Auxiliary Statements

DISCORD: https://discord.gg/JGGu5MGN LINKTREE: linktr.ee/AuxiliaryStatementsPodcast Well well well, look who it is, back again. You! The dear listener. God bless you. This week the lads attempt to untangle the mess of ideas that always seem to assert themselves under the banner of being 'anti work.' What does that mean? Is it viable as a movement? Whether it's Tang ping or r/antiwork, we're here to figure it alllllll out. Reading: The Tangpingist Manifesto - https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-tangpingist-manifesto

This week Dan & Jack return from their COVID hiatus to finish up Perry Anderson's C L A S S I C text and talk feudalism. Specifically, what was it, where did it come from, how did it differ from place to place and what caused its seemingly inevitable crisis and collapse. Reading - Part 2 - ''Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism'' (1974) by Perry Anderson

DISCORD: discord.gg/bJtAEbFS LINKTREE: https://linktr.ee/AuxiliaryStatementsPodcast Following up on their interview with June Reith a few weeks back, Jack and Dan decided for this show to take her advice and read Designing Freedom by business consultant and cybernetician Stafford Beer. First delivered as a series of radio lectures in 1973, designing freedom is a scathing critique of the principles of organisation that underlay contemporary social institutions and an impassioned appeal for change. Beer outlines how we might design a social system that, instead of ossification, decay and crisis, has freedom as its output. The lads also endeavor to work out how these principles might contribute to how we understand the task of setting up a socialist society and also what effective socialist organisations would look like if they we influenced by Beerian cybernetics. Text: https://monoskop.org/images/e/e3/Beer_Stafford_Designing_Freedom.pdf Audio: https://archive.org/details/DesigningFreedom_CBC_Lectures

This week's art is by Tom: https://www.instagram.com/thomasagreenwood/ Very special episode this week as we sat down with June Reith of General Intellect Unit to discuss systems theory, burning our Kautsky and left organization tactics! Reading: 'The Tree of Knowledge' by Maturana and Varela DISCORD: discord.gg/Ym8Bwmaz LINKTREE: linktr.ee/AuxiliaryStatementsPodcast

DISCORD: https://discord.gg/Ym8Bwmaz LINKTREE: https://linktr.ee/AuxiliaryStatementsPodcast This week Jack and Dan cover the first half of Anderson’s classic book on the transition to feudalism. They cover the rise of the slave mode of production in Antiquity from its initial emergence as a solution to class struggle in Greece to its peak during thee Roman Empire. Whilst this mode of production allowed the ancient states to reach stunning cultural heights it was also wracked with internal contradictions that would be its undoing. The eventual crisis was one of an under supply of slaves and whilst the eventual demise of Western Roman Empire was a protracted affair, when the invaders came, their fate was sealed by weaknesses stemming from the mode of production. According to Anderson a new synthesis developed over the next several centuries, a synthesis of two political economies in crisis and decay. It was the melding of Roman and Germanic ways of life that gave rise to the feudal mode of production. Reading - Part 1 - ''Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism'' (1974) by Perry Anderson

Alright, we're finally drawing some conclusions about the whole 'MILITANCY' thing. Universal conscription sounds scary...but what if it wasn't? Reading: Repression Breeds Resistance: The Black Liberation Army and the Radical Legacy of the Black Panther Party by Akinyele Umoja from "Setting Sights" (Scott Crow) Rittenhouse and white backlash by Daniel Lazare https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1373/rittenhouse-and-white-backlash/ Our gun rights too by Paul Demarty https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1374/our-gun-rights-too/

DISCORD: https://discord.gg/bJtAEbFS Is there even still a working class to hang our hopes and dreams on? What is revolutionary agency? Who has it? Is tea even good? All these questions answered today AND MORE as we dive back into longtime friend of the show Mike Davis. Plus, a special listener comment! Reading: Old Gods. New Enigmas (2018) by Mike Davis

Today the fellas have a gander at some Irish history and open up a wider discussion on revolutionary agency, marxism & nationalism and the nature of the Irish working class. Reading: Rethinking national marxism: James Connolly and ‘Celtic Communism’ (2003) by David Lloyd

Its the final instalment of the Revolutionary Strategy reading series! Jack and Dan finish the book and use Mike Macnair’s 14 point outline of his strategic outlook as a frame for their discussion. Drawing on the contents of the book as a whole, and particularly the final three chapters, the lads outline the contents of the Kautskyism Plus strategy presented by Macnair. Macnair is broadly in alignment with Kautsky when it comes to his advocacy of a strategy of patience. Building a workers party and a broader workers movement is a process that cannot be rushed and that requires gradual and progressive work by committed activists. Where Macnair diverges from the ‘pope’ of Marxism is over two questions: those of the state and internationalism. For Macnair, second international Marxism was a project far to committed to work within the bourgeois state rather than opposing it. Likewise it was far to centred on the national rather than the international fight for working class power. Marxism should be substantially internationalist. It was these two failings that lead to the catastrophe of 1914. The aim of Marxist strategy is to set the conditions necessary for the working class to challenge for state power. The workers party must be a party of opposition. Not a loyal opposition but a disloyal one. A party prepared not to take over the running of the state but to smash it and build anew in its own image.

Alright FINE we'll stop talking about Brenner and Meiksins-Wood for a minute, but ONLY A MINUTE. Today our fine chunky chaps talk world systems theory in an effort to broaden their horizons and understand how class operates on a systemic level. Or something like that. Reading: The Rise and Future Demise of the World Capitalist System: Concepts for Comparative Analysis (1974) by Immanuel Wallerstein and THE CRITIQUE OF WORLD-SYSTEM THEORY: CLASS RELATIONS OR DIVISION OF LABOR (1984) by Albert Bergesen