156 American Worker pamphlet

Justin:
[0:26] I'm justin i'm academic librarian and my pronouns are he and they

Jay:
[0:29] i'm jay i'm a cataloging librarian and my pronouns are he him

Justin:
[0:33] and we have a guest.

Justin:
[0:35] Would you like to introduce yourself

Kevin:
[0:36] sure my name is kevin van meter i am an author a labor educator and union organizer and i use he and him.

Justin:
[0:45] Welcome back let me get louder welcome.

Justin:
[0:48] Back um we had you on not too long ago to talk about Blue Bottle Independent Union. And from what I understand, you wanted to.

Justin:
[1:00] Inquiry in general today. So yeah, how did you want to transition from that episode to this one?

Kevin:
[1:05] That's great. Thank you for the prompt. So the last episode I was on with Alex Pine from the Blue Bottle Independent Union and Anastasia Wilson, who's a colleague and economist. And that was episode 153. We were speaking, of course, about the work and organizing that Blue Bottle has done in Boston, and then just recently also in the Bay Area. They're currently negotiating their first contract with Nestle. I'm sure it's going similar directions that we see the Starbucks workers who are already doing practice pickets and signing strike pledges and taking action against these multinational corporations that are really just unwilling to engage in decent and substantive conversations about wages, hours and working conditions. So I wanted to make sure to kind of highlight that, because since last time we were on, there's actually quite a bit of organizing taking place in the cafe sector. I believe we'll be seeing more action from Blue Bottle, but also from the World Workers United and other cafe folks around the country. Since publishing our class composition in the cafe sector article, it was actually split into two, so a two-part article, and appearing on your podcast and others, we've heard from cafe workers that are organizing in the UK and elsewhere.

Kevin:
[2:22] So part and parcel of doing the work that we do in the inquiry that we did in the cafe sector was it was an area in the United States and internationally where the class is moving. It's taking action. You're seeing forms of self-organization and self-expression take more organized forms, sometimes in unions, sometimes strike action, petitions.

Kevin:
[2:43] Button-up campaigns, all kinds of working class self-activity and organizing is taking place in the sector. And part of the reason we do the inquiry is actually just circulate those struggles, circulate those stories and allow workers to see themselves as part of a struggle that's larger than just them and their boss or them and their co-workers and their shop or bargaining unit and see themselves and their common cause with other folks in the service century. So really, as a follow up, this kind of work continues, right? We've conducted seven interviews with cafe worker organizers from Starbucks Workers United, Pete's Coffee, which is an IWW campaign out of the West Coast, Blue Bottle, of course, a couple other small coffee chains that are either independent unions and some represented by Unite Here or UFCW, and others. And we'll be circulating and publishing those hopefully by the end of the year, because not only do we want to talk about the conditions of work and the conditions of cafe workers.

Kevin:
[3:41] Especially as they're starting to take major industrial action and organize, but we also want to circulate those detailed accounts of organizing because it also de-isolates folks and allows them to see themselves as part of a larger struggle. So I appreciate the prompt because I wanted to make sure, one, to really highlight the action and activities that have developed since our last conversation, but also note that the method of workers' inquiry is not just clearly for cafe sectors, but for libraries, for grocery store workers and others. And we've been speaking now with grocery workers about launching an inquiry into that sector, since clearly a lot of organizing has taken place there as well since the pandemic and even recent.

Justin:
[4:19] Yeah, and I think a lot of what we're going to talk about today is a publication called American Worker.

Justin:
[5:06] Of that. So the American worker is doing more of that narrative style. I think that's quite interesting.

Kevin:
[5:11] It certainly is. And I think there's actually quite a bit of thought about why they chose the format they did for the American worker. So let me take a few steps back. Marx published A Worker's Inquiry in a French socialist journal in 1880. He had a short preface.

Kevin:
[5:28] He actually solicited responses by saying, please send these into the appropriate journal, and then we will summarize them and serialize them and then publish them as a book. And then in addition to the preface, of course, he has 101 questions, many of which still are relevant today. So for instance, his first few questions are question one, what is your trade, right? Clearly a relevant question. Does the shop in which you work belong to a capitalist or limited company? State the names of the capitalist owners and directors of the company, right? These are just graphic things that folks would be asking. Who actually owns the company? Well, I work for Blue Bottle. Is it owned by Blue Bottle? How does Blue Bottle operate? Is it part of this international conglomerate? And Nestle, who are actually the owners who own the stock and various other elements of these companies, right? Like union organizers are always engaged in strategic corporate research, because very often you might encounter a nonprofit, a for-profit corporation.

Kevin:
[6:24] A state agency, and you really want to understand how those power relationships work and where those decisions are. Sometimes they're not made at the Blue Bottle Cafe. Sometimes they are made at Nestle Headquarters, right? In addition to that, State, and this is number three, state the number of persons employed, state their age and sex, right? And then he continues on this demographic section. And then he'll continue in section two with question 30, state the number of hours you work daily and the number of working days during the week, right? How many hours are we engaged in work? And in addition to Marxist questions, we'd want to bring a autonomous or Marxist feminist analysis in. Not only how many hours are we working for wage work, but how much on wage work in addition to that is being performed by different kinds of populations that are racialized and gendered, of course, in the course of a work week. Is there actually, in fact, any time of which we are not engaged in that kind of work? And at a later question is an excellent workers inquiry done on libraries that actually gets specifically to this question of wage work in these spaces. And then just I'll give a few more highlights here in section three in question 46.

Kevin:
[7:35] He says, what agreements have you with your employer? Are you engaged by the day, week, month? Right. What is your pay period? Do you have a contract? Is it a work contract? Do you have a job description? Does the union contract affect your wages, hours and working conditions? What does that look like? Right. So he asked these series of questions in 1880 in order to really understand what we call the working class perspective. Now, of course, his major work is that of Capital, and in Volume 1, what he's doing, in fact, is providing an abstract ideal of how capitalism functions, right?

Kevin:
[8:11] Particular series of chapters, he'll look at relative surplus value, how much technology is being used and the relationship between technology and the means of production and labor powers exploitation and the process of producing. Then he'll look at absolute surplus value, which is how long the workday is. And then he'll actually hold both those things constant and then look at how intense work is, what that intensity of work looks like as well, which I think is a really underutilized category, Marx's capital. But that's an abstract ideal of how capitalism operates, right? That's from capitalism's perspective in a lot of ways. We could call that a reading from capitalism's perspective of how capitalism operates, right? Or should operate or could operate in Marx's analysis. Now, we can invert that perspective and say, what is the experience of workers in the course of the workday, right? What are the relationships that develop?

Kevin:
[9:02] How does the production process work? What does your workday look like? How does Does it function? How many hours are you working? Who else works there? Who owns this? These are all vital questions. And it's actually, in fact, a different set of questions than you would ask about what is capitalism and how does it operate? How does it function? How does it exploit our labor power and destroy the environment and various other things, which is fundamentally different than asking the question of how workers experience? Because we can talk about the abstract nature of capitalism or the abstract ideal that he writes about in Capital Volume 1. And that gets us ever so far. But actually, especially when we're talking about organizing.

Kevin:
[9:42] Amplifying forms of informal and formal organizing the workplace, amplifying and circulating struggles and informal practices of time theft or insubordination, all those things can only be understood from the perspective of the workers themselves. Right. Interesting enough, when that first appears in English, and this is going to connect to the larger story of the American worker, and I hope in an interesting way, in 1938.

Kevin:
[10:09] The New International, which was a Trotskyist journal, American Trotskyist paper, December of 1938, published a translation of Marx's A Worker's Inquiry. And they said in their introduction to this text, as it's appearing for the first time in English, and certainly in the United States, to my knowledge, we see from this series of questions how Marx's decisive point of reference was not a set of abstract category, but a concrete incidence in the daily lives of workers. Exploitation, surplus value, rate of profit, are here traced to the living source, right? The actual experiences of workers themselves. And then he goes on on another point in his third point here, this anonymous author who summarized Marx's text for the American audience says, the indirect effect of the question indicates that Marx meant when he said that the emancipation of the workers must come from the workers themselves. And hence, if the emancipation of the working class is going to come from the workings itself. Part and parcel of that is developing consciousness and understanding the production process of which we are fighting in our everyday lives and organizing against when we're taking industrial action or wildcats or organizing. So this appears in 1938. Liam, I'll stop there and before transitioning off to the American worker and how this relates to the American worker, see if there's another kind of question or prompt or anything you wanted to kind of share and reflection back about Marx's question.

