Radio Free Humanity: The Marxist-Humanist Podcast

Brendan interviews Andrew about his new article, “Value, Price & Prattle,” which responds to a recent paper in Historical Materialism by Jesse Lopes and Chris Byron. Andrew reiterates his request that the journal and its publisher retract the paper, because it misrepresents things that Marx and Andrew wrote and contains other serious errors. The co-hosts then discuss Lopes and Byron’s argument...

Gabriel Donnelly, a young labor activist and Marxist-Humanist, joins the co-hosts to discuss his new article, “Workers’ Self-Organization: New Unionization Drives and Their Contradictions.” They talk about how the new unions and unionization campaigns depart from established unionism and about the link between the resurgent unionism and social movements like Black Lives Matter. They also discuss t...

The co-hosts discuss Brendan’s just-published article, “Should I Turn Down the Thermostat or Overthrow the Capitalist Mode of Production?” The article offers further thoughts on Marxist-Humanist Initiative’s perspective on the relation between capitalism and the ecological crisis. Brendan pushes back against accounts that blame rising greenhouse gas emissions on consumers’ behavior or on bad leade...

Brendan and Andrew discuss the Ukrainian fight for national self-determination, drawing lessons from V. I. Lenin’s responses to “imperialist economists” and Rosa Luxemburg, who all claimed that national self- determination is unachievable under imperialism. The co-hosts review what “imperialist economism” meant at that time and they discuss parallels today, including a new variant––campist imperia...

The co-hosts welcome Sergey Romanov, who researches Holocaust denial and Katyn-Massacre denial, and Dr. Nicholas Terry, a historian at the University of Exeter. Sergey and Nick discuss their work together on the Holocaust Controversies website. The rest of the interview focuses largely on Katyn Massacre, which pro-Stalin writers like Grover Furr refuse to concede was perpetrated by Stalin’s regime...

The co-hosts welcome Maksym Shumakov, a young activist and leading member of the Ukrainian democratic-socialist organization Sotsialnyi Rukh (Social Movement). Maksym answers a wide range of questions. Topics include: life in Ukraine today; how to support Ukraine’s fight for national self-determination; how the war has given rise to new forms of social organization and new multiethnic, multicultur...

The co-hosts discuss Andrew’s new essay, “Dunayevskaya’s 1953 Letters: Transcending Vanguardism & Spontaneism.” Andrew sets out the political and organizational context of two letters that Dunayevskaya wrote to her co-leaders in the Johnson-Forest Tendency, CLR James and Grace Lee (Boggs), in May 1953, on Hegel’s “Absolute Idea” and “Absolute Mind (Spirit).” He argues that she was dissatisfied wit...

The co-hosts and Anne Jaclard review and discuss “The U.S. and the Holocaust,” the new PBS documentary by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein. The documentary details the relation between U.S. immigration restrictions and the Nazis’ mass extermination of Jews, as well as the ever-present and ongoing struggle between American supporters and opponents of white supremacy and anti-Semitism. Ann...

The co-hosts discuss Andrew’s article, “Karl Marx Systematically Exploited by Ben Burgis: Marx’s Exploitation Theory vs. G. A. Cohen’s ‘Plain Argument.’” Andrew likens Burgis’ “theoretical appropriation” of Marx’s exploitation theory to cultural appropriation. Brendan and Andrew then discuss a variety of topics, including problems with Burgis’ formulation of exploitation in terms of “capitalists’...

The co-hosts welcome sociologist Gavin Rae, to discuss his critique of “Sociological Marxism,” which well-known left sociologists Erik Olin Wright and Michael Burawoy proposed two decades ago. They rejected Marx’s theory of capitalist crisis, claiming that state economic management has caused capitalism to stabilize, and that the value theory underlying Marx’s crisis theory is internally inconsist...

The co-hosts are joined by Anne Jaclard, who has fought for abortion rights since the 1960s. They discuss the US Supreme Court’s recent ruling that eliminated the right to abortion. Anne explains what the details of the ruling, and its “legal reasoning,” and its trashing of longstanding precedent mean for our rights. She also situates the ruling within the long history of struggle over abortion ri...

