Initially we wanted to talk about the DSA after a few short discussions on a video that came across our desk as well as a shitty Atlantic article that came out last year about how it's best to just ignore the news, but we ran too long and will discuss the DSA another time.
Rathbone is a political tiktok influencer who I think has done some really great work dispelling myths surrounding the Israeli occupation and genocide of Palestine which is why it's disappointing to hear this video, unfortunately extremely common among Marxist circles when it comes to critically analysing the class nature of China. His position is western American Leftists should shut up about China while we heavily disagree. What some Marxists call a multipolar world we see it as an emerging inter-imperialist world that will inevitably lead to war. The Communist Party of China is a bourgeois party that deserves to be studied and criticized.
Sources for today's episode:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5EuyaaxAvS/?igsh=MW5meWl5M2k0cXF1cA==
https://workersvoiceus.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/china-a-new-imperial-power.pdf
https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1087-extracting-profit
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/03/information-news-addiction-liberal-depression/673351/
Ending song is Woody Guthrie's Do Re Mi, where he sings about the dustbowl forcing people west to California, like Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath.