In this episode Dave(@withsobersenses) and Jon (@jonpiccini) chat with Padraic Gibson (@paddygibson) about his research into the Communist Party of Australia and its early, or lack there of, engagement with Indigenous struggles in the 1920s and 30s. Not only is the history fascinating but Paddy also really digs into what was wrong with socialist and communist thought at the time, and the inheritance of Marx and Engel’s work, that made it hard for the CPA to connect with these struggles. How and ...
Aug 21, 2018•1 hr 15 min•Ep 39•Transcript available on Metacast It has been twenty years since the Wharf Dispute between Patrick Stevedores and the Coalition Government on one side and the Maritime Union of Australia, the Trade Unions and supporters on the other. This was (so far) the last set piece national confrontation between Capital and Labour over a specific industrial dispute to happen in Australia. In this episode Dave (@withsobersenses) chats with Nick Southall about the Maritime Defence Committee. The latter was formed by comrades outside of the in...
Jun 27, 2018•1 hr 22 min•Ep 38•Transcript available on Metacast What the hell is going on globally? In this (short) episode Dave (@withsobersenses) tries to think through the fracturing of the global order: the split in the G7, the end of QE by the US Federal Reserve and the ECB and the looming possibility of more US tariffs on Chinese imports. How do we understanding these phenomena? Why are they happening and what does it all mean? This is our 50th Episode! Ambrose Evans-Pritchard ECB winds down QE despite slowdown, risking '2011' policy error Central bank...
Jun 21, 2018•27 min•Ep 37•Transcript available on Metacast This is Part 2 of our 2-part show with Tanya Serisier about #metoo, feminism and the struggle against gendered and sexual violence. This show fleshes out the problems of the notion of consent as a solution to gendered and sexual violence, the continuing importance of the lessons of 70s feminism, including much-maligned lesbian separatism, how feminism has forced a rethink of what politics and power is and we finish with Tanya’s reflections on the recent UCU strike and what it shows us about radi...
Jun 17, 2018•51 min•Ep 36•Transcript available on Metacast This episode is part one of a two-part interview with feminist scholar and activist Tanya Serisier . Tanya and Dave(@withsobersenses) discuss how #metoo can be understood in the history of feminist struggle against, and thought about, gendered sexual violence. Tanya discusses how complex these issues are: they evade easy answers and they bring up difficult questions about where such violence comes from and how struggle and speech against them sometimes breaks from the broader patterns of power a...
Jun 02, 2018•56 min•Ep 35•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of Living The Dream (@withsobersenses) chats with Aaron and Michelle at Bad Habit Records about what’s happening in Ipswich. The council is engulfed in a corruption scandal (complete with bashings in the forest), the centre of the town is in dire straits caught between neglect and a development project, the local economy is suffering except for a massive real estate venture in Springfield and the plan for a new, and hotly contested, super dump in New Chum. In the face of all this...
May 21, 2018•47 min•Ep 34•Transcript available on Metacast This episode is a recording from Marx200 Brisbane of Dave's (@withsobersenses) presentation on Marx's Theories of Crisis . Music by Stereolab
May 20, 2018•58 min•Ep 33•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode Dave (@withsobersenses) grabs a recorder and heads to the Labour Day rally. He interviews friends and comrades about the rally, what they think the impact of #ChangeTheRules has been, and if there is any opportunity to broaden and open up struggle? Due to a moments hestitation he didn't try to interview Sally McManus as she walked past. Music by Alistair Hulet
May 07, 2018•46 min•Ep 32•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of Living The Dream Dave (@withsobersenses) tries to start an analysis of the Trump administration’s trade and tariff policy. Why has the Australian Left been so paralysed over this question? What sense can we make of it? How do we understand the policies of the state in the broader dynamics of world capitalism? Stuff mentioned includes: U.S. Admits That Politics Was Behind Steel Tariffs (not a Brazilian paper but a US paper reporting on US representatives talking to Brazilian bu...
Apr 14, 2018•34 min•Ep 31•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode Dave (@withsobersenses) chats with Vanamali Hermans (@VChristabel) about the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). Whilst billed as ‘the most significant economic and social reform since the introduction of Medicare in the 1970s’ Vanamali shows how the NDIS often means the reduction in services for those with disabilities and bureaucratic hellishness. We discuss why this is so, the compounding issue of inequality in regional health delivery and the struggles and strategies...
Apr 08, 2018•1 hr 9 min•Ep 30•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of Living the Dream Jon (@jonpiccini) and Dave (@withsobersenses) chat with Eleanor Robertson (@marrowing) about if we are living in a feminist moment and what that means. We focus our conversation on two of her articles from Meanjin . We discuss why it is that so much of contemporary feminism focuses on representations in popular culture – what does that tell us about both feminism and popular culture? From here we talk about the complex history of 2nd Wave feminism, the limitat...
