The Left, in a general sense, is very much atomized. We live in highly atomized societies. People are pretty much alone; it's you and your iPad.

I've been interested in the reports on Rojava. It seems clear that there are positive developments.

I just went along with political activists and interested in other intellectual interests which I pursued kind of at random. I never had a real college education. I got a degree, but it was just patching together courses here and there.

The capacity to transfer production elsewhere is a weapon against the Western workers.

We should certainly not be perpetuating further harm to others or to the environment. Suppose that workers at ExxonMobil are trying to unionize. We have two choices: to help them improve their lives, or to keep away so that their lives will be worse. Neither choice has any effect on use of fossil fuels. So radical organizers can both help them unionize and improve their lives, and convince them to find a different way to survive and work for ending the use of fossil fuels.

The Second World War ended with a radicalization of the population in the United States and everywhere else, and called for all kinds of things like popular takeovers, government intervention, and worker takeovers of factories. Business propagated a tremendous propaganda offensive. The scale surprised me when I read the scholarship - it's enormous, and it's been very effective. There were two major targets: one is unions, the other is democracy.

The internet, since it is publicly created, ought to be publicly controlled.