we're giving help, we're also asking for help. There's the, what is it, Benjamin Franklin rule that if you ask someone for help, they're- they like you more-

Right.

... because you've, like, given them an opportunity to demonstrate themselves or something like that. It's totally true though. Like, if you ask someone for a little favor, it makes them like you more for some weird quirk in psychology, because we're a helping species. We just love helping each other.

Yeah, and it builds rapport and it, like, yeah. It... And building those, like, core community engagements, uh, is necessary towards starting the process of, like, building actually democratic institutions at local community levels like that, where people can have more of a say in the things that affect their life. You know, theoretically, this goes really well. There's like organizations like this in communities all around the world. More and more people are joining them. More and more things are being done by and offered through these community organizations. People are relying on them. They're becoming more convenient in a lot of ways than the, the current capitalist institutions of society. Building that type of power of people participating in and having an investment in these community institutions, and the fact that they have an actual democratic say in how the community institutions are run if they're participating in them, that's the, like, beginnings of kernels of things that can expand out to begin to replace the other capitalist institutions in society.

Yeah, if you removed all the Library Socialism branding for it, I think that's also just a description of, like, how to have a strong political left. But yeah, so I think that's where we start. I actually, I think there's a lot of different ways we could do it. That is a great pathway of how to start and a framework for how to build over time, starting from first steps to building up to being a serious political movement that can actually challenge centers of power, can change public opinion, and can build popular consensus of the need for a ecological and democratic transition on planet Earth.

Transitionary concept three, neighborhood connectors.

Hi there.

Hi, uh, I'm from the Local Utopian Library Collective. My name's Shawn. I'm just checking in to see if you want to sign up for our neighborhood tool library program. A number of your neighbors are already sharing tools for free, so if you like, you can borrow a good drill if you need one from a neighbor, that kind of thing, or you can put your tools up for loan too.

Oh, that sounds kind of interesting. I don't have a lot of time right now though. I'm, I'm kind of watching the kids, so.

Uh, no problem. Here, let me give you an information package, and you can sign up at this link here. Like, this, the page here will act... Or, this page here on the back, it includes all the different communal services we're working on right now. So there's lots of cool stuff to take advantage of.

Oh, wow. And you guys do free meals at the park on Sundays? That's cool.

Soup on Sundays. We also have a bulk buying program. It can save you money by teaming up with your neighbors and buying in bulk.

We got a program around shoveling snow when there's a snowstorm. You know, our city doesn't do a good job dealing with that. Actually, th- this might be a weird question, but I just spoke to a senior citizen a couple doors down. We like to try to connect people, and she's been having trouble carrying her own groceries home from the store. She lives alone. She's on a pension. So we're trying to connect her with someone in this neighborhood who can help coordinate with her directly, kind of one-to-one, grab a few things for her on a regular basis. Do you think that's something that you might be interested in doing to, like, help a neighbor and, an-

That sounds like a really nice thing to do. I'll have to talk to my partner about it, but yeah, I think we might be interested in doing that.

Honestly, that would just be, like, amazing. She's super sweet. Here, let me just write this down that, uh, we'll follow up with you.

Sorry, and who are you again? You said Utopian something? Is that like a non-profit?

Yeah. So I'm a volunteer neighborhood connector. Uh, we're an activist group, the Vancouver Utopian Library Collective. We basically just try to help people in any way we can, uh, and talk about, you know, climate crisis and things like that. But my job is to go to people's doors, let them know about our project, see if they want to receive help or give help in any way, and just help connect people.

Oh, well, you know, I have some extra cans of beans around. Would that, uh, maybe help out with the Sunday soup thing?

Yeah, no, that would be awesome. No, ac- if you have a food donation like that, well, we could definitely take it and use it for the project.

Here, let me, uh, just go get those for you.

Man, people are so nice. This is such a fun thing to do, talking to people like this, seeing them help each other. Transitionary concept three, neighborhood connectors.

Uh, so here's another bundle of questions. Technical questions on the small scale: How do you go about setting up a community library of everything? Who legally owns the collection, given current legal definitions? Is there software to help manage collection and loans? And would it be good or bad to vet new borrowers while the library socialist culture is still getting established? All really great, interesting questions.

On, how do you go about setting up a community library of everything, one piece of advice that just came to mind was that it doesn't necessarily have to be a library of everything right away. You know, in a small community, you're probably gonna only have specific resources. So I, I know they probably didn't mean literally everything, but, like, focusing in on strategically what you think people in your community might need on a regular basis, but not want to own, picking items specifically that lend themselves to brief periods of use and then returning them in the way that, like, tools do. I think this is why a lot of people focus on tool libraries as a natural sort of extension of the current, like, book library thing, is that tools are just one of those things that people don't need all the time. Another one I like to point to a lot of the time is tents for camping. Probably only use that once or twice a year, so you probably don't need to own a tent. A bunch of different people could share the same tent over a summer. That's another example. Like, picking and choosing which things you're gonna start with that you think people would actually use and would actually be a benefit to society, I think would be a sort of key initial consideration in setting something like that up.