Mar 22, 2018•1 hr 25 min•Ep 29•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of Living the Dream Jon (@jonpiccini) and Dave (@withsobersenses) talk with Tad Tietze (@Dr_Tad) about the idea of antipolitics he developed with Elizabeth Humphrys(@liz_beths). We talk about what politics is and how it relates to capitalism and the state. Tad argues that politics is increasingly detached from society and what this means and how communism as ‘the real movement’ can and should related to politics. Tad argues that this analysis has serious and devastating implicati...
Feb 19, 2018•2 hr 34 min•Ep 28•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome to 2018! In this episode Jon (@JonPiccini) and Dave (@withsobersenses) look into the swirling mists of the crystal ball of class struggle and try to work out what’s going on in 2018 and what happened in 2017. It’s a wide ranging chat about race, class, Invasion Day, strikes that didn’t happen and plebiscites. Will the experiments in radical social democracy continue to gain traction? What’s #changetherules all about? What plans do thinkers for capital have if any at all? Is capital accum...
Jan 31, 2018•1 hr 10 min•Ep 27•Transcript available on Metacast Workers of the world unite, right? Okay, but how? This is a special episode where Shane Reside, an organiser with the International Transport Workers Federation, interviews Jamie K McCallum (@jamiekmccallum) author of Global Unions, Local Power: The New Spirit of Transnational Labor Organizing about a new kind of labour internationalism: the global union federation. What are they? Where did they come from? Are they any good? Do they challenge the inequalities between workers in the North and Sou...
Dec 04, 2017•1 hr•Ep 26•Transcript available on Metacast In this special #qldvotes2017 episode of Living The Dream Jon (@jonpiccini) and Dave (@withsobersenses) engage in all the froth and illusion of electoral politics. We chat about the broader situation in Queensland and the impact of the slowdown of capital accumulation and the rise in state debt and the general degeneration of all the major parties. What is the ALP government all about and why is it so boring? What is left of the LNP and what kind of reactionary mindblowingness is One Nation enga...
Nov 20, 2017•1 hr 11 min•Ep 25•Transcript available on Metacast Australia is currently in the midst of a non-binding postal survey on same-sex marriage and it seems likely that the ‘Yes’ vote will win by a massive majority. Yet the ‘Left’ and supporters of same-sex marriage seem miserable and downcast about this. In this episode Simon Copland (@SimonCopland) helps Jon (@jonpiccini) and Dave (@withsobersenses) make sense of it all. We talk about the role that homophobia and sexuality plays in capitalism, the histories of Queer struggles within neoliberalism, ...
Oct 07, 2017•2 hr 31 min•Ep 24•Transcript available on Metacast In episode 2 of Marx’s Textbook Dave (@withsobersenses) looks at two very different ways of understanding the broad dynamics of capitalism. Mainstream economics asks us to think of capitalism as simply a system of wealth creation and consider questions of what is or isn’t an efficient use of resources and when or if the state should intervene; whilst Marx argues that capitalism is primarily compelled by the drive to make profits and accumulate capital, the source of which is the exploitation of ...
Sep 21, 2017•45 min•Ep 23•Transcript available on Metacast Marx’s Textbook Ep.1: An Introduction to the Critique of Capitalism & of Economics This is the first episode of a new Living The Dream series entitled Marx’s Textbook. In each episode Dave(@withsobersenses) takes a chapter of a basic macroeconomics textbooks – in this case Littleboy (2013) – summarises the content and then presents how Marx can help us think about these issues and challenge the dominant assumptions. What we find is that Marx doesn’t just provide different answers rather he compe...
Aug 30, 2017•34 min•Ep 22•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of Living the Dream Jon (@jonpiccini) and Dave (@withsobersenses) talk with all-round good egg Troy Henderson (@TroyCHenderson) about the idea of a Universal Basic Income. Troy provides us with an intellectual history and we discuss if it is a techbro attempt to sure up capitalism, a radical social democratic attempt to fix capitalism or if it contains radical elements that point in an anti-capitalist direction? We also talk about why a Jobs Guarantee is horrid and shit. Some stu...
Jul 26, 2017•1 hr 6 min•Ep 21•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of Living The Dream Dave (@withsobersenses) talks with Craig Gent from Novara Media . We talk about the recent UK General Election and the surprisingly good result Labour under Jeremy Corbyn received. Craig tells us about how Novara have chosen to orientate to Corybn and elections, the contradictions of social democracy and what the election may or may not mean for larger anticapitalist practice. These contradictions are represented artistically by starting the show with a sample...
