Jacobin Radio

It's the first episode of The Vast Majority, which will be bringing you conversations on American and international politics from a socialist perspective. So who better to have on than Bhaskar Sunkara, Jacobin's editor, publisher, and founder. Bhaskar is the author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality, which is out today, April 30. Micah talked to Bhaskar about the state of the socialist movement, socialism’s relationship to liberalism and markets, and Bhaskar’s utopian vision of a Buffalo Wild Wings on every corner.You can order The Socialist Manifesto from your bookseller of choice or your local bookstore. And you can read Bhaskar's editorial "The Exercise of Power," where he talks about "class-struggle social democracy," in the latest issue of Jacobin: https://jacobinmag.com/2019/02/the-exercise-of-power See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

It's a new podcast from Jacobin: The Vast Majority, hosted by Micah Uetricht. We'll be talking to authors from Jacobin and its sister publications like Catalyst and Tribune in the UK, plus whoever else is thinking and doing important work on the Left. The first episode will be out April 30. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

*This episode of The Dig is a special Dig in Spanish. Visit Jacobin for a transcript in English. Este episodio de The Dig es un Dig especial en español. Entra a Jacobin para una transcripción en inglés.*Cuando se piensa en Chile desde el extranjero, generalmente surge la imagen de su pasado reciente marcado por la dictadura cívico–militar. Y esto con toda razón. El legado del régimen genocida de Pinochet todavía está presente en todas partes—en la memoria personal y colectiva, en las leyes y en una constitución profundamente neoliberal que sigue condenando al sistema político a un bipartidismo e impide las transformaciones deseadas por la soberanía popular. Daniel Jadue, el alcalde de la comuna de Recoleta, ubicada en la Región Metropolitana del Gran Santiago, se ha entregado a la empresa de construir en su territorio un laboratorio del comunismo del presente y del futuro. Junto a su equipo ha abierto una farmacia popular, una óptica popular y una linda librería popular. Todos estos servicios de primera neces

Rossana Rodriguez on her successful campaign as a socialist for the Chicago city council, where she will join five other socialists. Then, Benjamin Fogel, author of this and this, on the lunacy of Bolsonaro's early months as president of Brazil. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The US has played a major role in fomenting violence across Yemen, backing the Saudi and United Arab Emirates-led forces attacking the country while also conducting a direct war against Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula under the guise of counterterrorism. But while it's understandable that US involvement is the top focus for the American left, understanding the war in Yemen requires a much broader analysis. The Yemeni conflict not only includes multiple outside actors but also multiple groups of Yemenis pursuing different outcomes, rooted in a complex history that few outside of Yemen understand. Explaining that context is what this show, in partnership with the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), is all about. This special episode includes two interviews with contributors to Middle East Report, MERIP's print publication. First, up is Yemeni journalist Afrah Nasser and political scientist Stacey Philbrick Yadav; and then, Dan speaks with political-economist Adam Hanieh.Check out The Fight f

Our guest Yoav Peled argues that Netanyahu is the only issue in the April 9 election. Netanyahu is under indictment for one case of bribery and two cases of fraud, but Yoav says he is likely to win even though his party and their bloc — with far-right, racist and religious parties — is more or less tied with the anti-Bibi “Blue and White” coalition or bloc. Yoav also discusses his new book, The Religionization of Israeli Society — which sheds light on how the country has moved from secular Zionism to an increasingly far-right expansionist religious Zionism, and how that helps us understand the election, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — and the relation between culture, politics, nationalism, secularization, and new social movements. Suzi then talks to Micah Uetricht in Chicago, where 5–6 socialists were just elected to the City Council. Micah argues they will have outsize influence in determining the political issues — much as we have seen nationally with the election of democratic socialists to Congress. I

Jason Wilson on how cops are more interested in surveilling the Left than the Right (article here; Will Parrish article here). Then, Todd Chretien reflects on the forty-two-year history of the International Socialist Organization, which dissolved itself at the end of March. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In the US, China is often viewed at best as a nefarious and enigmatic rival and at worst as a civilizational enemy. But these stories of national rivalry that permeate both major parties and the mainstream media function as a mystification, shrouding the global supply chain that connects capitalist exploitation from East to West. When we cut through the noise, a rather different picture emerges: China is home to a massive portion of the world's working-class, a class that is struggling against the combined forces of state and global capital for dignified lives. And these struggles, contrary to conventional wisdom, are deeply connected, rather than opposed to, worker struggles in the West. Dan interviews sociologist Jenny Chan on China's class conflict and labor movement.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.

Car dominance, public transit austerity, and the neoliberal political-economy within which both are embedded have fomented what Marx called idiocy, in its classical sense of privatized social isolation. Dan talks to geographer Kafui Attoh, the author of Rights in Transit: Public Transportation and the Right to the City in California's East Bay, about the political-economy of public transit and why the fight for transportation justice must be part of a broader struggle for the right to the city.André Gorz's "The social ideology of the motorcar" unevenearth.org/2018/08/the-social-ideology-of-the-motorcar/Two upcoming live Dig tapings in Providence!April 23: Dan interviews Sam Stein on his book Capital City facebook.com/events/2164662790291372/May 2-4: Slavery’s Hinterlands: Capitalism and bondage in Rhode Island and across the Atlantic world facebook.com/events/661508874305008/And check out the Philadelphia Socialist Feminist Convergence, April 26-28 socfemphilly.wordpress.comThanks to Verso Books. Peruse their

