Well folks, we’ve been teasing it long enough…today your large beautiful boys are reading THE BOOK. In an attempt to answer the questions “What is a conspiracy theory?”, “What happened to all the Nazis?” and “How did we get into this mess?” Dan and Jack are taking a look at The Devil’s Chessboard - a “biography” of the early CIA. Everyone has that friend on the left that’s a little bit too into conspiracy theories (cough, jack, cough), but this week, your lionhearted podcast hosts are going to s...
Apr 30, 2021•2 hr 1 min
Jack and Dan are at it again, dishing up some more bonus capital content. Things take a literary and all around fantastical turn in this section; expect phantoms, illusions, necromancy, and who knows, maybe a wizard or two? Oh won’t Jack be thrilled. The lads delve into the world of commodity fetishism, the essential ideology that supports and makes possible the capitalist commodity economy. A form of economy whereby the only relationships that truly matter are those that exist between things an...
Apr 27, 2021•36 min
This week our rotund podcast hosts kick back, watch a movie, and try to answer that question that has been haunting humanity since the early-1940s: was Robert McNamara cringe? The answer is yes. So strap in as the lads take a look at documentary-guy Errol Morris' 2003 classic "The Fog of War". The movie profiles McNamara as he goes from common Irishman to rare Irishman in his long career as war criminal and professional Numbers Guy. If only he had been born in a baseball town...he may have inven...
Apr 23, 2021•1 hr 12 min
This week Jack and Dan trade one big M Marxist for another, Milliband is out, Mattick is in. It’s quite a stark reversal, from a strategy of revolutionary reformism to one of spontaneous action by the workers and their primary organisational arm, the workers council. That’s right, Council Communism is on the docket for this weeks show and if we know one thing by now the lads always stand ready to be wooed by yet another camp of communists. Mattick’s critique of the reformist left is withering as...
Apr 16, 2021•1 hr 14 min
Be prepared to raise a glass and shed a tear this week as Jack and Dan part ways with their guiding light, their north star, Auxiliary Statements God Emperor, Ralph Miliband. That’s right, your dogged and persistent hosts have finally dusted off their worn and tattered copies of Marxism and Politics for one final time. This week, a discussion of Marxist strategy as the question is asked whether capitalism can be overthrown by reform within the bounds of constitutional legality or by resorting to...
Apr 09, 2021•1 hr 7 min
I think we all knew this was the logical conclusion of the last few episodes. The lads are at it again, with Jack well on his way to becoming a primitivist and Dan doing all he can to keep things on the level (no pun intended). In this episode your begrimed hosts discuss England's most radical moment - the occupation of St. George's Hill by Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers in 1649. However! Dan and Jack quickly realize they read two completely different texts! Jack read arch-revisionist Eduard...
Apr 02, 2021•1 hr 25 min
Jack and Dan are at it again folks, labouring under the misapprehension that greater wisdom is attainable to their mediocre minds. The lads again embark on their quest to fathom the wisdom of the oracle, reading once more from Karl Marx’s master work; Capital. Will they again find the weight of the truths contained therein overwhelming or rise to meet its challenge. Here’s hoping we can chalk one up for our heroes this week otherwise its just gonna get embarrassing. Its all about exchange value ...
Mar 30, 2021•40 min
Yeah if this Karl Marx guy was so great why didn't he ever write about chicken tractors?? Huh, nerd!? That's what I thought. This week the lads are dipping their malformed little toes into the pond of prepping for capitalist collapse. What would a collapse look like? What should I do to prepare? Do I buy more guns or less guns? Who am I and why am I here? All these questions and MORE will be answered in this week's episode when we talk to Andy and Elliot from the phenomenal Poor Prole's Almanac ...
Mar 26, 2021•1 hr 27 min
What do, Egyptian mummified cats, the battlefields of the Napoleonic wars, and millions of tons of South American bird poo have in common? The answer to this and some hopefully more useful and pertinent questions will be revealed on this weeks show as Jack and Dan continue their foray into the world of ecological theory. The lads read some John Bellamy Foster and learn all about how Karl Marx was, contrary to popular perception, a deeply ecologically minded thinker who was all too aware of the e...
Mar 19, 2021•1 hr 12 min
This week Jack and Dan read some blooming Bookchin. An anarchist! And a shockingly prophetic one at that. The boys ask, is mankind a part of nature or does it stand apart from it? What constitutes an ecological system and in what ways are social systems analogous to ecological ones? What is going on in the syphilis addled brains of the British aristocracy? Also the lads are now firmly committed to the no dig revolution which one suspects is largely because it accords with their generally lazy di...