Yeah, and there, there's kind of multiple ways that we can approach it. There is the very bottom-up, non-institutional approach, which would be like, say you get... You door knock, flyer drop in your immediate neighborhood and have a, like, meeting about establishing a tool library. So you inform everyone there's gonna be at a certain time. You prepare a little bit of punch, maybe some snacks. Do a little presentation to everyone and say, "Here's the plan. We all have these things. We have more things than we need. Would you pledge tools that you ha-" And, like, be prepared to be like, "I've got the lawnmower, the tools, et cetera that I would put in the library. Are you guys interested in working out some sort of system where we can all share these things in, in a dynamic way and have people pledge their shovels and stuff," in a way. So that's like, happening at the small level among neighbors in a way that's just practically helping them and might be a good place to start. And in that context, like, who would own the stuff would be that everyone would continue to technically, under the law, own their own stuff, but there'd be a sharing agreement about what the criteria is for the use of other people's materials. Like, how do they withdraw it or put it in the system and stuff. Some of those technical questions that have to be hammered out, but they're not particularly hard.

So that's one way that you could do it, is like the very organic, people-focused one. Or you could have, like, a more institutional approach of, like, getting together some people and some money and establishing an institution or organization that is like a tool library or is another type of, like, lending library of things that serves a community. So tha- tha- this might be larger than a city block or two, the, the area that it serves. That sort of thing, I think it would make sense to be structured with some sort of buy-in, like having people be shareholders or having there be a membership fee and things like... You know, i- in the ideal version you want to avoid all this stuff as much as possible, like fees, money. But as practical matters in setting up institutions in the current environment, I don't have a strong objection to those things, insofar as they're helping build up these library socialist relations and that they're not, say, uniformly controlled by one person who's like profiting off of others and so on. Like, it needs to be approached in an ethical way.

Yeah. They asked about like, who legally owns the collection given current legal definitions, and in a situation like that where you're actually starting like a tool library, maybe with like actual space where like people come to the library, like a, I don't want to say storefront 'cause it's not a store, but like a, a, a place where the things are housed and like-

Commons front.

A commons front, yeah. There's a few different ways to do it, but you would want some type of cooperatively owned structure where the people who are members of the library share ownership over- 'Cause, uh, you wouldn't want to have it just as, like, a sole proprietorship business, obviously. I'm thinking more of like non-profit institution or just like co-op. Like, a way in which you can have an organization that has rules governing it based on people who are participating in the institution sharing accountability and ownership over the items within the institution would be like, the sort of mid-scale...... thing there. I think it's also worth mentioning that, like, on, like, the sort of largest scale, in, like, municipalities, uh, there's also work that can be done of, like, expanding current library systems, uh, or using municipal funds in other ways to encourage the creation of tool libraries or things like that on a municipal scale. And in those cases, they would be, I guess, technically owned by the municipality. So, so there's a lot of different possible ways that this could be set up from that sort of small scale to the larger scale thing.

Yeah, and on the- on the heavy institutional front that you're just talking about with municipalities and stuff, like, at the end of the day, we do need, no matter what political organizing we do, we need to be doing it in a legal and political context that doesn't criminalize us for doing what we're doing. And so, that implies, to me, at least some degree of trying to, over time, lobby for that political context to be beneficial towards these sort of property relationships. And there's some drawbacks that we can think of when, say, you have a really great municipal lending library, and you, like, achieve that. You convince parties that are in power in your city to, like, put resources into this kind of thing, and it's all set up in a way that community volunteers would have a hard time doing. That's great, obviously, on one level, but then the challenge is the fate of those institutions is caught up, and the election system is caught up in who are the party in power, their budgets, and stuff like that. And that's a drawback, and it's something that needs to be mitigated and grappled with in that context. But overall, I find proposals like that that are implemented through a legal framework, I think are a beneficial part of the overall... Like, when we imagine a societal transformation from the current world to a library socialist world, down the line, we imagine that happening partially through existing institutions as a matter of, like, practicality and urgency, and also, like, stability for regular people.

So, any place where we can fund, pre-figure, build, or legally en-codify library socialist relations, like, that's- it's probably a good thing. But it needs to be rooted in a democracy that's outside the- the state. Like, not party politics, not a library socialist party. But, you know, confederated helpers, public opinion, research collectives, and mass political action that's helping shift the norms within institutions, that's pushing from the outside. And also, I mean, individuals pushing on the inside is also part of that. But until the institutions become unrecognizable and radically different... So, like, one example of a legal formulation that we could fight for and win on the road to library socialism is, uh, a legal status for a de-commodified property that can no longer be bought and sold. Uh, moving items out of the marketplace and into a common realm, legally, is something that could be structured in policy. Uh, similarly, you know, legal structures around democratic user for So to answer the question of who owns what, uh, down the line, I think we should collectively own it in new ways that could be encoded in law. And also, legal formulations around, like, is- the question of, "Is it a co-op? Is it a non-profit? Is it municipal?" Et cetera. There could be legal formulations around democratic institutions that are none of those things, that are new categories.

