Jacobin Radio

Michael Seltzer is a cultural anthropologist and professor emeritus at Oslo University in Norway. There is a sharp contrast in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic between Norway, Finland, and Denmark, where isolation and quarantine are in effect, as compared to Sweden, where the economy is open, and the death rate is much higher. Mike says learning from the experience of Scandinavia is instructive for the United States as some states open for business, while others stay locked down. Mike looks at the history and politics behind these different approaches. Michael Goldfield<font color="#000000"> discusses his new book,</font>The Southern Key: Class Race & Radicalism in the 1930s and 1940s. He argues that the political economic evolution of the South has been the key to determining the peculiar nature of American politics. Today the South is the center of reaction, leading the fight against choice, women and LGBTQ rights, the right to unionize — and even in the fight against the lockdown and quarantine necessary to halt the spread of coronavirus. It didn’t have to be this way and Goldfield holds that the experience (and failure) of organizing the working class in the South explains the origins of the current state of the United States and the world; and that the defeats from that time closed off the possibilities for meaningful class and anti-racist politics — as well as for a successful labor movement for decades to come.

No book better captures what it's like to be a socialist who has jumped headlong into the fight for a better world than Vivian Gornick's The Romance of American Communism. Thankfully, Verso has reissued it after the book was out of print for decades. Micah Uetricht talks to Alyssa Battistoni, Sean Estelle, and Meagan Day about it. You can buy Romance from Verso here: https://www.versobooks.<wbr />com/books/3110-the-romance-of-<wbr />american-communism Read Alyssa's review here: https://www.<wbr />dissentmagazine.org/article/<wbr />bad-romance Buy Bigger than Bernie for just $12.95 here: https://jacobinmag.com/<wbr />store/product/69

Dan interviews Aaron Benanav, who argues that the problem isn't that robots are stealing our jobs but rather that capitalist growth is finding its limits and making jobs worse.Read "Automation and the Future of Work" in New Left Review. Parts one and two.Please support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig.

We cover chapters three and four—"Satan's Strongholds" and "The Free-Born Englishman." With guest John Bohstedt (author of The Politics of Provisions: Food Riots, Moral Economy, and Market Transition in England, 1550-1850) we discuss the history and logic of riots in early modern England: why did riots occur so frequently? What did they mean? And how did they relate to the widely held ideas about English liberties, which both contributed to and inhibited the development of popular radicalism? Secondary Readings: John Bohstedt, Riots and Community Politics in England and Wales, 1790–1810. John Bohstedt, The Politics of Provisions: Food Riots, Moral Economy, and Market Transition in England, 1550–1850. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France. Douglas Hay, Peter Linebaugh, John G. Rule, E.P. Thompson, and Cal Winslow, Albion's Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England. Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man: Being an Answer to Mr. Burke's Attack on the French Revolution. George Rudé, The Crowd in History: A Study of Popular Disturbances in France and England, 1730–1848. Charles Tilly, "Collective Violence in European Perspective." E.P. Thompson, "The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century.” E.P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters: The Origins of the Black Act.

There are too many bad takes out there about the end of the Bernie Sanders campaign. Thankfully, Hadas Thier and Paul Heideman wrote one that is good: "Bernie's Campaign Strategy Wasn't the Problem." Read it here: https://jacobinmag.com/<wbr />2020/04/bernie-sanders-<wbr />campaign-strategy-democratic-<wbr />party-biden-trump Find Hadas's book here: https://www.<wbr />haymarketbooks.org/books/1481-<wbr />a-people-s-guide-to-capitalism And Paul's book here: https://www.<wbr />haymarketbooks.org/books/946-<wbr />class-struggle-and-the-color-<wbr />line And you can still get Micah Uetricht and Meagan Day's 'Bigger Than Bernie' for only $12.95 from Jacobin: https://jacobinmag.<wbr />com/store/product/69

Vijay Prashad on China (and Sinophobia), Kerala, and the crucial importance of social organization. Then, Meagan Day and Micah Uetricht, authors of Bigger than Bernie, on Bernie Sanders, socialism, electoralism, and where it all goes from here.