Suzi talks to political economist Pedro Paulo Zahluth Bastos about the Trump-Bolsonaro love fest in D.C. last week, and the new Brazilian-US relationship. Bolsonaro was "summoned" to Washington to support a US invasion of Venezuela under the pretext of "exporting democracy," and we ask Pedro Paulo how that will go over in Brazil — and note the irony that Bolsonaro is a staunch defender of military dictatorships and no lover of democracy. We also get Pedro Paulo's view of Brazilian politics and economics under their new tweeter in chief — who campaigned as a murderous, homophobic, anti-feminist, declaring open season on the Left and on the Amazon rainforest, but governs as an extreme neoliberal. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The strike is back, and big time. Teachers in particular have been walking off the job not only to demand higher wages but also to fight for an end to privatization and for a transformation of the educational system for their students. These strikes, often led by women, are no doubt inspiring, and they have won important victories for workers and the communities they serve. We are, in other words, beginning to head in the right direction—but we're not heading there even close to fast enough. Winning working class power is not only necessary to meet people's immediate material needs. It is necessary if we are to accomplish a profound democratization of this country, which is what we must do if we are to implement a just energy transition that heads off what scientists have determined to be imminent climate catastrophe. Dan talks to Jane McAlevey about the labor movement and strikes.Jane's Catalyst article The Strike as the Ultimate Structure Test.And her Jacobin article Organizing to Win a Green New Deal.Thank

Tony Wood, author of Russia Without Putin, on contemporary Russia and Putin. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Four of the five candidates endorsed by the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America either won outright or advanced to the runoff election on April 2, leading to talk of a Socialist Caucus on the city council. And other progressive candidates throughout the city knocked off corporate-friendly incumbents. Dan passes the mic to guest host Micah Uetricht for an interview with United Working Families Executive Director Emma Tai and In These Times web editor Miles Kampf-Lassin on how years of grassroots organizing—and partnerships between labor and community groups and socialists—can produce a sea change in urban politics.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.

American liberty has since its foundation relied upon the dispossession of indigenous people and Mexicans, upon African enslavement and, ultimately, upon the constant fleeing outward that created an empire that none dare call by its name. As historian Greg Grandin writes in The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America, this expansionist project has finally lost its ideological and material vitality, no longer able to neatly reconcile centuries of mounting contradictions. And so politics returned to the border as American expansion hit a wall—figuratively and, as Trump has demanded, very literally. "Trumpism," Grandin writes, "is extremism turned inward, all-consuming and self-devouring. There is no 'divine, messianic' crusade that can harness and redirect passions outward. Expansion, in any form, can no longer satisfy interests, reconcile contradictions, dilute the factions, or redirect the anger."Thanks to University of California Press. Check out No Go WorldL How Fear Is

Cinzia Arruzza and Tithi Bhattacharya, authors (along with Nancy Fraser) of Feminism for the 99%, on a truly transformative feminism. Then, Sam Stein, author of Capital City, on bourgeois urban planning, with an emphasis on NYC. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Richard Walker, geographer and director of the Living New Deal project, on what the original New Deal can teach the Green one. Then, Aziz Rana on the need for a left internationalism. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou explains: it's not just that the War on Terror has warped American and European politics and society; it's that the War on Terror and Islamic terrorist groups like ISIS have become mutually-critical facets of a larger, more total global geo-political order. In other words, the terrorists and the national security states waging war against them are dependent upon one another, and together have created a more violent, divided and alienated world.Thanks to University of California Press. Check out Red Round Globe Hot Burning: A Tale at the Crossroads of Commons and Closure, of Love and Terror, of Race and Class, and of Kate and Ned Despard by Peter Linebaugh ucpress.edu/book/9780520299467/red-round-globe-hot-burningAnd 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.

Suzi talks to DSAers Jeremy Gong and Magally Miranda Alcazar about the larger issues they are confronting after two years of Trump, a midterm election that saw radical democratic socialists elected to Congress, and the beginning of a second Bernie Sanders campaign for president. How do they see the challenges ahead, in a more favorable national context for Democratic Socialists, thanks to Bernie, AOC, #Red4Ed striking teachers, and the Trump administration’s retrograde policies? Can the Left take over the Democratic Party and should that be their aim? Or should the social-movement work of DSA, independent of the Dems, be their focus? How do they define socialism, and what should socialists do given the structures of our politics and economy?Then, Suzi talks to Randy Shaw about his new book, Generation Priced Out — which is a call to action that addresses the national crisis of housing, city by city, looking at how policy and neglect, as well as economic crisis, has led to skyrocketing rents and home values th

It's irrelevant whether establishment liberals are sincerely aware of the threat posed by climate catastrophe because they are constitutionally hemmed in by a small-bore, technocratic and profoundly neoliberal ideology. But the climate justice movement understands not only the urgency of the problem but also the magnitude of the political-economic response that solving it requires: to fight global warming, according to The Green New Deal, we must transform the unequal, alienating and exploitative system that carbon emissions are rooted in. Dan interviews Green New Deal architect Rhiana Gunn-Wright.Read Jacobin's Green New Deal series jacobinmag.com/series/green-new-dealThanks 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.

Striking women have begun to reclaim feminism as a project of working-class struggle against not only patriarchy's domination of women by men but also against capitalism's domination of the many by the few—a system that sexism serves. As Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya and Nancy Fraser write in Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto, "Our answer to lean-in feminism is kick-back feminism. We have no interest in breaking the glass ceiling while leaving the vast majority to clean up the shards. Far from celebrating women CEOs who occupy corner offices, we want to get rid of CEOs and corner offices." Dan interviews Tithi Bhattacharya.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.