Mar 12, 2021•1 hr 8 min
That's right folks, your brave podcasters have officially made it to T W E N T Y episodes of this here show. And you know what that means: we're phoning it in for another clip show. What have the boys learned over the last ten episodes? Does any of it matter? Is Marxism a legitimate tool for understanding the current state of things? Was Tom Morello in an episode of Star Trek? We answer none of these questions except the last one in this absolute knock-down-drag-out BARNBURNER of an ep. Thanks t...
Mar 05, 2021•1 hr 16 min
I don't know dude...what if time had like.......a fourth dimension? Reading: Voice of the Fire (1995), by Alan Moore.
Mar 02, 2021•33 min
Drum roll please! Welcome back to the show, podcast favourite, returning champion, and all round class act, Ellen Meiksins Wood! The lads discuss Meiksins Wood’s defence of EP Thompson’s theories of class against his structuralist and analytic Marxist critics. Discussion ranges from the origins of capitalism, to processes of class formation, and the place of class in politics today. Also covered; the comedy skits of Jerry Cohen. Reading: Class as Process and Relationship from Democracy against C...
Feb 26, 2021•1 hr 26 min
Turns out there's more to this book than the first six pages. Who woulda thought? This week the lads take a stab at deciphering the two-fold nature of the labor inside all commodities....but not before some corrections from last week. Corrections, I hear you say? How is that possible? Well get used to it because our brave hosts tend to say more crazy stuff than the Mariners' front office. Ba-boom! Reading: Capital Vol.1, Part 1. Commodities and Money, Chapter 1. Commodities, Section 2. The Two-f...
Feb 23, 2021•47 min
Hark! In the distance. What's that noise? Them's the dulcet tones of the boys talkin' some more Milly Band. So buckle in, hunker down, tune in, drop out and buckle up for one H-E-double-hockey-sticks of an episode, because this week we're talking about the necessity of a working class party capable of overthrowing this garbage can of a world we currently inhabit. In a twist, during this episode Dan winds up becoming a Stalinist and Jack a Maoist (owing to his propensity of relentless self-critic...
Feb 19, 2021•1 hr 19 min
Its revolution folks! Or is it? This week Jack and Dan take their first look at the German revolution of 1918/19; that most sorrowful of events in the history of the international workers movement where the world failed to turn and the revolutionary wave that began in Russia in 1917 was so abruptly halted. The boys discuss the revolutionaries’ failures, the duplicity of the Social Democrats, the workers councils, and the revolution’s place in the history of German. Reading: Problems of the Germa...
Feb 12, 2021•1 hr 9 min
What’s this, a new series from the Auxiliary Statements boys! Jack and Dan attempt to conquer the commanding heights of political economy and dip their toe where the big fish swim. That’s right, Big Daddy Marx’s Capital is the topic of this hopefully irregularly regular new offering to your podcast feed. Will these new acolytes to Marxology flounder or will they fly? Only time will tell. Reading: Capital Vol.1, Part 1. Commodities and Money, Chapter 1. Commodities, Section 1. The Two Factors of ...
Feb 09, 2021•58 min
What's that? The lads are a little late getting around to talking about this book? Everyone already talked about it on their podcasts two years ago? Well better late than never I always say. This week our beautiful brave boys Dan and Jack create a summoning circle of sorts in an attempt to revive the calculation debate. Spoiler alert: markets are bad, folks. Also on the docket, Dan defends the Borg. Again. Reading: The People's Republic of Walmart (2019) by Leigh Phillips & Michal Rozworski...
Feb 05, 2021•1 hr 34 min
The boys make a return to Allende’s Chile this week with the conclusion of their sketch of its all too brief flirtation with cybernetic planning. Jack and Dan look at what exactly it was that cybernetician Stafford Beer proposed as a model for real-time decentralised economic management in Chile. They explore the highs, the lows, and some lessons that can be drawn from Project Cybersyn. Reading, Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Alliende’s Chile (2014), by Eden Medina.
Jan 29, 2021•1 hr 28 min
Well look who stopped by! Today Dan and Jack are joined by Marxist Podfather Tom O'Brien from the From Alpha to Omega Podcast. Tom talks some sense into the boys and gives us all sorts of scalding hot takes about Trump, Biden and the crumbling empire that is the United States of America. They lads then talk a little Revolutionary Strategy, cybernetics and Aaron Bastani's wet, wet mouth. You can find the FULL, UNEDITED LIVESTREAM of this interview over on the Auxiliary Statements YouTube channel....
