Cosmopod

A recent Jacobin piece by Chris Maisano argues that building “a Left that matters” requires focusing on Democratic Party electoral work, but we must be clear about the consequence of such an orientation: a middle-class Left that remains disconnected from the proletariat and abandons the fundamentals of Marxism. By Jacque Erie. Read By: Keir Intro Music: ворожное озеро Гроза vwqp remix Outro Music: We are Friends Forever performed by Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment.

The Cibcom Collective argues that Communist society will require an overcoming of political representation in favor of forms of direct democracy like sortition and referendum. Read By: Will Intro Music: ворожное озеро Гроза vwqp remix Outro Music: We are Friends Forever performed by Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment.

Rudy joins Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro and George Martin, authors of Urban Food Production for Ecosocialism: Cultivating the City for a discussion on urban agriculture. We talk about the history of food and the city, the ways the Global North/South divide is reflected in food, before focusing on the authors' fieldwork on what the political uses as well as limitations of urban food gardens are. We discuss examples in Ghana, Italy, the US, China and Cuba, and what is done right and wrong in each of these cases.

Transcription and commentary by SA Reed. Read by Cliff Intro Music: ворожное озеро Гроза vwqp remix Outro Music: We are Friends Forever performed by Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment.

Amelia, RK, Harry and Rudy sit down for a discussion on systems approaches to ecology using as a basis H. T. Odum's Environment, Power, and Society for the Twenty-First Century: The Hierarchy of Energy . We talk about Odum's innovations in the field of ecology, his ideas about the hierarchies of energy and matter, how to use Odum's framework to extend Marxist analysis of society towards constructing an eco-socialist program, and use that to critically evaluate several current political proposals including degrowth, unequal ecological exchange and eco-modernism.  Other references: “Limits to growth” in communism?  Bonaiuti, M. From bioeconomics to degrowth. London: Routledge, 2011. http://www.georgescuroegen.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/From_Bioeconomics_to_Degrowth_def.pdf Cockshott, Paul. "Calculation in-Natura, from Neurath to Kantorovich." University of Glasgow(2008). https://www.academia.edu/download/68627453/standalonearticle.pdf Foster, J. B., and Holleman, H. "The theory of unequal ecological exchange: a Marx-Odum dialectic." Journal of Peasant Studies41.2 (2014): 199-233. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03066150.2014.889687 Kikstra, J. S., Mastrucci, A., Min, J., Riahi, K., & Rao, N. D.  (2021). Decent living gaps and energy needs around the world.  Environmental Research Letters, 16(9) https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac1c27 O’Neill, John. "Socialist calculation and environmental valuation: money, markets and ecology." Science & Society66.1 (2002): 137-151. https://guilfordjournals.com/doi/pdf/10.1521/siso.66.1.137.21006 Pirgmaier, E. (2018) Value, Capital and Nature. Rethinking the foundations of ecological economics. PhD thesis, University of Leeds.   https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/22895/

links to read and sign resolutions here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfXgSds8qpoyqfwY-wXfs00htSRExsofCdvgLDRN-_Zn82IsQ/viewform https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc_9gWNbmroeapzEBICuZotHoLElzUalW_jD84jxqqkVF8L-w/viewform

Gil Schaeffer responds to Ben Grove’s “Twelve-Step Program for Democrat Addiction” and its arguments about the need for a mass party, critiquing Mike Macnair, Ben Lewis and Lars Lih’s concept of Erfurtian Marxism. Read By: Will Intro Music: ворожное озеро Гроза vwqp remix Outro Music: We are Friends Forever performed by Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment.

Shuvu Bhattarai, Member of the Marxist Unity Group, outlines the recent history of DSA and advocates for a mass socialist party in the US. The podcast covers the division within DSA, the analysis of socialist organizations and leadership structures, the struggles and transformations of DSA, debates at the DSA convention, tensions and debates within DSA, and the potential for revolutionary transformation.

Anton joins Robert Knox for a discussion of Marxist approaches to law, with a focus on international law. We discuss critical legal studies, international law and how it compares to other branches of law, its origins and how it has evolved through the years focusing on the cases of Haiti, the USSR and decolonization movement, and law and neocolonialism. We also discuss how Marxists can approach law in general through principled opportunism.

Harry Zehner analyzes the discourse and politics of the YIMBY-NIMBY divide and argues that socialists should reject this binary entirely. Read By: Aliyah Intro Music: ворожное озеро Гроза vwqp remix Outro Music: We are Friends Forever performed by Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment.