Auxiliary Statements

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)

What’s this, a new series from the Auxiliary Statements boys! Jack and Dan attempt to conquer the commanding heights of political economy and dip their toe where the big fish swim. That’s right, Big Daddy Marx’s Capital is the topic of this hopefully irregularly regular new offering to your podcast feed. Will these new acolytes to Marxology flounder or will they fly? Only time will tell. Reading: Capital Vol.1, Part 1. Commodities and Money, Chapter 1. Commodities, Section 1. The Two Factors of a Commodity: Use-Value and Value.

What's that? The lads are a little late getting around to talking about this book? Everyone already talked about it on their podcasts two years ago? Well better late than never I always say. This week our beautiful brave boys Dan and Jack create a summoning circle of sorts in an attempt to revive the calculation debate. Spoiler alert: markets are bad, folks. Also on the docket, Dan defends the Borg. Again. Reading: The People's Republic of Walmart (2019) by Leigh Phillips & Michal Rozworski

The boys make a return to Allende’s Chile this week with the conclusion of their sketch of its all too brief flirtation with cybernetic planning. Jack and Dan look at what exactly it was that cybernetician Stafford Beer proposed as a model for real-time decentralised economic management in Chile. They explore the highs, the lows, and some lessons that can be drawn from Project Cybersyn. Reading, Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Alliende’s Chile (2014), by Eden Medina.

Well look who stopped by! Today Dan and Jack are joined by Marxist Podfather Tom O'Brien from the From Alpha to Omega Podcast. Tom talks some sense into the boys and gives us all sorts of scalding hot takes about Trump, Biden and the crumbling empire that is the United States of America. They lads then talk a little Revolutionary Strategy, cybernetics and Aaron Bastani's wet, wet mouth. You can find the FULL, UNEDITED LIVESTREAM of this interview over on the Auxiliary Statements YouTube channel. Wow! Check out Tom's patreon here - https://www.patreon.com/FromAlpha2Omega And check out the Emancipation Network here - http://emancipation.network/

This week Jack and Dan try to get to grips with the hip new theory on the block; Cybernetics! Our story starts in 1970s Chile. The boys learn all about how an eccentric British cybernetician named Stafford Beer came to be in the employ of the Socialist administration of president Salvador Allende. What does this management consultant have to teach a bunch of democratic socialists and how might business management theory come to inform our glorious communist future? VSM Guide - https://www.esrad.org.uk/resources/vsmg_3/screen.php?page=1qguide Reading, Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile (2014), By Eden Medina.

Recorded before the events in DC so you won't have to sit through any current event hot takes! That's the Auxiliary Statements promise, baby. What's it been, six episodes since we talked about our boy Ralph?? This week Dan and Jack climb back aboard the Mili-train to talk a little bit more about the state. Is there a difference between bourgeois republicanism and fascism? Yeah for sure. Are they both bad? Oh yeah most definitely. Reading: Marxism and Politics by Ralph Miliband (1977), Chapter IV, The Defence of the Old Order II: Section 2,3,4&5.