Amelia Davenport and Renato Flores argue that social media cannot be ignored despite its negative effects on modern culture. Instead, the left needs its own approach to social media that takes into account the values encoded into tech platforms. Narrated by: Allen Lanterman Intro Music: ворожное озеро Гроза vwqp remix Outro Music: We are Friends Forever performed by Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment.
Amelia Davenport argues for the relevance of cybernetics to the project of developing a communism that transcends the modernist project. Read by Will Intro Music: ворожное озеро Гроза vwqp remix Outro Music: We are Friends Forever performed by Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment.
Rudy joins Robbie McVeigh and Bill Rolston, authors of Anois ar theacht an tSamhraidh: Ireland, Colonialism and the Unfinished Revolution for a discussion on Irish history from colonization to the present. We discuss the earliest colonization attempts, the Ulster plantation and the formation of the planter/gael binary and Protestant Ascendancy, the Act of Union and how the Act co-opted a Catholic minority and made colonialism in Ireland distinct. We then follow by discussion how Partition came a...
Alexander Gallus pushes against the haze of propaganda to assess the current course of the war between Ukraine and Russia. Article read aloud by John Turner.
Jean, Jess, Annie and Rudy sit down to discuss Gracie Lyons' Constructive Criticism: A Handbook based on their organizing experiences. They discuss the events that led them to take an interest in this book, how this book uses Marxism and Maoism to frame (self)criticism in ways that go beyond-self help, before going through the methods the book proposes to improve giving and receiving criticism giving ample examples along the way. They finish with a reflection on the role of criticism and persona...
Lydia Apolinar, Alexander Gallus, and Ryan Tool pay tribute to the revolutionary and plebeian origins of Christianity. Read by William (Note: Originally Published December 25th 2020)
Dillon, Rudy, Amelia and Lucas sit down to discuss the art and practice of mentorship. We talk about how to assert yourself as a mentor without being resented or developing an unbalanced relationship, one-on-one mentorship vs group mentorship and what makes a good mentor. We follow up by discussing how to adequately make a person feel welcome and contribute to the movement and allowing them to grow, the art and practice of delegation, and give ample examples on our experiences with these topics....
Parker, James, Rudy and Cliff join for a discussion on the context of Lenin's State and Revolution , and how those ideas were applied in the early years of the Soviet government. We start by discussing the context of the book, especially in relationship with the recent audiobook by Kautsky on Democracy and Republicanism . We continue by discussing the debates in the Second International around the Paris Commune, the Immediate Genesis of the Book during the First World War, the text itself and it...
Annie and Paul join Kim Moody, a socialist and labor movement theorist and author of The Rank and File Strategy and Breaking the Impasse . We discuss Kim's political origins between the civil rights movement and labor unionism; his experience with unions and rank-and-file rebellion in the 1970s as a member of International Socialists; the history, purpose and achievements of Labor Notes, Kim’s vision of political change through mass action, including his thoughts on the Amazon Labor Union, and w...
Rudy joins Intan Suwandi, author of Value Chains: The New Economic Imperialism and co-author of Covid-19 and Catastrophe Capitalism: Commodity Chains and Ecological-Epidemiological-Economic Crisis for a discussion on Global Commodity Chains. We discuss supply chains from a bird's eye, the theoretical development of the concept, and why they are so crucial to capitalist production and why they consolidate inequality and imperialism. We discuss how large companies use 'arms-length' contracting to ...
This is a narration of chapters 9-13 of Karl Kautsky's Parliamentarism and Democracy (1893-1911), from Karl Kautsky on Democracy & Republicanism by Ben Lewis. The full audiobook is currently in production by the team at Cosmonaut Magazine. A copy of the book itself can be purchased at Haymarket Books . Narration and editing by Myk Labas, with apologies for the microphone difficulties. Music: ' Red Sleeping Beauty' by McCarthy...
Isaac and Rudy join Chad Montrie, author of numerous books on the intersection of workers' movements and the environment for a discussion on the often ignored facets of working class environmentalism. We begin by discussing Chad's earlier work To Save the Land and People , on the worker and farmer opposition to strip mining in Appalachia in the 1970s, and how that movement interfaced with the United Mine Workers of America and the Sierra Club. We continue by reflecting on what the definition of ...
Sam Thomas argues that Machiavelli can help us understand the bourgeois nature of fascism, and how anti-fascism must empower the proletariat.
Donald, Christian, and Connor sit down and discuss the man of steel: Joseph Stalin. Less of a focused biography, we put Stalin in his historical context. In this episode we focus primarily on his ascension to power over the course of 1920s and the road to the Great Terror. Other important topics covered include the Agrarian Question, the First Five Year plan, along with a brief detour into the adventures of a young Stalin and the Russian Civil War. We end the first part here because of the impor...
Eric, Rob and Rudy join to discuss Afghanistan, focusing on its socialist period from 1979 to 1992. We discuss the history of the Afghan state from its beginnings as the Durrani empire, its interactions with Russia and the British empire, the Zahir Shah monarchy and the Daoud period all the way up to the Saur revolution, including a discussion of the communist and Islamist factions in the country. We talk about the initial reforms the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) tried to make...
