Varn Vlog

Please support our Patreon.   For early and ad-free episodes, members-only content, and more. Scott Ferguson (@videotroph) is an associate professor of film & media studies in the Department of Humanities & Cultural Studies at the University of South Florida. He is an editor for the Money on the Left Editorial Collective and serves as a research scholar at the Global Institute for Sustaina...

Please support our Patreon.   For early and ad-free episodes, members-only content, and more. Freddie and I discuss the tactical mistakes of the Democrats.  Freddie is the author of the Freddie DeBoer substack. He is also the author of the Cult of Smart.  Abandon all hope ye who subscribe here.    Crew: Host: C. Derick Varn Audio Producer: Paul Channel Strip  ( @aufhebenkultur ) Intro and Outro Mu...

Andrew McWhinney is a writer, editor, and organizer. He writes and edits for Negation Magazine .  We begin by discussing the legacy of Jean Baudrillard, but we talk about new ways to organize, the importance of international collaboration, and where the left is now.   Here are the articles mentioned in the interview:  A Marxist Mission To Rescue Jean Baudrillard   Totality and the Vanguard Functio...

Please support our Patreon.   For early and ad-free episodes, members-only content, and more. Ben and I discuss his work on the life and legacy on Christopher Hitchens. You can find his book on the topic here .  You can find Ben's article in sublation magazine on how liberals sound Hitchens with their stance on Ukraine here .   You can find Ben's podcast, Give Them An Argument.     Aband...

Please support our Patreon.   For early and ad-free episodes, members-only content, and more. Nicolas D Villarreal is palladiummag contributor. Author of novel: Caeruleus. He is an analyst of heterodox economics and political theory. He also works as a freelance writer. You can find his work here.  Abandon all hope ye who subscribe here.    Crew: Host: C. Derick Varn Audio Producer: Paul Channel S...

Please support our Patreon.   For early and ad-free episodes, members-only content, and more. Dr. Victor Devinatz is a Distinguished Professor in the College of Business since 1991at Illinois State.  . He is nationally recognized for his expertise in qualitative research in a wide variety of labor relations and employment relations topics where he utilizes ethnographic, oral history and archival r...

Please support our Patreon.   For early and ad-free episodes, members-only content, and more. I talk to Ben Lewis from Marxism Translated on the Second International materials that remain untranslated and why it is important. You can find Ben's work here:  Marxism Translated – First-time translations, analysis, and discussion of classical German-language Marxist texts Abandon all hope ye who...

Please support our Patreon.   For early and ad-free episodes, members-only content, and more. John and Shannon are both organizers of the Dual Power Gathering. You can find out more and support the event here .    Abandon all hope ye who subscribe here.    Crew: Host: C. Derick Varn Audio Producer: Paul Channel Strip  ( @aufhebenkultur ) Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake. Intro Video Design: Ja...

Please support our Patreon.   For early and ad-free episodes, members-only content, and more. Jeff is a teacher in Jefferson Parish, a Union member, and the host of Morning Comrade . We discuss the history of Unions in New Orleans, challenges to education, and the current situation.  Jeff will be coming back to expand on this conversation in the future. Abandon all hope ye who subscribe here.    C...

Please support our patreon.   For early and ad-free episodes, members-only content, and more. Sudip Bhattacharya is a Ph. D. candidate at Rutgers University, an activist, and a writer.  He researches the history of organizing and labor movement. We reference two of his articles: Intellectuals and Activism and Striving for Solidarity . IF you would like to help support his mutual aid work with the...

Please support our patreon.   For early and ad-free episodes, members-only content, and more. Jules Taylor of No Easy Answers comes on to talk to me about what it means to be Communist in this time where nothing seems certain, the "Democratic socialist" revival seems to be beached on the sands of the Democratic party, geopolitical complications are everywhere, and many people have lost t...

Please support our patreon.   For early and ad-free episodes, members-only content, and more. In today's episode, we talk to Patrick Toole.  Patrick Toole is a cofounder of the Lefty Book Club.   We discuss the horizon of opportunity and limits of leftist education and educational projects. Abandon all hope ye who subscribe here.    Crew: Host: C. Derick Varn Audio Producer: Paul Channel Stri...

