Today's links

When parties fail, movements step up: Thomas Frank on why we need to occupy the Democrats.
Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
This day in history: 2008, 2013, 2018
Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading

Edith Ransom and Charles Zimmerman (center) of ILGWU Local 22 march with others in the 1937 May Day parade.

When parties fail, movements step up (permalink)

Does anyone like the American two party system? The parties are opaque, private organizations, weak institutions that are prone to capture and corruption, and gerrymandering's "safe seats" means that the real election often takes place in the party's smoke-filled rooms, when a sure-thing candidate is selected:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/30/weak-institutions/

But there doesn't seem to be any way to fix it. For one thing, the two parties are in charge of any reform, and they're in no hurry to put themselves out of business. It's effectively impossible for a third party to gain any serious power in the USA, and that's by design. After the leftist Populists party came within a spitting distance of power in the 1890s, the Dems and Repubs got together and cooked the system, banning fusion voting and erecting other structural barriers.

The Nader and Perot campaigns were doomed from the outset, in other words. Either candidate could have been far more popular than the D and R on the ballot, and they still would have lost. It's how the deck is stacked, and to unstack it, reformers would need to take charge of at least one – and probably both – of the parties.

But that's not cause for surrender – it's a call to action. In an interview with Seymour Hersh, Thomas Frank (Listen, Liberal) sets out another locus of power, one with the potential to deliver control over the party to its base: social movements:

https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/ordinary-people-by-the-millions

It's been done before. The parties are routinely transformed by power-shifts within their internal coalitions: since 1970, corporate Dems have consistently pushed the party to the right, making it the power of white-collar professionals and relying on working people showing up and marking their ballots with a D because they have "nowhere else to go."

Bill Clinton was the most successful of these corporate raiders, delivering the parts of the Reagan Revolution that Reagan himself could never have managed: dismantling tariffs and bank regulations, passing the crime bill and welfare "reform." He came within a whisper of (partially) privatizing Social Security.

This set in motion the forces that made Trumpism possible: when Dems told deindustrialized workers to "learn to code" and blamed them for the destruction of their communities, it opened a space for Make America Great Again, the (empty) workerist rhetoric of the GOP. The Dems' plan of putting "really smart people" in charge and letting them run things was a (predictable) disaster. "Really smart" isn't the same as "infallible" and really smart people can be spooked or bulled into doing the wrong thing – like Obama "foaming the runways" for the banks with the houses of mortgage holders, and leaving the bankers responsible for the Great Financial Crisis unscathed:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/15/mon-dieu-les-guillotines/#ceci-nes-pas-une-bailout

"Really smart people" can't get us out of this mess. Instead, we need the kind of muscular political action – the "whirlwind" – that characterized FDR's New Deal: "complete reformation of the banking industry.. just about every other industry as well. Regulation. Social Security. Public works. Antitrust. Soil conservation."

FDR got there by alienating his former classmates and refusing the go-slow entreaties of his cronies. He got there because there was a mass social movement that made him do it ("I want to do it, now make me do it"):

https://humanizingthevacuum.wordpress.com/2014/09/16/i-agree-with-you-i-want-to-do-it-now-make-me-do-it/

Every time in US history where one of the political party duopoly listened to its base, it was because of a mass social movement: the farmers' movement (1890s), labor (1930s), civil rights and antiwar (1960s). As Frank says:

Social movements succeed. They build and they change the intellectual climate and then, when the crisis comes, they make possible things like agrarian reform or the New Deal or the Civil Rights acts of the 1960s.

Today, we see the seeds of those social movements: the new union movement. Black Lives Matter. Neobrandeisians with their "hipster antitrust." These are the movements that are creating "ideas lying around": ideas that, in time of crisis, can move from the fringe to the center in an eyeblink:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/27/ideas-lying-around/

They are setting in motion another transformation of the Democratic Party, from its top-down, "really smart people" model to a bottom-up, people-powered one, kept in check by movements, not party bosses. As Frank says, "They require the mass participation of ordinary people. Without that, I am afraid that nothing is possible."