This is a narration of chapters 4-8 of Karl Kautsky's Parliamentarism and Democracy (1893-1911), from Karl Kautsky on Democracy & Republicanism by Ben Lewis. The full audiobook is currently in production by the team at Cosmonaut Magazine. A copy of the book itself can be purchased at Haymarket Books . Narration and editing by Myk Labas. Music: 'Class War' , the Dils 'Aired Out' , blackchai...
Djamil and Donald join Helena Sheehan, author of Marxism and the Philosophy of Science: A Critical History for a deep dive on the interactions between these two fields. They start off with Sheehan’s intellectual history, before discussing what Marxism is and how it relates to other philosophies of science. They talk about Marx & Engels’ relationship to science, in particular to Darwinism, Engels’ much maligned Dialectics of Nature , its relationship to Hegel, and the laws of dialectics. They...
Jean Allen and Marisa Miale, authors of For An Internationalist DSA , sketch out a strategy for building a left opposition committed to electoral discipline and unity between socialism and the international working-class. Read by LC
Lydia and Rudy join Imogen Woods from Prometheus Journal to discuss her articles on organizing social care workers and houseworkers . We talk about the concept of social care factory, and how the mass privatization has resulted in declining care standards as well as working standards. We talk about how democratically run care system can look like, how to organize social care workers and how "love" is used as a currency. We then switch to a discussion of the International Feminist Collective and ...
This is a narration of the two prefaces, introduction, and chapters 1-3 of Karl Kautsky's Parliamentarism and Democracy (1893-1911), from Karl Kautsky on Democracy & Republicanism by Ben Lewis. The full audiobook is currently in production by the team at Cosmonaut Magazine. A copy of the book itself can be purchased at Haymarket Books . Narration and editing by Myk Labas.
Charlie and Rudy join Carolyn Eichner, author of The Paris Commune: A Brief History and Surmounting the Barricades: Women in the Paris Commune for a discussion on the Paris Commune, its origins, its place as a transitional state in a civil war, its tragic end as well as its legacies. We talk about the situation of Paris in 1871, the forming of the Commune, the meaning of "social republic" and how women had to fight for a place in it, the political tendencies in the Commune, the cooperatives and ...
This is a narration of the preface and introduction for Karl Kautsky on Democracy & Republicanism by Ben Lewis, who has also provided a preface to the audiobook. The full audiobook is currently in production by the team at Cosmonaut Magazine. A copy of the book itself can be purchased at Haymarket Books . Narration and editing by Myk Labas.
Drawing from the experience of the Democratic Socialists of America and Marxist Center, Marisa Miale examines the everyday, interpersonal level of party-building and argues for a revolutionary strategy that can weave together cultural intervention, base-building and political unity. Comrade Lacus reads aloud.
The Spanish government has just sided with the Moroccan government on the issue of the Western Sahara. Djamil and Rudy join Garazi Hach Embarek for an introductory discussion on the history and present of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic of the Western Sahara. We discuss the pre-colonial and Spanish colonial history, the context and formation of the Polisario Front liberation organization. We follow up by talking about the liberation wars against Morocco and Mauritania, the place of the Poli...
Renato Flores responds to Cam W’s argument for Maoism and the mass line. Gabriel Palcic reads aloud.
Annie and Cliff join Victor Devinatz, a management theorist and labor historian, to discuss the formation of the Trade Union Unity League (TUUL), its successes and failures, and the role it played in the development of the labor movement. We focus on its emergence from the end of the Trade Union Education League (TUEL), its relationship between bottom-up initiative and Comintern direction in the shift toward dual unionism; CPUSA’s three-pronged strategy of constructing the TUUL, building an oppo...
In light of the liquidation of DSA’s BDS working group, Charlie Frank argues that Marxists must continue the political fight rather than turn towards localist activism or the various left-wing sects. Comrade Mike reads aloud.
Giacomo Bianchino and Rudy join Amal for an introductory discussion on New Zealand's (Aotearoa in the Maori language) political economy, with a focus on how the country was settled and connected to the world market. We discuss the nature of the first settlements, the dispossession of the Maori, the Treaty of Waitangi and why it is a cornerstone of the myth of biculturalism, why the colonization process of the Maori was different when compared to the one in Australia and why New Zealand is an ind...
Jackson joins ethnomusicologist and anthropologist T.M. Scruggs to discuss Nicaraguan popular music in the decades leading up to the 1979 Sandinista Revolution, as well as during the first Sandinista government from 1979 to 1990. With a focus on the work of FSLN-affiliated musician Carlos Mejía Godoy, we dive into the history of the Nicaraguan political song movement that emerged in the late-60s and early 70s and discuss how, especially after the 1972 earthquake that devastated Nicaragua’s capit...
Ian Wright defends Marx’s theory of surplus-value and its claim that human labor is the ultimate cause of economic profit. Gabriel Palcic reads aloud.
