Auxiliary Statements

Those few faithful listeners will know we've been flirting with the idea of worker's parties and how on earth we're supposed to build a mass movement recently...and we haven't really gotten anywhere those questions. So we did the sensible thing and brought on someone who actually knows what they're talking about. That's right everybody we got the one and only Cliff Connolly to talk about two artic...

Jack and Dan continue their adventure through the classical Marxists modes of production. This week the lads find themselves in the slave states of ancient Athens and Rome once again under the trusted tutelage of Ellen Meiksins Wood. To what extent does this ancient civilisations mode of production deserve the descriptor ‘slave’? To what extent was production dominated by slavery and how did the p...

Jack and Dan might well be flirting with primitivism once again this week as the lads find themselves asking the question, was the Neolithic agricultural ‘revolution’ ultimately a mistake for human civilisation; a back step and not the moment of its genesis? For it turns out, according to Marshall Sahlins, Palaeolithic humans may well have had it made! For Sahlins, pre-agricultural life, far from...

Another 10 episodes, another recap. Well folks, we like to think we've come a long way since out first few episodes. This week we talk about what's changed our thinking in the last ten episodes, specifically in regard to the system of socialism outlined in the Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution. How do we materialize working class anger? How can we help bring the class...

What is it with all these billionaire and why do they keep going to space? Your stalwart hosts have decided its long passed time we put a stop to these antics! How you ask. By putting an end to the dictatorial reign of capitalism that enforces the conditions necessary for the existence of your Bransons and your Bezoses and by implementing a new class based regime in its place, one that will set th...

The third and final part of our Emmy award winning Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution series HAS ARRIVED! It's been a dang good read folks, and in this ep you'll hear our concluding thoughts on this whole communism thing, just how viable it is, how much faith we have in the general system of councils and what the Dictatorship of the Proletariat might actually look like...

Well folks for the first time in Aux Statements history we won't be bringing you our scheduled programming. However! Fear not. Jack is bringing you a half-assed Adjunct Statements to give you something. In this ep, Jack reads an essay he wrote for no discernible reason about discontentment with capitalism in fantasy. He compares Ursula Le Guin's "A Wizard of Earthsea" with Tolkien's "The Silmarill...

You've been waiting long enough, folks...here it is - part 2 of our episode on the dang CIA. Have we gone loopy? Have we become conspiracy chuds? Tbh not really. In this episode we try and parse the faff from the not-faff as we uncover the hidden purpose behind American Cold War foreign policy. Turns out it wasn't that great! It was pretty bad, in fact! Reading: Part II, The Devil’s Chessboard (20...

Waaaaay back many episodes ago, dear listener, your meek and humble podcast hosts watched a movie from Errol Morris all about that evil idiot Robert McNamara. Well here we are today watching another Errol Morris movie but this time all about Donald Rumsfeld and let's just say...this is one evil SOB. In this episode we ask what role those unelected civil servants play in politics, how they manage t...

Holy guacamole the lads are at it again. This book continues to impress as we dive into the second part of our Fundamental Principles reading series - this time covering a spectrum of topics ranging from why everyone left of the councilists are idiots to how we would consume life's necessities and luxuries under communism to why accounting and equal "wages" are absolute fundamentals. Not sure what...

This week, self professed Marxists on the internet Jack and Dan do that rarest of things, they read some actual Marx! As an appendix to their continuing engagement with the very excellent text ‘The Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution’, the lads took a look at Karl Marx’s withering and often times pedantic commentary on the 1875 founding programmatic document of the Germ...

Yeah yeah this one SOUNDS boring but what if I told you we'll be covering...labor time calculation??? Alright that may also sound boring but if we want to be calling ourselves commies and running around calling for an end to capitalism we've got to have an idea of HOW our new world will function. And gosh darn it that is exactly what these people did with this here book. Ever wonder how production...

This week the fellas interview.....a former member of parliament?? Boy how'd they con their way into that one. You read that right folks, this week we sat down to talk to Thelma Walker, a one time UK Member of Parliament who, after Corbyn had his so-called "whip" removed, had the guts to do what some of us couldn't...leave the Labour Party. But Thelma's career didn't stop there! She recently sat a...