Jay:
[11:35] At least for the, I can already see how this is like for library workers or people who work in libraries who may not even be doing like, quote unquote, like library and ship related work. There's all sorts of different types of workers in a library, right? But this sort of like, I feel like so many librarians had this idea of like, oh, well, if I work at a public library, then it's like, it's a city thing or a county thing or something. But I mean, I didn't know until like a month ago that the New York Public Library and the Queens Public Library and the Brooklyn Public Library, that whole system, that's a nonprofit. They have a CEO. They are not a city organization. They get city funding, but they're a nonprofit technically with a CEO. And like, that's weird for a library.

Jay:
[12:24] I feel. And so like, how does that complicate like any kind of work that they're doing? The fact that they have a CEO instead of being quote unquote, like a government body, right? Or how does this work at academic libraries? Are you public or are you like a state school or are you private or a state school? Like, like there's not just like a type of library. There's a lot of different types of, of libraries and then how they get their funding and who you report to and what that looks like i can already see how like this might make people realize things about where they work that they didn't know before so yeah i was also just thinking like there's the the joke of well mark's never accounted for xyz and then someone will pull some obscure quote where mark's you know exactly that he and i feel like this sort of style of workers inquiry capital is like fixed right like you can't go back and he can't go back and rewrite capital he's dead like capital is this theoretical thing but workers inquiry allows it to rewrite itself kind of it allows it to stay fresh and modern and to like adapt and change and do like synthesis as history and time and capitalism change which is very cool,

Justin:
[13:38] And I think it's a good mechanism because the perennial.

Justin:
[13:44] How do we get the workers to self-organize and to become self-conscious and to become educated because you spend all day working really hard and then you don't have the time to do intellectual.

Justin:
[14:26] You know, that's not a story I see on TV, right? That's not what I see in the chef movie, right?

Kevin:
[14:32] And that is a moment of class consciousness and the building of class consciousness. Interesting enough, the feminist consciousness raising groups that emerged in the 60s and 70s, where, you know, women would meet around a circle and share the stories of their lives and discover that very often their relationships with the husbands felt subservient, that they were intellectual, political, civic, cultural.

Kevin:
[14:56] Artistic, and other experiences that they wanted to explore, and very often, because of the care for children, care for elders, of course, without a wage, limited that experience. They discovered that they preferred to be with women and not with men, right? All kinds of things. And actually, in fact, what the feminist consciousness raising groups were doing is de-isolating women to allow them to see that common experience. Also, through that process, common solutions and organizing solutions are addressed. And actually, in fact, those feminist consciousness raising groups pull from the Not just, you know, this, but a huge tradition of this kind of worker education that included and important for the story of the American worker and the traditions that it comes out of many of the members. And I suspect the anonymous author of or somewhat in this author of the first section of the pamphlet that looks at factory work in a General Motors plant in Linden, New Jersey, came out of the Young People's Socialists. What the Young People Socialist League was doing with its various circles, and I know there was one in Newark, near the plant, those in Brooklyn, that Marty Gleyberman, who is a labor organizer and educator.

Kevin:
[16:03] Spent most of his life in Detroit and is very important in the fact that he republished his pamphlet in 1972 and has influenced generations of labor organizers and those involved in class struggle here in the States. So I believe I know Gleyberman is part of the Young People's Social League. I suspect Anonymous author was, too. And we'll get to back to some of that and those details and those stories in a moment. But Young People's Socialist League, as well as also the workers education movement, which was 70 labor colleges around the United States, were intimately involved in developing what Grace Lee Boggs would call the natural and acquired powers of workers. They train folks in debate. They do study groups together. They reflect on their own experiences. Right. They were engaged in all kinds of processes of self-education that in a lot of ways dwarf what is taking place even in study groups or in DSA chapters.

Kevin:
[16:55] Wobbly general membership branches, of course, the formal labor movement or even in left labor that they saw that a socialist society was on the horizon and that it would require workers to develop their full capacities in order to bring that society into peace, right? And this pamphlet, the American Worker Pamphlet in 1947, the kind of work that's being done in 1938 when Marx's Workers Acquire appears in this American Trotskyist publication, is part of a large constellation of socialists, secular Jewish.

Kevin:
[17:29] Other ethnic group organizations, formals of mutual aid. But at the center of it was a really important educational and consciousness-building process, right? I just want to turn back to something that Jay had commented upon in regards to library work. I had referenced to both of you previously a really interesting inquiry and proposal for further inquiry into library work. It's written by Anna Culbertson. It's called Our Labor, Our Terms, Workers' Inquiry in Library. And they begin in their introduction with the varied experience of library workers during the COVID-19 pandemic brought into relief the disconnect between how we perceive the conditions and outcomes of our life and the actual power we do. Or do not have over them. The disarray of our workplaces, the knee-jerk opening, closing of buildings, and the confusion of rapid policy changes led many of us to integrate the very essence and value of our work, as well as where, how, why, and for whom it's performed. And they continue. Their wonder when work ended and non-work began, and whenever it did at all. Is there actually a division in work? And part of the reason I point this out is that I think as this inquiry continues to bring up a lot of the issues you've addressed on the podcast we talked about today and also in a previous episode.

Kevin:
[18:47] But what is really key here is it allows library workers to understand other forms of work that are taking place, how different it is to work at a public or private or public library, or in this author's instance, in a academic library, they will continue to go on and look at that. And an example from my own organizing experience is I was a healthcare worker organizer during the pandemic, mostly for low-income healthcare workers in rural Oregon. And there were over 120 different job classifications and jobs, right? Did those in food service understand what certified nursing assistants did? Did certified nursing assistants understand what different kinds of techs did? I certainly did. And I came out of higher education and higher education organizing somewhat was thrown into the deep end and trying to figure out all these different kinds of work and jobs that are being done by healthcare workers in the midst of a pandemic under that immense stress.

Kevin:
[19:41] And actually, in fact, part of the organizing and unionization process, and we were in the.

Kevin:
[19:47] During most of my years doing that work, define common cause. So for instance, the lack of childcare or lack of PPE is something that's spread across these different kinds. But it's actually interesting for workers then to understand very different forms of work that are taking place on their floor, passing them every day in the hallway, or even in the same hospital rooms with their patients. Those different kind of job classifications because, as both of you have been previously. We're so engaged in the work process, it's so stressful and overwhelming at times. And then we're exhausted at the end of the day that we don't have time to have these kind of refusations, much less learn a very, very different kind of work and job that's taking place in our own workplace. But those kind of things are vitally important if we are going to understand and address inequalities in the works, right? Who does different kinds of work and why, both historically and today? A hospital is a hierarchy. It is a racial and gender hierarchy. The administrators, the doctors are more often than not upper class, middle class and come from that background more often than not, especially in rural Oregon white. And as you go down the pyramid, you see those with nursing degrees, very often white and women. And then, of course, those with, you know, two weeks or two years of education in order to get their certifications more often than not poor white folks of color, immigrant folks and others. Right. So understanding how that hierarchy actually operates and describing that is vitally important to develop solidarity and understanding between.

Kevin:
[21:17] Say, the nurses and other health care workers or even the doctors who are organizing on other health. We see that in higher education, too, where it is a hierarchy, a class and gender and race hierarchy, even with some real challenges brought to bear on higher education, which is important. But professors, how often are they in solidarity with the low-wage healthcare workers that actually keep those things running? Or with academic librarian workers, who we need for our interlibrary loans to arrive, for our research to get posted, for all kinds of things. And part and parcel of what I think is really vital about workers' inquiry is, in our cafe example... The separate spheres of front of house and back of house, if you're not doing that work and you're engaged in that eight hours a day and you don't understand that, it makes actually organizing class consciousness development. So I'll kick it back to you all.

