Alex, Rudy and Christian sit down to discuss the history of the German Democratic Republic from its foundation atop the ruins of WW2 to the prelude of reunification. They discuss the challenges of building socialism in the fourth of ruined country, the challenges of brain drain, the economy before and after the Wall was built, the intelligentsia/worker divide, the varying responsiveness of the ruling party to criticism and how the GDR was able to provide a normal life to most of its population f...
Apr 04, 2021•1 hr 36 min
Jonah Martell proposes a radical New Union Act to throw the antiquated US Constitution into the dustbin of history. Cliff Connolly reads the article out loud.
Apr 01, 2021•34 min
Sam and Rudy join Ian Scott Horst, author of Like Ho Chi Minh! Like Che Guevara! The Revolutionary Left in Ethiopia, 1969–1979 (Foreign Languages Press) for a discussion on the 1974 revolution in Ethiopia and the relationship to the Ethiopian present, as well as what we can learn and apply from it for today's world. We talk about the questions of Eritrean and Ethiopian nationalism, the role of the military in a revolution, the student movements in Ethiopia and their role, with a comparison to th...
Mar 28, 2021•1 hr 30 min
Lydia and Anne sit down with Daria Dyakonova to discuss the often neglected history of the Communist Women's Movement (1920-22). They talk about the origins of the movement, its most important figures, the debates around what the base of the CWM would be, and what would be the main issues it tackled, its changing relationship to the Comintern and its recurring fight against male chauvinism within the communist and broader workers movement. The discussion finishes with the slow eclipse of the CWM...
Mar 21, 2021•1 hr 6 min
Amelia, Jake, Steve and Rudy sit down for a discussion of what experiences in organizing brought them to be interested in Cybernetics and Beer's viable system model, and how they try to think through the structures of the organizations they currently are members of in Beerian terms. They discuss the dichotomies of centralization/de-centralization and here/now vs then/there, and how to balance them as well as the need for regulation in organization in the shape of arbitration and policies. ------...
Mar 14, 2021•1 hr 19 min
Cliff Connolly critiques CounterPower’s vision of the “party of autonomy” and offers an alternative vision of the mass party. Cliff reads his article aloud.
Mar 11, 2021•52 min
Lydia, Isaac and Rudy join Emmanuel Farjoun from Matzpen for a discussion on his 1983 piece Class divisions in Israeli society and how the divisions have changed in the present day. We discuss the changing strength of the Palestinians inside Israel and how that is reflected in their changing political aims, the differences between whiteness in the US and the construction of race in Israel, and the BDS movement internationally....
Mar 07, 2021•1 hr 31 min
Matt Strupp reads aloud the a reprint of the mission statement of Marxist Unity Slate , a set of proposals for the 2021 DSA convention with the aim of fostering democratic discipline and principled election campaigns, as well as uniting Marxists in DSA around a vision of a mass socialist party. The proposals can be read and signed here, 100 signatures are needed to bring these to the convention. Most of the participants in Marxist Unity Slate are associated with Cosmonaut Magazine , either as co...
Mar 04, 2021•15 min
Donald and Rudy sit down with Wayne Au, author of A Marxist Education . They discuss his experiences on providing a critical education, how education in the US currently stands and how Covid has just brought to the forefront issues faced by students. They discuss the Au's work on Paulo Freire and Lev Vygotsky, and end up envisioning how a socialist school could look like.
Feb 28, 2021•1 hr 1 min
Mikael Lyngaas argues that post-work theorists ranging from Bob Black to Srnicek and Williams are utopian socialism for the current era. Sam Wiles reads the article out loud.
Feb 24, 2021•33 min
Renato Flores argues for self-determination and reparations for Black Americans as a key part of the revolutionary struggle in the USA. Robert Fisher reads the article out loud.
Feb 19, 2021•25 min
Ian and Donald join William Clare Roberts (@MarxInHell), author of Marx's Inferno for a discussion on the wider themes of his book: republicanism, non-domination, theories of freedom, the early communist movement, and how to read capital both politically and scientifically.
Feb 15, 2021•1 hr
Isaac and Rudy join Moshé Machover, one of the four founding members of the Israeli Socialist Organization, better known as Matzpen after the name of their publication for a discussion on the group's origins, how their anti-zionist consciousness originated and developed, their marginalization by Israeli society during the 1967 war and how Arab/Jewish solidarity was built. The conversation then pivots to how the Israeli Class Structure has changed since its early analysis by Matzpen and what that...
Feb 07, 2021•1 hr 49 min
Parker and Alex have a conversation with the editor and translator of Karl Kautsky on Democracy and Republicanism (Haymarket, 2020) on the legacy of Karl Kautsky before he turned renegade. They discuss the convergence of various conflicting political views, from 'Leninists' to Social Democrats and Cold War Warriors, into what Ben Lewis calls in his book a "peculiar consensus" that fundamentally misrepresents the historical figure of Kautsky. Please support Ben Lewis's work Marxism Translated on ...
Jan 31, 2021•1 hr
With family abolition a controversial topic in the current-day leftist discourse, Alyson Escalante argues for a more nuanced and sensitive approach to the topic by looking at the works of Karl Marx and Alexandra Kollontai while exploring the relation of colonialism to the family. Sam Wiles reads the article aloud.
Jan 29, 2021•53 min
Matt and Christian join Zhun Xu, author of From Commune to Capitalism: How China’s Peasants Lost Collective Farming and Gained Urban Poverty for a discussion on China's communes from their construction to their dismantling. They contextualize land reform globally, elaborate on how the Chinese land reform process looked different from the Soviet one, discuss how the communes looked and functioned, and what services they provided as well as their achievements and their points of failure. They then...
