Cosmopod

Donald has a chat with Richard Barbrook, author with Andy Cameron of The Californian Ideology and the book Imaginary Futures . The two discuss Silicon Valley techno-Utopianism and its transformation into our current tech dystopia, the Cold War left and their attempts to use Marxism in service of capitalism, the role of China in shaping the development of modern technology, crypto-currency, why the...

Matt and Rudy join Matt Rothwell from the People's History of Ideas podcast for a discussion on the founding of the Chinese Communist Party on its 100th anniversary. We base ourselves on the book From Friend To Comrade: The Founding of the Chinese Communist Party, 1920-27 by Hans J. van der Veen, and discuss issues such as the influence of the Soviet Union on its formation, how intellectuals , mov...

Rudy, Connor and Donald sit down to talk about Vietnamese political economy and the Vietnamese Communist Party with a particular focus on the period of reunification and market reforms. We discuss the formation of Vietnamese Communism in isolation, the history of Vietnam up to reunification and how that set up a very divided country for the VCP to rule over, the short planned economy period and ho...

Neither a politics of identity informed by theories of intersectionality nor reductive economistic readings of Marxism are adequate for a modern socialist project, argues Donald Parkinson. Robert Fish reads the article out loud.

Djamil and Rudy join Rob Wallace, author of Big Farms Make Big Flu: Dispatches on Influenza, Agribusiness, and the Nature of Science , and Dead Epidemiologists: On the Origins of COVID-19 , for a discussion on how capitalism produces mass pandemics through the destruction and creation of new ecologies. We discuss how humans 'fit' in nature, and how capitalism destroys natural barriers that prevent...

This is a narration of the seventh chapter of Lars Lih's excellent book Lenin Rediscovered: What Is to Be Done? In Context. In this chapter, Lih maps out Lenin's basic conception of Russian Social Democracy's present challenges and asserts that "the political poetry of WITBD is located in this larger definition of the situation".   The full audiobook is currently in production by the team at Cosmo...

Rudy joins Max Ajl, author of A People's Green New Deal (Pluto Press, 2021), for a broad discussion on the themes of his book and on the agrarian question in general. We speak about Max's background in agrarian movements with a particular focus on the Arab region, the Cochabamba People's Agreement and its relevance today, the critique of the current Green New Deal and of eco-modernism, the appeari...

Donald Parkinson explains and defends the format of the  minimum-maximum program using the model established in Marx and Guesde's Programme of the Parti Ouvier . Lydia Apolinar reads the article out loud.

Rudy joins Tony Norfield, author of The City: London and the Global Power of Finance (Verso Books) for a broad theoretical practical discussion on the topic of finance. We discuss Hilferding and Lenin's theories of finance and imperialism, and where they are lacking, how finance is used to enforce global domination today, the exorbitant privilege of the dollar, the discussions around the rate of p...

This is a narration of the sixth chapter of Lars Lih's excellent book Lenin Rediscovered: What Is to Be Done? In Context. In this chapter, Lih examines the remaining three interlocuters Lenin polemicizes with in WITBD: the anonymous authors of the Joint Letter, Boris Savinkov, and L. Nadezhdin. All three are marginal historical figures in their own right, but their importance in contextualizing th...

Parker and Christian join Matt Christman for a discussion on the class dynamics of the founding of the US, using Charles Beard's book An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States as a jumping off point. They cover the main idea of the book: how the Founding Fathers designed the Constitution and the federal institutions to ensure their class interests after the Independence W...

Jonah Martell lays out a twelve-step program for the Democratic Socialists of America to pursue a path of independent working-class politics. Christian Cail reads the article out loud.

Amelia and Rudy join Raul Espejo, one of the top members of  the Cybersyn project in Allende's Chile, the founder of Syncho Research  and the president of the World Organization of Systems and Cybernetics  for a conversation. We discuss Raul's experiences, his current projects,  and what he thinks socialists should learn about Cybernetics in today's  world, especially around the concept of variety...