Justin:
[22:06] Yeah. I was watching your appearance on one of the other podcasts that you sent me.

Justin:
[22:25] Pamphlet and like how it came to be, like pitch it to them of why they should go read it.

Kevin:
[22:30] My elevator pitch. It's funny, I've been so obsessed with this pamphlet for years now and trying to uncover the quote-unquote anonymous author of the first section. I know the author of the second section as she's an important American revolutionary. But yeah, let me take your question on directly. Why should people read this pamphlet? So I'm sitting in the break rooms and cafeteria in the midst of the pandemic as a union organizer. And obviously there are shifts and there are times where people take their lunch, right? And that means there would be periods of time where I'm sitting there and just waiting for members, for workers to come up and have conversations with me about the campaign that we're running, the bargaining platform that we're developing, the issues they want to address in their next contract negotiation. And I'm sitting there and preparing and working on writing this book called Reading Struggles, which I'm still writing. We'll talk about it in a few minutes. And as part of that, I wanted to read this pamphlet, The American Worker. It was published in 1947 by anonymous autoworker running under the name of Paul Romano.

Kevin:
[23:37] And their first part and section is really a deep, in-depth reflection on life in the fact. And in this case, it's life in the General Motors auto plant in Linden, New Jersey. And what were the racial and gender division? Why were black workers getting the most dangerous and difficult jobs that were very often lower weight? Why were women being relegated to the upholstery division, right? How did production operate? What was the union system? Was there informal methods of informal work groups and organizing taking place outside, beyond, and even in defiance of the right. And as I'm reading this.

Kevin:
[24:17] Allowing me to think through the structures, the production processes, the divisions, and the issues that I just mentioned a few moments ago in the hospital where I was a staff member for a local, right? It really allowed me through this pamphlet from 1947 to think about how the production process was organized. And then of course, I reflected on the various jobs I've had over the years. I worked from 19, I am that old.

Kevin:
[24:43] I worked from 2008 to 2012 in a metal fabricator in Portland, Oregon, out on the dry dock, right? 10 hours a day, six days a week. And it allowed me to think through that process differently than I had experienced earlier. So in my opinion, since we are going to spend more time working than any other life activity, work is still the central problem. You will spend more time working between this moment, and the day that you die than any other life activity besides sleep? How often do we talk about how that work is structured and organized? How could it be counterplanned and organized better, right? So when I worked in this metal fabricator, we get plans from Intel where we're building a particular system table basically for them for their chip making processes and they'd say okay this is how you need to ship in a shipping and then i would take those plans and i and the other folks on the factory floor would go out to the shipping crate and go out to the table and be like this ain't gonna fit the way that some engineer in an office and intel thinks it's going we need to do that this way right and we could spend maybe say 10 hours loading this shipping container with the pedestal their way or do it our way which will be safer better easier and more practical in four ways. So we counterplanned the dictates that we're getting from the boss themselves, right? Or in this case, the client and imposed by the boss, by the supervisors and others.

Kevin:
[26:06] So it allowed me by reading this pamphlet to really think deeply about how the hospital I was a union staffer stationed at functioned. It allowed me to reflect back on how my own work functioned.

Kevin:
[26:19] And being that work is our dominant life activity, as long as we live in societies where the capitalist mode of product prevails to the opening line of Marx's capital there, then we should think we should talk about think about that and envision new ways of organizing that production or just simply not produce things like fast food or nuclear weapons or shitty media, right, or advertising. And the American worker allowed me to do that in a way that I was pretty shocked for a pamphlet produced in 97. So my pitch for those who are interested in these kind of topics, these kind of subjects, or been reflecting on their own work experience, is to turn to the original American Worker Pamphlet 7. Now, the second part of the pamphlet also is, I would say, a philosophical reflection on the first part. And I'm going to touch on that in a moment, but I want to mention just a couple of quick things. I wrote about both sections of this pamphlet, and then, of course, the life of the pamphlet, how it was produced and the like, in an article called Searching for the American Worker in New Politics. I published that in summer of 2023. It's certainly available online, and I know you all will link to it in the show notes.

Kevin:
[27:27] My elevator pitch for this particular article is, how can a pamphlet produced by an anonymous autoworker and a Chinese-American luminary, at the time an unknown intellectual who graduated with a degree in philosophy, but as a Chinese-American woman could not find a job in any American university, no one would have her, and started engaging in these various worker struggles, First with the movement march on Washington movement, early civil rights movements, and then, of course, with these various work. And that particular individual is Grace Lee Baugh.

Kevin:
[28:05] A vitally important figure in the last hundred years of American left and revolutionary politics. So take a peek at the article. And really, my argument for that is it will, I hope, help you reflect your own work experiences, but also tells a story of why a pamphlet produced in 1947 still resonated with me sitting in a hospital break room or cafeteria in the midst of the pandemic or why it reflected on the own experience of cafe workers, so much so that we produce this cafe workers inquiry. In the immediate aftermath of the publication of this pamphlet in the United States, it was translated and then serialized in France. So it was published in English in 1947 by a small group of dissident Trotskis here in the United States called the Johnson Forrest tendency. It's translated by the Socialism and Barbarism Group and then serialized in the first couple issues of their similar publication to the Johnson Forrest efforts here in France. And as a result of that serialized pamphlet, it gets into the hands of French who see their similar experience because auto work as cotton under slavery or IT and tech today, or even finance capital today is a dominant and central industry that affects very often all other production in undercapital. So.

Kevin:
[29:29] These American workers in the Linden, New Jersey plant, their experiences are reflected in the Ford, General Motors, and other plants in Detroit. They're reflected in the auto plants of France after it was trans. And then, of course, actually, those workers start asking their own questions and start reflecting on their own questions.

Kevin:
[29:47] And in 1954, it's translated into Italian in a similar fashion to the American auto plants where you had a great migration of African Americans from the south to the north. Very often, two take auto worker jobs and then work in the most dangerous elements of the plan. In Turin, Italy, in the north of Italy, in those auto plans, the racialized other of, quote-unquote, browner Italians or those with Mediterranean roots or Moorish roots in the southern part of the country were treated as a racial other as they migrated from the south to the north, right? The pamphlet is translated in 1954. It circulates throughout Italy, as well as also the material from socialism and barbarism influences a whole new generation of Italian militants who are trying to understand how do we understand work and capitalism and class struggle from the workers' perspective. And clearly, this is a lot of grist for that male. This is a story that is still relevant. This is a story that has circulated, influenced class struggle and workers way beyond the initial intent of probably about a thousand copies of this pamphlet that was produced, right? It's been translated into Greek. It's been translated into Italian twice.

Kevin:
[31:00] Recently again. It's been translated into French actually just this last year, even after the 1947 translation with a new preface. The fact that this auto worker and Chinese-American philosopher in 1947 wrote this pamphlet that's still reflecting on our experience today, I think is profound. Let me say one other thing about the other two pamphlets. Actually, in fact, the three pamphlets that come immediately after this one by the same group of associated people. And then I'll go back and speak a little bit more about Grace Lee Boggs and her section, which ties into my earlier comments about the translation of Marx's workers' inquiry. Almost immediately after the American worker, they published three other pamphlets. A woman's place already cuts out, and then an additional pamphlet looking at the experience of a black man in the South who then moves to the North and seeks employment, right? So we're seeing very much the emergence of an understanding of the Great Migration, of the shift from the experience of the South and experiencing the racism of the North, the development of early Black liberation and civil rights struggles. When A Woman's Place appears, it is the first time that, at least in this milieu and at least in this kind of conversational and inquiry guise, a pamphlet appears about housework from the woman's perspective, from the housewife's perspective already cuts out is also an interesting pamphlet it looks at truancy from the perspective and the experience of school from the perspective of a truant student right.