So, uh, we- we have a willingness to use institutional resources, and, uh, we draft utopian policy in our research collectives. The realm of law and policy is a place of utopian contention for us. It's part of our overall strategy. But again, it's rooted in this democracy outside the state. The confederation of helpers, satellite research collectives, et cetera. Th- these things can be made complementary. So, back on the original question of, like, how we deal with this potential reliance on the state to keep our municipal library open, I think there's a few possibilities, and one of them is a bit more technical. But we could draft policy that limits the conditions that such a project could be defunded or privatized, et cetera. You could also draft policy that ensures, legally, that the libraries are distributed to democratic community groups, specific ones or ones that set according to criteria, uh, in the event that it's defunded. Like, that sort of thing. But there's another principle that might also kind of help us to protect wins like that, and that's that if you set up a library of everything in your community, people will like it. People like libraries. And if you set up a system that prevents the waste of things by having there be a library pickup for things like old furniture and stuff like that, people are gonna like that. And if people like things, they're gonna fight to keep them. So, when thinking about the municipal, legal, political, kind of stuff like that, we want to ensure that we're getting policies and institutions in place that once they're set up, people are really going to like, and they're going to fight to keep.

Right. Uh, in terms of software to manage collections and loans, it really depends, again, on the scale of what you're doing. If you're doing that two blocks, knocking on doors, seeing who- who wants to share items amongst themselves in your little, like, close-knit neighborhood community, maybe all you need is a group Excel spreadsheet or Google sheet or whatever, that people have a link to, that you keep track of who has which item. And that's maybe all you need for something on that scale. Uh, if you're talking about larger scale things, I think there's potential for adapting different library softwares, or there's a lot of different sort of project management software that exists that could potentially be adapted to things like this. There's also things that are like spreadsheets, but have a bit more flexibility. Like, there's, uh, Coda and Notion are two, like, things you can play with to track things like that in projects. Uh, and also, I did a Google search. Uh, I was trying to find if there was library software that already existed that wasn't focused on books. Uh, and at first, it was kind of hard to find, but the Google search that got me some results that looked promising was "library of things software," and I saw, I think, at least three or four different ones that seemed to exist there. I didn't research any of them in specific, but that- that's the Google search I would use to begin the sort of journey there if you're looking for something that's like a really purpose-built, already existing software. But yeah, I- I don't think you would need that to start. I think an Excel spreadsheet would work for a lot of more community use cases.

Yeah, and if we're talking about the capital L, capital S, capital M, Library Socialist Movement, and we're trying to create kind of like a global library socialist consensus towards transforming society, then we'll definitely have to have people engaged in the developing of our own tools based on...

Yeah.

You know, the uses that come out in practice and, you know, we're gonna have to have probably international working groups working on open source software and stuff like that. That would be part of the vision. And there's just something I want to emphasize here, because it's come up before, it's not library socialist unless it's being used to agitate for political transformation. A lot of these ideas like community tool libraries, tool libraries that are set up as cooperatives and stuff, they can be influenced by library socialism without being library socialist in the capital L, capital S sense. And I think in order to be in the capital L, capital S sense, library socialist, just to be clear, we appreciate and like any... there's no need to be capital L, capital S in most circumstances. But if you want to be, like a community library isn't enough to be library socialist unless it's specifically, explicitly endorsing a library socialist vision of transforming society to an ecological and democratic society with usufructy and property relations. And that distinction is subtle but important because I just want to emphasize, like, not every library thing, not every tool library thing is library socialism. It's part of the same spectrum. There could be influences back and forth, but unless it's using these tools to agitate for that social transformation, then it's not capital L, capital S.

Yeah, and the, "Would it be good to vet new borrowers while the library socialist culture is still getting established?" I don't really know how you would vet new borrowers. To me it would be more of a thing of, like, if people abuse the system, they would lose privileges over time.

Yeah, and you could have like the buy-in shareholder kind of model for co-ops. A municipal model would have systems to... libraries ban people who repeatedly deface books and cause a scene, et cetera.

Right.

And the local community level, it's a little more awkward, but, like, if someone is fucking up your community tool library, then people need to have a plan for, like, how to dissuade them. What's it called? Escalating-

Grad- graduated sanctions.

Graduated sanctions, yeah. So at first there's like a little, there's like a warning, you know, they lose some privileges, they're cut out for a week, et cetera, and then eventually you're banned, um, and that sort of system works for, in a friendly way, getting everyone on the same page about following the charter, following the rules that are set up and so on. So yeah, there's no one size fit all- fits all answer, but to some degree, yes, like, people... Yeah, less vetting, but more, like, vetting afterwards.