Jan 24, 2021•1 hr 35 min
Richard Hunsinger argues that migrant concentration camps represent a descent into fascist barbarism and are related to the inherent tendencies of capitalism. Remi Debs reads the article aloud. -------------------- Find more information about Richard's case in: https://twitter.com/DefendRichard/ , and please donate to the Atlanta Solidarity Fund
Jan 12, 2021•29 min
For the latest episode of our series on Actually Existing Socialism, Christian, Rudy, Donald and Connor join forces for a discussion on the Yugoslav self-management in its different iterations. We use Darko Suvin's Splendor, Misery and Possibilities: An X-Ray of Socialist Yugoslavia as a background to outline an exploration of the successive reforms where self-management was first brought in as a response to the failures of the command economy to take advantage of plebian creativity, and how slo...
Jan 02, 2021•1 hr 27 min
Rudy is joined by Jasdeep and Sangeet to talk about the recent farmers protests going on in Northern India, especially around the regions of Punjab and Haryana. They discuss the origins of the movement and of the farmers union, how the movement relates to workers and urban dwellers and how the questions of caste, religion and gender are dealt with. The conversation then examines the total participation of society in the movement and how this was achieved, and what we can learn from it. We finali...
Dec 27, 2020•46 min
Parker and Alex join Emil Jacobs of the Socialist Party of the Netherlands to discuss the factional struggle and expulsion of the Communist Platform group. They discuss the party's bureaucratic centralism and opposition to open democratic struggle by the party's parliamentary fraction. Should communists bother to try to push for principled politics within the broader workers movement? Why or why not? Emil also asks for context on the struggle for socialism in the US and the Democratic Socialists...
Dec 21, 2020•58 min
Rudy is joined by Jonathan, Henry and Felipe from the Boston Independent Drivers Guild for a discussion on how gig drivers are resisting and organizing against precarity in their jobs. We discuss what a typical working day looks like and how drivers relate to their jobs and what the workforce looks like and what challenges that entails when organizing, such as multilingualism. Felipe discusses how Uber and Lyft workers can meet each other, how BIDG was started, its current organizing strategy an...
Dec 16, 2020•1 hr 3 min
Donald Parkinson takes issue with the calls for a “socially conservative leftism” that have increased in popularity since Jeremy Corbyn’s defeat in the UK election. Matthew Strupp reads the article aloud.
Dec 10, 2020•47 min
In the second episode of our Soviet Science series, Donald, Djamil and Rudy sit down to contextualize an infamous episode of this story: The case of T. D. Lysenko and Lysenkoism. We discuss the origins of vernalization and Lysenkoism in peasant folk knowledge and Michurin's plant garden, how the state of Soviet scientifical structures and Soviet agriculture favoured his rise, how he took advantage of the Soviet purges to solidify his standing, how he managed to absolutely ban the research of gen...
Dec 05, 2020•1 hr 28 min
Cliff Connolly argues for a culture of sobriety within our organizations, drawing from the example of Austrian Socialism.
Dec 03, 2020•39 min
Alex and Rudy welcome historian Cliff Conner for a discussion of his recent book The Tragedy of American Science: From Truman to Trump published by Haymarket Books . They discuss how this tragedy is a tragedy of capitalist science which is seen across the capitalist world, the role of science as an unchallengeable source of authority and how that is squared with the antiintelectualism needed to sustain a power structure, the influence of money in regulation and research, the precautionary princi...
Nov 28, 2020•1 hr 8 min
This article's author, Richard Hunsinger, is currently being held without bail in an ICE detention facility and could use our support. Donations to the Atlanta Solidarity Fund help political prisoners like Richard, and can be made at https://atlsolidarity.org/ Letters can be sent to Richard by emailing writetodick@protonmail.com Donations to his commissary can be sent on Venmo to Kat-Richards-1 or cashapp to $KatRichards. Discourse related to the concept of emotional labor can highlight the way ...
Nov 23, 2020•27 min
Join the Cosmonaut Ecocrew as they discuss Andreas Malm’s piercing 2016 text Fossil Capital and attempt to dispel the myriad of myths that have been erected around the energetic transition to coal. The fateful intertwining in mid-19th century British cotton districts of capital and fossil fuels is examined in the context of class struggle, the ascendancy of the steam engine, and alternative futures which were incompatible with the logic of capital. ----- Check the previous episodes of this serie...
Nov 21, 2020•1 hr 18 min
Donald Parkinson responds to Taylor B’s Beginning’s of Politics: DSA and the Uprising , arguing that a workers’ party is necessary to advance an emancipatory politics. Cliff Connolly reads the article aloud.
Nov 15, 2020•29 min
Rudy and Annie join the two co-chairs of Philly Socialists, Mara and Janaya, for what starts as a conversation on the issues women and non-men comrades face when organizing, and ends up being a discussion of Philly Socialists' base-building activities and their philosophy on the party. The episode starts off with a discussion of the experiences in PS to make the spaces more welcoming to everyone, the role of child-care and of strong sexual harassment policies, and how to provide spaces for every...
Nov 08, 2020•1 hr 23 min
Matthew Strupp examines economic debates in China during the leadup to the Great Leap Forward and assesses comparisons made between Mao and Bukharin. Cliff Connolly reads the article aloud.
Nov 06, 2020•28 min