Kevin:
[32:30] In some way, looking at the emergence of the black liberation struggle, looking at the emergence of the feminist movement, looking at the emergence of a youth and student movement, and then, of course, understanding what workers think and do while at work in 1947 is really profound. In a lot of ways, these four pamphlets predict the next 75 years of social movement development. One, because the claim, and this claim comes from CLR James and his debates with Trotsky in 1939, is that the black liberation struggle is autonomous from the larger class struggle. The feminist, queer, student, youth, and other struggles are autonomous from other struggles, right? From the larger class struggle, from the party, from the union. Because there needs to be a process of self-discovery, of consciousness building, of consciousness raising, the development of a class, race, or gender consciousness in order to further the needs and desires of that particular population. It can't be dictated from the party, can't be dictated from the union, you can't learn it by reading Marx or philosophy. It needs to develop organics, and those struggles need to be directed by those who are most affected. These are arguments that have been taking place in the American left and arguably across the planet in Marxian revolutionary movements for over 100 years. And they're really starting to be articulated in these early years in these profound ways.

Jay:
[33:49] Yeah it reminds me of oh sorry go ahead kevin i was just gonna say it reminds me a lot of so they're like the the work of like the coma he river collective you know like black lesbian socialists right and are the ones who came up with identity politics and i know as like leftist and socialists we usually like it's what identity politics that's for that's some lib shit right but like actually like if you actually look if you fucking read what like identity politics is or look at a lot of other like black feminist thought and like black political economy it's not necessarily it's like because i feel like what you're saying is like people think like oh these struggles are separate because you like the people of this specific identity or race or gender etc like have to do this sort of self-reflection and focus on their own issues that doesn't mean they're still not relation to other things and this is something that's talked a lot about black political economy and black feminism. And that's like what identity politics is. It's not that it's not related to other things and that it's not also a class struggle. But if you don't actually focus on the people most marginalized, like if you don't focus on black women, for example, they will just be forgotten as well as any unique struggles that they have. I feel like people sometimes get this idea. It's like, oh, one or the other, you're only doing all of us together and it's all the working class and that includes everything. Or we're all spread off into our four corners of our own identities and that these things don't touch each other at all. I don't know. So, if that was coherent at all.

Kevin:
[35:18] Very much so. And I think also it is profound in rereading the Komachi River collective statement recently in the last few years was how a good portion of it addresses issues and socialism, right? Like that is the part of the thrust of the pamphlet. And of course, it's brilliant conclusion that when black queer women are free, all of us are free.

Jay:
[35:40] Yes.

Kevin:
[35:40] Is profound in the context of understanding all these other class and related struggles. And in a lot of ways, the American worker could also be blamed in some maybe small fashion for articulating an anti-union ultra-left position, right? So it's very critical of the unions for, I think, a lot of really good reasons. So it's published in 1947. In 1946, there's a massive strike wave across the auto sect. So we have to think that we're now converting back from the war production years to domestic production. The factories are being reorganized. The unions in some ways are becoming more bureaucratic. We'd see a few years later, five, six years later, what we call the Treaty of Detroit, which was a productivity deal by between the, you know, a peace treaty in ways between the unions and capital and the auto manufacturers, which said if you increase productivity, you'll get more wages, right? It's a quote-unquote productivity deal. That's already starting to be formulated in 1946 and 1947.

Kevin:
[36:41] Also, the union then becomes, because of the contract, because of the post-war error, because of this productivity deal, in order to keep the deal needs to discipline certain kinds of workers to make sure that they're not, you know, I presume I can curse.

Kevin:
[36:54] Boss makes a dime. I make a dime. That's why I shit on company time. In order to gain those moments back or to counter-plan on the shop floor or to engage in wildcat strikes or sabotage in order to slow production. All those things are vitally important. And then the union becomes, in some ways, a disciplinary apparatus in the self-activity of workers themselves and then a bureaucratic process of requiring a grievance rather than a group of workers on hearing that their co-worker has been fired for bullshit reasons. It's one thing to file a grievance, another thing to march on the boss and say, we're not leaving and not working until you hire them, right? One of them removes power from the shop floor and puts it through more legalistic channels. Another maintains the development of working class capacities and power. The American worker is criticizing, and I think in a really prophetic way as well. Interesting enough i was able to find some correspondence by this paul romano we know because of gracie boggs and others comments that his actual name was phil singer i believe he left the group and the orbit of these marxian organizations before the pamphlet came out but about the time the pamphlet's going to appear for the first time in 1947 he writes a letter to their bulletin that's circulating as a way of you know we have the internet now with it's good bad I got the guises that Johnson Forrest and he had this internal discussion bill to further conversations among.

Kevin:
[38:18] And Phil Singer is basically writing, criticizing this, I would say, intellectual who's suggesting we should throw the baby out with a bathwater that like we should actually take this ultra left position against the unions. And he's like, you don't work in a fucking auto factory, man. Like, yes, we should criticize and fight against the unions and their bureaucratic processes and the grievance process rather than the shop floor strategy. We should fight in our unions in order for racial or gender equality. He doesn't say that particularly on what being polemic there as well.

Kevin:
[38:50] Actually, in fact, the unions create a base of which we can then operate, right? It gives us a contract, gives us wages, hours, and work conditions, some say over our jobs. So it might be fine for you as an intellectual to throw out the union, but actually in the auto factory itself, we need. And I think that's an important point because there are ultra left elements in the pamphlet when read a particular way. And in a lot of ways, what's interesting about the American worker, is that it incorporates a number of different Marxian and political concepts. It also is innovative in a number of ways, right, as this first appearance of a form of proletarian literature. So unlike the class composition, the cafe sector that we just published, it didn't use a survey. It didn't then kind of summarize and look at that sector or that industry and workers' experiences in that in order to reflect that back to workers themselves and circulate those lessons and struggles and understanding in order to build a class struggle and class consciousness.

Kevin:
[39:50] Instead, it took kind of this first-person narrative approach. And I've asked myself, and I was starting to say this a few minutes ago, I've asked myself many times, why did they choose that? And I say that because cited in Grace Lee Boggs' part two are two really important pieces of Mark. The first is that she cites the 1938 translation of a worker's inquiry.

Kevin:
[40:11] Clearly, Grace read this. The group discussed it. Presumption is that Paul Romano and Marty Gleyberman, C.L.R. James, and others, as part of this group, discussed and looked at Mark's worker's inquiry. So there's really a different way of producing or developing knowledge. And then separate from that is the question of how do you present? So in a lot of ways, this new form of proletarian literature of a experience of work from the workers perspective of 1947 is is brilliant because after the war, you see the development of a popular culture of a quote unquote pop novelization, right? Detective novels and superhero comics and various other things. And by telling this kind of story in this way, rather than maybe a quasi sociological report or an analysis of the class composition or an analysis of the sector and the major corporations and players operating within it, by telling that first person narrative, it really allows the reader to see themselves in it. And my conclusion is they chose this form because we start to see the emergence of that kind of popular and working class culture in the United States. In addition, there's similarities between this and I have somewhere a stack.

Kevin:
[41:23] Endless stack, it seems, of zines written in the last 10, 20 years by substitutes, by those who worked on fishing boats, by cafe workers, by service industry workers, all kinds of workers. Because actually telling that first-person narrative work is an immensely powerful mechanism for sharing those kind of work stories, right? So Grace Lee Boggs read, and those involved in producing this pamphlet read, A Merker's Inquiry. And rather than, to Marx's prompt, providing a summary and report back, they actually decide to produce this first-in-person. Now, and I know this is one of the questions that both of you wanted to ask. Actually, in fact, C.L.R. James, the author of The Black Jacobins on the Haitian Revolution and many, many, many other vitally important political treaties, prompts this autoworker, Phil Singer, to keep a diary of his day-to-day experience. Now, Phil talks about that in his section of the pamphlet, and we know that C.L.R. Prompted him to do that because of Grace Lee Boggs' reflections in her later life. So he basically kept a diary of his day-to-day reflections in the auto plant, and that was the source material for producing this pamphlet. So rather than a survey, he used a diary. Raya Duaskawa, another member of the group, would call this a similar method, the full fountain pen. My friend Anastasia Wilson, my comrade Anastasia Wilson, and I are... Labor educators, economists, academics. And as a result, sometimes we have time and resources to actually put toward telling worker stories.

