Jacobin Radio

Lisa Duggan wrote a book that explains everything you need to know about Ayn Rand and why she became so enormously consequential so that you don't have to read Rand's work yourself. Mean Girl: Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed is out now from University of California Press.Thanks to Verso. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.comPlease support this podcast with money at Patreon.com/TheDig See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Sam Gindin on the UAW’s strike against GM, and the possibilities for the green repurposing of a plant GM is abandoning. Then, Robin Einhorn on the role of slavery in shaping tax politics in the early United States (article here). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The history of suburbanite reactions to school integration in Atlanta and Charlotte reveal the class power underpinning both racism and the demolition of the New Deal order. Dan interviews Matt Lassiter, discussing suburbanite resistance to school busing, why Nixon's Silent Majority was the the product of a suburban strategy rather than a Southern one, and why the class base of all politics matters.Thanks to Verso. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.comSupport this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

As we trudge closer to 2020, candidates are emerging for elected office beyond the presidency. And, thank God, they don't all suck. Like Cathy Kunkel, who is running for Congress in West Virginia's second district.Cathy is an energy analyst, cochair of the Working Families Party in West Virginia, an activist during the 2018 West Virginia teachers strike, and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. She's also a contributor to Jacobin, where she's written half a dozen articles about West Virginia and Puerto Rico.You can read her Jacobin articles here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/author/cathy-kunkelYou can learn more about her campaign at her website: https://kunkelforcongress.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Suzi talks to Paul Mason on Brexit and George Kerevan on Brexit in Scotland — to unravel the complexities and many political-economic ramifications of the issue. The Brexit crisis is as consuming for the United Kingdom as Trump is for the United States. Paul Mason calls it "Brexhaustion," and says chaos is being normalized … albeit manufactured. The daily ins and outs are confusing, especially to outside spectators, but we shed light on this now constitutional crisis with British journalist and writer Paul Mason, and with political economist, journalist, and former SNP MP George Kerevan, who fills us in on the Scottish case by framing for us just how the United Kingdom came to this pass, how Britain has been massively convulsed by the internal divisions rocking the dominant Conservative (Tory) Party — such that Boris Johnson, now in power, could be seemingly denouncing the very capitalist interests the Conservative Party was supposed to represent. Brexit didn’t create these developments, but it is the outward

Margaret Corvid, city councilor in Plymouth, England, on Boris Johnson and Brexit madness. Then, John Clegg on slavery’s profound effects on the US political structure. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dan interviewed legendary feminist scholar Silvia Federici on Caliban and the Witch at her Brooklyn apartment. Next year, he'll make a return trip to discuss Wages for Housework.Here's the article on the Pawtucket factory strike by Joey La Neve DeFrancesco that Dan mentions jacobinmag.com/2018/06/factory-workers-strike-textile-mill-womenThanks to Verso. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.comSupport this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dan discusses the history of black politics in the US—left, nationalist, liberal, and neoliberal—with Michael Dawson.Check out New Dawn, Michael's podcast on race and capitalism: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/new-dawn/id1213696020Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.comPlease support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We need a Green New Deal to stop climate catastrophe. Everybody knows this. But housing has to be a key piece of the GND, as Daniel Aldana Cohen argues in the Spring 2019 issue of Jacobin on housing.Daniel Aldana Cohen is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he directs the Socio-Spatial Climate Collaborative and coauthor, with Alyssa Battistoni, Kate Aronoff, and Thea Riofrancos, of A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal from Verso Books. The four of them also coedit the Green New Deal series at Jacobin.Buy a copy of our housing issue, "Home Improvement," here: https://jacobinmag.com/issue/home-improvementRead Daniel's articles for Jacobin here: https://jacobinmag.com/author/daniel-aldana-cohenRead our Green New Deal series here: https://jacobinmag.com/series/green-new-deal See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Journalist Yasha Levine on the “democracy” demos in Moscow: for a flossier neoliberalism. Then, Maria Luisa Mendonça, director of Rede Social de Justiça e Direitos Humanos (Network for Social Justice and Human Rights) in Brazil on the Amazon fires: who’s setting them, why, and what can be done. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Writer Brian Hioe updates us on the Hong Kong protests. Then, Kavita Krishnan, secretary of the All India Progressive Women's Association (AIPWA), on India’s ongoing crackdown in Kashmir See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Heidi Sloan is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America running for Congress in Texas's 25th district. She's challenging a Republican incumbent, used car salesman, and incredibly rich person Roger Williams.Sloan recently sat down to talk about her story, her work with homeless people in Texas, how she came to join the DSA, her socialist political vision, and which corporate supervillain she would most like to grill as a member of the House of Representatives.Read more about Heidi at her website: https://heidifor25.com/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Guest host Astra Taylor interviews Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz about Indigenous people's history to reexamine all of history, the present, and our possible futures.Thanks to Verso. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.comPlease support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Ordinary language is the sound of hegemony; it is also an archive of the struggles to overturn it. Language is an institution and a constantly emergent field of struggle; it is the product of power relations and it is also itself power relations. Dan interviews John Patrick Leary, the author of Keywords: The New Language of Capitalism.Thanks to Verso. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.comSupport this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The question of how socialists should engage with the labor movement has always been a critical one. One proposal: the rank-and-file strategy, which the Democratic Socialists of America adopted in its recent convention. But what is it? Labor sociologist Barry Eidlin explains.Barry Eidlin is an assistant professor of sociology at McGill University in Montreal and the author of Labor and the Class Idea in the United States in Canada.Read Barry's short explainer on the rank-and-file strategy here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/03/rank-and-file-strategy-union-organizingRead Barry and Micah's article on the "militant minority" here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0160449X19828470 (Behind an academic paywall, but message Barry or Micah on social media to get a PDF of it)Read Kim Moody's 2000 pamphlet on the strategy here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/08/unions-socialists-rank-and-file-strategy-kim-moodyBuy Barry's excellent book here: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781107514416?aff=TomLutz See