Dan interviews Meagan Day and Micah Uetricht, the authors of Bigger Than Bernie: How We Go from the Sanders Campaign to Democratic Socialism, to assess the campaign and the way forward.Please support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Suzi talks with her brother Irv Weissman, director of Stanford University’s Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine about the science and politics of coronavirus, and with Sheheryar Kaoosji, director of the Warehouse Workers Resource Center, about the dangerous working conditions at Amazon fulfillment centers and the threat they pose to the company’s workers and to public health. Irv explains why coronavirus is so devastating, how our immune system has responded to it, and why the disease is more dangerous for those who are older. He also discusses the fragility of our public health infrastructure, what safe practices are needed to protect the population now, and the barriers to scientific research posed today by the political and religious right. Sheheryar reports on the walkouts taking place by Amazon workers in the Inland Empire, and elsewhere around the country over the lack of safety equipment and practices in their workplaces.

Yanis Varoufakis talks about life under COVID-19, the economic crisis, vultures stripping Greece, and democratizing the European Union (includes bonus audio clip of Jim Cramer recalling his Trotskyist past).

Dan interviews the makers of a new podcast series telling the history of the Iraq War.Blowback is available only on Stitcher Premium—and for a month you can listen for free. Go to stitcherpremium.com and sign up with the code BLOWBACK.Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

We cover chapters one and two — "Members Unlimited" and "Christian Apollyon" — on this week's episode. Rachel Foxley, a professor of history at the University of Reading and author of The Levellers: Radical Political Thought in the English Revolution, joins us to talk about the English Revolution. Secondary Reading: Rachel Foxley, The Levellers (Manchester University Press, 2013). Christopher Hill, The Experience of Defeat(Verso, 2017). Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra(Verso, 2014). CB Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (Oxford University Press, 2011). Barrington Moore, Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Beacon Press, 1993). Ellen Meiksins Wood, Democracy Against Capitalism(Cambridge University Press, 1995).

Dan interviews historian Kim Phillips-Fein about her book Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics and about how the destruction of social democracy made today's city where coronavirus is killing its poor and working-class people.In other news: Dan's Jacobin essay on keeping the Bernie infrastructure alive is here and the volunteer petition to do so, which you should sign, is here.Please support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Welcome to Casualties of History, a podcast from Jacobin magazine. We’ll be working our way through EP Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class. In this first episode, Alex and Gabe introduce themselves and cover the book’s preface, as well as outline the context in which it was written. Who was Thompson, and what was he aiming to do in writing this book? Who was he arguing with, and why?Reference is made to secondary literature:Perry Anderson, “Origins of the Present Crisis,” New Left Review 1, no. 23 (Jan-Feb 1964).EP Thompson, “The Peculiarities of the English,” Socialist Register (1965). Thompson, “Time, Work Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism,” Past & Present no. 38 (Dec 1967).Frederick Cooper, “Work, class and empire: An African historian's retrospective on E. P. Thompson,” Social History 20, no. 2 (1995).Geoff Eley, A Crooked Line(University of Michigan, 2006).Madeleine Davis, “Reappraising British socialist humanism,” Journal of Political Ideologies 18, no. 1 (2013).Davis, “Edward Thompson's Ethics and Activism 1956–1963: Reflections on the Political Formation of The Making of the English Working Class,” Contemporary British History 28, no. 4 (2014).

Bernie Sanders is out of the race. We can’t go on; we must go on. Micah talked about it with Jacobin contributor Eric Blanc and Democratic Socialists of America National Political Committee member Marianela D’Aprile. Read Eric’s piece on Bernie dropping out here:https://jacobinmag.com/2020/<wbr />04/bernie-sanders-campaign-<wbr />supporters-2020-election Buy ‘Bigger than Bernie’ here:https://jacobinmag.com/store/<wbr />product/69

Dan interviews veteran organizer Jasson Perez and journalist Sarah Jaffe on left organizing amid covid and where it might go.Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Suzi talks to James K. Galbraith on the economic policies we need, and Aaron Benanav on the crisis of unemployment. James K Galbraithresponds to the multiple crises and challenges brought by the coronavirus pandemic, laying out the economic policy we need now, and the mobilization necessary to get it. He proposes concrete measures, like a Health Finance Corporation, that could be an efficient one-stop shop for all the resources needed. We ask why the economy as currently organized has been unable to deal with the challenges of the pandemic. Galbraith's watchwords: solidarity, organization, and determination.Aaron Benanav writes about employment, especially the irregular, informal and precarious forms of employment — the ones that fall through the large holes in the shredded safety net. His article, “Crisis and Recovery” looks at the cataclysmic economic crisis unfolding in tandem with the public health crisis. We get his findings.

