42.1 Friendship (is not easy)

Everyday communism says that even in our worst moments, we have an instinct for mutual aid. In fact, we can't get away from our impulse to share.

Aug 09, 2026

An excerpt from the audiobook of Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times — Chapter Eight, “Friendship (Is Not Easy).”

I’m putting this out as a companion to my interview with Carsie Blanton because she models in her touring life exactly what I’m trying to articulate in this chapter: solidarity as the antidote to the individualism capitalism enforces on artists, activists, and everyone else.

The chapter draws on D.W. Winnicott’s incommunicado core, Aristotle’s three types of friendship, and David Graeber’s everyday communism to build the case that real, horizontal friendship is already a form of non-capitalist life.

Sources:

Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times — Penguin Random House
D.W. Winnicott — The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment — Karnac Books
Aristotle — Nicomachean Ethics, Books VIII–IX (on friendship) — MIT Classics
David Graeber — Debt: The First 5,000 Years — Melville House
David Graeber on everyday communism — Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology — Prickly Paradigm Press
Prefigurative politics — concept overview — SAGE Encyclopedia of Political Theory
Carsie Blanton — official site

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