Jun 16, 2017•57 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of Living the Dream Jon (@JonPiccini) and Dave (@withsobersenses) are joined by Liz Humphrys (@liz_beths) who torpedos the hagiography of the ALP Hawke-Keating government. Whilst the talking heads of the ALP like Van Badham and Wayne Swan argue over if the Hawke-Keating government was mainly excellent with a few flaws or really excellent with none, Liz’s ground breaking work on the Accord shows how the latter was the central plank of the implementation of neo-liberalism in Austra...
Jun 02, 2017•1 hr 12 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of Living the Dream Dave (@withsobersenses) chats with Godfrey Moase (@gemoase) the General Branch Assistant Secretary of the National Union of Workers . Godfrey had a number of criticisms of our last show . We talk about these and Godfrey also addresses the broader strategic and tactical possibilities for anticapitalist struggle and how they relate to trade unions. You can find some of Godfrey’s writings here: Maintain the wage rage (with Carina Garland) Defending Australian Lab...
Apr 02, 2017•1 hr 6 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode Jon (@jonpiccini) and Dave (@withsobersenses) talk about the recent cuts to penalty rates by the Fair Work Commission . We dismiss the idea that this attack is actual just a product of ‘the Right’; rather it is a continuation of the 100+ year tradition of arbitration supported by the ALP and the mainstream of the ACTU in the context of the real contradictions of capital accumulation. We discuss the movement against penalty rate cut as well as the Big Steps walk off of early child...
Mar 23, 2017•56 min•Transcript available on Metacast In a special episode of Living The Dream, Max and Natalie (@DrNatOsborne) join Jon (@JonPiccini) to discuss radical happenings in Brisbane of late. We talk about the election of Jonathon Sri in the Brisbane City Council elections of last year, why Brisbane is experiencing such a strong wave of ‘right to the city’ activism and how these two interconnect. Musings on the interconnections between social movements and elections, the global and the local and culture and politics abound. South Brisbane...
Feb 17, 2017•1 hr 6 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of Living the Dream Jon (@jonpiccini) and Dave (@withsobersenses) have a very quick chat about Cory Bernardi quitting the Liberal party. We discuss how this is more evidence of the breakdown of politics/the rise of antipolitics; the attempts by the RBA to keep capital accumulation going through monetary policy whilst everything crumbles around them and what this means for radical strategy and tactics. Stuff we mention includes: Leftflank National Press Club: Malcolm Turnbull Nati...
Feb 08, 2017•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of Living The Dream Jon (@jonpiccini ) and Dave (@withsobersenses) go through the entrails with an inverted periscope to try to see what we should expect for 2017. We chat about Invasion Day and the rising tide of Indigenous struggles, the Centrelink debacle, anti-Road protests and more. We are pretty optimistic about the year ahead and look forward to hearing your thoughts. Articles, people and groups we mentioned or are relevant: Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance –WAR Celes...
Jan 27, 2017•1 hr 19 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of Living the Dream Jon (@jonpiccini) and Dave (@withsobersenses) talk about the weird as hell political environment of the Age of Trump. Was 2016 the worst year ever? Are we caught in the midst of a rising reactionary wave? And why do the failures of the liberal establishment feel to so many people to be failures of the Left? (And what is the Left? Are we the Left?) What’s with the amateur sociology about voting demographics that is everywhere now? Do we really have to choose be...
Dec 22, 2016•1 hr 6 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of Living The Dream, Dave (@withsobersenses ) chats with Carmen about the Workplace Organising 101 training she recently provided in Brisbane. Carmen talks about the purpose and structure of this training, its relationship to anarcho-syndicalism and reflects critically on the contribution it can play to developing our collective power and overcoming capitalism. Organisations mentioned include: Brisbane IWW Freie Arbeiterinnen- und Arbeiter-Union (FAU) Music by Dolly Parton and Ma...
Dec 11, 2016•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of Living the Dream Dave (@withsobersenses) chats with Kieran (@Kieran Bennett) about a recent Melbourne counter-rally to a Trump celebration rally ostensibly organised by #altright types and attended by local fascists and neo-Nazis. From here Kieran lets us know who is who in the fascist zoo in Australia, the social phenomena behind the far-right and we discuss what a relevant anti-capitalist practice might be that can defeat the fascists and offer a genuine emancipatory alterna...
Dec 07, 2016•1 hr 5 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of Living The Dream Jon (@jonpiccini) and Dave (@withsobersenses) talk about the US Election and the phenomenon of Donald Trump. We aren’t interest so much is speculations about what is going on in the US but rather what the different ways Trump and Clinton are talked about in Australia tells us about what is going on in Australia. Articles we refer to include: Debating Deplorables: How the Left Can (and Cannot) Win Trump Voters Sympathy for the Devil? Theses on the New European ...
Nov 02, 2016•1 hr 13 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
