Cosmopod

This is a narration of the third chapter of Lars Lih's excellent book Lenin Rediscovered: What Is to Be Done? In Context. In this chapter, Lih explores three crucial texts from the Iskra period of Lenin's career, December 1900 to August 1903. The first, Russia and Its Crisis, was written by liberal revolutionary Paul Miliukov and explains the context of the revolutionary situation leading up to 1905 in which Iskra was published. The second, the Bolsheviks' Amsterdam Report from 1904, looked back at the Iskra period and gave the Bolshevik's side of the story. The third, which Lih calls the Political Agitation series, is a number of Iskra articles written by Lenin which further elucidate his Erfurtian outlook. The three texts combine to present overwhelming evidence that the textbook interpretation of Lenin is seriously flawed.   The full audiobook is currently in production by the team at Cosmonaut Magazine. You can find more episodes (and other audio books) on our Youtube channel, and you can purchase a physical copy of the book itself at Haymarket books.   Narration and editing by Cliff Connolly.

Annie and Rudy join Greg Afinogenov from Stomp Out Slumlords for a discussion on tenants unions, and how SoS has thought about the work of Cloward and Piven to develop ideas on how to build sustainable mass organisations. We discuss how to build mass constituencies for actions and what the goal of tenants unionism should be. Further reading: R. A. Cloward, F. F. Piven - Disruptive Dissensus: People and Power in the Industrial Age Stomp Out Slumlords's organizing report of February 2021

This is a narration of the second chapter of Lars Lih's excellent book Lenin Rediscovered: What Is to Be Done? In Context. In this chapter, Lih examines all the programmatic writings from Lenin in the 1890s and demonstrates the revolutionary leader's consistency throughout this time. This sets the stage for Lenin's later polemics at the start of the 20th century, including What Is to Be Done? The full audiobook is currently in production by the team at Cosmonaut Magazine. You can find more episodes (and other audio books) on our Youtube channel, and you can purchase a physical copy of the book itself at Haymarket books.   Narration and editing by Cliff Connolly.

Christian and Connor sit down with Helen Yaffe to discuss her book We Are Cuba. We talked about the history and political economy of revolutionary Cuba before and after the post-Soviet period. Some of topics we touched on were the nature of democracy on the island, the relationship of Cuba to the United States, and how Cuba has dealt with the pandemic and coming crisis of climate change. Other resources mentioned: Emily Morris - Unexpected Cuba  The documentary Cuba & COVID 19 Public Health, Science and Solidarity and Helen's article on Cuban vaccines. Piero Gleijeses' work on Cuba, in particular Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976–1991 and Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington and Africa, 1959–1976.

Amelia Davenport joins Samuel Bowles for a short discussion on his life-long research on global poverty and education. They discuss Bowles's history and how this led to his orientation, his work on education "Schooling in Capitalist America", including what he has changed his mind on, his thoughts about markets, incentives, central planning and capitalist economies, as well as other theories such as the value-form abolition, neo-liberal economics. He also talks about teaching economics to undergraduates and what thinkers socialists should engage with even  if they're outside the Marxist tradition. Make sure to check out the CORE project and their completely free undergraduate level coursebook on economics.

This is a narration of the first chapter of Lars Lih's excellent book Lenin Rediscovered: What Is to Be Done? In Context. In this chapter, Lih explains how the legacy of figures like Marx, Engels, Lassalle, Kautsky, and others influenced Lenin. There's also a wonderful exploration of how the pre-war SPD served as the original model for the "vanguard party" (though in a very different way from how the term is used today).   The full audiobook is currently in production by the team at Cosmonaut Magazine. You can find more episodes (and other audio books) on our Youtube channel, and you can purchase a physical copy of the book itself at Haymarket books.   Narration and editing by Cliff Connolly.

Rudy joins Zama and Jonathan from Amazonians United to discuss their shop floor alternative which has organized walkouts in Chicago, and started a national fight for PTO.  They discuss the way they bond with co-workers on the shop floor, what their next steps are, and how different their organizing looks like to that of RWDSU which organized the Bessemer (Alabama) unionization effort. We also discuss medium- and long-term goals, as well as how they relate to the existing socialist movement.

Destructive cults are usually considered the domain of religious movements. The Left, however, has its own track record of cults. Gus Breslauer sympathetically examines this history in search of the political questions that produce such groups, how they operate, and how to overcome them. Robert Fish reads the article out loud.

Roger and Rudy join Frank Bardacke, author of Trampling out the Vintage: Cesar Chavez and the Two Souls of the United Farm Workers for a discussion on the UFW, its history, its tactics, its structure and its slow loss of relevance. We focus on the boycott as a tactic: how the UFW pioneered the use of boycotts, how winning the 1965-70 Delano grape campaign through a boycott shifted the power in the union from workers to staffers, and how both tactics, and what they represented in the union, would come into conflict in the 1979 Salinas Lettuce struggle. We also talk about Cesar Chavez the man, the UFW's changing relationship to undocumented migrants, present-day farm organizing and what lessons we can draw from the UFW for today, in particular on the use of boycotts and on union democracy.

This is a narration of the 37-page introduction to Lars Lih's excellent book Lenin Rediscovered: What Is to Be Done? In Context. Going against conventional wisdom, Lih presents a detailed study that paints Lenin as an optimist inspired by the capacity of the working class and determined to guide them to carry out their historic mission. Furthermore, Lih identifies the German Social Democratic Party as Lenin's ideal model of a revolutionary party, which he tried to implement to the greatest extent possible in Russia.   The full audiobook is currently in production by the team at Cosmonaut Magazine. You can find more episodes (and other audio books) on our Youtube channel, and you can purchase a physical copy of the book itself at Haymarket books.   Narration and editing by Cliff Connolly.