And yeah, while it's still getting estab- I im- I imagine in a fully realized library socialist future, obviously if, like, everything that people need is encompassed under a library system, you wouldn't be banning people from accessing it if they're abusing the system in some way, but there would be ways of community outreach and... If someone's constantly, like, breaking items or... You know, there'd be, you know, you'd want to know why that's happening, what can we do as a community to stop it. Like, what help do you need? Can these things be easily repaired? Is it, is it happening because, you know, you have particular needs that the items only kind of meet and you're using them sort of in the wrong way but because it's the only thing you have available? Like, what's the reason this is happening? Uh, that would be a sort of, like, ideal, in a library socialist future, way of dealing with breaches of good community use of these resources. Um, there could be graduated sanctions in that situation too but obviously there wouldn't be, like, a cutting people off thing, but I think in terms of smaller scale things in the current society, we don't necessarily have the resources to do that for every single person who might breach the etiquette or the rules of the library, so there is a difference there between an ideal end goal and, like, a current society thing.

Yeah, and I think in terms of the ideal end goal, I trust the people of the future to be able to... These are surmountable problems and it'll take experimentation and thought and it will take more people than just us to figure out how all these things are structured, how do you make sure that people don't abuse the system while also ensuring that they have an inalienable right to the irreducible minimum and so on, but I have total confidence that these are surmountable.

Transitionary concepts number four, utopian policy from below.

Our political project is rooted in democratic counter power, starting with satellite research groups, building into helper groups, and building into a confederation of helpers. Uh, we don't seek public office or power, but we do consider policy debates and the reforms and legislation of states to be a site of utopian contestation, and a place to develop our shared political imagination.

In satellite research groups, we should be continually developing interesting novel and life enriching policies that increase the realm of freedom. We can push for these policies as part of a new common sense, our attempts at a counter hegemony.

Some examples of the types of policies which are utopian and enrich human freedom include decreased workweeks, increased paid holidays, paid sabbaticals for everyone would be a great one.

Municipal libraries of things.

Programs that cut food waste by mandating nearly expired food wastage from restaurants and grocery stores are put into municipally funded community kitchen programs.

Programs that reduce the amount of useful commodities being sent to the dump by allowing community members to have useful items picked up and repaired or redistributed through community libraries.

And big reforms like legal constructs that allow for democratic and communal property in new ways, structures which make it undesirable to hoard property or money, legal constructs like decommodify some property, making it illegal to buy or sell communal goods.

There's some policies which are more libratory and fully library socialist, and there are also policies that we think are good but are less particular to our movement. We should never miss an opportunity to criticize inadequate policies or to celebrate places where policies have made life better for people.

As utopians, we draft more policies than will ever be implemented. The utopian policy space, it's a rich place to debate and refine our ideas, even in the context where many of these specific ideas are doomed to remain that, ideas, things to debate about. But even that serves a dual purpose. On one hand, it enriches the utopian imagination of society as a whole by providing new options, meaning in the future when crises happen there are solutions lying around, and on a personal level, it enriches our own utopian imaginations to work through these ideas together, to refine them, and to define together what might make a better future for everyone.

Um, so on the economics of library socialism, we got a few questions on this. "What are the economics of library socialism, and how do they play into transition?" Another question, "In your vision, will there be something that looks like a modified version of today's economic understanding, for example, Keynes, Varoufakis, et cetera? Or will it look more like a complex network of personal relationships and formal and informal systems of debt, i.e. Graeber?"

Yeah, so basic- like, the economics of library socialism, we kind of introed. We kind of talked about usufructian economics. Uh, just really basically what that means is that property rights in some systems can be thought of as broken into usus, fructus, and abusus, so basically the right to use something, the right to benefit from something, and the right to destroy something. And the idea of usufructian economics and the way we use it is talking about commonly held property where people have the right to use and enjoy things that are owned by everyone, in theory owned by society. They're granted usfructian property rights for something but not abusus rights. You don't fully own something. You can't destroy things, uh, that other people can use. They should be returned to the library and, and used again, uh, by someone else. So, the, the easy way to think about usufructian property relationships is the library.

Yeah, and so our current economic understanding, including the counter-economics of someone like Varoufakis, who I admire greatly, uh, and I just generally, like, in general endorse wonkish counter-economic radical stuff, people like Matt Bruenig and stuff, doing great work. And they're totally welcome within the library of tactics and analysis that library socialism is bringing forward. Um, but a lot of economics is based on the assumption of private property as something that is static and negotiated and finished, and we're bringing to the table... Uh, you know, this is one of the, the unique key aspects of library socialism is that we're saying we need to renegotiate that. And like Aaron was just saying, there are property relationships which are possible that aren't the current incarnation of private property that we inherited, uh, from ancient Rome that's rooted in slave law.

