A sneak peak at this new VarnVlog series featuring guest spots from Sean KB and Jason from great post-Trot podcast The Regrettable Century. We read Alexander Dugin's most famous work, 'The Fourth Political Theory' to understand why all sorts of dingdongs, from the right to the left, are looking to this eclectic, irrationalist Russian pos...
2024-01-03 11:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post
Sean and Varn return with part two of their series on nationalism and the nation state. In this episode, the discuss various Marxist conceptions of the state including Otto Bauer, Rosa Luxembourg but especially Vladimir Lenin. What is the relationship between people and nation? Class and nation? And what is to be done? Full episode for patrons!
2023-12-22 11:00:10 +0000 UTC View Post
Anders & Andy interview the unmasked McKinsey whistleblower and journalist Garrison Lovely about consulting with Rikers and ICE. Other topics include bread fixing, opiates, McKinsey 4chan, and Mayor Pete. In the second Garrison takes our answers on being a leftist Effective Altruist.
Garrison's podcast: https://mostintere...
2023-12-18 14:00:04 +0000 UTC View PostSean and Andy are joined by Volodymyr Ishchenko, Ukrainian Marxist and sociologist, to discuss his upcoming collection of essays "Toward the Abyss" from Verso Books. (You can and should preorder here.)
How does a 'civilizational' or 'cultural' or 'decolonial' understanding of the Russia-Ukraine conflict obscure the underlying class conflict at its heart? What is the politi...
2023-12-13 11:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
Andy and Sean are joined by returning champion Jason Myles of This is Revolution podcast and industrial metal maniacs Bitter Lake to discuss his recent 2023-12-06 11:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post
We read chapters X and XI of Settlers, about the decline of the CPUSA and postwar settlers parasitism on a global scale.
Read Along:
https://readsettlers.org/ch10.html
https://readsettlers.org/ch11.html
Info about Yokinen Trial./ White Chauvinism purges:
NEWS EP: Musk's trip Israel and the elections of Milei, Wildes, and the Dublin riots. Israeli labor shortage. How worried we should be about Trump's Plan 2025? Why Bidenist social-democracy won't help. Civil Socety vs. Social Humanity. PSL and block the boat criticism. The rise of AMLOnomics and Avocado wars in Mexico
Labor shortage in Israel: ...
2023-11-29 11:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post
We visit Argentina, where the extremely online anarcho-capitalist Bolsonarista and MAGA Chud Javier Milei has just been elected their new president. Will it be a return to the Anti-communist dictatorship of the 70s and 80s, the neoliberal dollarization era of the 90s, or will it turn Argentina into one big AnarchApulco?
To find out, Andy interviews members of anarchist-communist collective based in the<...
2023-11-22 11:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post
Shadowy Antifa spokesperson and podcaster Jamie Peck returns to tell us about the Block Cop City action this week in Atlanta, and what comes next for the movement against Cop Cities in Atlanta and everywhere.
Coverage on Block Cop City:
Natasha Lennard:
2023-11-16 10:00:04 +0000 UTC
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This is audio of CRUSH reading series no.37, Benefit for Palestine featuring Kamelya Youssef, Jenna Hamed, Tenaya Nasser, 2023-11-10 11:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post
The arcane numbering system is gone, but Sean and Varn have (surprise!) a new miniseries. Inspired by current events - such as the Russo-Ukrainian War, Israel's ongoing atrocities in Gaza, and the turn towards post-neoliberal economic nationalism - we're going to explore all manner of Marxist and non-Marxist theories on the nation state to help get our heads around the current mess the world is in and hopefully chart a pathway out.
How did the nation-state rise in the early modern world...
2023-11-08 11:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post
J. Sakai's Settlers Chapter 9 - Neocolonial Pacification in the US discusses how the Settler Nation integrated Native American and Black leaders into its ranks. Topics include: Native American self-governance, the rise of Marcus Garvey's UNIA, international solidarity with Ethiopia after Italy's 1935 invasion, the STFU (Southern Tenant Farmers Union), A. Phillip Randolph, the March on Washington, Black Power, and Settlers-pilled Scorsese.
Settlers Ch. 9: 2023-11-06 11:00:07 +0000 UTC
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Andy and Sean discuss the invasion in Gaza, Israel's move towards ethnic cleansing, the history of proletarian resistance in Palestine, and theorize class conflict between the Israeli and Palestinian national projects and its working classes. We also talk about what all this means for those communists in the US removed from the conflict.
Some of our reading for the episode:
Sean is joined by @DanielTutt, host of the @torsion_groups and @emancipations_ podcast, to talk about the life of Friedrich Engels through the Tristam Hunt's 2009 biography Marx'...
2023-10-25 10:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
Recording of a discussion last Saturday with Michael Hardt at Woodbine for a discussion of his new book The Subversive Seventies and our contemporary autonomist experiments in Queens, Atlanta, and elsewhere.
