Show Notes
Learning about the ways of the Aztec today, we all pretty much agree that their ideas around human sacrifices are barbaric. That they have no place in our “modern” civilizations today.
But is this really the case?
In this episode, we explore the ways in which capitalism’s ways of knowing and doing (its epistemologies) perpetuate the same ideas of human sacrifice today. We start with the more direct examples of workers literally dying for profit—the construction workers who die building homes they cannot afford to live, and the many factory workers who die manufacturing products we can use (deaths we have just come to accept as inevitable or as “accidents”). Then, we move to the indirect examples of people lacking food and shelter because these basic needs have come to be understood as commodities those with capital need to make profit from, and not as just things people need to live. In this, we see how capitalism changes what we know to be true; that houses provide shelter (instead we think of houses as investments we are supposed to make profit from), that forests have ecological value (instead we think of more profitable ways to use of this land, whether by turning it into farms to clearing it to put buildings up on it) etc.
We stress how this not normal, exploring how many (non-western) communities in the world recognized the need for lettings things exists as… things. Like the Kikuyu people who despite having a clan-based/individual land ownership system let people farm, and even build on land they didn’t own to ensure everyone’s needs in the community were met. The Wendat who found the French society having many needy beggars against the backdrop of a glamourous nobility class barbaric.
Lastly, we highlight how people have always recognized the absurdity of this idea of the primacy of profit and meeting market needs over their own, like the Maragua women who rejected the idea of growing coffee to make the country foreign currency to pay off its debts while being unable to feed their own families. We hope that by bringing this knowledge to the forefront of people’s minds, especially a time when (in Kenya) we are again seeing market needs supersede the collective population needs most visibly with draft laws (Livestock Bill 2023, Animal Production Professionals and Technicians Bill 2023 etc.) undermining people’s ability to feed themselves tabled in parliament with the intention of forcing them to be dependent on capitalist agribusiness chains (resulting in more profit for them), we are all reminded that none of this is okay. That maybe, just maybe, we need an economic model built to fulfill our needs, instead of a cruel, barbaric system meant to make profits for a select few. And that we have models all throughout history to draw inspiration from as we take on this work!
More from Until Everyone Is Free
Yesterday, we hosted the final installment of our teach-in series "Beyond the Bill." After the June 25 uprisings last year, many Kenyans were radicalized, they began seeing the state for what it is, they started seeing the contradictions. We wanted to capture that momentum and, through political education, help people make sense of the shape of power that guides what has been happening in the country—from "how countries should think about debt" to the history of Mwakenya, to Pan-Africanism in the DRC, and much more. Every month for the last year, we invited people to help us understand these connected struggles, and we're grateful to everyone who took part and, of course, everyone who listened and shared! In two of our sessions, we spoke to Sudanese comrades Rabab Elnaiem, Husam Mahjoub, and Gussai Sheikheldin. The edited transcripts of these conversations, we put together and published in a booklet called "Revolution Neither Starts Nor Ends." Our ultimate goal is to distribute these as free pamphlets for reading in social justice centres and other political organizing spaces throughout Nairobi (and maybe throughout the country)! However, in order to fund a big print run, we are selling bound copies of this book at 800 KES. Please buy some copies and help us raise money to print hundreds more to give away! You can find them at Cheche Bookshop. Some of you who have already sent money can pick up your copies there anytime.
There's a season for everything, and the time has come for April Zhu, our producer, to sign off. Until Everyone Is Free will continue with our team Stoneface Bombaa, Felix Omondi, and Wairimu Gathimba—bringing history into the living archive of our listeners' minds, hosting discussions on political shifts in the airwaves and, of course, radicalizing people. A luta continua.
A lot of the talk about AI focuses on how human AI is. Can it write like me, draw like me, sing like me? What we need to be concerned about, however, is how AI makes us less human. Kenya has become a hub for companies that recruit African workers to do the content moderation and data labeling microwork that AI depends on — and yet workers and their often inhumane conditions are hidden. Commissioned by Project Ether, Until Everyone Is Free produced a special podcast episode highlighting how AI technology is just the latest stage of a long story of capitalism. But, as with all other stages, there is worker resistance too.
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