So, on the question of will it be more like the wonkish counter-economics of Varoufakis or will it be more like the communal counter-economics of someone like Graeber, I think the answer is, to certain degrees, both. Um, as we are trying to transition in a way that is responsible and appealing to people, and, like, our vision of revolution is not a, a thunderclap revolution, you know, like a moment of insurrection and uprising where there's chaos for some period and then it, it settles down. We want to have the process be something that is evolutionary, that people have a buy-in to, that people aren't afraid of, that, you know, we can be the serious kind of... Sort of inverting the way that Varoufakis uses it, like, be the adults in the room that people can trust that we have a serious plan for how to transition and they don't have to worry about their children being harmed, for example. So, I think part of doing that is having a serious counter-economic analysis of the current system, and I think that eroding property rights sort of necessarily requires that sort of thing.

In terms of how it plays into transition, I mean, partially it really fits neatly into what we've already talked about, which is, like, talking about starting to build these types of economic relations among people in community, in municipalities, in various ways and then attempting to grow that so that more and more people begin participating in these types of economic relations as opposed to the current capitalist abusus property right relations of our current society. There's a lot of different ways this can happen, but basically what you want to do in a transition from one type of economic outlook to another is to increase the amount of our relations that are structured this way, the way that we're talking about, usfructian way, as opposed to the current way.

Yeah, so on a society-wide level, we wanna be doing interventions in the economic system that are moving us towards more egalitarian, ecological, and democratic economic relations that are challenging and changing property rights. Um, but then also at the, a smaller level, uh, there's building up of common spaces, spaces that are sort of not economic in the relationships that are happening with them, like, uh, commons management, like Elinor Ostrom talks about, which is, you know, it's economics. It is economics in a sense, but it's not like the trading of things for money and stuff. It's kind of a social relation and not an economic relation in a way, but it's also kind of an economic relation.

I mean, yeah, all economic relations are a type of social relation in a way. I think economics, like, in its, uh, best form is, like, kind of the study of how we distribute and generate the things that people need to people who need them to sort of maximize that, like how do we get people the things that they need? Uh, and the study of how to do that, and yeah, I think Elinor Ostrom's Principles for Commons Management are, like, a really good starting place for thinking about how this actually works. Yeah, I think there's, like, a lot of economic principles that lend support to the type of society and the type of transition we're talking about. Like, we've talked about before the idea of a group of people cooking one large pot of soup has an economic benefit of, uh, what's that scale? What's the...

Economy of scale they call it.

It's a, it's an economy of scale benefit to make one large pot of soup for a large group of people versus everybody making their own pot of soup because there's a benefit to saving on labor costs there. Like, you just have one person or two people making soup for 32 people rather than 32 people all individually making soup for themselves and spending the time to do that. There's an economy of scale benefit there. Um-

Yeah, it takes less labor hours and probably... And w- wouldn't use less resources, have less waste, and so on. So there's an economic benefit there, and the same goes for library lending in general. It's like you're getting more value out of the sort of cost, the environmental cost...... of a product by sharing it. So instead of producing a book for everyone in the community, you're producing one book that people take turns with, or a handful of books that everyone takes turns with. And as a result, you're getting more value for less input. That's an economic calculation that library socialism has a big advantage. And both of those advantages can be used in the process of helping people, like we talked about before with this type of outreach strategy of doing things for the community, is that one of the advantages that library socialism has is that we genuinely have a sort of economic force on our side, which is that communal relationships, sharing relationships are economically cheaper than itemized relationships.

Yeah, there's also the idea of marginal utility, which is basically the idea that, uh, w- the value of a dollar is different depending on how much you need it. If you're a billionaire, you need a dollar a lot less than somebody who's living paycheck to paycheck. The value of money or resources is different depending on how much you have. And so hoarding wealth, individuals having tons of hoarded wealth decreases the value of the things that they're hoarding because they aren't being used by people. They're not... if economics is a study of how to get things people need to people, as a billionaire, you don't need most of the things you have. You're just preventing people who do need them from accessing them, thus, like, decreasing value overall in society. So redistributing wealth in general is a proposition that increases value in society because those resources can be put to use for the people who actually need them, increasing the sort of, like, value you get out of the stuff.

Yeah, in the typical application of marginal utility, the question I think was like, "Why does someone who has 100 cows, uh, willing to sell a cow for cheaper than for someone who has only one cow?" Or something like that in the pattern grin world stuff.

Right.

And we take that same logic and apply it to money. Like, $1000 to someone who's homeless is life-changing. $1000 to Jeff Bezos is nothing. It's a flick in the nuts to him. Well, it's better...

(laughs)

... than a flick in the nuts, but not much better. Um...

If... Maybe taking $1000 you could... Anyway, who cares? (laughs)

(laughs)

So moving on to another question: What is the strategic benefit to being a library socialist, uh, rather than an anarchist or a Marxist, et cetera? Do we really need more ways to split people up? Uh, so I think there is strategic benefit to using the label of library socialism and to the idea sets that library socialism kind of brings to the radical politics table in general. Uh, but I also wanted to say that I don't think having different labels necessarily means that people have to be split up. I think it's a tendency people have when dealing with labels to be like, "Oh, I'm an anarchist and not a Marxist," or that anarchism and Marxism have to be inherently opposed. But there's also people, and I would count myself among them, who think that both anarchism and Marxism have useful stuff in them in some sense. I consider myself both an anarchist and a Marxist and a library socialist. I think you can be all three. I think the problem of people, like, splitting themselves up by labels and opposing themselves to other people is more of a problem with how people deal with labels and factionalism than it is that creating another label is gonna multiply this problem, that we just have too many labels, and if we pared it down just to the most essential labels, uh, and there would only be, like, three factions or something, and...