Jan 22, 2021•1 hr 40 min
This week Jack and Dan try to get to grips with the hip new theory on the block; Cybernetics! Our story starts in 1970s Chile. The boys learn all about how an eccentric British cybernetician named Stafford Beer came to be in the employ of the Socialist administration of president Salvador Allende. What does this management consultant have to teach a bunch of democratic socialists and how might business management theory come to inform our glorious communist future? VSM Guide - https://www.esrad....
Jan 15, 2021•1 hr 35 min
Recorded before the events in DC so you won't have to sit through any current event hot takes! That's the Auxiliary Statements promise, baby. What's it been, six episodes since we talked about our boy Ralph?? This week Dan and Jack climb back aboard the Mili-train to talk a little bit more about the state. Is there a difference between bourgeois republicanism and fascism? Yeah for sure. Are they both bad? Oh yeah most definitely. Reading: Marxism and Politics by Ralph Miliband (1977), Chapter IV...
Jan 08, 2021•1 hr 27 min
Today's the day folks! Jack and Dan make their best effort to explain why the podcast has the title it does; what is an auxiliary statement? The boys dive deep into some philosophy of science and do their upmost to stay vaguely afloat as they wrestle with the ultimate question, what is scientific investigation and how is it done (and more importantly, not done)? Theory is nothing without practice! Pretty rich coming from a theory podcast I hear you exclaim. Reading: The 'Corroboration' of Theori...
Jan 01, 2021•1 hr 17 min
Wow Auxiliary Statements in your feed on a TUESDAY?! For the first episode of our mid-week mini-episode series (known henceforth as Adjunct Statements), Jack takes a dive into the greatest book ever written...State and Rev-, uh, I mean The Silmarillion by JRR Tolkien. Why the hell is this in my commie podcast feed you ask? Not sure, but Jack does his best to explain what use this big ol' book could be to socialists, nerds and freaks today. Reading: "The Ainulindalë" from The Silmarillion (1977),...
Dec 29, 2020•39 min
Well would you look at that. Dan and Jack have made it to 10 episodes. We couldn't be more proud of our boys, could we folks? This week they take a look back at everything they've read so far in an attempt to draw parallels and maybe a conclusion or two. But after 10 lovely episodes, only one thing is for sure - Louis Althusser was and remains to this day, an anarchist icon. Happy holidays from the Auxiliary Statements family. Hope you're all staying safe. If you're like us, today is just anothe...
Dec 25, 2020•1 hr 28 min
On this week's show Jack and Dan continue their expedition to America's testcase state in all things deplorable and dastardly; California! Come listen to how a motley band of hippies, armed with sci-fi novels and utopian dreams, came to define the dystopian reality of the nascent computer age. Our hosts learn how things went so disastrously wrong and are forced to consider just how attached they they are to their “wetware”. Reading: The Californian Ideology by Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron (...
Dec 18, 2020•1 hr 17 min
God damn I miss Ronald Reagan. That's the mood as the lads take a look at the rise of The New Right - the political movement that decided to once and for all end the legacy of the New Deal and replace it with something much stupider. In this episode, Dan and Jack will examine all the freaks, opportunists, chuds, racists, homophobes, war-hawks, fundamentalists and worst of all CALIFORNIANS that brought about Ronald Reagan's presidency. So strap in, buckos, because this one's a history lesson. Rea...
Dec 11, 2020•1 hr 27 min
This week Jack and Dan are led down the garden path into the wonderful world of IDEOLOGY. With Althusser as a guide the boys try to grapple with the pervasive nature of the old foe capitalism and continue to seek an answer to the vexing question, “Why no revolution?”. Never before has ignorance been used as such an effective tool of criticism. Reading: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses by Louis Althusser (1970)
Dec 04, 2020•1 hr 26 min
The boys just couldn't keep away...Dan and Jack are back with chapter III and chapter IV section I of that Marxist classic - Marxism and Politics. This week they talk some more about class consciousness and what the hell that has to do with ideology. And what the hell is ideology. And what the hell are we. And do we even exist. They also get heated about Rob Manfred and talk a bit of baseball baby, that greatest of all sports. Reading: Marxism and Politics by Ralph Miliband (1977), Chapter III: ...
Nov 27, 2020•1 hr 24 min
This week it's revealed that fantasy may mean a little TOO much to Jack and Dan as they try very hard to have a conversation about its utopian potential as well as its tendency to promote the status quo. If nothing else, both of our co-hosts are proven to be nothing more than massive, irredeemable, disgusting, sticky nerds. Reading: Why Fantasy Matters Too Much (2009) by Jack Zipes, The Journal of Aesthetic Education, Summer, 2009, Vol. 43, No. 2, pp. 77-91.
Nov 20, 2020•1 hr 31 min
