Sean KB welcomes to the show two teachers (Carolyn Hietter and Ian Seda) from the John Jay College Department of Economics (Marxist) to discuss their program and the goings-on at the City University of New York since the beginning of the atrocities in Gaza: the McCarthyite administration's war on free speech, the massive shifts within the bourgeois ...
2024-06-05 10:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post
It's been four years since the demise of Sandersism in the United States. It's been two years since the COVID-19 crisis upended society and Russia invaded Ukraine. Socialist politics is, if anything, even more fractured and impotent than it was last decade.
What do we make of the deep melancholy gripping politics today? How have the various political solutions on offer been delegitimated? And why is Sean KB seemingly immune to this melancholy? (Hint: it's the Independent Labor Club.)<...
2024-05-29 10:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post
Sean and Andy are joined by Reid Kane to discuss the tortured legacy of the Socialist Party of America. Why doesn't the United States have a nominally working class party like the UK, where unions formed the institutional base for an independent party? How come state repression was so effective in undermining working class self-organization in the early-20th century? In which ways did the Old Left and the New Lef...
2024-05-22 10:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
Sean is joined by friend of the show, Ted Reese, to discuss his brand new book: Abundant Material Wealth for All. How does Henryk Grossman's breakdown theory help us understand the economics and politics of this current moment? In what ways are crisis tendencies affecting the United States and the UK? What type of program should socialists offer as a way out of the crisis? Join us in fleshing out Ted's expansive ...
2024-05-15 10:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post
For the tenth episode of our series about the revolutionary culture of the sixties, Andy talks to China scholar Ralf Ruckus about the Cultural Revolution in China, during which large factions of youth competed to renew and complete the revolutionary vision of Mao. The result was a seizure of power by the PLA and an estimated 2.8 million death between 1966-1976.
Ralf Ruckus recently pu...
2024-05-08 10:00:09 +0000 UTC View Post
Happy May Day! We report on our visits to pro-Palestine encampments and take listener questions
Check out the ILC BBQ in McCarren park in Williamsburg 3-7 followed by a party/screening at Woodbine: https://www.instagram.com/p/C6Rj8UzuoYs/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
First We Take Columbia text: 2024-05-01 09:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post
Boris and Rey from the anti-nationalist Empire Never Ended podcast and Antipolitika journal chat about the far rights in the US and ex-Yugoslavia, the legacy of Balkan nationalism, cursed Balkan Youtube comments and Greater Idaho.
Empire Never Ended patreon: https:/...
2024-04-24 09:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post
And(y) & And(ers) smoke a hash joint and read selections from the "Protocols of Drug Experiments" in which German Marxist philosopher Walter Benjamin ate a hash edible and wandered around Marseille being weird.
PDF: https://anarch.cc/uploads/walter-benjamin/on-hashish.pdf
New Yorker review of On Hashish: 2024-04-19 13:30:46 +0000 UTC View Post
The communist milieu lost a titan last week. Our kind friend and mentor, Loren Goldner (1949-2024), passed away on Friday, April 12th 3:00am, at age of 76. As a tribute to his life and legacy we were able to gather a handful of people who were close to him to share stories, memories and inspirations. Special thanks to Arya Zahedi, Zhana Kurti, Jarrod Shanahan, Joe Lombardo, Ross Wolfe and Billy O'Conner for coming on to memorialize a great thinker and a great friend.
Copious Lore...
2024-04-17 10:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post
Part 2 of our discussion with Middle East scholar Arya Zahedi of Insurgent Notes about the essay Class Struggle, Autonomy, and the State in Iran from Ill Will Editions. He talks about the uprisings in Iran, including the murder of 2024-04-03 11:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post
Middle East scholar Arya Zahedi of Insurgent Notes discusses his new piece Class Struggle, Autonomy, and the State in Iran from Ill Will Editions. In part 1, he talks about what the left gets wrong about Iran and its political history through the 1979 revolution, hostage crisis, and counterrevolution.
Read ...
Anselm Jappe is a professor of philosophy, former member of the Krisis Group, and author of the newly-translate book THE SELF-DEVOURING SOCIETY: CAPITALISM, NARCISSISM, AND SELF-DESTRUCTION with Eric-John Russell. The book’s tagline is: “Everyone can feel that the world is getting angrier. The Self-Devouring Society provides an original and rigorous explanation of why.”
Buy the book fr...
2024-03-27 10:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post
For the first ever edition of Party Girls Zine Club, Sam and Jamie discuss Inhabit: Instructions for Autonomy, a 2018 broadside (or little orange book, if you will) from Inhabit, which is not a mere media project, but "a collectively and anonymously written strategy emerging from a network of autonomous projects across North America." What do we make of Inhabit's steps to revolution? Why present speculative fiction in a programmatic context? What does this work of ultra-left thought get right...
2024-03-22 10:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post
IfNotNow activist Ignacio Choi chats about the Pro-Palestine movement, which has, like Finkelstein and Rabbani, won the debate within the framework of international law and human rights. But how far does that get us, and where else could the movement go?
In the bonus we talk about Israel's leftwing defenders in German...
Sean and Varn return with part four of their series on nationalism and the nation state. This episode is about the vexing questions of class and nation that arose in the 20th century and are unresolved today. Why did both the reformist and revolutionary wings of the classical workers movement turn towards state developmentalism? How did really existing class develop to conflict with Marxist theories of working class emancipation? What mistakes from past movements are we still making today whe...