If only we had just realized that one of these labels was right about their enemies being bad and right about themselves being good and all the rest of them are wrong about those things-

Yeah.

... and everyone joined that one label, we'd have enough people to finally pull something off. I don't really think that's how it works. And yeah, we have these tendencies, there's, like, these social tendencies that we have to, like, turn our own side into angels, downplay the things that are associated with our own ideas that are negative, and play up the things that we find not... Like, just look on Twitter for ten minutes with the f- types of quote unquote debates, which I think actually fall far below what I'd consider a real debate, where just people are just ripping on each other and insulting each other in these broad groups and stuff. I don't really want to add library socialism to that dynamic and be like, "Oh, yeah, start ripping on everyone from the library socialist perspective instead. That's really gonna make everything work."

(laughs)

Library socialism, with our metaphor of the library, you know, this group of things that's bigger than the sum of its parts, that can also be applied to the left in some sense. Like, I know Marxists who I admire the action and analysis of greatly. I know anarchists who I admire the action and analysis of greatly. My tendency in terms of identification is more like social ecology than either of those. But there's influence all around in these spheres. Like, the- th- these- these factional groups on the left, I really do consider them part of a single continuum in some ways that people don't really act like that's the case when they're playing, like, kind of the partisan games and they have their partisan armor on and they're...

Yeah, when it's, like, read theory and they mean, like, read a specific kind of theory so that you identify with a specific label and a specific set of answers to the questions that the left asks. I don- yeah, I don't wanna turn library socialism into that. I would rather library socialism take an approach of there's a whole library of different ideologies and tactics on the left, from Marxism to anarchism to libertarian municipalism to, you know, get as detailed as you want, council communist, democratic socialism. We have this library of labels and idea sets with things associated with them that all have beneficial kernels to them. And to me, the library socialism position is yes and to the parts of those that are beneficial to the given analysis of a particular time and place.

On the subject of the strategic benefit, which I actually think there really is one, with Library Socialism as a title, it's pretty approachable, I think. If you-

Yeah, I think there's a benefit of just people get it immediately, like, "Oh, yeah, libraries."

Yeah. And you could call it like a library soci... Like, if you wanted to depoliticize it further you could say like, you know, the movement for a library society and even cut out the socialism stuff. But I think socialism is associated right now probably most strongly in public imagination with democratic socialism and Bernie Sanders. Whether, um, and I'm sorry to people listening who might prefer that's not the case, but I think that is the case. So Library Socialism as this kind of thing that's like friendly and approachable, and pushes further than democratic socialism in its radicalism, but has that kind of association of, "This is friendly. This is something you can talk to your neighbor about. This is something you can talk to your mom about. It's... There's no bloodthirst to it." If that's not the associations people have. And like, yeah, Marxism and anarchism, and again, I'm sorry if this isn't what people prefer to be the case, but like go and talk to people at the mall, or go and talk to people on the street corner about Marxism and anarchism, you're gonna get some pretty familiar and predictable responses about, you know, failures and brutality within the Soviet Union, the- the-

Dangerous anarchists on the streets.

Yeah, chaotic bomb throwing anarchists associated-

Yeah.

... and whether you think that's fair or not, or whether you prefer that to be the case or not, let's just be real. Like, we're gonna do all that work to re-litigate all these enormous historical disputes before we get started on addressing the climate crisis that's already here?

Yeah, having the association be rather than with the Soviet Union or bomb throwing anarchists on the streets, but instead the library, one of the public institutions that has like the highest approval rating of all public institutions. Uh-

Yeah, it's basically the only public institution that hasn't suffered in public opinion over the last couple decades.

I think associating radical politics with that is a really smart move just from a public relations perspective. Uh, but it's also just like really, really honest. It's not like, "Oh, let's just take the cloud of libraries because people love libraries." It's like actually foundational to what we think the path forward is to a better society, and the way that a better society would look is to expand those library relations. So it's like both gets really deeply to the core of what the actual political argument is, and is associated with something that people really like for good reason, because it's a great institution in general. Like, libraries, public libraries could be better in various ways, but like, yeah, they're pretty great.