The episode’s main segment is a presentation by Andrew, at a recent MHI meeting, on what Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Program says about the differences between capitalism and communism, and about revolutionary transformation of capitalism into communism. His close reading of the text is informed by Marx’s conception of the relation between a society’s economic basis and its political and legal su...

Radio Free Humanity Ep. 73: Furedi’s Long Journey from Revolution to Reaction (interview with Ravi Bali). On Frank Furedi and his milieu. What went wrong––and what was wrong from the start? Current-events segment on Trumpism after Trump.

Episode 72: Chomsky’s Linguistics & Politics—Interview with David Golumbia by MHI

RFH Ep. 71 The Cybercurrency Crash—Interview with David Golumbia by MHI

The co-hosts and veteran journalist John Stoehr discuss a few of John’s recent posts on gun violence and white supremacy. He argues that white power is a driving force behind the proliferation of guns and gun massacres––even when the murderer is mentally unwell and has no overt political motive––and that gun control is a threat to white power. He and the co-hosts also discuss the responses of Repu...

Ep. 69: Henryk Grossman: “The End of Capitalism” (w/Ted Reese). On Reese’s new book that defends Grossman’s breakdown theory and claims that “capitalism must end.” Current-events segment: Repubs’ nomination of Mastriano and other PA primary results.

The co-hosts and Bill Weinberg, noted journalist and anarchist podcaster, discuss Noam Chomsky’s statements about Putin’s war against Ukraine, as well as his ideology and other political activity. They take up Weinberg’s “Against Chomsky” podcast, interviews of Chomsky about the war, and the open letter to Chomsky from his Ukrainian translator. Weinberg provides a synopsis of Chomsky’s political i...

The co-hosts discuss Brendan’s just-published review-essay on John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark’s 2020 book, The Robbery of Nature: Capitalism and the Ecological Rift, which Brendan found to be dishonest, inconsistent, irrelevant, and embarrassing. After summarizing their theory of capitalism’s ecological crisis, Brendan explains that it fails to fit the facts: contrary to what Foster & Clark ar...

Prominent critics claim that changes in capitalism since Marx’s time have made his analyses in Capital less relevant. They say that the world no longer looks like the world described in Capital, or that important aspects of capitalism are overlooked or left underdeveloped by Marx. The co-hosts discuss Andrew’s essay, “How Not to Evaluate the Relevance of Marx’s Capital,” which challenges such clai...

Marxist-feminist author Rohini Hensman joins the co-hosts to discuss her recent article “Ukraine’s Protracted Struggle for National Liberation” as well as “pseudo-anti-imperialism” within the left. Hensman details the relation between Ukraine and Russia under Tsarist rule, the changes that occurred with the Bolshevik revolution, and then Stalin’s recolonization of Ukraine. She and the co-hosts the...

Anne Jaclard of MHI and the co-hosts discuss the organization’s editorial, “Ukraine Fights for National Self-Determination Against Russian Imperialism.” Topics include: (1) the right of national self-determination; (2) Putin’s repudiation of this right to justify his imperialist invasion of Ukraine; (3) slaughter of Ukrainian civilians and displacement of millions; (4) opposition to the invasion w...

The co-hosts interview David Golumbia, author of The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism. They discuss cyber-libertarian ideology and how the rise of Bitcoin has made it mainstream. David argues that many supposedly non-ideological Bitcoin enthusiasts have been influenced by cyber-libertarianism. He and the co-hosts also discuss what Bitcoin is, whether it is money, whether it is...

The co-hosts interview Michael Albert about his new book, No Bosses. He summarizes the main ideas and components of participatory economics (parecon) and discusses what’s new about his latest book. The discussion then turns to values, evaluations of what’s possible, and “old ideological scripture”––what roles do they play in working out an alternative future? Finally, Albert discusses how planning...

The co-hosts and Anne Jaclard discuss Andrew’s article, “On What Grounds Should We Defend Liberal Democracy?” The discussion focuses on defense of the liberal-democratic individual rights and freedoms that are under heightened attack, not on classical liberal ideology or democracy “as such.” This stance is contrasted to the ambivalence toward liberal democracy that prevails in parts of “the Left.”