2024-03-13 15:50:02 +0000 UTC View Post
NEWS EP! We discuss Aaron Bushnell, voting uncomitted and hopelessness, UAW and Starbucks union victories, the MTA wildcat strike and working-class demands for safety.
Aaron Bushnell / Gaza:
-Crimethinc statement https://crimethinc.com/2024/02/26/this-is-what-our-ruling-class-has-decided-will-be-norm...
Sean is joined by political theorist William Roberts to discuss his excellent 2017 book, Marx's Inferno: The Political Theory of Capital which excavates not just Marx's use of the structure of Dante's Inferno but the radical political theory that undergirds it. What is the relationship b...
2024-02-28 11:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post
In which Sean writes another Substack article and reads it out for patrons on the feed!
This time about the republican communist turn, the death of civil society and our opportunity to build an organization of a new (old) type. We'll be talking about it all, plus hanging out at the meetup this coming Saturday at 5:30pm,
An interview with Eric King, who was recently released after being incarcerated since 2014, five of those in segregation. He was charged with using an incendiary device to commit arson after throwing a molotov cocktail at an empty Federal Building in Kansas City Missouri during the uprising in Ferguson. Today he is out on probation and talking with us about his history with the anarchist movement, his time insi...
2024-02-21 07:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
Sean and Andy are joined by Mike Macnair, member of the Provisional Central Committee of the Communist Party of Great Britain, columnist at Weekly Worker and author of Revolutionary Strategy (2008) and many other works.
We discuss the legacy of Marxist political movements of the 19th and 20th centuries, the role of the party, the importance of patience and republicanism to the working class struggle and w...
2024-02-14 11:00:11 +0000 UTC View PostWe are pleased to announce that we've got a space and a date for the Antifada meetup this month. We'll be gathering on February 24th at 5:30-8:00pm at the Woodbine collective at 585 Woodward Avenue in Ridgewood, Queens. There will be no cover and it will be open to all.
Feel free to BYOB!
See you there,
Andy and Sean
2024-02-14 02:15:57 +0000 UTC View Post
NEWS EPISODE! We talk about the crisis of liberalism in the US and worldwide through the context of the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the formation of BRICs as a challenge to US-based global order, the economic spiral of Germany and China, class war at the border, and betrayal of every millennial's favorite grocery store.
Show notes:
UAW organizing in Alabama, Tennessee:
2024-02-05 11:00:10 +0000 UTC
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Sean and Varn return with part three of their series on nationalism and the nation state. This episode is about the only really existing internationalism left: the capitalist infrastructure of globalization. Special emphasis is made of the history of state formation in the Middle East as it pertains to the current conflict. In the second half, the discussion turns to the rise and decay of what is called the "Rules Based International Order".
Song: Gary Numan - This Wreckage
2024-01-31 11:00:03 +0000 UTC View PostHappy belated New Years!
As I've mentioned a few times on the pod, we're looking to do an NYC meetup this winter. This would be to hang out with old friends and meet some new ones, but also in preparation for a potential new project for 2024.
Alas, despite being two weeks unemployed (thank god) I've been having some delays in finding an appropriate space to meet in. While a bar would be sort of standard, I guess, I'm looking for something more private and intimate.
... 2024-01-26 22:32:05 +0000 UTC View Post
Sean and Andy finish reading Settlers, Chapters 13 and 14
BLA's Message to the Black Movement: https://archive.lib.msu.edu/DMC/AmRad/messageblackmovement.pdf
Clips from Finally Got the News:
https://www.youtub...
Ex-Militant of the Homosexual Front of Revolutionary Action (FHAR) Lola Mieseroff is our guest on this installment of the Antifada sideproject on the revolutionary culture of the sixties. We talk about growing up in gay South France in the sixties, her experience in May '68 and after, the resonance of Stonewall, what it meant to be a pro-situ and her run-in, with Debord, the revolutionary politics of homosexuality and queerness, her relationship with Guy Hocquenhghem and the rest of the revol...
2024-01-24 11:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
In part two of our discussion on the essay Forest and Factory, we foray into fourierism and the whimsical world of life under global communism. Topics include: the mushroom mafia, nomadic pleasure duels, gender orgies, capitalist fantasy camp, and communist santa!
Hellroys - Santa Clause is a Commie
What will production, consumption, supply chains, and climate policy on a global scale look like under communism? Phil Neel and Nick Chavez has published a compelling vision of the future in their Endnotes essay Forest and Factory
Also check out Nick Chavez's piece Tec...
2024-01-17 11:00:08 +0000 UTC View PostWe start 2024 by talking about Houthis and global shipping, the Uniparty, the Harvard presidency, and the backlash against Pro-Palestinian protesters as part of the broader backlash against progressive liberalism.
*NEW YEARS PROMOTION!* Sign up or upgrade your membership at the discounted $10/month annual membership and DM your ad...
Sign up or upgrade your membership at the discounted $10/month annual membership and DM your mailing address on Patreon for a *free postage paid copy* of the PM Press George Floyd Uprising book, with contributions by Andy and many past and future ...
2024-01-08 04:00:33 +0000 UTC View Post