Kevin:
[42:49] Alex and other folks involved in cafe work and cafe worker organizing and Alex bargaining with Blue Bottle and organizing new cafes out in the Bay Area, right, or supporting that organizing at least, gave us so much to work from. So we have the time to take these stories and present it back to workers themselves. We have the resources. We We have access to translation software and Zoom and various other things. So we used a full Fountain Pen method where workers would share their experiences of organizing. And then we'd do the work as militant intellectuals to produce the surveys.

Kevin:
[43:24] Right, or produce those narratives and those stories, share them back with the workers. So we produced an interview. We transcribed it. We edited it. We sent it back to one of the worker organizers. They made comments. We're like, oh, no, this isn't clear. That isn't clear. I said this, I meant this. And like, we go back and forth until they are happy with the interview. And then we can present that to the world, right? So that process was also taking place within the Johnson Forest and see where the full fountain pen would be the militant intellectual writing down the narrative of stories or information they're providing in order to circulate that and give workers an opportunity very often when they didn't have the time on top of the workday, on top of union organizing, on top of engaging in community and class struggles to circulate their stories and narrative. Now, it's interesting because Grace Lee Boggs, in the second part of the pamphlet, the quote unquote reconstruction of society, she also draws on Marx and alienate. And I think this point is important for a number of reasons.

Kevin:
[44:22] The same year the American Worker pamphlet is published, Grace Lee Boggs translates Marx on alienation for the first time, right? This comes from the Economic and Philosophical Manuscript. The concept of alienation, of course, is vitally important for many Marxian anarchists and other political traditions since. But its first translation and first citation is done by Grace Lee Boggs in 1944. Now what grace does is she brings the concept of alienation that that you're alienated from the production process your fellow workers the product that you're producing and of course your quote unquote as marx's phrase would say species being right the the human essence of of collaborative cooperative and and work that provide goods and services that human be right instead of that becoming the sharp edge of the wedge of the only or the main concept that she thinks will unlock the rest of human understanding and class struggle, she incorporates that in a really substantive and meaningful way in understanding all the other phenomenon in the fact itself. So her purpose in this second part of the essay, the second part of the pamphlet in the essay, the.

Kevin:
[45:31] It's amazing in the way that she brings in the reflections of auto workers, but also then proposes that we need to organize for a fundamentally new society and understand how alienation needs to be overcome in that process of developing a new society. So Grace is using that concept arguably for the first time. She is translating that for the first time. That pamphlet appears as three essays by Karl Marx selected from the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, and that actually appears by the Johnson Forrest Tendency around the same time as the American. I think that's an important political lesson, that they're bringing in a new concept and it doesn't become this new shiny object. It doesn't become the sharp edge of the wedge. It doesn't become the most important thing. But rather, it allows them to expand upon their understanding of autowork and work under capitalism. And then, of course, what a reconstruction of society and a new society would look like, which would not include alienated ladies.

Justin:
[46:30] Great. I did note for the first time, I hadn't heard of the term party names, which is just pseudonyms, I guess, that comrades use. And I like the idea of party names.

Justin:
[46:42] So I was going to ask what everyone's party name would be. Yeah.

Kevin:
[46:47] I have one. That's helpful.

Justin:
[46:49] I think you've got one written down. Someone brought one down.

Kevin:
[46:52] That was me. So my party name would be Helman Rigby. And I'll explain what that means in a second. But Grace Lee Boggs chose the party name, was actually given the party name of Rhea Stone because it would be easier to write about revolutionary politics and the like, and not then be caught up in the surveillance state and repression and other issues that militants were facing. And autoworker Phil Singer chose the name of Paul Romano. So I think for me, at least, I always like to go with literary references. And Helmand Rigby, in fact, comes from B. Traven's book, The Death Ship. So he's basically a person without citizenship, a person without papers. He's joining the crew of a quote unquote death ship into the interwar era just to find employment. And rather than writing his own name in the ledger of the ship that he is boarding, he then says, I wrote with clear letters that until the last trumpets of the last day or calling, someone then will be confused on how to call me. Helmut Rigby, right? So pulling a literary reference from what I say of favorite books, I would choose Helmut Rigby as my party name. What about you all?

Jay:
[47:57] It's like trying to come up with a good drag name like yeah i usually also go literary references for most things or like i'm really into opera so maybe like a cool opera character i don't know i know that like the beginning of moby dick has stuff from a librarian in it so maybe like a moby dick reference or something i don't know or like something from billy bud maybe billy bud Who knows? I don't know. I do love Billy Budd. But yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I'd have to think about it. Come back to me.

Justin:
[48:30] I did. I actually went to a thesaurus earlier to find names that begin with N.

Justin:
[48:49] Thinking of of like my actual pseudonym online like because i usually just go by justin from library punk uh because that's it's it's a pseudonym and it kind of promotes the podcast but i don't know maybe maybe justin justin the librarian.

Justin:
[49:04] Or the librarian

Jay:
[49:05] maybe i would do something from like from oscar wilde actually because like my like handle online is wild at heart but wild is spelled like oscar wild but it's my favorite david lynch movie so and like wild's my favorite like queer anarcho socialist person who ever lived so i don't know maybe yeah maybe i do a wild reference i change my answer wild's better and fits me better i think.

Kevin:
[49:30] I think what's interesting too as the pamphlet is a new form proletarian. In a lot of ways, it, you know, predicts the emergence of an entire working class culture talking about this, an entire zine culture talking about people's lives and experiences. And of course, their experiences at work is one subset of zine. In the same way that these autoworkers and revolutionaries were choosing party names, we see the development of punk names or forest names, right? When folks were doing forest defense work, they would choose Some ecological reference right to go by in case the state came calling or especially during times of repression, people will choose those kind of party names. But these kind of developments in working class culture.

Kevin:
[50:14] Very often we'll think as new and innovative and cool and actually, in fact, have long, rich histories of working class people choosing party names or forest names or punk names in order to avoid the threats that are coming from the state and capital.

Justin:
[50:28] Yeah, this would happen quite a bit, partially because the police were corrupt. But in Ybor, when the cigar manufacturing plants were in West Tampa and Ybor, in Florida, they would go on strike once in a while. They were quite militant. And they had a lot of mutual aid societies.

Justin:
[51:14] So, yeah, that's just reminding me of that story. But you have a question for us.

Kevin:
[51:19] I have a question for you. So I was reading this really wonderful article on workers' inquiries in libraries today. I was speaking with a library worker yesterday, in fact, and they work with teenagers. And one of the things that they were sharing in the details of their job, it basically sounded like a social work, right? There are a lot of elements of library work. And I was a former college professor and am a labor educator. And a lot of elements of my job are outside of, quote unquote, education, right, or reproductive labor or effective labor forms to support the like. And thinking about this library workers experiences working with teenagers in a lot of ways, it's beyond providing resources. Reading recommendations or finding a reference source for them and things along those lines. And all the contradictory nature of so many of these kind of service work, I want to point out a book from the late 1970s that was republished a few years ago. It's called In and Against the State, Discussion Notes for Socialists. And this was published in the United Kingdom. It was a group of militants from Edinburgh and London, all of which worked as teachers, social workers in you know, housing offices and the like, and they found that their experiences were contradictory, right?

Kevin:
[52:35] They were the only way that folk could access many services they needed to survive, but also very often were expected to discipline, right? Like a teacher is expected to provide educational opportunities, but also discipline students in certain ways that could be and should in a lot of ways be questioned. So I was really interested in hearing about your own experiences and work in light of some of the other shows that you've been having recently on AI and how that's going to work, but also thinking about the pandemic and post-pandemic and how many other kinds of services are provided by libraries. So my question is actually pretty simple. It comes from our Cafe Workers Inquiry as well. We asked this of our 35 cafe workers that spoke to us and wondering how this relates to you all. I'm heading over to Europe next week for a month to do workshops in London, Edinburgh, Dublin, and Belfast on workers' inquiry, sharing this workers' inquiry, but also prompting people to ask each other and themselves this. And it is, can you tell us a little about your work? What do you do all day? How is the work divided up? What are the working conditions like? And what is going to work like every day?

Jay:
[53:47] Justin, you want to go first? You want me to go first?

Justin:
[53:49] You go first.

