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Designing the Revolution is a video podcast series by Roger Hallam, partly recorded from prison. This series details the theory and practice of a completely new way of reimagining and renewing society.
๐ The audio quality of chapter 1 to 12 is quite bad (to varying degree), due to them being recorded from a prison phone. To make it easier to follow what Roger Hallam is saying, we created transcriptions and subtitles for you!
Thus far, Roger Hallam has released 25 chapters of 'Designing the Revolution'. His aim is to release about 40 talks in the end. Below you will find the videos, summaries, and written transcripts of the chapters:
Chapter 10 - Sociability Practice
Chapter 11 - Action Theory
Chapter 12 - Action Design
Chapter 13 - Sociability In Action
Chapter 14 - Framing Communication and Media
Chapter 15 - Organisation โ Leadership
Chapter 16 - Organisation โ The Dynamo
Chapter 17 - Organisation โ The Whirlwind
Chapter 18 - A22
Chapter 19 - Hobbit Lawyers Facing Mordor
Chapter 21 - The Economist: Famine and Collapse
Chapter 22 - The Conservative Dilemma
Chapter 23 - The Sociology of the Revolution
Chapter 24 - The Emergence of the People
Chapter 25 - Going into Battle: the Liberal Class
Chapter 26 - Going into Battle: the Security Forces
About the podcast
The podcast contains about 23 hours worth of listening material.
U.N: No โcredible pathwayโ to staying under 1.5C degrees (October 2022)
It's official: we are heading into the biggest shit-show in human history. Revolution is now inevitable, a great danger and a great opportunity to create a new revitalised democracy, or allow fascism to drag us all into hell.
Far from it being the end it's just the beginning, there's everything to play for but only if we organise and resist as if our lives depend upon it, because they do.
Roger Hallam has studied and designed social change for 35 years, he has initiated and helped run the biggest climate campaigns of the last decade he knows his stuff. This series details the theory and practice of a completely new way of reimagining and renewing society.
At this moment in time this is the most important podcast series in the world, even if few people get it; that it's now or never for humanity. Roger walks his talk - these podcasts are recorded from prison. We're talking about real change here, no more blah blah blah.
Summary
Chapter 1-5: Introduction
The climate crisis is a social crisis. It is not just a natural phenomenon. People are going to suffer and die on a mass scale, and society as we know it is going to collapse. The risk of human extinction, however small, is one that we cannot ignore.
The inevitable social unrest will increase the likelihood of fascism in some states (constitutions being changed to become less democratic), other states will collapse all together (resulting in warlordism). At the same time, in times of social unrest, the likelihood of social change in general also increases, which provides agency. In other words: radical democratic reform becomes a more realistic possibility. Either way, regime shifts (constitutional changes, not just governmental changes) become more likely. This provides us with the opportunity (and responsibility!) for pro-social reform.
However, this only happens if we act strategically. Historically, opportunity for social change has not always resulted in positive change. This was due to the lack of strategic design, Occupy and the Egyptian revolution being examples. To contrast this, Roger Hallam argues he has tried and tested key elements of strategic design, showcased in his repeated successes with Extinction Rebellion, Insulate Britain, Just Stop Oil and the H22 project.
So the question becomes: how do we operate strategically? Iterative strategy design is key, optimising for the least-worst outcome, instead of trying to find the perfect solution. Theory should continuously be updated based on findings from our own practice (praxis). In addition, we should reuse existing theories from capitalist society, adapting them to our needs (exaptation). For example, elements of sales theory can also be applied in grassroots organizing.
Attribution
Work from the following resources was reused on this section the website:
- Designing the Revolution by Roger Hallam (2023) - Not explicitly published under a Creative Commons licence, but in Roger Hallam's words: "This is a process of collective creation, as you might say. So, you want to take some of what I've said, cut it up, criticise it, make a video out of it, you know, translate it into languages. Feel free. You don't need just permission. It's an open source project." (Chapter 5, part 1)