Yeah, and I think in order to have a successful political movement you need to have a strong brand identity that's associated with the things that you want it to be associated with. And I think there's an opportunity to build up Library Socialism's association in people's minds as something that's positive, friendly, that proposes a serious transition to deal with things that everyone is worried about in our society, that people know the way that things are currently going cannot stand without social and environmental disaster. That's a fact that people know in every community. And being able to engage on that issue with a positive connotation, a nice thing, that proposes a transition that people can see themselves being a part of, that they're not afraid of, that they know takes the crisis seriously and ideally is actively helping them in their life by the time this is happening, I think that really is how you create a social revolution. And when I say social revolution, I mean a non-violent revolution of conscience that happens around the world where people participate in the transformation of our institutions for the purposes of democracy, ecology, egalitarianism, and creating a free library society. I think that's possible. I understand that there'll be challenges along the way, but I think it is damn worth pursuing. It's because, like I said, everyone knows we're in crisis. Everyone knows there's a threat to them and their children, but they don't know who the good guy is. And for good reason. It's a very confusing time, and we can build that association and be that good guy with libraries.

Transitionary concept number five, revolution of conscience.

There are a huge number of people who recognize that our world is in a serious multifaceted crisis with entwined ecological, economic, political, and social crises that require us to change course as a civilization. But most people don't have an idea of how that transition would happen, and are sometimes afraid that attempting a transition could end up being harmful to them and their communities.

We propose a path to societal transformation that's maximally ethical, and which gives people a maximum chance at sincere buy-in. So our Counter-Hegemony and New Common Sense has a vision of a future worth living in, a world which has room for everyone, where everyone has a better life. Our politics are motivated by this deep sense of respect for everyone.

Transition does not need to be defined by harsh conflict, instability or danger. We can aim sincerely for a relatively smooth, iterative, evolutionary process that has the shortest most direct and most peaceful path towards world transformation. This means utilizing the power of existing institutions when appropriate, and building counter power outside of those institutions when appropriate.

We're aiming to build this consensus so powerfully that the institutional world will be forced to transform. We can get there by persuasion, collaboration, good ideas, eventually tectonic shifts in our politics built on the base of strong democratic and participatory organizing outside of institutions. As our work shifts humanities collective conscience, we will inevitably have sympathizers within institutions without any particular need for entryism or electoralism. At the same time, we intend to fully utilize all of the opportunities for social transformation, including the power of those institutions by the power of influence, democratic organizing, and appeals to conscience. We hold that a revolution of conscience is possible, desirable, and the primary means in which this social transformation can happen. A democratic and ecological society is a requirement to survive the near future.

All right, the next transition-related question: What caused you to believe that people are ready for library socialism rather than despairing and deciding that we just need a temporary authoritarian government to take over until the proletariat really wakes up? And, whew, it's a- it's a doozy of a question. (laughs) It's, uh ... There's a lot there.

Yeah. So this project of transforming society into an ecological and democratic society is fundamentally about respecting people, creating a world that has room for everyone. Uh, our politics are motivated by this deep sense of respect for everyone. So, there's no amount of despair that will make me endorse a strategy that treats the vast majority of people with disrespect, which this suggestion, in my opinion, does. It's about decency, humility, and respect for humanity in people. So I, I don't think that the idea of an imposed temporary authoritarian government would even work. I don't think it's plausible that such an arrangement would ever be temporary. And I think that attempting that process from the position that we're at instead of working through steps that we've spoken about today is something that would actually actively work against the process of waking people up, as we say. Like, it could actively generate resistance to our good ideas that people would support. So, I think in order to treat the question of social revolution seriously and with due respect, humility, and conscience, we should try to do things in a good way. This proposal of, like, an authoritarian imposition, it's sometimes treated as an easy solution to problems we face, but it's not. It's n- it's not even a solution at all. It wouldn't work. And it's more complicated to try to do that than to try to do things in a good way, respecting everyone, working together towards a world that respects everyone, has space for everyone, values every voice. So I reject some of the premises of the question here. (laughs)

Yeah, I think even the idea at the beginning of the question of, like, uh, "What caused you to believe that people are ready for library socialism?" is like ... It's, it's a way that a lot of people think about social transformation that I think is wrong, the idea that, like, the public is either ready or not ready for particular changes. To some extent, I think people are ready for whatever works, and whatever is convenient, and whatever is useful, whatever other, other people around them are doing. Uh, like, do you think people are ready for someone to knock on their door and say, "Hey, m- maybe let's start a tool library in our neighborhood"? Like, I feel like anybody could be ready for that. Or, maybe specific individuals would be like, "No, I hate that idea," and they're not, quote-unquote, "ready" for it, or they just don't want to do it, or they're not interested in it. I think that social change happens when inflection points and crisises come about, and there's ideas laying around that end up being materially useful to people. Uh, so if there's library socialist movements that exist that are providing benefit to people, people are ready to accept benefit pretty much wherever you're willing to offer it to people. So, like, the idea that the public isn't ready, but needs to be made ready, or that ... I just think it's the wrong way to go about it, and that the right way to go about it is through activism that provides people with things that are useful to them and offers them ideas and ways to think about how society can be organized that are beneficial and in line with what we suggest. For the most part, I don't think we need to worry about whether people are ready or not. We need to worry about how we can organize in such a way that brings usufructy and property relations to more people, uh, while promoting these ideas.

