Cosmopod

Donald Parkinson takes issue with the calls for a "socially conservative leftism" that have increased in popularity since Jeremy Corbyn's defeat in the UK election. Matthew Strupp reads the article aloud.

In the second episode of our Soviet Science series, Donald, Djamil and Rudy sit down to contextualize an infamous episode of this story: The case of T. D. Lysenko and Lysenkoism. We discuss the origins of vernalization and Lysenkoism in peasant folk knowledge and Michurin's plant garden, how the state of Soviet scientifical structures and Soviet agriculture favoured his rise, how he took advantage...

Cliff Connolly argues for a culture of sobriety within our organizations, drawing from the example of Austrian Socialism.  

Alex and Rudy welcome historian Cliff Conner for a discussion of his recent book The Tragedy of American Science: From Truman to Trump published by Haymarket Books . They discuss how this tragedy is a tragedy of capitalist science which is seen across the capitalist world, the role of science as an unchallengeable source of authority and how that is squared with the antiintelectualism needed to su...

This article's author, Richard Hunsinger, is currently being held without bail in an ICE detention facility and could use our support. Donations to the Atlanta Solidarity Fund help political prisoners like Richard, and can be made at https://atlsolidarity.org/ Letters can be sent to Richard by emailing writetodick@protonmail.com Donations to his commissary can be sent on Venmo to Kat-Richards-1 or...

Join the Cosmonaut Ecocrew as they discuss Andreas Malm's piercing 2016 text Fossil Capital and attempt to dispel the myriad of myths that have been erected around the energetic transition to coal. The fateful intertwining in mid-19th century British cotton districts of capital and fossil fuels is examined in the context of class struggle, the ascendancy of the steam engine, and alternative future...

Donald Parkinson responds to Taylor B's  Beginning's of Politics: DSA and the Uprising , arguing that a workers' party is necessary to advance an emancipatory politics. Cliff Connolly reads the article aloud.

Rudy and Annie join the two co-chairs of Philly Socialists, Mara and Janaya, for what starts as a conversation on the issues women and non-men comrades face when organizing, and ends up being a discussion of Philly Socialists' base-building activities and their philosophy on the party. The episode starts off with a discussion of the experiences in PS to make the spaces more welcoming to everyone,...

Matthew Strupp examines economic debates in China during the leadup to the Great Leap Forward and assesses comparisons made between Mao and Bukharin. Cliff Connolly reads the article aloud.

Parker and Peter join August Nimtz, the author of Lenin's Electoral Strategy (now reprinted as The Ballot, The Streets-- or Both) to discuss how Lenin and the Bolsheviks approached electoral politics and what we can learn from them to apply to today's situation. They talk about the origins of Nimtz's research project as an attempt to refute the point that electoralism must mean programmatic compro...

For the first instalment of our in-depth study of Soviet Science, Djamil, Donald and Rudy sit down to discuss the scientific institutions and the practice of Science in the early Soviet Union up to the conclusion of the Stalin Revolution. They start off with a survey of the Tsarist Academy, and what kind of structures and specialists the Bolsheviks inherited. The conversation continues with the ch...

Annie and Cliff join Michael Gilbert, a public health technologist and a harm reduction organizer for a conversation on how communists should relate to harm reduction efforts. They discuss the reasons why people use drugs, the role of drug availability in harm reduction, how international regulations shape the drug trade and how that is used to justify politics such as strong borders and even inva...

Daniel Newman urges patience and caution in the face of current political turmoil. Cliff Connolly reads the article aloud.

Donald and Lydia join human rights lawyer and fellow Marxist Anne McShane to discuss her recent PhD thesis on the Zhenotdel, the women's department of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. They discuss the origins of the Zhenotdel,  how it attempted to solve the shortcomings of the women's movement in the second international and its role in women's liberation after the October Revolution. The...

Two articles from the archive pertaining to MC.  The first is Building Revolution in the USA: Notes on Marxist Center Conference, 2018, by Parker McQueeney and Donald Parkinson. The second article is For the Unity of Marxists with the Dispossessed: The Bolsheviks and the State, 1912-1917, by Medway Baker. Cliff Connolly reads both articles aloud.

Gabriel Palcic argues that various attempts in academia to develop theories of revolution as alternatives to Marx's theory of revolution and historical materialism only serve to disguise the centrality of class contradiction in these events. Cliff Connolly reads the article aloud.

Remi and Niko join Comrade Adam from Red Library to discuss Kohei Saito's Capital, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy: Karl Marx's Ecosocialism. We discuss the concept of metabolism, Marx's evolution of thought on ecology being the core realm of capitalist crisis, agricultural chemistry, the role of a Marxist ecosocialist perspective to stop the destruction of capital across...

Matthew Strupp lays out the politics of revolutionary defeatism in contrast to the approaches of third-campism and third-worldism. Cliff Connolly reads the article aloud.

Rudy and Medway are joined by recently graduated Dr. Virginia Conn to discuss about her research on science fiction in the USSR, the German Democratic Republic and China. We discuss what the purpose of science  fiction under socialism is, the continuities and ruptures of science fiction in the People's Republic of China during it's diverse political  periods, how the new Soviet citizen contrasted...

Three of our writers are joined by veteran union organizer Chris Townsend to discuss labor organizing across history and in the present day. Chris, Remi, Peter and Annie will explore how to do what Lenin emphasized had to be done : how do we inject the political 'good news' of socialism into the workers' economistic struggle? They recapitulate how the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party situated...

Christian, Donald and Rudy sit down to discuss Che Guevara's program for a socialist transition using Helen Yaffe's book Che Guevara: The Economics of Revolution as a background.  We visit the economic "Great Debate" of Cuba in the early 1960s, the different approaches to using the law of value for socialist transformation, Che's critique of market socialism, his model of Cuba as a single socialis...

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...