Cosmopod

Rudy and Medway are joined by recently graduated Dr. Virginia Conn to discuss about her research on science fiction in the USSR, the German Democratic Republic and China. We discuss what the purpose of science  fiction under socialism is, the continuities and ruptures of science fiction in the People's Republic of China during it's diverse political  periods, how the new Soviet citizen contrasted with the Chinese new  citizen, the figure of Bogdanov within Russian Cosmism, how the particularities of the GDR reflected in its Science Fiction, and how many male-written stories in socialist science fiction both succeed and fail in capturing the intricacies of gender and social reproduction. ------ Read Virginia's article "Economic Circulations: Blood-Based Systems of Value in Alexander Bogdanov’s Red Star" here: https://cosmonaut.blog/2020/02/01/economic-circulations-blood-based-systems-of-value-in-alexander-bogdanovs-red-star/

Three of our writers are joined by veteran union organizer Chris Townsend to discuss labor organizing across history and in the present day. Chris, Remi, Peter and Annie will explore how to do what Lenin emphasized had to be done: how do we inject the political 'good news' of socialism into the workers' economistic struggle? They recapitulate how the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party situated itself in the labor organizing of the early 1900s, how the 'third period' of the Comintern laid the basis of the formation of the CIO in the US, and attempt to extrapolate what can we learn from those tactics to apply in the present day.

Christian, Donald and Rudy sit down to discuss Che Guevara's program for a socialist transition using Helen Yaffe's book Che Guevara: The Economics of Revolution as a background.  We visit the economic "Great Debate" of Cuba in the early 1960s, the different approaches to using the law of value for socialist transformation, Che's critique of market socialism, his model of Cuba as a single socialist factory, and how this model compares to contemporary approaches such as the People's Republic of Walmart. We emphasize how Che's humanistic outlook in molding new humans prefigured some of the problems that other socialist societies such as Yugoslavia or the Brezhnev USSR would face, and how his contributions add to the debate around cybernetical socialism today.

Join us for the second installment in Cosmonaut's critically acclaimed ecology series to discuss Jason Moore's "Capitalism in the Web of Life". Niko, Matthew and Remi discuss how this work merges concepts from Marxist ecology and world-systems analysis to reveal how capitalism organizes nature as a whole oikeios, and how this sets limits to capitalist accumulation once "the Four Cheaps" (energy, food, work and raw materials) become scarce and capitalism is forced to shift to new regimes of accumulation. The team talks about how Moore's concepts of oikeios and capitalism-in-nature extends the dialectical relationship of organism and environment, and how this can be applied for a socialist project, as well as addressing the critiques of Moore's work from other ecosocialist schools.

Donald and Rudy are joined by Djamil Lakhdar to discuss Ian Hacking's book The Social Construction of What?. Written during the "science wars", Hacking intervenes in the debate between strict constructivism and strict realism. Hacking reframes the types of questions to be asked when interrogating the social origin of something, and clarifies the different approaches we can take when we interrogate the construction of a concept. We start off with natural and social sciences, and continue to the application of these questions to today's world. Is physics socially constructed? What does it mean to say gender, race or even capitalism are socially constructed? Where can we go from that assertion? What does it mean to say Marxism has Eurocentric origins and how does that matter today? Does Marxism have a single method, and how do different tendencies relate to that method? We try to answer these and more questions on this episode of Cosmopod.

Capitalist food production is based on ecological destruction, imperialism, inhumane labor practices, and the degradation of human health. A socialist program that guarantees healthy food for all is the only alternative. By Katie Paige, Kelly Alana, and Renato Flores. Cliff Connolly reads the article aloud.

Donald and Lydia interview Yassamine Mather, former Fedayeen (minority) guerrilla fighter, chair of the Hands off the People of Iran coalition and editor of Critique. The episode starts off with the history of the debates leading to the formation of the minority Fedayeen faction, and why they decide to break from the majority Fedayeen faction, take up arms and start a guerilla/focoist campaign against the Iranian Republic after the 1979 revolution. Yassamine also offers her account of why the left failed to take advantage of the 1979 situation, the problems with focoism and guerilla tactics, as well as her thoughts on the 2019 protests in Iran, and how the international left and Iranian exiles should relate to the Islamic Republic. -------- Yassamine's writing can be found on the Weekly Worker website. We especially recommend her talk "Learn the lessons of the Fedayeen", as well as her general archive.

An investigation into how the Communist Party USA created camaraderie through both forced circumstances and conscious efforts, exploring its role in fostering solidarity and the challenges it presented. The podcast delves into the historical contexts of camaraderie, the formation and factional struggles of the CPUSA, camaraderie in the labor movement, and the influence and challenges of the Common Turn.

The Cosmonaut crew sits down to discuss Althusser's Lectures on Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scientists. We historically situate the text and talk about Althusser's conception of science and of philosophy, how they both relate to each other and what happens when one exploits the other and "common sense", in the form of the dominant ideology, creeps in. This is followed by a discussion on actual examples of how philosophy and science interrelate, and what it means to defend a materialist line in philosophy. We discuss philosophical practice in politics and end by providing an extension of Althusser's concept to include Spontaneous Philosophy of the Activist, or how "common sense" creeps in to activism, and we end up reproducing liberal concepts in our organizing.

 Cliff Connolly reads two articles aloud. In the first article, What Do the Democratic Socialists of America Stand for Politically?, DT Seel proposes what the DSA’s program would be if based on the politics of its endorsed candidates. This ‘inductive program’ is then examined and put under critique. In the second article, Structuring the Party: The Case of the DSA, Diego AM explores the organization conundrums of the modern left, looking at the Democratic Socialists of America and the alternatives proposed by base-builders and Maoists.