Yesterday, as part of the Red May socialist festival in Seattle, Charmaine Chua, Deb Cowen, Sandro Mezzadra, Spencer Cox and I chatted about logistics and transport.

Deb we as always absolutely brilliant, talking about how logistics is about so much more than the transportation part of it – and spoke about the way even the production of pork is now part of the logistics; that there is a calculative logic involved whereby the pig becomes the first stage of production of a commodity – pork- and that the raising of pigs is adjusted to its logistical needs (she also showed us the softwares that help manage such production).

Charmaine spoke about how the logistics counterrevolution emerged as a response to the nationalist and anticolonial policies of decolonising nations c. 1950s and 1960s. I can’t wait to read her forthcoming book which will be making this argument.

Sandro spoke about the various ways in which the modalities of organisation we find need to be expanded outside of logistical spaces; and Spencer, who is an organiser with Amazon warehouse workers talked about how there has been a generational gap and a loss of the experiences of organising and mobilisation which is only just being recuperated.

The whole panel (and the q&a) is here: