Cosmopod

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.

Cliff Connolly reads two articles aloud. In the first article, Why Define Fascism?: In Defence of Making Distinctions, Jacob Smith argues that if the left wishes to take fascism seriously we shouldn't use the term lightly but with precision. In the second article, The End of the End of History: COVID-19 and 21st Century Fascism, Debs Bruno and Medway Baker lay out the conditions of the current crisis, the political potentials it opens up, and the need for a socialist program to pave a path forward.

Remi and Rudy welcome A. M. Gittlitz, the author of "I Want to Believe: J. Posadas, UFOs and Apocalypse Communism" and The Antifada producer to discuss the role of utopias and prefiguration in historical and modern day communist strategy. We cover topics from Russian Cosmism, the parallels between New World and Space Utopias, the relationship between the subjective and objective conditions for revolution, finding spaces where we can imagine a better world and how to find hope in the end of the end of history. The episode ends with the opening of Cosmos: Carl Sagan's hope for a brighter future. Check out Andy's article on the Space force here: https://www.plutobooks.com/blog/the-plot-against-space/

The Cosmonaut team inaugurates the ecology series by discussing John Bellamy Foster's seminal book "Marx's ecology" on its twentieth anniversary. Join Niko, Ian, Matthew and Remi as they discuss the context of this work, and how it started a rediscovery of Marx's ecological politics. They discuss how ecology informed Marx's understanding of the world since his doctoral thesis, the relationship between Marx, Darwin and Malthus and the concept of metabolic rift.

In one of our earliest articles, Parker McQueeney lays out the case for building a party around a minimum-maximum program. Cliff Connolly reads the article aloud.

Donald and Rudy welcome Asad Haider from Viewpoint Magazine to discuss the present political moment. Using Badiou's "The Rebirth of History: Times of Riots and Uprisings" as a starting point, we discuss riots as a political expression in an intervallic period. We talk about the shape of the party should take to represent this political will, the racial context, overdetermination and spontaneity, and how history is being restarted.

English language sources still describe Nadezhda Krupskaya first as "Vladimir Lenin's wife" rather than " a radical revolutionary whose ideas [...] were monumental in Soviet state formation". To begin the process of correcting this error, M.A. Iasilli writes on what she can teach us about education and labor. Cliff Connolly reads the article aloud.

Rudy, Ahmed, and Remi join Sam Agarwal, a PhD student at Johns Hopkins University in sociology, whose research on and fieldwork in Kerala provide insight into the Indian state's handling of societal crisis like the 2018-9 floods and COVID-19. We discuss the left politics of the CPI(M) and its various rival parties, the Indian political climate, the feminist movement, the handling and mitigation of climate change, and what we can learn from a contemporary communist-governed state while dealing with its limitations. ---------------------------------------- Check out Sam's work here: https://truthout.org/articles/this-state-in-india-shows-us-why-fighting-covid-19-requires-working-class-power/ Books recommended include: The Rise of Hindu Authoritarianism: Secular Claims, Communal Realities by Achin Vanaik and The Phoenix Moment: Challenges Confronting the Indian Left by Praful Bidwai.

In this article from our site, Alexander Gallus reviews Ilona Duczyńska's German language book 'The Democratic Bolshevik' which explores the socialist experiment of Red Vienna and its failure to defend itself from reaction. Matthew reads the article aloud.

Donald sits down with Sean Guillory from the SRB Podcast to discuss Komsomol, which was often one of the only organizations that provided a link to the early soviet state in many small towns. They discuss the way the early Soviet state was structured with attention to how soft and hard power was transmitted, communist values, gender relationships, the rebirth of social conservatism and comradeship among other things.

Join our round table where we listen to on-the-ground reports from our writers of the protests around the country, how they were organized, and how the police and the NGO-industrial complex have responded to them. Robert, Cliff, Alex, Ahmed and Remi discuss the possibilities for this movement, and where we go from here.