Michael Hardt is a philosopher and political theorist whose work focuses on autonomist social mov...
2023-10-18 10:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
We continue reading J. Sakai's Settlers - The Myth of the White Proletariat, chapters 7 and 8. We begin the episode with a discussion of the war in Israel and Palestine with Sakai's national-liberation framework in mind.
Leftcom statements mentioned:
https://en.internationalism.org/content/17406/neither-israel-nor-palestine-workers-have-no-fa...
With neo-Keynesian hacks like Will Stancil crowing about the alleged successes of Bidenomics, it seemed fitting to bring on Jamie Merchant, author of many incisive articles in Paul Mattick's Field Notes section of the Brooklyn Rail and elsewhere to discuss capital, finance and permanent crisis. Topics include the enduring lega...
2023-10-11 10:00:04 +0000 UTC View PostSean and Andy talk about their moves/life showers, and the next chapter of our lives. We go on to discuss the influx of asylum seekers to NYC, the crisis of the WTO and rules-based international order, right-wing opposition to a Chinese EV battery plant in Michigan, and a munitions plant in East Germany, and in the bonus we talk about Trudeau's "Bonzo goes to Bitzburg" moment.
Woodbine Reservoir journal release party: 2023-10-04 10:00:00 +0000 UTC
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Sean and Varn continue the second part of their miniseries on left strategies and orientations.
Central to the discussion is the definition and role of what is called 'Rank and File' organizing, something that means many things to many people, but whose bases are often conflated in literature and debate, for example in the DSA. Sean and Varn tackle, in turn, the tendencies associated with Joe Burns, Jane MacAlevey, Kim Moody, Marxist-Leninists and syndicalists.
Taking a cue from c...
2023-09-27 09:59:59 +0000 UTC View Post
UAW Strike updates! We hear Sean's analysis of the struggles of US autoworkers since 2018, various strategies the government has used to intervene, evaluated the takes of Brandon and Drumpf, ponder a Titoist Obama, and discuss the revolutionary position.
In the fun half we summarize the positions of the Trotsyist SEP and WSWS, a critique from the Bolshevik Tendency, and argue why abolishing the value form would be a more popular demand than electing a socialist politician or taxing the ...
2023-09-19 09:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
Audio from our live gig last week in Brooklyn! Find out if this the end of podcasting as we know it.
Then we hang with Minion Death Cult a week later to sift through the wreckage of the Well There's Your Problem show in Philly, out trip to Citi Field to woo Mrs. Met, nasty notes to UPS drivers, NY in the post-Bloomberg era, ...
2023-09-18 10:00:00 +0000 UTC View Post
Since we're in Philly this week to perform with Well There's Your Problem, enjoy this classic episode from December 2019 with Roz!
Have you ever asked yourself what weird 1980s Hollywood live-action/cartoon crossover films have to say about the infamous General Motors Streetcar Scandal of the mid-20th century?...
In Chapters 5 and 6 of Settlers Sakai talks about the history of populist anti-imperialism, the emergence of the white proletariat (we do exist!), and explains how the IWW was a vehicle of white supremacy.
https://readsettlers.org/ch5.html
Brand new Diving into the Wreckage mini-series scrapping at the wreckage that is the US Left, tracing the trajectory of socialist politics since the 1970s, and looking for ways out of the mess we're in.
Within, Varn presents on the recent history of the Democratic Socialists of America, their precipitous rise and slow decline in membership since 2020. How does this bode for the future of the millennial left? As it turns out, there are reasons to be cautiously optimistic. 2023-09-06 10:00:00 +0000 UTC View Post
Global Uprisings documentarian and TheRealNews contributor Brandon Jourdan chats about his recent experiences in the pension strikes in France, comparisons to the June Uprising following the murder of Nahel, Belgian Balkanization, the anarchist origins of Twitter, and if the End Notes Decades is ending, or just getting started bab...
2023-08-30 10:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
https://readsettlers.org/ch4.html
song: Lupe Fiasco - El Mural, Jr.
2023-08-25 08:59:01 +0000 UTC View Post
Welcome to the seventh episode of Armed Loved, the Antifada sideproject about the revolutionary countercultures of the 60s and.. Let’s just say early 70s to make it easier on me. Today we’re talking about the subject of the new book from PM Press: The Mohawk Warrior Society: A Handbook on Sovereignty and Survival
Promo film Spaces of Exception: 2023-08-23 10:00:00 +0000 UTC View Post
Sean and Varn are back to get to the basics and discuss first principles for communist organizing, What organizational form is adequate to working class power in the present moment? On what basis might class autonomy politics and at the point of production be achieved? How do we relate to our past: our successes and many failures?
SHOW DETAILS with MINION DEATH CULT, POD DAMN AMERICA, and WELL THERE'S YOUR PROBLEM (philly only)!!!!
NYC Sept 10: <...
2023-08-16 09:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post