Jay:
[53:50] Okay. This is actually similar. So a couple of years ago, we did some day in the life episodes where we just asked each other questions about our jobs because this was a thing we realized that like, even if you work in an academic library, I don't necessarily know what another person who does collection development does. Right. So just what do we all do? And it's also so kind of a little bit about my work. So I do cataloging, which for those who aren't librarians or catalogers is where you get a book. and all of the information about it, like its title and its author, how many pages it has, stuff like that. You transcribe those in a record according to a specific standard as well as doing intellectual labor to analyze it, to classify it and give subject headings and stuff. And this is when you go on a library website, search the catalog, that's the record that you see. I'm one of the people that makes those, right? so that's like the basic of what a cataloger does i however am mainly in spreadsheets all day i do a lot of like developing like working with special projects like i develop batch routines how do if we have over 11 000 things how can we this backlog of years how can we actually get at least data about that into the catalog so that it is discoverable.

Jay:
[55:16] And I work very closely with my supervisor manager to sort of develop these workflows and stuff. So that's what the majority of my work is, is in spreadsheets kind of doing in batch or doing the sort of like high concept thinking and figuring out for workflows around like other types of cataloging. So then that's what I do all day work. And then how is the work divided up? I don't know. According to what my manager says, it's this is the first time in my life I've had a job where I didn't have to set the priorities. And I'm lucky I have a really good manager. He's in the he's in the union. So then there's like, so, you know, he's spicy supervisor, right? He was like the head of a department. I love working with him and we get along really well. And I respect him a lot. And so he sets my priorities for me. And that's the first time in my life I've not had to do that in a job. And it's actually really nice.

Jay:
[56:14] Working conditions. I think a lot of librarians who work in public libraries will relate to this statement or understand what I mean by this. I work because I work in a public library. I work in the sort of central main location, right? My working conditions are going to be vastly different than someone who works in a branch. I, unless something goes wrong with the HVAC, there is like a 0% chance that it being too hot or too cold, like that the weather is going to affect whether or not my workplace is open. Whereas like branches close all the time or like that, like I always know that there will be enough people opening up my location whereas two is the minimum to open up a branch what happens if you have a program what happens if there's more than one floor like that's just not safe so my working conditions like i'm in a non-public area i'm non-public facing i'm in a nice big open room that i face windows i get to see the sunlight all day like i have like kind of no complaints about my working conditions outside of the usual like administrative bureaucratic bullshit but like my work conditions are good but i know that like branch librarians it's like night and fucking day or even people who work with the public night and day and what is going to work every day like for me it's great this is a job i.

Jay:
[57:41] I like it's like the kind of labor where this is the kind of labor I would want to be doing outside of capitalism because I understand that like, you know, we all have to do some kind of labor and help everybody out. And this is what I'm good at. And this is what I like doing. And it's it helps people. I know it's my job. I I leave that shit at work once I'm home. But like, it's still labor I enjoy doing. And it's again because i'm not most of my jobs in the past i've had to like set my own priorities or come up with things to do or even supervise people or like be in charge of things and that takes a lot of brain energy for me to do and i would get in like get like paralysis.

Jay:
[58:28] A lot that then would affect everything else like in my non-work life and now because i All of a sudden, that's not a cognitive task I have to hold in my head and be able to do. It makes actually enjoying my labor to the extent that one can. It's nice. And then I can leave it at home. And right now, the thing that's making me not be able to fucking do shit at home is because I overcommit in organizing outside of work. But for once, it's not work's fault that I am all burnt out. Which is a weird feeling. But I will say I am continuing the tradition of all of my jobs of being the only person with my job title at a place. And so there's no one else who does what I do at the library. And that's been true in every single job I've had, which is a kind of weird position to be in.

Kevin:
[59:25] I love that.

Jay:
[59:26] Yeah.

Justin:
[59:27] All right. So the position I'm in, I have had a job like Jay's when I was graduate.

Justin:
[1:00:10] Academic librarian position at a private university where I'm a faculty member. Second time i've been in a position like that i didn't want to ever be in a private small private university ever, shouldn't exist you should just give up you should ask the state to turn you into a community college um so about my work i have i have to make my own priorities.

Justin:
[1:01:15] Look around campus to see opportunities for like external events because we're a very highly commuter campus so it's hard to figure out where I can do events and where I can like I'm really into zines, at my old university, you know, students were there all day because there was six times as many students. So we're just not going to see the kind of foot traffic. And so I, how is work divided up? Looking from like a larger scale, something I wanted to talk about. As a librarian, I have certain tasks. I am very rarely asked to open or close the building. I, person to do the tech services stuff as well with me. And I'm very comfortable doing that. I'm very comfortable setting my schedule to other people's, you know, I put stuff out there and then I wait.

Justin:
[1:02:37] Do that. It didn't come naturally, but I learned how to do it over the last seven years at my last job. You're way better at it than I am. Yeah. I'm lazier in a lot of ways too. Like I work really, really hard and then I am okay.

Justin:
[1:03:33] Ever invited the facilities people to the all-staff meeting because they're a different department, right? They don't report to anyone in the building. They don't report to the library dean. report to facilities they're just assigned, i am now we have the same we have the same housekeeper but she doesn't come to the all staff meetings now when we have all staff meetings but the president facilities is there and that's good and i'm glad they're there so.

Justin:
[1:04:03] Staff meetings at jay's workplace and i don't think facilities people were in those meetings or they were they were okay okay, I couldn't tell. It was a very packed room. It's our security that is not even like, they're a separate contracted company. And same like with our cafe, it's like a separate company. But facilities is like, like, facilities is like in the unions. So they're like library employees. Yeah. So the thing is, like, how can they build consciousness of the connection to their industry? And my IWW model of syndicalism is peering through there. What are working conditions.

Justin:
[1:04:49] The only limitations are, you know, budget, bureaucracy, the regular stuff. You know, my supervisor's good. My coworkers are good. No real problems there. But, you.

Justin:
[1:05:02] You know, I don't want to get targeted in that. But as far as I know.

Justin:
[1:05:05] Everything is stable and good for now.

Jay:
[1:05:07] I want to also add one other thing for mine for like how is the work divided up my workplace is unionized yeah union librarians but we're silly and have two unions we sort of have like I'm not going to say the unions I'm trying not to say people know where I fucking work but I'm trying not to like say where I work but we basically have like the professional union that's like real old and only became affiliated like less than a decade ago maybe like it was an independent union before them and then there's this sort of like library assistant like union so basically does your position like require a master's degree or like professional expertise or not now i think that's a horseshit distinction because the people doing the library assistant work do have expertise and are professionals but sometimes they have more experience than i do why do i get paid more than them you know like that you know i don't like that distinction but there are certain rules about who can do what kind of work based on our our cbas and especially this shows up in cataloging because in my department there's like some like our catalogers and those are like my union and then there's like the people who do like the processing work so like the way public libraries work you get most of them when you're ordering books they already come with a barcode on they usually already come with like a spine label on maybe they're already pre-wrapped they usually maybe even have a record already like that kind of thing except the one of the companies that.

Jay:
[1:06:35] Does that just went out of business so we're about to have more work but like the la's will do that processing work they'll like put.

Jay:
[1:06:45] Get the book physically ready, and then they know how to search for records that might already exist. They might even be able to be like, oh, hey, this record doesn't have a page number, but I know how to read and can get the page number and put it in our version of the record. What they aren't allowed to do is the subject analysis and classification work. So basically, if you're just transcribing things according to a standard, like info that exists, then LAs can do that. But people in my union it's like if you're coming like if analysis and intellectual labor comes up then that is crossing over the other union and we've been thinking a lot about this recently because um we're arguing we're bargaining we're doing shared work bargaining right now so what is work that can be done by people in either union and what is exclusive work to our union and we're having like we wrote it up for like each department and then we're having people in those departments, review it right now and it's like oh how does the work that we do in cataloging that's metadata work are the people in digital doing metadata are they doing it and thinking about it the same way that we are what about in archives what about in special collections what about in like the fine arts like all of these other places that are doing metadata work but are they dividing it up and thinking about it the same way.