On this episode of Cosmopod, Donald and Parker welcome Cosmonaut author Josh Morris on to discuss the history and historiography of the US Communist Party. Academic accounts of the party have largely fit in two camps; Josh's upcoming book The Many Worlds of American Communism attempts to go beyond the standard story and rethink the scholarship for a post-Cold War era.

Throughout the United States, revolt against police violence and the state has broken out in response to the callous murder of George Floyd at the hands of the police. To help contribute to this outbreak of militancy, we have published these words of advice on successful protest from Ahmed Nada, a veteran of the Egyptian protest movements in 2011, 2012, and 2013. Cliff Connolly reads the article aloud.

Cliff Connolly reads an article from CLR Gainz expressing that the left needs physical as well as mental strength if we are going to be victorious in making revolution and defeating reaction. Escalating police violence in the wake of George Floyd's death only reinforces this idea. Stay safe, comrades.

In this special edition of Cosmopod's ongoing labor interview and history series, Remi is joined by two legends of the US socialist labor scene: Adolph Reed and Ed Bruno. Tune in for a long and enlightening discussion of the attempt at an American Labor Party in the 1990s-2000s, where we stand both as a working class and an organized left in light of waning neoliberalism, the trendlines emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic, the necessary order of priority between identity- and class-based organizing, how socialists should relate to electoral struggle, and much more.

In the second installment of the Internationalism series, Remi and Ahmed are joined by Bori, a South Korean student activist for a discussion of Korean history, the social dynamics underlying today's political situation, the prospects for a left resurgence in RoK, and the elusive nature of South Korea's much-maligned neighbor to the north and the unreality of reunification talks.

For this installment of our series on Actually Existing Socialism, Donald, Christian, and Rudy have a discussion based on Eden Medina's book Cybernetic Revolutionaries and the experience of cybernetic planning under Allende's Chile. Outro music is "Litany for a computer and a child about to be born" by Angel Parra and Stafford Beer.

Lydia Apolinar reads J.R. Murray's essay combating the chauvinist politics of left anti-immigration.

We are very happy to release this crossover episode with Breht O'Shea from Revolutionary Left Radio and Red Menace! Remi, Parker, and Donald have a wide-ranging discussion with Breht touching on current events, ecological Marxism, organizing, labor, electoral strategy, and more.

To continue our series on the relation of Marxism to science, we read and discussed Christopher Caudwell's Crisis in Physics. Join Donald, Matthew, Rudy, and Remi for a conversation that covers the life of Caudwell, the relevance of his thought to topics such as ecology and the meaning of freedom, theoretical physics, and the possibility of "proletarian science".

Cliff Connolly reads Amelia Davenport's long-form essay Organizing for Power. Davenport argues for leftist organizers to reclaim the ideas of Taylor's Scientific Management, making a broader argument for the relevance of cybernetics, cultural revolution in the workers' movement, and a Promethean vision of socialism. https://cosmonaut.blog/2019/11/19/organizing-for-power-stealing-fire-from-the-gods/

Join Remi as he discusses the history and philosophy of science, as well as its use for socialists with two professional scientists, Matt and Rudy (author of the Cosmonaut article "Knowledge: Power and Emancipation").

Donald, Parker and Christian are joined by one of the greatest political commentators of our time, Jake from Swampside Chats, to discuss the struggle between Social-Democracy and Woke Liberalism in the Democratic Party. What lies ahead? How can the left benefit from the Bernie movement/campaign? Are Boomers holding us back? Join us for a discussion on a historic election.

Christian and Donald sit down for a discussion on Moshe Lewin's 1974 tome Political Undercurrents in Soviet Economic Debates. They discuss Bukharin, the Left Opposition, Stalin, Soviet reformers, cybernetic planning, and more. Unfortunately, Lewin's book is out of print but we recommend getting your hands on a used copy if possible. If you can't, his book The Soviet Century is still in print from Verso Books. We hope to continue this to be a continuous reading series on the problems of building socialism.

