Cosmopod

Join us for the second installment in Cosmonaut's critically acclaimed ecology series to discuss Jason Moore's "Capitalism in the Web of Life". Niko, Matthew and Remi discuss how this work merges concepts from Marxist ecology and world-systems analysis to reveal how capitalism organizes nature as a whole oikeios, and how this sets limits to capitalist accumulation once "the Four Cheaps" (energy, f...

Donald and Rudy are joined by Djamil Lakhdar to discuss Ian Hacking's book The Social Construction of What?. Written during the "science wars", Hacking intervenes in the debate between strict constructivism and strict realism. Hacking reframes the types of questions to be asked when interrogating the social origin of something, and clarifies the different approaches we can take when we interrogate...

Capitalist food production is based on ecological destruction, imperialism, inhumane labor practices, and the degradation of human health. A socialist program that guarantees healthy food for all is the only alternative. By Katie Paige, Kelly Alana, and Renato Flores. Cliff Connolly reads the article aloud.

  Donald and Lydia interview Yassamine Mather, former Fedayeen (minority) guerrilla fighter, chair of the Hands off the People of Iran coalition and editor of Critique . The episode starts off with the history of the debates leading to the formation of the minority Fedayeen faction, and why they decide to break from the majority Fedayeen faction, take up arms and start a guerilla/focoist campaign...

In this article, Josh Morris investigates how the Communist Party USA created a sense of camaraderie in its organizing efforts between members, looking at how both circumstances forced on organizers as well as conscious efforts of the party helped create an organizational culture that promoted (or in some cases damaged) solidarity among workers and oppressed people. Cliff Connolly reads the articl...

The Cosmonaut crew sits down to discuss Althusser's Lectures on Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scientists . We historically situate the text and talk about Althusser's conception of science and of philosophy, how they both relate to each other and what happens when one exploits the other and "common sense", in the form of the dominant ideology, creeps in. This is followed by a discussion on actual...

 Cliff Connolly reads two articles aloud. In the first article, What Do the Democratic Socialists of America Stand for Politically?, DT Seel proposes what the DSA's program would be if based on the politics of its endorsed candidates. This 'inductive program' is then examined and put under critique. In the second article, Structuring the Party: The Case of the DSA, Diego AM explores the organizati...

Cliff Connolly reads two articles aloud. In the first article, Why Define Fascism?: In Defence of Making Distinctions, Jacob Smith argues that if the left wishes to take fascism seriously we shouldn't use the term lightly but with precision. In the second article, The End of the End of History: COVID-19 and 21st Century Fascism, Debs Bruno and Medway Baker lay out the conditions of the current cri...

Remi and Rudy welcome A. M. Gittlitz, the author of "I Want to Believe: J. Posadas, UFOs and Apocalypse Communism" and The Antifada producer to discuss the role of utopias and prefiguration in historical and modern day communist strategy. We cover topics from Russian Cosmism, the parallels between New World and Space Utopias, the relationship between the subjective and objective conditions for rev...

The Cosmonaut team inaugurates the ecology series by discussing John Bellamy Foster's seminal book "Marx's ecology" on its twentieth anniversary. Join Niko, Ian, Matthew and Remi as they discuss the context of this work, and how it started a rediscovery of Marx's ecological politics. They discuss how ecology informed Marx's understanding of the world since his doctoral thesis, the relationship bet...

In one of our earliest articles, Parker McQueeney lays out the case for building a party around a minimum-maximum program. Cliff Connolly reads the article aloud.

Donald and Rudy welcome Asad Haider from Viewpoint Magazine to discuss the present political moment. Using Badiou's "The Rebirth of History: Times of Riots and Uprisings" as a starting point, we discuss riots as a political expression in an intervallic period. We talk about the shape of the party should take to represent this political will, the racial context, overdetermination and spontaneity, a...

English language sources still describe Nadezhda Krupskaya first as "Vladimir Lenin's wife" rather than " a radical revolutionary whose ideas [...] were monumental in Soviet state formation". To begin the process of correcting this error, M.A. Iasilli writes on what she can teach us about education and labor. Cliff Connolly reads the article aloud.

Rudy, Ahmed, and Remi join Sam Agarwal, a PhD student at Johns Hopkins University in sociology, whose research on and fieldwork in Kerala provide insight into the Indian state's handling of societal crisis like the 2018-9 floods and COVID-19. We discuss the left politics of the CPI(M) and its various rival parties, the Indian political climate, the feminist movement, the handling and mitigation of...

In this article from our site, Alexander Gallus reviews Ilona Duczyńska's German language book 'The Democratic Bolshevik' which explores the socialist experiment of Red Vienna and its failure to defend itself from reaction. Matthew reads the article aloud.

Donald sits down with Sean Guillory from the SRB Podcast to discuss Komsomol, which was often one of the only organizations that provided a link to the early soviet state in many small towns. They discuss the way the early Soviet state was structured with attention to how soft and hard power was transmitted, communist values, gender relationships, the rebirth of social conservatism and comradeship...

Join our round table where we listen to on-the-ground reports from our writers of the protests around the country, how they were organized, and how the police and the NGO-industrial complex have responded to them. Robert, Cliff, Alex, Ahmed and Remi discuss the possibilities for this movement, and where we go from here.

On this episode of Cosmopod, Donald and Parker welcome Cosmonaut author Josh Morris on to discuss the history and historiography of the US Communist Party. Academic accounts of the party have largely fit in two camps; Josh's upcoming book The Many Worlds of American Communism attempts to go beyond the standard story and rethink the scholarship for a post-Cold War era.

Throughout the United States, revolt against police violence and the state has broken out in response to the callous murder of George Floyd at the hands of the police. To help contribute to this outbreak of militancy, we have published these words of advice on successful protest from Ahmed Nada, a veteran of the Egyptian protest movements in 2011, 2012, and 2013. Cliff Connolly reads the article a...

Cliff Connolly reads an article from CLR Gainz expressing that the left needs physical as well as mental strength if we are going to be victorious in making revolution and defeating reaction. Escalating police violence in the wake of George Floyd's death only reinforces this idea. Stay safe, comrades.

In this special edition of Cosmopod's ongoing labor interview and history series, Remi is joined by two legends of the US socialist labor scene: Adolph Reed and Ed Bruno. Tune in for a long and enlightening discussion of the attempt at an American Labor Party in the 1990s-2000s, where we stand both as a working class and an organized left in light of waning neoliberalism, the trendlines emerging f...

In the second installment of the Internationalism series, Remi and Ahmed are joined by Bori, a South Korean student activist for a discussion of Korean history, the social dynamics underlying today's political situation, the prospects for a left resurgence in RoK, and the elusive nature of South Korea's much-maligned neighbor to the north and the unreality of reunification talks.  

For this installment of our series on Actually Existing Socialism, Donald, Christian, and Rudy have a discussion based on Eden Medina's book Cybernetic Revolutionaries and the experience of cybernetic planning under Allende's Chile. Outro music is "Litany for a computer and a child about to be born" by Angel Parra and Stafford Beer.

Lydia Apolinar reads J.R. Murray's essay combating the chauvinist politics of left anti-immigration.

We are very happy to release this crossover episode with Breht O'Shea from Revolutionary Left Radio and Red Menace! Remi, Parker, and Donald have a wide-ranging discussion with Breht touching on current events, ecological Marxism, organizing, labor,  electoral strategy, and more.