Hey look at this (permalink)

Jordan Peterson: Critics complain over 'misleading' book cover quotes https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-66520089
Excerpt Reveal: The Lost Cause by Cory Doctorow https://www.torforgeblog.com/2023/08/14/excerpt-reveal-the-lost-cause-by-cory-doctorow/
Barbiephonic Forever https://exple.tive.org/blarg/2023/08/16/barbiephonic-forever/ (h/t JWZ)

A Wayback Machine banner.

This day in history (permalink)

#15yrsago How the Daily Show’s PVRs work https://web.archive.org/web/20080819214437/http://www.pvrblog.com/pvr/2008/08/the-daily-show.html?cid=126776178

#15yrsago Transcript of my talk on “Life in the Information Economy” https://craphound.com/cambridge_biz_lectures.txt

#10yrsago Cross a border, lose your ebooks https://listserv.crl.edu/wa.exe?A2=LIBLICENSE-L;1e13597c.1308&A2=LIBLICENSE-L;1e13597c.1308

#10yrsago Talking about the writing life https://www.shelf-awareness.com/readers-issue.html?issue=223#m4107

#5yrsago NYU makes med school free for all students https://www.wsj.com/articles/nyu-offers-full-tuition-scholarships-for-all-medical-students-1534433082

#5yrsago Chinese spies force US-based Uighurs into “voluntary” surveillance by threatening their families in China https://www.thedailybeast.com/chinese-police-are-spying-on-uighurson-american-soil

#5yrsago CEO-to-worker wage gap yawns ever wider, hitting 312:1 in 2017, up by 17.6% https://www.epi.org/press/top-ceos-compensation-increased-17-6-percent-in-2017/

#5yrsago Portugal proves that austerity doesn’t work https://www.truthdig.com/articles/let-this-be-the-end-of-austerity-once-and-for-all/

#5yrsago Big Bang: the “stupid patent” on teledildonics has expired https://www.vice.com/en/article/ne55x8/teledildonics-patent-has-expired

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Naked Capitalism (https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/).

Currently writing:

A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS JAN 2025
The Bezzle, a Martin Hench noir thriller novel about the prison-tech industry. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2024
Vigilant, Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM
Moral Hazard, a short story for MIT Tech Review's 12 Tomorrows. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE, ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION
Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM

Latest podcast: The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation (audiobook outtake) https://craphound.com/news/2023/08/01/the-internet-con-how-to-seize-the-means-of-computation-audiobook-outtake/

Upcoming appearances:

San Diego Union Tribune Festival of Books, Aug 19
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/festivalofbooks
Burning Man Center Camp, 1430h, Aug 29
https://playaevents.burningman.org/2023/playa_events/03/
EFF Awards (San Francisco), Sept 14
https://www.eff.org/awards/effawards/2023
An Evening with VE Schwab (Des Moines), Oct 2
https://www.thecabinidaho.org/all-events/ve-schwab
26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing keynote (Minneapolis), Oct 16
https://cscw.acm.org/2023/index.php/keynotes/

Recent appearances:

New Books Network
https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-internet-con
Haunted Mansion Ghost Post Panel Live From Midsummer Scream
https://dizneycoasttocoast.libsyn.com/haunted-mansion-ghost-post-panel-live-from-midsummer-scream-disney-podcast-episode-1027
how big tech makes the internet worse (What's Gonna Happen)
https://www.stitcher.com/show/what-s-gonna-happen/episode/how-big-tech-makes-the-internet-worse-with-cory-doctorow-305645071

Latest books:

"Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/.
"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html
"How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59 (print edition: https://bookshop.org/books/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism/9781736205907) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)
"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html
"Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.

Upcoming books:

The Internet Con: A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech, Verso, September 2023
The Lost Cause: a post-Green New Deal eco-topian novel about truth and reconciliation with white nationalist militias, Tor Books, November 2023

This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

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