Kevin:
[1:08:07] It's really interesting to hear you all speak about that work because I have a good friend in Portland who's a reference librarian, zine librarian, mat librarian. I've heard their work for years. My mother was a librarian for most of her working life. My grandmother, my mother's mother, worked in a library. My mother was a children's librarian where my grandmother worked shelving books, doing adult programming, all kinds of different things, right? And when I think about library work, I think about that. I don't think about, I even worked for the Friends of the Library in Portland, Oregon for quite some time. And that was cataloging, choosing, you know, then selling books. And then hearing about what you all do is so different than my perceptions and assumptions and understanding about how library work operates. And then of course, those divisions you're talking about have an important to your, you know, earlier comment about the Kabachi River Collective, how that work and those divisions of work take place.

Kevin:
[1:09:04] Doing higher education organizing with faculty and graduate students always was a challenge for me because faculty and graduate students think that they are in those programs because they're the smartest people. And those who do better jobs in the university are in those jobs because they were not the smartest people. And actually, it's because of class striations in our society. How do people access education? What opportunities do they have? Are they part of a, they come out of a, you know, working class community? Do they have the relationships to be able to participate fully as, even if they entered a PhD program with the kind of language and assumptions and resources and cultural processes that acclimated middle class and upper class folks to, to academia, right? So there's all of these challenges that we really need to think about. And in higher education and healthcare organizing, seeing the real fundamental class differences between faculty and nurses. And those who worked to keep the universities and hospitals running. And actually how, if we could create ladders and other opportunities, so folks that were working in certain kinds of higher education or hospital work then had the opportunity to choose or not to choose to go on to get degrees and become faculty or, you know, RNs could take place. And break down and destroy and address some of that class striation. And that pyramid scheme, that hierarchy that so many of these institutions reinforce and are based on.

Jay:
[1:10:34] Because I used to be in academic libraries as well. I was like the majority of my career. I remember when I would do instruction, I actually loved doing instruction. And I would have professors sometimes not want me to do it because how dare I, a person without a PhD, teach their precious students? How dare I teach a class? Their class, not just a class, but their class. Right. Like how dare, why am I qualified? They like, didn't, you know, I've, I've heard about faculty being like, uh, I care more about my journal than your salary. Like, you know, if the journal costs are going up, like why we have the internet, why do we need you? Like this real antagonism and like belittling of the expertise of librarians in, in, in higher ed because faculty really entitled faculty just like, don't understand what we do.

Kevin:
[1:11:24] Let's also be honest, and I say this as a former higher education organizer and former faculty member, faculty and PhDs are not trained to do their fucking jobs, right?

Jay:
[1:11:33] No, they're not.

Kevin:
[1:11:34] Your job is scheduling things. Your job is running committees. Your job is addressing budgets. When you're fortunate or unfortunate enough to become the chair, then it's making other kinds of hiring decisions. PhD programs do not train PhDs to actually do their jobs. And actually, I think it reinforces some of the real problems, class variations that we're seeing in these universities. And I won't say which university it was, but I can't even tell you how many times I've consulted with higher education unions where faculty did the exact same thing that you have mentioned. So at a university, the faculty basically turfed the the health care plan, because even though it would cost absolutely zero more dollars, faculty are like, yeah, providing gender affirming care is not really an issue for us. And it's like, well, actually, all the fucking employees in this institution are on the health plan. So I'm glad that you have the power to decide who gets and who doesn't get care. But you're actually really stepping on the necks of those who are doing other kinds of work. And of course, then, you know, trans and gen forming faculty as well.

Jay:
[1:12:36] But the faculty aren't trans and gen forming, that's for the students, that's for children, right?

Kevin:
[1:12:41] Yeah.

Jay:
[1:12:43] I hated that bullshit when I was in higher ed.

Justin:
[1:12:47] I was having a conversation with my supervisor today and she was kind of catching me up on the, because I started this summer, right? And she's catching me up on the lore. And this email had gone out about, like, you know, how are we going to, like, our new, that's a big, big, big curriculum review committee coming up.

Justin:
[1:13:40] And what that can mean for the library is we could have an opportunity to help faculty members redesign.

Justin:
[1:13:51] So that's how my job for the past like 10, my entire career has always worked.

Justin:
[1:13:56] I started doing open educational stuff in my first librarian position. You wait for an opening and then you're.

Justin:
[1:15:21] Form, it says the first one is the university library. The first school is the library. And then they have to click the library to then choose their school because we're the first.

Justin:
[1:15:36] It's an education. Does a lot and it's a terminal master's profession. Yeah.

Justin:
[1:15:42] So, you know, we don't get doctor and we don't need doctor.

Jay:
[1:15:45] No. If you get a library and information science PhD, it's because you have a research project you want to do or you want to teach like and be like a core faculty at a library school. Yeah. Doing like research. But you do not need it for a job at all. At all.

Justin:
[1:16:01] Yeah. You never do. You barely need the master's degree.

Jay:
[1:16:03] Yeah. It's like I. Yeah.

Justin:
[1:16:05] Probably do. But it's good. It's a good. it's a good degree to get it's a good not a very hard degree it's a good degree

Jay:
[1:16:11] you get out of it what you put into it is what i always tell people because i sing the praises of my program and the classes i took and what i got out of it but i know a lot of people are like i didn't learn dog shit in library school i'm like

Justin:
[1:16:25] the thing you have to do is work in a library while you're doing it whatever else you're doing don't go into a library school if you cannot also get a library job or not, doing the coursework and real work at the same time, it's not going to work for you. Just put it off till next year. So if you have time.

Justin:
[1:16:46] Do you want to tell us about your books, like reading struggles?

Kevin:
[1:16:49] Yeah, I can give you a short synopsis, especially because it's basically what keeps me up at night and haunts me. George Orwell basically stated writing a book is being haunted and being...

Jay:
[1:17:00] That's a very gothic Marxist of him.

Justin:
[1:17:01] Yes.

Kevin:
[1:17:02] You're not get that demon out until the book is done, and I very much feel like that is the case. This book has been, in a lot of ways, in the works for most of my adult life. I was very lucky as a young organizer to come in contact with movement and political and intellectual elders that were engaged in all kinds of different organizing experiences. I was lucky enough to, in my late teens, early 20s, walk into the office of feminist scholar and Marxist Silvia Federici. I was introduced that first day to a collective called the Midnight Notes Collective, which includes philosopher George Goffensis.

Kevin:
[1:17:42] Historian Peter Leimbaugh, educator Monty Neal, and many, many other really interesting and engaging militants here in the United States. And because that is the political tradition which I identify with and the political tradition that I draw from for all of my work, even as an organizer, I wanted to go back and write the intellectual history of this trajectory, this tradition. In a lot of ways, it begins, I referenced earlier, in CLR James' debate on the autonomy of the black liberation struggle, or the quote-unquote black question, with Trotsky in Mexico in 1930. CLR had already been engaged in anti-colonial struggles, for instance.

Kevin:
[1:18:21] Fighting the Italian fascist invasion of Ethiopia. It turns out that he traveled to Scotland and Ireland, even spent time with the daughter, Nora Connolly, of the great Irish Lenin and Irish revolutionary figure, James Connolly. He introduced her to Trotsky, recruited her for the struggle against that early fascist intervention and assault on Ethiopian sovereignty. In a lot of ways predates the struggle against fascism in Spain, and socialists who rose up as Franco. So he's involved intimately in those activities. At the same time, he's writing about the black Jacobins and Haitian Revolution and how important of a struggle that is against the slave and the slave society, and arguably one of the most important revolutions, if not the most important revolution in the Western Hemisphere, being that not only did it show that former slaves could liberate themselves, but also develop their own post-revolutionary society, defining their own full humanity as humans. And that was something that he was certainly... So he's thinking about all these kind of questions and then comes on a tour after he publishes The Black Jacobins in 1938 to the United States, meets with sharecroppers, meets with other militants, gets involved in the Harbourland Renaissance.

