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and the Hello and welcome to another episode of Politics Theory Other, a podcast from Tribune magazine.

My name is Alex Doherty and my guest today is Gavin Muller.

Today's episode is part two of our

conversation on his new book, Breaking Things at Work, The Luddites were right about why you

hate your job. We talked about Taylorism and the deskilling of workers and about how automation was

used by American military planners during the Vietnam War in order to maintain control of the

increasingly mutinous US Army. And finally, we talked about why, in spite of how the increasing

deployment of deskilling technologies made working conditions worse and more dangerous, many union

leaders in both the United States and Europe supported the imposition of these new technologies.

Today's show is brought to you by PTO's supporters on Patreon and also by Verso Books,

who have lots of excellent titles that may be of interest to PTO listeners.

One that you might like to check out is The Force of Nonviolence by Judith Butler.

According to the New York Times, as a strategy

of resistance and protest, nonviolence is often seen as passive and resolutely individual.

Judith Butler's philosophical inquiry argues that it is in fact a shrewd and even aggressive

collective political tactic. Now available in paperback, Butler reminds us that

what is deemed violence or non-violence is a matter of interpretation, and that the state

maintains a monopoly on deciding which acts are understood to constitute violence at all.

It's out now from Verso Books, and you can buy it directly from their website or get it as part

of your Verso Book Club membership. Go to versobooks.com for more information. I also interviewed Judith about

the book in episode 80. And now to today's interview. Gavin Muller is the author of Media

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