Jacobin Radio

Legendary critical theorist Nancy Fraser argues that a total analysis of capitalism requires taking Marxism beyond a narrowly economistic view. Throughout its history, capitalism has been defined not just by labor exploitation but also by the disavowal of that exploitation's own basic conditions of possibility: the things that the daily business of labor exploitation and surplus-value appropriation require from politics, care work, war-making, mining, patriarchy, racism, and more.Thanks to Verso Books, which has loads of great left-wing titles at www.versobooks.com. And thanks to University of California Press. Check out Uberland: How Algorithms Are Rewriting the Rules of Work by Alex Rosenblat ucpress.edu/book/9780520298576/uberland.Please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Suzi talks to Jacobin's managing editor, Micah Uetricht, who has been writing about Chicago politics and Rahm Emanuel since 2011: in fact Micah Uetricht is to Rahm Emanuel what Hunter Thompson was to Richard Nixon. We get Micah's take on why "Mayor 1%" is not running for reelection, and what his legacy will likely be. Suzi then speaks to freelance writer Chloe Watlington, who has been writing about Puerto Rico since Hurricane Maria for the Baffler and Teen Vogue. Chloe looks at the bizarre attempts to reboot the economy that profess to solve problems that aren’t the problem, and the response from labor, as well as student strikes against massive cuts to education at all levels. There is a pattern here and Chloe helps unravel it. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Writer Joel Schalit on neofascism in Germany and Israel. Then, Heidi Matthews, assistant professor of law at York University, on #MeToo. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What socialism should offer is freedom by way of power and democratic control over our polity and economy—and thus over our future as a society. Matt Bruenig has one proposal out at his People's Policy Project on how to begin to do just that, and it's called a social wealth fund. The idea is that the state gradually socializes the assets of every single publicly-traded company in the United States by purchasing their stocks.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge catalogue 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.

Raven Rakia, a journalist with The Appeal, on the nationwide prison strike (more here and here). Then, Asad Haider, author of Mistaken Identity, on race and class. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Nikhil Pal Singh on the unfortunate obsession shared by certain pundits, journalists and social scientists: definitively proving that Trump won because of racism, and racism alone. What drives so many people to dedicate so much time to arguing that either class or race or gender or whatever matters the most—or worse yet, matters exclusively? And what does "matter more" even mean? Plus, a Dan Denvir monologue on the identity politics debate.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out versobooks.com for loads of great left-wing titles.Support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dan speaks to Elizabeth Rush, the author of Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore, a lyrical, mournful but ultimately hopeful account of people dealing with amongst the most tangible effects of global warming right now: the rising seas that are threatening poor and working-class people with dislocation, community destruction and compounded destitution. It's a beautifully-written guide to the current crisis that sugarcoats nothing yet that highlights how ordinary people can organize to fight for their future and that of the planet where we live.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their massive collection of left-wing books for sale at versobooks.comAnd please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Rob Larson, author of Capitalism vs. Freedom, explores how the “free market” is a realm of unfreedom, and Keith Gessen discusses his new novel about contemporary Russia, A Terrible Country. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Today's episode is a long one. It's the first of two this week on climate politics: a live event that I hosted at Verso Books in New York a couple weeks ago. Or, at least part of it is. The event livestream, which we grabbed the audio from, malfunctioned for the first half hour or so of the episode. And so, dear listeners, we made lemonade out of audiovisual lemons and re-did the first part of the interview later over the phone from Providence.Dan spoke to Audrea Lim, Thea Riofrancos, Ashley Dawson and Daniel Aldana Cohen about how the left should respond to the climate crisis—and how that response, for better or for worse, will require a deep transformation in social and economic relations, and also in our built environment and how we inhabit it. In other words, eco-socialism is the only solution because we can't achieve real ecological balance without socialism, and true socialism that delivers liberation would be concretely impossible without ecological balance.Thanks to Verso. Check out so many good lefty

Suzi Weissman talks to Robin Blackburn about Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party's left-wing leader. Drawing on Robin's article, "The Corbyn Project," in the May/June 2018 New Left Review, Suzi asks Blackburn to explore the challenges and constraints a Corbyn Labour Left government would face after a decade of Tory austerity policies — that came on the heels of Thatcher and Blair's neoliberal politics making Britain the most unequal country in Western Europe. Suzi also asks Robin what fundamental changes a Corbyn government could implement, and to sketch the proposals and prospects for an egalitarian shift in the UK, with lessons for the US and beyond. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Josie Duffy Rice on Justice in America, her new podcast from The Appeal that she co-hosts with with Clint Smith, media coverage of criminal justice, carceral feminism and domestic violence, and the disturbing liberal affection for federal law enforcement under Trump.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out For a Left Populism by Chantal Mouffe versobooks.com/books/2748-for-a-left-populismSupport this podcast with your money at patreon.com/TheDig See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Russia: the more your average American thinks about it, the less they seem to know. National security-state enthused liberals blame Putin and for creating what is an obviously-if-incomprehensibly made-in-America monster. Trump, in turn, cannot seem to contain his giddy enthusiasm for Putin's brand of hyper-masculine authoritarianism. Meanwhile, Russia, an actual country where roughly 144 million people live, has become mostly invisible to Americans—because it has been replaced by a caricature. Sean Guillory, the host of the SRB podcast and author of seansrussiablog.org, explains it all.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future by James Bridle versobooks.com/books/2698-new-dark-age And The Amateur: The Pleasures of Doing What You Love by Andy Merrifield versobooks.com/books/2765-the-amateurSupport this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Christina Gerhardt, author of Screening the Red Army Faction (2018, Bloomsbury), on the RAF’s history and artistic reception in the context of the German 1960s and 1970s. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Part two of a two-part interview with Aslı Bâli on the Syrian civil war and the larger geopolitical conflicts that shape the Middle East — with an emphasis on the role played the United States. During part one, which you should definitely listen to first, Bâli discussed the various powers sacrificing the lives of Syrian people in the pursuit of their perceived geopolitical and sectarian interests. In this installment, Bâli discusses the restrictive frames that dominates the American discussion over Syria, and then assesses the lack of a coherent heterodox left-wing foreign policy in the United States — something that we desperately need as the possibility of the Left taking power becomes newly plausible.Read: "Remember Syria?" by Bâli and Aziz Rana bostonreview.net/war-security/asli-bali-aziz-rana-trump-putin-syria and "The U.S. Debt to Syria" bostonreview.net/war-security/asli-u-bali-aziz-rana-us-debt-syria.Live recording of The Dig coming up in New York City. Friday, August 17, 7 PM at Verso Books (20 Jay S