Please support our patreon.   For early and ad-free episodes, members-only content, and more. John Michael Colon and Steve Mann are editors of Strange Matters magazine .  We discuss the limits of the popular versions of Modern Monetary Theory, the deep history of money, and the theories of FOREX,  focusing on more modern history and the transition to the current fiscal situation.   This is a conti...

Please support our patreon.   For early and ad-free episodes, members-only content, and more. In today's episode, we talk to Dr. Clyde Barrow on lumpenproletariat and other groupings that result from finance capital. Dr. Clyde W. Barrow is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. He is the author of Toward a Critical Theory of...

Please support our patreon.   For early and ad-free episodes, members-only content, and more. Rebecca E. Karl teaches History at New York University . She is the author of China's Revolutions in the Modern World: A Brief Interpretive History ,   Mao Zedong and China in the Twentieth-Century World: A Concise History (Duke 2010) and Staging the World: Chinese Nationalism at the Turn of the Twen...

Please support our patreon.   For early and ad-free episodes, members-only content, and more. Ikoi Hireo is a substance dependency disorder counselor, co-host of It's Not Just In Your Head , a nd a long-time internet friend of mine. We talk about the crises in care work and the limitations we see in the field.  This is a long and informal, even a bit personal, conversation on the topic. Aband...

Please support our patreon.   For early and ad-free episodes, members-only content, and more. Steve Mann, a member of the Strange Matters coops , will discuss the limits of our understanding of inflation and his article, " Notes Towards a Theory of Inflation ."  We will talk about classical theories of inflation, MMT, and the limitations of all the current models. Abandon all hope ye who...

Please support our patreon.   For early and ad-free episodes, members-only content, and more. In honor of May Day,  Chapo Trap House 's and CushVlog 's Matt Christman comes on today to speak about the situation of the US left and how we got here.   Labor has had some major victories in the past few weeks, but the trends are in general still negative.  How did we get here and what can we...

Please support our patreon.   For early and ad-free episodes, members-only content, and more. Professor Dongping Han was born and raised in rural Shandong, China. His mother was a farmer and his father was a blue-collar worker in a state-owned factory. Dongping started working after school on a collective farm when he was only nine. After he graduated from high school, he worked in the village fac...

Please support our patreon.   For early and ad-free episodes, members-only content, and more. Daniel is the host of "What Is Politics"    and we discuss the problems of institutional drift, over-complexity in the systems, educational issues and the social problems they create, and classes attracted to left-wing thinking. Abandon all hope ye who subscribe here.    Crew: Host: C. Derick Va...

While the introduction music is that of Varn Vlog on this podcaster, this series will be simultaneously released on both the Varn Vlog podcast feed and the Regrettable Century podcast feed .   This is a long-running series we are doing on understanding social technologies, relationships of production, and how we get here:  i.e. what is the social and class history of the past.    In this episode,...

Please support our patreon.   For early and ad-free episodes, members-only content, and more. Jared is the author of Cyber Dandy. We talk about anti-communism and anti-radicalism in the US from the 1790s to the 1940s.  This is part one of a series. Abandon all hope ye who subscribe here.    Crew: Host: C. Derick Varn Audio Producer: Paul Channel Strip  ( @aufhebenkultur ) Intro and Outro Music by...

Kim Panagos is a doctoral candidate finishing his dissertation on the concept of the "Fog of War" and Graete is a streamer and political theorist interested in building a more pragmatic and successful left.  We talk about the uses and misuses of military strategy, understanding emergent system dynamics, the limitations of left-wing political trends and thinking, and building a more resil...

Sam Kangarloo is an MMT Subject Matter Expert, Future Systems Designer, and Program/Project Management Consultant based in Massachusetts.  We discuss MMT as spelled by Warren Mosler, various theories of inflation, and its affects on politics. Abandon all hope ye who subscribe here.    Crew: Host: C. Derick Varn Audio Producer: Paul Channel Strip  ( @aufhebenkultur ) Intro and Outro Music by Bitter...

Mir Bal is a social worker and leftist in Sweden.  He was a co-host of "For a Lost Cause," a Swedish Marxist podcast.    We discuss the history of the Swedish Social Democrats, the actual politics of the Sweden Democrats,  and many misconceptions North Americans may have about Nordic countries in general and Sweden in particular. Corrections: There is an error when we talk about economic...