The Worker and the Hydra: A Reply to Partisan Mag
The development of working-class consciousness requires more than struggles against the employer on the shopfloor, argues Marisa Miale. Mick Labas reads the article aloud.
Nov 11, 2021•30 min
Cosmopod
Cosmopod is the official podcast of Cosmonaut Magazine, a project dedicated to expanding the project of scientific socialism in the 21st Century. In our feed we have a combination of podcast episodes and audio articles from our website.
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Episodes
Indigenous Flows of Resistance with Mike Gouldhawke
Jackson and Rudy join Mike Gouldhawke , a Métis and Cree writer whose family is from kistahpinanihk (City of Prince Albert) and nêwo-nâkîwin (Mont Nebo) in Treaty 6 territory in Saskatchewan, for a discussion on indigenous issues in Canada with a focus on the Métis. We talk about the history of the Métis, through ethnogenesis, the Red River Resistance and the North-West Resistance. The conversation continues with cross-border organizing, the similarities and differences between Canadian and US I...
Nov 08, 2021•1 hr 36 min
The Fight for a Marxist Program in the DSA
Donald Parkinson assesses the 2021 DSA Convention and imagines a path forward beyond its current political and strategic deadlock. Cliff Connolly reads the article aloud.
Nov 05, 2021•40 min
[Audiobook] Revolutionary Strategy - Chapter Five
This is a narration of the introduction to Mike Macnair's groundbreaking book Revolutionary Strategy. Narration and editing by Lydia Apolinar. The free market triumphalism of the 1990s is over. Early 21st century capitalism looks like Karl Marx’s description: growing extremes of wealth and poverty, and irrepressible boom-bust cycles. But for the moment, rightwing religious and nationalist nostalgia politics is the main beneficiary of the opposition this has spawned. The political left remains in...
Nov 03, 2021•31 min
Untold Stories of the United Electrical Workers with Chris Townsend
Annie joins Chris Townsend, longtime organizer with both the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers (UE) and the Amalgamated Transit Union for an oral history on UE from the second World War, through their split with the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the offshoring wave of the late 20th century and the collapse of the USSR. They discuss how UE develops a militant class consciousness in its members, their survival through the dark years of the 1990s, organizing the unorganized, thei...
Nov 01, 2021•1 hr 31 min
To Hell With The American Gentry
Nicolas D Villarreal argues against populist appeals for a common front between the working-class and small business owners. Mick Labas reads the article aloud.
Oct 29, 2021•19 min
The Value of Law: The Judiciary and the State with Mike Macnair
Anton and Donald join Mike Macnair for a discussion on law in history and in Marxist thought. They discuss the purpose of law, the different schools of philosophy of law, how Hegel conceived law and the state, and what Marx and Engels took from it, the legal theories of the Soviet theoretician Pashukanis, the role of the constitution in a bourgeois state, what is the role of judges in capitalism and how to organize law in a socialist society. References : Mike Macnair - Law and State as Holes in...
Oct 25, 2021•2 hr 10 min
Trans-cending the Market: How Socialist Planning Can Meet the Needs of Transgender People
Stani Bjegunac lays out the ways a planned economy could contribute to the project of transgender liberation, focusing on the issues of bathrooms and medical transition. Marina reads the article aloud.
Oct 22, 2021•18 min
[Audiobook] Revolutionary Strategy - Chapter Four
This is a narration of the introduction to Mike Macnair's groundbreaking book Revolutionary Strategy. Narration and editing by Lydia Apolinar. The free market triumphalism of the 1990s is over. Early 21st century capitalism looks like Karl Marx’s description: growing extremes of wealth and poverty, and irrepressible boom-bust cycles. But for the moment, rightwing religious and nationalist nostalgia politics is the main beneficiary of the opposition this has spawned. The political left remains in...
Oct 20, 2021•41 min
Class Struggle and Corporatism: A Brief History of Australian Colonialism
Rudy joins Roxy Hall and Giacomo Bianchino for a discussion on the past, present and future of the Australian state. We talk about the history of Australian colonization with its differences and similarities with US and Canada, the squatter vanguard of settler-colonialism, the failed attempt at a bourgeois revolution that was the Eureka Stockade and the process of Federation. We then turn to the formation and pivotal role of the Australian Labor Party in Australian politics, outlining the broad ...
Oct 18, 2021•1 hr 45 min
The Class Struggle in Afghanistan and its Future
In light of the Taliban’s consolidation of power in response to U.S. withdrawal from the region, Rob Ashlar predicts not the foreclosure of class struggle in Afghanistan but new beginnings. LC reads the article aloud.