In our newest installment of the beloved "everyone is an idiot except me" reading series, we bring you a rushed and perhaps cursory analysis of the CLASSIC Hal Draper joint "The Two Souls of Socialism." Are anarchists as bad as Hitler? Are the Fabians just Stalinists? Is William Morris our F R E A K I N G king?? Some of them sure, yes and hell yes are the answers to those questions posed by Draper...

Here we are folks, another arbitrary milestone, episode 30! As it’s another episode with a zero at the end you know what that means, another high energy low effort clip show. The boys are oh so proud of their little show and want to take this opportunity to take stock. Where is the podcast going, where did it come form, is it coming or going? No one really can say. Topics for discussion include, c...

Wait a minute, you're telling me America was founded by the same syphilitic capitalists who ruined England?? This week the boys dust off some Foner to take a look at the role of labor in the founding of these here United States. Was the War of Independence a fully bourgeois revolution? Or did labor power and class struggle have something to do with it? Methinks they did. Reading: Chapters 1-3 of "...

Well folks, we’ve been teasing it long enough…today your large beautiful boys are reading THE BOOK. In an attempt to answer the questions “What is a conspiracy theory?”, “What happened to all the Nazis?” and “How did we get into this mess?” Dan and Jack are taking a look at The Devil’s Chessboard - a “biography” of the early CIA. Everyone has that friend on the left that’s a little bit too into co...

Jack and Dan are at it again, dishing up some more bonus capital content. Things take a literary and all around fantastical turn in this section; expect phantoms, illusions, necromancy, and who knows, maybe a wizard or two? Oh won’t Jack be thrilled. The lads delve into the world of commodity fetishism, the essential ideology that supports and makes possible the capitalist commodity economy. A for...

This week our rotund podcast hosts kick back, watch a movie, and try to answer that question that has been haunting humanity since the early-1940s: was Robert McNamara cringe? The answer is yes. So strap in as the lads take a look at documentary-guy Errol Morris' 2003 classic "The Fog of War". The movie profiles McNamara as he goes from common Irishman to rare Irishman in his long career as war cr...

This week Jack and Dan trade one big M Marxist for another, Milliband is out, Mattick is in. It’s quite a stark reversal, from a strategy of revolutionary reformism to one of spontaneous action by the workers and their primary organisational arm, the workers council. That’s right, Council Communism is on the docket for this weeks show and if we know one thing by now the lads always stand ready to...

Be prepared to raise a glass and shed a tear this week as Jack and Dan part ways with their guiding light, their north star, Auxiliary Statements God Emperor, Ralph Miliband. That’s right, your dogged and persistent hosts have finally dusted off their worn and tattered copies of Marxism and Politics for one final time. This week, a discussion of Marxist strategy as the question is asked whether ca...

I think we all knew this was the logical conclusion of the last few episodes. The lads are at it again, with Jack well on his way to becoming a primitivist and Dan doing all he can to keep things on the level (no pun intended). In this episode your begrimed hosts discuss England's most radical moment - the occupation of St. George's Hill by Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers in 1649. However! Dan...

Jack and Dan are at it again folks, labouring under the misapprehension that greater wisdom is attainable to their mediocre minds. The lads again embark on their quest to fathom the wisdom of the oracle, reading once more from Karl Marx’s master work; Capital. Will they again find the weight of the truths contained therein overwhelming or rise to meet its challenge. Here’s hoping we can chalk one...

Yeah if this Karl Marx guy was so great why didn't he ever write about chicken tractors?? Huh, nerd!? That's what I thought. This week the lads are dipping their malformed little toes into the pond of prepping for capitalist collapse. What would a collapse look like? What should I do to prepare? Do I buy more guns or less guns? Who am I and why am I here? All these questions and MORE will be answe...

What do, Egyptian mummified cats, the battlefields of the Napoleonic wars, and millions of tons of South American bird poo have in common? The answer to this and some hopefully more useful and pertinent questions will be revealed on this weeks show as Jack and Dan continue their foray into the world of ecological theory. The lads read some John Bellamy Foster and learn all about how Karl Marx was,...