'Bigger than Bernie: How We Go from the Sanders Campaign to Democratic Socialism' is out this week, and coauthors Micah Uetricht and Meagan Day are talking about it today. Buy it from Jacobin for $12.95 here: https://jacobinmag.com/<wbr />store/product/69

Dan interviews Amy Kapczynski and Gregg Gonsalves on the politics of public health and what we can learn from ACT UP.Please support The Dig with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan interviews New York magazine writer Eric Levitz on the big corporate bailout that gave workers precious little to survive the corona crisis.Please support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan interviews Marxist economist Grace Blakeley on coronavirus economics.Please support this podcast with money at Patreon.com/TheDig

David Himmelstein of Physicians for a National Health Program and CUNY on how US health policy got us to this desperate pass. Then, Helen Yaffe on Cuban interferon and COVID-19, and the country’s biotech industry and health system (YUP article here).

Podcasting in the time of coronavirus: Suzi's new episode of Jacobin Radio features interviews with Marxist greats Mike Davis and Robert Brenner. Mike Davis is writing widely on the COVID-19 pandemic in Jacobin and the Nation. Fifteen years ago, Davis published The Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu, and he sees the coronavirus pandemic as the familiar monster now at our door. We get his views on the huge challenges coronavirus poses for humanity, and the impotence of global capitalism in the face of biological crisis. He calls it a “Medical Katrina” that exposes the woeful unpreparedness of our disinvested public health system as well as the stark class divide of health care in the United States. <o:p></o:p> Suzi then turns to Robert Brenner for his analysis of the deepening crisis and its political implications. Brenner says that the economic meltdown was triggered by COVID-19 but not caused by it. We get his account of the politics — that is of the way wealth is now attained by political rather than the old-fashioned means: how an alliance of top corporate managers and the very rich, plus leading politicians from both political parties, have rigged the political economy in favor of the 1 percent. It is from the standpoint of this transition from capitalism (back) to feudalism that we need to understand how the crisis is unfolding and the various political responses to it, from the establishment and from the Left. <o:p></o:p>

Coronavirus is decimating the planet right now, and it's made far worse by the fact that we don't have a public healthcare system. We talked to Adam Gaffney, president of Physicians for a National Health Program and a doctor at Cambridge Health Alliance and Harvard Medical School, about this. Forgive the self-promo in a time of society-wide breakdown, but: the book by host Micah Uetricht and Jacobin staff writer Meagan Day, Bigger than Bernie: How We Go from the Sanders Campaign to Democratic Socialism, has had its release date bumped up to March 24. Please preorder it! It's 20% off from Verso: https://www.versobooks.<wbr />com/books/3167-bigger-than-<wbr />bernie

Dan interviews Mike Davis about everything we are all suddenly trying to figure out.Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan interviews NYC DSA down-ballot candidates. Samelys López is running for a US House seat in the Bronx. Jabari Brisport, Marcela Mitaynes, and Phara Souffrant Forrest are running for seats in the state legislature. All four are campaigning on a platform of housing justice.Please support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Kali Akuno on why black voters like Joe Biden. Then, Dibyesh Anand on the belief system of India’s Hindu fascists (book here).

An interview on how the Democratic Party got here today with Ryan Grim.Please support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Pep talk time: Dan interviews Rep. Ilhan Omar to give us some perspective and prepare us for the fight ahead.Please support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Mass incarceration has rightly become a major topic of discussion and organizing on the Left recently. But our guests today, Adaner Usmani and John Clegg, have some issues with how we talk about that incarceration system and many of the standard strategies for how we go about dismantling it. John and Adaner are the authors of the Catalyst article "The Economic Origins of Mass Incarceration," which you can read here: https://catalyst-<wbr />journal.com/vol3/no3/the-<wbr />economic-origins-of-mass-<wbr />incarceration Also, you can and should preorder Bigger than Bernie by Meagan Day and your host Micah Uetricht here: https://www.versobooks.<wbr />com/books/3167-bigger-than-<wbr />bernie

Suzi looks at the significance and aftermath of South Carolina and Super Tuesday, asking basic questions about the disconnect between the enthusiasm and support for progressive policies and Bernie Sanders (and Elizabeth Warren to a lesser degree), and the reality of people then voting for Biden. Was it fear, motivated by the constant drum of the corporate media that Bernie is not electable but Biden is? We get views and analysis from our guests Matt Karp and Adolph Reed.