Oct 14, 2021•22 min
The World-Ecology: Capitalism and Nature with Jason Moore
Niko and Rudy sit down with Jason Moore, author of Capitalism in the Web of Life and The Capitalocene ( Part I , II ) for a discussion on his approach to world-ecology including the concepts of Capitalism as a way of organizing nature and of the Web of Life. We discuss how Capitalism has organized nature since its inception and why it is necessary to begin a periodization of capitalism's effects on nature in the colonization of the Atlantic Islands, the debates around Metabolic rift/shift, the r...
Oct 11, 2021•1 hr 49 min
[Audiobook] Revolutionary Strategy - Chapter Three
This is a narration of the introduction to Mike Macnair's groundbreaking book Revolutionary Strategy. Narration and editing by Lydia Apolinar. The free market triumphalism of the 1990s is over. Early 21st century capitalism looks like Karl Marx’s description: growing extremes of wealth and poverty, and irrepressible boom-bust cycles. But for the moment, rightwing religious and nationalist nostalgia politics is the main beneficiary of the opposition this has spawned. The political left remains in...
Oct 07, 2021•30 min
Imperialism in the 21st century with John Smith
Donald and Rudy join John Smith, author of Imperialism in the 21st Century: Globalization, Exploitation and Capitalism's Final Crisis for a discussion on imperialism and unequal exchange. We discuss the history of three global commodities: t-shirts, iPhones and coffee and what they can tell us about the worldwide social relationships of capitalism, why GDP and productivity are illusions that hide exploitation and super-profits, the concept of labor aristocracy and super-profits and the political...
Oct 04, 2021•1 hr 53 min
Ten Theses on the Gender Question
Roxy Hall makes an intervention into debates around transgender issues, critiquing both trans liberalism and anti-trans radical feminism to stake out a position that seeks the abolition of gender. Annie Rose reads the article aloud.
Sep 30, 2021•24 min
Radical Approaches to Mental Health: Decolonial and Democratic Psychiatries with Sasha Durakov
Matt and Rudy join Sasha Durakov Warren from An Unsound Mind for a discussion on the history of psychiatry reform movements and radical mental health. We discuss how the definition of mind has changed across history, and how the internal movements to reform psychiatry and mistakenly grouped under broad umbrellas that hide a myriad of approaches and contradictions. We also discuss the Franco Basaglia's Democratic Psychiatry movement and Fanon's decolonial psychiatry, and end by envisioning what t...
Sep 27, 2021•1 hr 31 min
Intro to Historical Materialism by Nikolai Bukharin
Written by Bolshevik philosopher, economist, and statesmen Nikolai Bukharin in 1921, Historical Materialism: A System of Sociology was the standard primer on sociology and the historical materialist method in the early Soviet Union. Christian Cail introduces the text in the latest offer from Cosmonaut Press, which Cliff Connolly reads aloud. The book is available for purchase at cosmonautmag.com and a reading group starting Sept 30th will be available to all Patreon subscribers.
Sep 24, 2021•19 min
[Audiobook] Revolutionary Strategy - Chapter Two
This is a narration of the introduction to Mike Macnair's groundbreaking book Revolutionary Strategy. Narration and editing by Lydia Apolinar. The free market triumphalism of the 1990s is over. Early 21st century capitalism looks like Karl Marx’s description: growing extremes of wealth and poverty, and irrepressible boom-bust cycles. But for the moment, rightwing religious and nationalist nostalgia politics is the main beneficiary of the opposition this has spawned. The political left remains in...
Sep 23, 2021•31 min
The Practice of Marxist Psychoanalysis with Daniel Tutt
Donald and Rudy join Daniel Tutt for a discussion on the history and present of psychoanalysis and its relationship to Marxism. We discuss whether psychoanalysis can be considered a science and how psychoanalysts produce knowledge before explaining the libidinal economy and possible psychoanalytic interventions in the sphere of exchange. We also discuss Wilhelm Reich: his claim to being the first Marxist psychoanalytic as well as his writings on fascism and its relationship to the family. We con...
Sep 20, 2021•1 hr 31 min
[Audiobook] Revolutionary Strategy - Chapter One
This is a narration of the introduction to Mike Macnair's groundbreaking book Revolutionary Strategy. Narration and editing by Lydia Apolinar. The free market triumphalism of the 1990s is over. Early 21st century capitalism looks like Karl Marx’s description: growing extremes of wealth and poverty, and irrepressible boom-bust cycles. But for the moment, rightwing religious and nationalist nostalgia politics is the main beneficiary of the opposition this has spawned. The political left remains in...
Sep 16, 2021•25 min
Revisiting the Agrarian and National Questions with Paris Yeros
Rudy joins Paris Yeros editor of Reclaiming the Nation: The Return of the National Question in Africa, Asia and Latin America and Reclaiming the Land: The Resurgence of Rural Movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America for a discussion on the agrarian and national questions in the 21st century, with a focus on the Zimbabwe land occupations of the 2000s. We discuss the semi-proletarization and land hunger in the Global South, the relevance of the peasantry as a social class, national sovereignty ...
