The Socialist Program with Brian Becker

On today's "In the News" roundtable, Brian Becker, Esther Iverem, Nicole Roussell and Walter Smolarek discuss the election of a socialist in the Democratic primary for mayor of Buffalo, New York, a series of dramatic reversals by the Biden administration over infrastructure, injustices in the prison system, the sentencing of convicted murderer Derek Chauvin, U.S. airstrikes attacking Iraq and Syria, and more. Please make an urgently-needed contribution to The Socialist Program by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/thesocialistprogram. We rely on the generous support of our listeners to keep bringing you consistent, high-quality shows. All Patreon donors of $5 a month or more are invited to join the monthly Q&A seminar with Brian.

Over the past month, the U.S. media and the Biden administration have sought to give credence to the conspiracy theory first advanced by Trump that the COVID-19 virus emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. Last month, Biden breathed new life into this notion when he ordered intelligence agencies to redouble their efforts to determine whether the virus came from a lab and to report back to him in August. Brian is joined by KJ Noh. He’s a peace activist and scholar on the geopolitics of Asia, and he’s a frequent contributor to Counterpunch and Dissident Voice. Please make an urgently-needed contribution to The Socialist Program by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/thesocialistprogram. We rely on the generous support of our listeners to keep bringing you consistent, high-quality shows. All Patreon donors of $5 a month or more are invited to join the monthly Q&A seminar with Brian.

Today we continue a series of discussions about the basics of Marxism — a method for understanding and changing the world used by many of the great revolutionaries of modern history. We discuss the Marxist understanding of the role played by stock markets in capitalism. How has the function of stock markets evolved over the years, and how do they contribute to today’s exploding wealth inequality? Richard Wolff is the co-founder of the organization Democracy at Work and the author of many books, the latest being “The Sickness is the System: When Capitalism Fails to Save Us from Pandemics or Itself”. You can check out his work at rdwolff.com. Please make an urgently-needed contribution to The Socialist Program by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/thesocialistprogram. We rely on the generous support of our listeners to keep bringing you consistent, high-quality shows. All Patreon donors of $5 a month or more are invited to join the monthly Q&A seminar with Brian.

On today's "In the News" roundtable, Brian Becker, Esther Iverem, Nicole Roussell and Walter Smolarek discuss growing inequality, the Juneteenth holiday, the New York City mayoral race, Joe Manchin's war on the working class, far right calls for a coup in Peru, the Biden-Putin summit, and more. Please make an urgently-needed contribution to The Socialist Program by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/thesocialistprogram. We rely on the generous support of our listeners to keep bringing you consistent, high-quality shows. All Patreon donors of $5 a month or more are invited to join the monthly Q&A seminar with Brian.

This week marks the 50th anniversary of the publication by The New York Times of excerpts of the Pentagon Papers — 7,000 pages of top-secret documents. These documents proved that the government of the United States had been lying to the people of this country for decades about a war that eventually ended with a U.S. withdrawal -- but only after millions of Vietnamese had been killed, 58,000 U.S. troops were killed with hundreds of thousands more suffered from physical and psychological injuries. Brian is joined by Daniel Ellsberg. He is one of the most important whistleblowers in modern American history and the author of The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. Daniel Ellsberg is also the author of Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. Please make an urgently-needed contribution to The Socialist Program by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/thesocialistprogram. We rely on the generous support of our listeners to keep bringing you consistent, high-quality shows. All Patreon donors of $5 a month or more are invited to join the monthly Q&A seminar with Brian.

Brian and Prof. Wolff continue a series of discussions  about the basics of Marxism — a method for understanding and changing  the world used by many of the great revolutionaries of modern history.  Today, they discuss the Marxist theory of the state. Mainstream  politicians talk about small government and big government, but never  tell the truth about who the government serves. Richard Wolff is  the co-founder of the organization Democracy at Work and the author of  many books, the latest being “The Sickness is the System: When  Capitalism Fails to Save Us from Pandemics or Itself”. You can check out  his work at rdwolff.com. Please make an urgently-needed contribution to The Socialist Program by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/thesocialistprogram.  We rely on the generous support of our listeners to keep bringing you  consistent, high-quality shows. All Patreon donors of $5 a month or more  are invited to join the monthly Q&A seminar with Brian.

On today's "In the News" roundtable, Brian Becker, Esther Iverem, Nicole Roussell and Walter Smolarek discuss the G7 summit and its leaders' hypocritical rhetoric about human rights and democracy, the fight against police brutality and the suppression of the movement against racism, the latest attacks on Ilhan Omar, and more.

In this May 2021 patrons-only seminar, Brian and the crew discuss the new era in the struggle for the liberation of Palestine and what it means for the region, U.S. imperialist plots to dismember China, the alarming danger of nuclear war, and more. Check out the preview now and subscribe at patreon.com/thesocialistprogram to hear the rest!

Kenneth Hammond, a Professor of East Asian and Global History, discusses the impact of the Cultural Revolution, the history of the Chinese economy, China's shifting perspective on American imperialism, internal divisions within Chinese leadership, and the US-China relationship in the 1970s.

Brian and Prof. Wolff continue a series of discussions about the basics of Marxism — a method for understanding and changing  the world used by many of the great revolutionaries of modern history. Today, they discuss Karl Marx's theory of classes. Politicians of all stripes love to talk endlessly about their devotion to the middle class, but what does that even mean? What are the unique insights from Karl Marx about the real class structure of society? Richard Wolff is the co-founder of the organization Democracy at Work and the author of many books, the latest being “The Sickness is the System: When Capitalism Fails to Save Us from Pandemics or Itself”. You can check out his work at rdwolff.com Please make an urgently-needed contribution to The Socialist Program by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/thesocialistprogram. We rely on the generous support of our listeners to keep bringing you consistent, high-quality shows. All Patreon donors of $5 a month or more are invited to join the monthly Q&A seminar with Brian.