Suzi talks to UCLA law professor Gary Blasi, a longtime housing activist and advocate for the homeless about the staggering increase in homelessness in LA city and county (indeed across the country). But there are misconceptions about what is driving this surge in people living on the streets. Put simply, says Blasi, homeless people are homeless because they cannot afford housing, mostly in neighborhoods where they have grown up. We get Blasi's analysis of the scope of homelessness, the effectiveness — or lack thereof —of city, county, and state measures to deal with it, as well as what more can be done.Suzi then talks to author and activist Paul Buhle about his graphic biography of the American socialist and labor leader Eugene V. Debs — one of the most important Americans of the twentieth century according to Bernie Sanders, who also called Debs “the most effective and popular leader that the American working class has ever had.” We hear about Debs’s life, ideas, and struggles as a fighting union leader of

Dan talks to Jacobin editor Bhaskar Sunkara about his book The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality. We must study socialism's history and plan for its future.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at versobooks.comPlease support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Jobs have in recent years gotten much worse for millions of service workers at Amazon, McDonalds and call centers. Dan interviews Emily Guendelsberger on her book On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane.Thanks to Verso. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.comPlease support this podcast with your money at patreon.com/TheDig See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

 Suzi looks at the rising in Puerto Rico with professor, activist, and author Rafael Bernabe in San Juan, Puerto Rico where two weeks of massive protests brought down the corrupt government of Ricardo Rosselló, and continue amid uncertainty about what comes next. The protest movement took off after the Center for Investigative Journalism released nearly 900 pages of chat messages between Rosselló and his inner circle, revealing their misogyny, homophobia, and the contempt they held for the population. But it wasn’t just the most recent events that brought the people’s anger to the boiling point: the economic meltdown of 2008–2009 hit a Puerto Rico already ensnared in a never-ending debt crisis engineered by vulture funds, and when natural disaster hit following economic disaster, conditions went from bad to worse. Bernabe helps us understand this trajectory, and we get his view on what direction he sees for Puerto Rico after the success of the mass movement.Asli Bâli, UCLA law professor and Middle East expert

Dan interviews Lily Geismer, the author of Don't Blame Us: Suburban Liberals and the Transformation of the Democratic Party. While Boston whites fought school busing in the streets, suburban liberals along Route 128 maintained and benefited from the larger system of metropolitan residential and school segregation that made the crisis possible. Suburban liberals also played a key role in creating a new Democratic Party that embraced a superficial politics of recognition while advancing a technocratic elite-driven neoliberal agenda that included the demonization and persecution of poor black mothers on welfare and mass incarceration.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.comPlease support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.