Sep 13, 2021•1 hr 17 min
[Audiobook] Revolutionary Strategy - Preface & Introduction
This is a narration of the introduction to Mike Macnair's groundbreaking book Revolutionary Strategy. We have also included a preface from Parker McQueeney on what this book means in the context of 2021. Narration and editing by Lydia Apolinar. The free market triumphalism of the 1990s is over. Early 21st century capitalism looks like Karl Marx’s description: growing extremes of wealth and poverty, and irrepressible boom-bust cycles. But for the moment, rightwing religious and nationalist nostal...
Sep 09, 2021•46 min
Canadian Settler-Capitalism with Brendan and Tyler Shipley
Rudy and Brendan join Tyler Shipley, author of Canada in the World: Settler Capitalism and the Colonial Imagination , for a discussion on the past, present and future of the Canadian state. We discuss the terms "Settler Capitalism" and "Colonial Imagination", the formation of Canada through Confederation, the historical policy of Canada towards indigenous people and the current debates around residential schools and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW), how Canada is falsely posited as a...
Sep 06, 2021•1 hr 31 min
Capitalism, Socialism and Subsistence in Laos with Boike Rehbein
Rudy joins Boike Rehbein, author of Globalization, Society and Culture in Laos and Society in Contemporary Laos for a discussion on the past, present and future of the Lao People's Democratic Republic. We start by discussing the concept of habitus and how it can be used to study Laotian society. We then talk about the structure of pre-communist society, the communist takeover in 1975 and the early attempts to build a centralized economy, and the market reforms of 1986. We finish by discussing th...
Aug 30, 2021•41 min
Communism and the Disabled with Maddie and Jess
Rudy joins Maddie and Jess from Philly Socialists to discuss the politics of disability and its relationship with organizing. We discuss different models of disability and how they operate under capitalism, what disability can teach us about organizing methods, and the disability rights movements in the US. We the dive into how to relate to accessibility in our organizing, and how to handle conflicting needs around it. We end by discussing the liberatory horizons for disabled people under social...
Aug 24, 2021•1 hr 25 min
[Audiobook] Lenin Rediscovered: Chapter Nine and Conclusion
This is a narration of the ninth chapter and conclusion of Lars Lih's excellent book Lenin Rediscovered: What Is to Be Done? In Context. In this chapter, Lih explores the debates between Bolshevik and Menshevik RSDWP members after their infamous split at the party's Second Congress. The conclusion hammers home Lih's insightful critique of the "textbook interpretation" of Lenin broadly and WITBD in particular, revealing the former as an optimistic and dedicated Erfurtian revolutionary. The full b...
Aug 19, 2021•2 hr 35 min
Lifting the Double Burden: The Women’s Movement under State Socialism
Lydia, Agata, Anne and Rudy join for a discussion of Kristen Ghodsee's Second World, Second Sex: Socialist Women's Activism and Global Solidarity during the Cold War . We begin with the forgotten Communist history of International Women's Year (1975) which later became the United Nations Decade for Women (75-85), and the conflicts between the Western and Eastern blocs regarding women's liberation. We also discuss the double burden of women in Bulgaria, and how women's associations interfaced wit...
Aug 16, 2021•1 hr 29 min
The Procedural is Political
Renato Flores argues for a culture shift around meeting procedures that takes into account differing backgrounds to make our organizing spaces more accessible to everyone regardless of education and time available. Unoriginal Smack reads the article out loud.
Aug 12, 2021•18 min
Communists and the Miners' Upsurge with Mike Ely
Rudy and Annie join Mike Ely, a veteran of the Revolutionary Union and the wildcat strike movement in the West Virginia coalfields of the 1970s. Drawing from Ely's experiences as a communist in West Virginia, we discuss the practice of social investigation, the role of communists in strike struggles, the structural and conjectural views of revolution and the connection to Alain Badiou, and state repression of the radical left. Contact Mike at wildcatincoal@gmail.com References by Mike Ely: Ambus...
Aug 09, 2021•2 hr 3 min
Grenada: Volcanic Memories and Stone Legacies of Revolution with Shalini Puri
Isaac and Rudy join Shalini Puri, author of The Grenada Revolution in the Caribbean Present: Operation Urgent Memory, and the companion website urgentmemory.com , for a discussion on the Grenadian Revolution and its legacies in both the island itself and the wider Caribbean. We cover the Revolution's accomplishments as well as some of its pitfalls, the contradictions and mutual strengthening of Marxism and regional liberation movements, and the Revolution's collapse. We then discuss the concepts...
Aug 01, 2021•1 hr 8 min
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