Yeah, and if, if we accept the premise of, like, the readiness thing, like, the, the, the steel man that I'd be is like, "Do people support the transition to an ecological and democratic society mediated by libraries right now?" Well, c- we don't really have any polling information, but I'd guess that it's a minority currently that supports that, probably by a wide margin because it's a, a unique idea in some ways.

If you ask people only who know that idea and understand it, it would probably be a pretty high percent-

Yeah, that's true. No, and I think the, the ... Uh, our job in politics is to convince people of the right things, to engage with people about the world that we want to create, to hear them, too. To not just broadcast to them and expect them to just receive it, but to hear what they're saying and have dialogue with them and bring them on board with us. And we don't need to convince 100% of people to pull off literally, like, a world historic, worlds, uh, revolution of conscience towards library socialism. You just need to convince a big chunk of people.

Uh, but ... And a lot of people don't need to be convinced. Like, I just know people who, like, don't care that much about politi- ... And if I started, like, explaining to them the big ideas of library socialism and property and, like, how sharing things makes it, they don't give a fuck. But if I told them, "Hey, there's this community organization where you can take out this thing so you don't have to buy it, and that's useful to you," then they're all down. They're like, "Oh, that's great. That's ..." Like, some people I know I've talked to about radical politics are like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever." Like, "It's just ideas or whatever." Like, "What are people actually doing?" Uh, so, like, there's a mixture of things, but it's like people don't, yeah, need to necessarily even support a transition to this ideologically in order for them to support organizations that are, like, helping people, and ...

If you tell this random person, "Well, I've got this great idea, these abstract ideas, and we're sort of thinking that we're going to impose it by force on the population 'cause we don't-"

(laughs) Just until they're ready.

Just until they're read- Do you think your friend who wants to use the lending library is going to be like, "Oh, great. I trust you guys."

(laughs)

"Well, nice to meet you."

Yeah, or they'll be like, "Well, maybe I'll just buy my own drill then."

(laughs)

(laughs)

Right. Yeah. Okay. So ... (laughs)

(laughs)

Um, yeah, there's so much more to say here and on other things, uh, but we're, we are out of time. We went over time. We've got more questions that we wanted to tackle, um, so we're gonna do a part two. Uh-

Yeah, specifically a lot along these lines of authoritarian transitions, and means and ends, and, like-

We want to talk about elections and insurrections. These are questions that we've gotten. And these are all ... The, the-... the, the, yeah, there's gonna be lots of good stuff next bonus episode, so stay tuned next month.

Yeah, we're gonna do transition Library Socialism part two, more, more Q&A on this topic 'cause there's actually, yeah, a lot, a lot to get into.

And if you're interested, you're like, "Huh, this ideas of internet research community sounds pretty cool to me," well, I've got great news, uh, which is that, uh, we have set up a BBS forum, which is currently, it's open to the public, but we're not promoting it yet. So we're just slowly bringing in spheres of people, so you'll see there's some activity there when you sign up, librarysocialism.com. It's a forum that includes discussions on library socialism, current events. There's a wiki. The vision here is that we're gonna try out some of these ideas around research collectives on the internet and give people some experience with it, and basically try it out. It's an experiment, and you're invited to join us. If you're interested in continuing these discussions or you have questions that you'd like us to con- consider in future things, you can put it in the comments on Patreon or join us at librarysocialism.com. We look forward to talking about more of this later, and, uh, I appreciate you taking the time and energy to listen in and think along with us, uh, whether you agree or disagree.

Yeah, thanks, uh, thanks for listening. Thank you for being part of our donor community. If, uh, unless this is some time in the future and we've released it outside of the paywall, then, um, thank you for considering being part of our donor community. But, you know, for the... yeah, we, we appreciate it.

So that's all, and, uh, hope you all have a wonderful, wonderful week, and that all your dreams come true, and that special someone that you have a crush on has a crush on you too. Wouldn't that be sweet? Talk to you soon. (laughs)

Bye.

Love, love, love

is wrong, she's wrong, they're wrong, so wrong, we're wr-

And we'll just pop that out, our fingers still touching on the stop button, and hey, that was great.

Yeah, really good.

That was, uh... I feel ready to go-

That might be my favorite episode.

... go start doing some of these things. Yeah, it might... they're all so good. All their episodes are so good. Like, it's definitely over a 9.5 out of 10, but they all are, so-

Oh, absolutely.

... I mean, is this at the top or the bottom?

Yeah, this is either my favorite episode, or it could also be my least favorite episode because they're all so good and so close to each other.

Well, hey, we don't have to lock in our ratings right now. We can think about it, let the episode settle in, and we, all we know is that it's somewhere on that favorite list, and it was amazing.

Hey, I'm just borrowing... I got these full samurai outfits. I got two, one that would probably fit you and one that would probably fit me, and I've also been lent some jet skis. So I was thinking we could dress up in traditional samurai wear and then go jet skiing. What do you think?

Yes. I would love to.