This is a narration of the fifth chapter of Lars Lih's excellent book Lenin Rediscovered: What Is to Be Done? In Context. In this chapter, Lih breaks down the causes and details of the intense polemical war between rival Social Democratic publications Rabochee Delo and Iskra. The context of Lenin's What Is to Be Done? cannot be understood without a thorough examination of this dispute, which ultim...

Djamil and Rudy sit down for a hardcore episode on the interaction  between Soviet diamat philosophy and Quantum Mechanics.  We discuss the  analytic core of dialectical materialism through the lens of the  philosophy of science and the position of scientific realism. We analyze  the main propositions of this core in an attempt to extract what is  best, and most relevant to physics: those proposit...

This is a narration of the fourth chapter of Lars Lih's excellent book Lenin Rediscovered: What Is to Be Done? In Context. In this chapter, Lih scrutinizes two opponents of the Russian Erfurtianism that Lenin championed: the Credo and Rabochaia mysl. This gives valuable insight into the political terrain on which What Is to Be Done? was deployed.   The full audiobook is currently in production by...

Lydia and Rudy join Matzpen member Ehud Ein-Gil for a  discussion on trade unionism within the Israeli state. We discuss Ehud's  experiences around the founding of Koach LaOvdim as a new sort of  union, the history and structure of the Histadrut and how that has  affected trade unionism inside the '48 borders, his experience  organizing bus drivers, the intermediate status of the Mizraim Jews in  ...

Ellie, Amelia, Matt and Rudy discuss the life and work of Col. John Boyd, one of the foremost military strategists of the last century. We discuss how the left should relate to military science, Boyd's main ideas such as the OODA loop and the Moral & Mental domains of struggle, his influences: Clausewitz and Sun Tzu, and how Boyd was able to use them to develop his ideas on strategy, and we finish...

This is a narration of the third chapter of Lars Lih's excellent book Lenin Rediscovered: What Is to Be Done? In Context. In this chapter, Lih explores three crucial texts from the Iskra period of Lenin's career, December 1900 to August 1903. The first, Russia and Its Crisis, was written by liberal revolutionary Paul Miliukov and explains the context of the revolutionary situation leading up to 19...

Annie and Rudy join Greg Afinogenov from Stomp Out Slumlords for a discussion on tenants unions, and how SoS has thought about the work of Cloward and Piven to develop ideas on how to build sustainable mass organisations. We discuss how to build mass constituencies for actions and what the goal of tenants unionism should be. Further reading: R. A. Cloward, F. F. Piven - Disruptive Dissensus: Peopl...

This is a narration of the second chapter of Lars Lih's excellent book Lenin Rediscovered: What Is to Be Done? In Context. In this chapter, Lih examines all the programmatic writings from Lenin in the 1890s and demonstrates the revolutionary leader's consistency throughout this time. This sets the stage for Lenin's later polemics at the start of the 20th century, including What Is to Be Done? The...

Christian and Connor sit down with Helen Yaffe to discuss her book We Are Cuba . We talked about the history and political economy of revolutionary Cuba before and after the post-Soviet period. Some of topics we touched on were the nature of democracy on the island, the relationship of Cuba to the United States, and how Cuba has dealt with the pandemic and coming crisis of climate change. Other re...

Amelia Davenport joins Samuel Bowles for a short discussion on his life-long research on global poverty and education. They discuss Bowles's history and how this led to his orientation, his work on education "Schooling in Capitalist America", including what he has changed his mind on, his thoughts about markets, incentives, central planning and capitalist economies, as well as other theories such...

This is a narration of the first chapter of Lars Lih's excellent book Lenin Rediscovered: What Is to Be Done? In Context. In this chapter, Lih explains how the legacy of figures like Marx, Engels, Lassalle, Kautsky, and others influenced Lenin. There's also a wonderful exploration of how the pre-war SPD served as the original model for the "vanguard party" (though in a very different way from how...

Rudy joins Zama and Jonathan from Amazonians United to discuss their shop floor alternative which has organized walkouts in Chicago, and started a national fight for PTO.  They discuss the way they bond with co-workers on the shop floor, what their next steps are, and how different their organizing looks like to that of RWDSU which organized the Bessemer (Alabama) unionization effort. We also disc...