[note: this is being re-posted because the original post was accidentally deleted. So if you have already listened, no need to listen again!]Aslı Ü. Bâli joins Daniel for part one of a two-part interview on the Syrian Civil War and the murderously instrumentalized geopolitics that fuel it. Syrians continue to suffer and to die while various actors treat the conflict as a proxy for their own geopolitical ends; meanwhile, huge numbers of Syrian refugees languish in neighboring countries, and the much smaller number who have made their way to Europe and the United States have been utilized by a resurgent far-right to blame ordinary Syrians for violence rooted in the colonial operations of those very same countries that now insist on keeping the refugees out.Read: Remember Syria? by Bâli and Aziz Rana bostonreview.net/war-security/asli-bali-aziz-rana-trump-putin-syria and The U.S. Debt to Syria bostonreview.net/war-security/asli-u-bali-aziz-rana-us-debt-syriaLive recording of The Dig coming up in New York City. F

Suzi and Alan Minsky talk to Katie Halper of WBAI's The Katie Halper Show about the role of independent media and politics in the Trumpian landscape we inhabit. Then Suzi speaks to prolific, award-winning playwright Murray Mednick, whose enigmatic  "Mayakovsky and Stalin" runs until August 19 at the Lounge Theatre in Hollywood. The play examines two lives and two suicides, related but distant, responding to the liberating freedom of revolution in the Soviet Union, but then increasingly strangled and suffocated by the top down brutal dictatorship of Stalin, played by actor Maury Sterling (best known as Max on Homeland), who joins the conversation. The play traces the parallel stories of the giant of Russian poetry, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and his relationship to his love and muse, Lilya Brik (darling of Russia’s avant garde) and her husband, the literary critic Osip Brik. Their relationship exemplifies the freedom from conventional mores in the early years of the revolution. The second life and suicide is that of

That right-wing people in the US and Europe have made George Soros the answer to so many troubling questions is not very surprising: he's a billionaire, he's Jewish and, unlike most of his cohort, he is an intellectual who spends much of his money on substantively progressive causes. Daniel Bessner's essay on him in n+1, however, not only sketches out the Right's obsessions but also offers a detailed analysis of Soros as a thinker and philanthropist — coming to the conclusion that Soros's hope for an open and pluralistic society will be forever doomed if we continue to live under the very capitalist system that made him so spectacularly rich. Here's Soros's response in the Guardian.Live recording of The Dig coming up in New York City. Friday, August 17, 7 PM at Verso Books (20 Jay Street in Brooklyn). It's called Blockadia and Beyond: Left climate politics for the 21st century https://www.facebook.com/events/2042636042656908/?active_tab=about!Thanks to Verso Books. Check out eThe Amateur: The Pleasures of Doi

Adam Tooze and Leo Panitch, separately, on globalization, Trump, the American empire, declinism, etc. Tooze is a professor of history at Columbia University and serves as director of the European Institute. His new book Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World is out this week. Panitch is a professor of political science at York University and the author of many books, including The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy Of American Empire. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Sorry to Bother You is a hilarious film about the dead-serious shittiness of life under neoliberalism's flexibilized and precarious labor regime, a system teetering upon a thin line between free labor exploitation and a form of expropriation reminiscent of full-on slave labor — all at the mercy of the thinly veiled barbarity of Palo Alto-style techno-utopianism. It's about how capitalist society divides and conquers friends and family to claim not only our obedience but also our very souls, and about how the task of left organizing is to see through that game and fight together. Dan's guest today is Boots Riley, who wrote and directed the film and also fronts the left-wing hip-hop group The Coup.Live recording of The Dig coming up in New York City. Friday, August 17, 7 PM at Verso Books (20 Jay Street in Brooklyn). It's called Blockadia and Beyond: Left climate politics for the 21st century https://www.facebook.com/events/2042636042656908/?active_tab=about!Thanks to Verso Books. Check out Out of the Wreckage:

If Kerri Evelyn Harris wins in Delaware, she will have knocked out an incumbent US Senator. And that would be a really big deal. Harris, a left candidate backed by Justice Democrats, is Dan's guest today. She is the latest candidate putting forward the bold proposition that in a democracy, ordinary people should govern themselves — particularly since well-credentialed incumbents like her opponent, Senator Tom Carper, so often do the bidding of corporate interests.Live recording of The Dig coming up in New York City. Friday, August 17, 7 PM at Verso Books (20 Jay Street in Brooklyn). It's called Blockadia and Beyond: Left climate politics for the 21st century https://www.facebook.com/events/2042636042656908/?active_tab=about!Thanks to Verso Books. Check out Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life by Adam Greenfield versobooks.com/books/2742-radical-technologies. And support this podcast with your $ at patreon.com/TheDig to receive our weekly newsletter!  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out