Audio recording of our very first article by Cliff Connolly. Read the original article by Amelia Davenport here: https://cosmonaut.blog/2018/09/03/where-does-power-come-from/

Reading by Cliff Connolly. Read the article here: https://cosmonaut.blog/2019/11/01/carrying-the-burden-of-communist-man/

For this episode, Parker and Donald welcome Cosmonaut editor and writer Medway Baker on to Canadasplain the Westminster system. Join us as we put on our inner socdem wonk to discover what went wrong for the Labour Party in the recent UK election.

Parker & Donald welcome Jake from Swampside Chats on to discuss the professional managerial class. What is the PMC, its relation to other classes, and its role in contemporary capitalist society? We discuss this and more, including topics like the Democratic primary, Marxology, Brexit, intersectionality, and Ben & Jerry's. Intro music is The Internationale, arrangement and recording by Christian Cail Outro Music is Yuppie Rap by Mike Saad and Bill O'Neil

Parker and Donald sit down with Amelia Davenport to discuss her article 'Organizing for Power: Stealing Fire From the Gods' and touch on a variety of topics like Taylorism, cultural revolution, Bogdanov, and systems theory. Read the whole article here: https://cosmonaut.blog/2019/11/19/organizing-for-power-stealing-fire-from-the-gods/

Matthew Strupp reads Donald Parkinson's essay "From Workers' Party to Workers' Republic", an attempt to develop a strategy for communists today by looking at the history of the movement. Read it here: https://cosmonaut.blog/2018/10/17/from-workers-party-to-workers-republic/

Remi and Guy, a multi-tour volunteer foreign fighter in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, sit down for an extended interview around the history, political and economic structure, military situation, and future outlook for the project in Rojava. Addressed are the most pressing critiques of the political structure adopted by the peoples of the region, with an eye toward marginalized ethnic and political groups, the relationship of the multitude of factions to one another and the population at large, and where things go from here. With the abrupt withdrawal of US forces and the attendant shift in the uneasy balance of forces in Syria, Turkey has invaded, Russia has vacillated between intervention and aloofness, and the fate of NES may lie in the balance. Since recording, events have developed quickly. We will release an update interview in the coming days.

Parker and Donald discuss last month's DSA convention, of which Parker was a delegate.

Recorded on July 23rd, 2019, J.R. Murray interviews Hector Reyes, a Puerto Rican socialist activist and faculty union organizer at University of Puerto Rico campus in Mayagüez. Since the recording of this interview the Governor of Puerto Rico has resigned and protests have continued. Further reading on the events that have taken place between the end of July and now can be found below: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/08/puerto-rico-socialist-spring-ricardo-rossello https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/08/puerto-rico-ricardo-rossello-peoples-assemblies And you can read about and support the organizations Hector references by following these links: https://www.facebook.com/Colectiva.Feminista.PR/ http://periodismoinvestigativo.com/

Cliff Connolly reads us an article by J.R. Murray. The United States is a mockery of what democracy is supposed to be. J.R. Murray unpacks the reality of a corrupt system that is designed to empower the rich against the working class majority. Arrangement and recording of L'internationale by Christian Cail

J.R. Murray sits down with Ellie Byant, a former Marine and current communist, for a short discussion on the United States military and how socialists should approach organizing soldiers and veterans. https://aboutfaceveterans.org/

Welcome to our audio article series! Today, Cliff Connolly reads us his article "Culture Beyond Capital: Art, Authenticity, and the 21st Century Workers' Movement" published on July 10, 2019. The article can be found at https://cosmonaut.blog/2019/07/10/culture-beyond-capital-art-authenticity-and-the-21st-century-workers-movement/ Arrangement and recording of L'internationale by Christian Cale

Welcome to Cosmopod. Comrades Donald, Rosa, Ian, & Parker sit down to discuss historical republicanism and its connection to the socialist movement.