Kevin:
[1:19:38] Actually is a figure at the Calypso Club in the Lower East Side where jazz greats are playing on the stage. Turns out the waiter is James Baldwin. And he sits court there, talking with great cultural figures of Harlem Renaissance. Then, of course, after that tour, he goes to Mexico to debate the Black question with Trotsky, arguing that Black folks themselves need to develop not even a revolutionary organization. It might be a civil rights group. It might be a political party or a political formulation that, instead of demanding a full revolutionary upheaval simply to demand equality in the society. But that needs to be determined by the black folks themselves and not by an external force. And in a lot of ways, the reason that I begin with that conversation is it's very often assumed that the quote-unquote permanent revolution in Marx and Engels' usage, that the working class is autonomous from the larger bourgeois revolutions and revolutionary movements and shift toward republic and democratic societies.

Kevin:
[1:20:43] The working class is actually a third factor, a third revolution, an independent factor from those bourgeois revolutions that resulted in the American French and obviously English revolutions, less so the Haitian, of course, because of the vital class elements of slaves freeing themselves therein that CLR talks about. But actually, in fact, the, My presumption, at least initially, was that James is using the autonomy of the working class to understand the autonomy of the black liberation struggle. And actually, in fact, it's reversed. James is understanding the autonomy of the black liberation struggle from the larger revolutionary movements and political parties and unions, then in fact allows the development of the pamphlet of the American worker and other reflections that the working class actually is in fact autonomous from the official organizations of the left. From churches, foundations, unions, political parties, et cetera, et cetera. Actually, in fact, the reflection of the autonomy of the working class, which then becomes that inversion of the class perspective, not looking at capitalism, the experience of workers from capital's perspective, but actually workers' perspective themselves as they develop their own consciousness.

Kevin:
[1:21:50] Forms of revolutionary self-activity and organization to overthrow the divisions in the capitalist society and, of course, itself. So I was kind of like tugging on these threads, And I began with that kind of unfolding and, Actually, in fact, where the book begins in that scene, the first chapter, is that debate, but also the considerations and thoughts and reflections that CLR had before and then after the debate on that quote-unquote question. And then I utilized that as a moment to then look at and try to understand how CLR was understanding the anti-colonial, the diasporic, and the Black struggle in this day. So the book is titled Reading Struggles. It comes from a quip and reflection by philosopher George Kofensis, where he basically states we need to be reading the struggles that are emerging in the working class. And if we're not doing that, we actually lose the opportunity to really understand where the class is going, what forms of struggle and organization might be emerging.

Kevin:
[1:22:46] What struggles like, so for instance, writing a path housework in the early 1950s then predates by almost two decades the emergence of the wages for housework movement and feminist struggles in the United States. States and of course across. So by reading those struggles, then we can actually intervene and further amplify and circulate through workers' inquiry and other methods, the struggles of working people that are emerging out of their everyday lives and forms of survival. So that is the focus of the book. And then I'm taking a couple of different moments throughout this tradition and revolutionary history of heterodox Marxists and how they understood those struggles. So I begin with C.L.R.

Kevin:
[1:23:23] James' debate on the black question. I then move to Raya Dueskava's understanding of Russia as a capitalist society and her conclusion of that, that it is, in fact, not a democratic society. It is not a worker state. It is not a, you know, the Soviets are an authoritarian and top-down structure that they need to challenge. And actually, you know, all the mechanism capitalism still functioning in that society. And the way she comes to that conclusion is that she comes from the perspective of the workers in the enterprises and Soviet. What is their experience? What is their everyday experience? And it's through tugging on that thread that then unravels the actual operations of state capitalism under the Soviet Union. And actually, in fact, state capitalism as it's emerging in Western societies as well, in addition to the Soviet Union. Then I move on to Grace Lee Boggs, who's looking at Marx and alienation, her initial struggles and involvement in the early civil rights movement with the March on Washington movement. She's living in Chicago at the time, up through, and then of course, the American worker that I'm talking about. And then I'll actually go to a number of other figures in these initial chapters. First three chapters will cover these kind of American workers and American Revolutionaries. Then I have two short subsequent chapters looking at how those kind of ideas and traditions circulate through France and Italy.

Kevin:
[1:24:51] And then, of course, part of the title of the book is Back Again, how then they recirculate through the United States, Canada, England, and elsewhere to influence a new generation of revolutionaries and militants and worker intellectuals in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s with a development of the Wages for Housework Movement in the United States, collectives like the Zero Work Collective and the Midnight Notes Collective. And then I'll conclude by looking at the Process World project and magazine out of San Francisco that really was identifying circulating workers' stories and understandings with the emergence of temporary, precarious office work, right? Are you being processed or are you doing the processing, right, is part of their formulation. So Reading Struggles looks at, 75 years of revolutionary movements and traditions and the context they're operating in so that militants who are reading the struggles in their day hopefully will illuminate and assist us in reading our struggles in our own concrete and still a work in progress. I think one of your questions was, how is the writing going? I actually, in fact, wrote 90,000 words of kind of like the structure of the intellectual histories of these various groups and the publications they did, the disagreements and arguments they had. And then I took a step back and said, how is this going to really be engaging and important to the reader? And I want the reader to understand how CLR or Grace Lee Boggs, Silvio Federici.

Kevin:
[1:26:18] Peter Leinbaum, George Coffensis, Harry Cleaver, and others looked at the struggles and contexts in which they were operating in and how they can amplify, circulate, and further those class struggles toward a reconstructive vision of a new society. And my hope in presenting that context in their stories and their own thought processes in writing during those time periods will aid folks in thinking through that process today because we cannot go back to the debate of 1939. We cannot return to the kind of, you know, zine style interventions of process world in the late seventies, early eighties, looking at temporary office work. We can't go back to those months. We need to look at our own context and hopefully learn some of the lessons of the past. And I don't just look at this as a positive development. I also look at the moment of which there's a split between Grace Lee Boggs and Grace and then her partner.

Kevin:
[1:27:11] The autodidact autoworker and great intellectual himself, James Jimmy Boggs. They split away from CLR because they're seeing the emergence of the civil rights and black liberation movement, where CLR is obsessed with workers' councils and the Hungarian revolution of nice, right? So actually, in fact, there's a moment of which CLR continues on his political line and political trajectory, but isn't reading and understanding the struggles that are emerging here in the United States. Part of that's due to his exile in England. Part of that is due to his own theoretical commitments. But I hope that it's a lesson for folks that we don't get bogged down and limited in our own theoretical perspectives, that they're constantly being renewed and rethought and readdressed and reformulated in relation to the struggles that are emerging and the struggles we like to see emerge.

Justin:
[1:27:56] I think that covered everything we wanted to. Is there anything you would like to plug in terms of people going and finding you, social media, websites, anything like that?

Kevin:
[1:28:05] Sure. I do a public history project on Twitter somewhat, I would say. Lately, since my focus has been doing workshops and trainings, it's a little less so. But you can find me on Twitter at AmericanWork47, which is obviously a reference to the American Worker pamphlet of 1947. I can be reached in other materials on labor history, labor education.

Kevin:
[1:28:28] Class struggle, social movements, and of course the things we talked about today can be found in my website at readingstruggles.info. I'm writing Reading Struggles right now for AK Press and will be out in the subsequent years. In addition, I'm working on the American Worker Project in a reprint and that will appear on a press in the next couple of years as well. In addition to the Cafe Workers Inquiry, our little collective group of folks who produced that inquiry are engaging in another right now. Our intent is to do that on grocery workers. Of course, if we have the engagement and support of grocery workers to do such an inquiry, folks can read about that at notesfrombelow.org. And if you're so interested and you're listening from England, Ireland, or Scotland, I'll be spending all of November there doing talks on CLR James, on the American worker pamphlet, on the search for the American worker, on the workers' inquiry we just conducted in the cafe sector. And also, I panel discussions with folks who are doing workers' inquiry in England, Ireland, Germany, and elsewhere for various different conferences and among comrades. So, if you happen to be listening from there, come join us for those workshops and training.

Jay:
[1:29:41] Yeah, we've got some listeners over there, I think, right?

Justin:
[1:29:44] At least a couple.

Jay:
[1:29:45] Yeah.

Kevin:
[1:29:45] I'm sure.

Justin:
[1:29:46] All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on again.

Kevin:
[1:29:48] Thank you. I really appreciate your time and your great questions and prompts and also being willing to answer one of mine.

Justin:
[1:29:54] Sure. Good night.