Auxiliary Statements

Jack and Dan are at it again folks, labouring under the misapprehension that greater wisdom is attainable to their mediocre minds. The lads again embark on their quest to fathom the wisdom of the oracle, reading once more from Karl Marx’s master work; Capital. Will they again find the weight of the truths contained therein overwhelming or rise to meet its challenge. Here’s hoping we can chalk one up for our heroes this week otherwise its just gonna get embarrassing. Its all about exchange value this time. How will Marx transition us from the act of simple commodity exchange to the totemic system of global trade governed over by the all powerful money form! One would imagine it shan’t be too laborious a process. Reading: Capital Vol.1, Part 1. Commodities and Money, Chapter 1. Commodities, Section 3. The Form of Value or Exchange Value

Yeah if this Karl Marx guy was so great why didn't he ever write about chicken tractors?? Huh, nerd!? That's what I thought. This week the lads are dipping their malformed little toes into the pond of prepping for capitalist collapse. What would a collapse look like? What should I do to prepare? Do I buy more guns or less guns? Who am I and why am I here? All these questions and MORE will be answered in this week's episode when we talk to Andy and Elliot from the phenomenal Poor Prole's Almanac Podcast. Go give them a listen!!!! Nerd!!!! LISTEN TO POOR PROLE'S HERE: https://linktr.ee/PoorProles WATCH THE FULL LIVESTREAM INTERVIEW HERE: https://bit.ly/3fiTrqz

What do, Egyptian mummified cats, the battlefields of the Napoleonic wars, and millions of tons of South American bird poo have in common? The answer to this and some hopefully more useful and pertinent questions will be revealed on this weeks show as Jack and Dan continue their foray into the world of ecological theory. The lads read some John Bellamy Foster and learn all about how Karl Marx was, contrary to popular perception, a deeply ecologically minded thinker who was all too aware of the environmental destruction wrought by our old foe capitalism. Reading: Marx's Theory of Metabolic Rift, Classical Foundations for Environmental Sociology by John Bellamy Foster (1999) and The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx Chapter 33. Metabolic Rifts and the Ecological Crisis by Brett Clark, John Bellamy Foster, and Stefano B. Longo (2019).

This week Jack and Dan read some blooming Bookchin. An anarchist! And a shockingly prophetic one at that. The boys ask, is mankind a part of nature or does it stand apart from it? What constitutes an ecological system and in what ways are social systems analogous to ecological ones? What is going on in the syphilis addled brains of the British aristocracy? Also the lads are now firmly committed to the no dig revolution which one suspects is largely because it accords with their generally lazy disposition. Reading: The Ecology of Freedom, Chapter 1. Social Ecology by Murray Bookchin (1982)

That's right folks, your brave podcasters have officially made it to T W E N T Y episodes of this here show. And you know what that means: we're phoning it in for another clip show. What have the boys learned over the last ten episodes? Does any of it matter? Is Marxism a legitimate tool for understanding the current state of things? Was Tom Morello in an episode of Star Trek? We answer none of these questions except the last one in this absolute knock-down-drag-out BARNBURNER of an ep. Thanks to everyone who's been listening! Go SPIDERS!! Reading: the menu at our local ihop

I don't know dude...what if time had like.......a fourth dimension? Reading: Voice of the Fire (1995), by Alan Moore.

Drum roll please! Welcome back to the show, podcast favourite, returning champion, and all round class act, Ellen Meiksins Wood! The lads discuss Meiksins Wood’s defence of EP Thompson’s theories of class against his structuralist and analytic Marxist critics. Discussion ranges from the origins of capitalism, to processes of class formation, and the place of class in politics today. Also covered; the comedy skits of Jerry Cohen. Reading: Class as Process and Relationship from Democracy against Capitalism by Ellen Meiksins Wood (1995)

Turns out there's more to this book than the first six pages. Who woulda thought? This week the lads take a stab at deciphering the two-fold nature of the labor inside all commodities....but not before some corrections from last week. Corrections, I hear you say? How is that possible? Well get used to it because our brave hosts tend to say more crazy stuff than the Mariners' front office. Ba-boom! Reading: Capital Vol.1, Part 1. Commodities and Money, Chapter 1. Commodities, Section 2. The Two-fold Character of the Labour Embodied in Commodities

Hark! In the distance. What's that noise? Them's the dulcet tones of the boys talkin' some more Milly Band. So buckle in, hunker down, tune in, drop out and buckle up for one H-E-double-hockey-sticks of an episode, because this week we're talking about the necessity of a working class party capable of overthrowing this garbage can of a world we currently inhabit. In a twist, during this episode Dan winds up becoming a Stalinist and Jack a Maoist (owing to his propensity of relentless self-criticism). Who said we can't all get along? Shout-out to our friends in the Cleveland DSA! Go Spiders!! Reading: Marxism and Politics by Ralph Miliband (1977), Chapter V, Class and Party.

Its revolution folks! Or is it? This week Jack and Dan take their first look at the German revolution of 1918/19; that most sorrowful of events in the history of the international workers movement where the world failed to turn and the revolutionary wave that began in Russia in 1917 was so abruptly halted. The boys discuss the revolutionaries’ failures, the duplicity of the Social Democrats, the workers councils, and the revolution’s place in the history of German. Reading: Problems of the German Revolution 1918-19 by Reinhard Rürup (1968)