Cosmopod

Parker McQueeney introduces two of Paul Costello’s essays on the topic of Stalin and Stalinism: Stalin and Historical Reality and Stalin and the Problem of Theory.

Matt and Rudy join Dongping Han, author of The Unknown Cultural Revolution: Life and Change in a Chinese Village for a discussion on his experiences growing up in Maoist China. We  discuss his hometown in Jimo County, his experiences with the Great Leap  Forward and how they compare to common historiography of the period,  the attitude of Communist Party officials and how the Cultural  Revolution changed the long tradition of politics in rural China by  empowering the common people to fight back against corrupt officials,  the educational reforms during the Cultural Revolution and how it helped  bridge the urban-rural divide. We finish by discussing the end of the  Cultural Revolution and how the Deng reforms set back the countryside.

Historiographical debates around the French Revolution are ultimately political debates, not just debates about the facts. Donald Parkinson argues for revitalizing the tradition of the social historians against the new revisionist orthodoxy. Myk Labas reads aloud. https://cosmonautmag.com/2019/09/historiography-wars-the-french-revolution/ 

Rudy and Giacomo Bianchino join Boe Spearim, host of Frontier Wars and Kieran from the Australian Communist Party and the NSW Aboriginal Land Council association for an introductory discussion on indigenous  Australians. We discuss the history of indigenous Australians before the  arrival of Europeans, what the "Frontier Wars" were and the  "historiography wars" around their story, how the indigenous struggle  changed after the "end" of these wars, including the day of mourning  protests, the Freedom rides, the Springbok boycott and the tent embassy,  and how land back was put into the Australian political agenda. They  tell us about the international relationships of the black Australian  struggle including their the US Black Panthers and  solidarity with other indigenous groups around the world.  We also discuss the  relationship between indigenous struggles and Marxism, the history of solidarity among oppressed groups in Australia, before finishing with the prospects for anti-colonial solidarity and the issues aboriginal people usually face when trying to build this solidarity.

The history of the British communist novel is ultimately the story of the political degeneration of the Communist Party of Great Britain. By Lawrence Parker. Narration by LC.

Connor, Christian and Donald sit down to discuss the collapse of the Soviet Union. They begin by situating the economic and political problems of the system, such as the siege economy and the centralization/decentralization dichotomies which led to the general malaise of the late Brezhnev period. They continue by discussing the rise of Andropov and Gorbachev, and what reforms they tried to implement: bans on alcohol and the opening of political discussion, and how those reforms ended up backfiring.   They follow up by discuss the Five Year Plan of 86-90, the two stages of economic reforms and their adverse effects, the coalition that appears which pushes for the dismantling of the Soviet Union, the rise of Boris Yeltsin and his association to Russian nationalism and the failed coup and how it signaled the transition of sovereignty and the end of the USSR. They also discuss what happened after the collapse, including shock therapy, the 1993 bombing of the parliament and the legacy of the USSR's collapse in Russia's present political system and economical situation, before finishing with an evaluation of all attempts to reform the Soviet Union. References: The Russian Revolution 1917-1932 - Sheila Fitzpatrick Revolution from Above: The Demise of the Soviet System - David M. Kotz Inside Gorbachev's Kremlin: The Memoirs of Yegor Ligachev - Yegor Ligachev Soviet Baby Boomers: An Oral History of Russia's Cold War Generation - Donald J. Raleigh Everything was Forever, Until it was No More: The Last Soviet Generation - Alexei Yurchak

Sam Miller polemicizes against the delusions of the left in the Biden administration and proclaims the necessity for a class independent approach to politics. Myk Labas reads aloud. https://cosmonautmag.com/2021/10/bismarck-browder-biden-joes-hegemony-versus-ours/ 

How have Jews in the US have gone from an unwelcome immigrant group prone to left-wing radicalism to Zionists and beneficiaries of whiteness? Lane Silberstein investigates. Harley Oliviera reads the article aloud.

Dillon, Jake, Rudy and Amelia discuss the work of management consultant Mary Follett and how to use her ideas to enable democratic  problem-solving and functioning of mass organizations. We discuss several common problems faced when organizing such as how to adequately replace leaders, how the person who does the work leads and how to effectively give orders. We follow by talking about how we can use Follett's ideas on integrating experience and the law of the situation to make leadership increasingly invisible. We also discuss her ideas on the role of experts and managers, power with vs power over and how to better relate to new members of an organization. We end by contextualizing Follett's  ideas with other better known methods such as the Maoist mass line, and how they can be applied to the current debates around Jamaal Bowman. References: Mary Follett - Creative ExperienceH. C. Metcalf, L. Urwick (ed.) - Dynamic Administration: The Collected Papers of Mary Follett

Donald and Jackson are joined by historian Aaron J. Leonard, author of The Folk Singers and the Bureau: The FBI, The Folk Artists and the Suppression of the Communist Party USA 1939-1956, to discuss the folk-revival music scene that emerged within and around the American Communist Party in the mid-1930s and which continued through the early 1950s. We dive into the scene’s relationship with the Party’s changing strategy and platform, how Earl Browder related to this revival, the scene’s institutional development in the late-1940s, as well as the suppression and surveillance of its leading members in the immediate post-WWII period and beyond.