<style></style>Super Tuesday has come and gone, and Joe Biden is now the frontrunner. There's nobody better to talk about this stuff than Jacobin staff writer and Senior Biden Correspondent Branko Marcetic, author of the new book Yesterday's Man: The Case Against Joe Biden. We discussed Biden and the state of the race as a whole.Branko's book is excellent. You can buy it for just $10: https://jacobinmag.com/store

A special pod ep from Sunday's live Boston canvass kickoff with Michael Brooks and Natalie Shure.Please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan interviews Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor on her book Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership.Come see Dan discuss All-American Nativism in Boston on 3/4 facebook.com/events/522615241724284/Support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Live show with Jacobin's Bhaskar Sunkara and Alex Press in Cambridge, MA for Bernie 2020. Recorded the night of Nevada caucuses.Please support us with your money at www.thedigradio.com

Colleen Eren, author of Bernie Madoff and the Crisis, on why the Ponzi schemer deserves release from prison (op-ed here). Then, Jamieson Webster psychoanalyzes money and left melancholy (interview with Fiona Alison Duncan here).

The Catholic Church was a powerful force throughout the first half of the 20th century. It was a force for right-wing reaction. That’s what Dan discusses today with Giuliana Chamedes, the author of the remarkable book A Twentieth-Century Crusade: The Vatican’s Battle to Remake Christian Europe.Live Massachusetts Dig for Bernie! With Bhaskar Sunkara and Alex Press at Harvard this Saturday 2/2, 7pm: facebook.com/events/604111176850753/Please support this podcast with your money at patreon.com/TheDig

Yasha Levine on Chrystia Freeland, Ukrainian Nazis, and the proxy war against Russia. Then, Lizzie O’Shea, author of Future Histories, on fake techno-utopianism and imagining a better future.

Bernie Sanders has won two states in a row, first Iowa and then New Hampshire. But how exactly did he do it? We talked to Jacobin's Shawn Gude, who gives some details about what the Sanders campaign's organizing looked like in Iowa, who ended up turning out for him, why Sanders has to overcome the barrier of post-Obama political despondency, and the campaign's path forward post-New Hampshire. Here's Shawn's article from Iowa: https://jacobinmag.com/<wbr />2020/02/iowa-working-class-<wbr />satellite-caucus-sanders And here's Meagan Day's article on the campaign's organizing: https://<wbr />jacobinmag.com/2020/02/bernie-<wbr />iowa-caucus-immigrant-factory-<wbr />workers-organizing

Racism on the right wing is changing in weird and important ways, and liberal anti-racism offers no viable solution. Dan interviews Daniel Martinez HoSang and Joe Lowndes, authors of Producers, Parasites, Patriots: Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity.Please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Suzi talks to Ansar Fayyazuddin<font color="#365f91">, t</font><font color="#000000">heoretical physicist and writer, who has written on geo-engineering as an approach to mitigate the climate disaster that he contends offers a false solution, filled with fallacies bound to create unforeseen consequences. Ansar’s critique is lucid and devastating, and he argues that geo-engineering technological fixes will not get us out of this mess, but will further entrench us in a deeply eco-destructive mode of life. He finds hope in the social movements demanding fundamental change and that means not just a Green New Deal, but conceiving the possibility of the end of capitalism. </font> <font color="#000000">Turning to the aftermath of the Bolivian coup, Suzi talks to</font>Linda Farthing<font color="#365f91">, </font><font color="#000000">Bolivia-based journalist and writer who gives us her account and analysis of what has happened in the three months since the coup that ousted President Evo Morales, sending him into exile. We get Linda’s insights on what led to the coup, who has reaped the benefits, and what has happened to the largely indigenous social movements that propelled Evo Morales to power and now face a horror show of violence. We also ask what lies ahead given elections have been called for May 2020. </font>

Columbia Point tenants face new management and a private police force.This is the final episode of the first season of People's History Podcast! "The Point: Rebellion and Resistance in Boston Public Housing" traces a social history of Boston from the urban rebellions of the 1960s, through busing in the 70s, into the Clinton era.We investigate these events from the lens of one community: Columbia Point, the largest public housing project in New England. Built on an isolated landfill site next to the Boston city dump, it was the site of major organizing, from welfare rights to a Free Breakfast for Children program. It was also the first public housing project to be sold off and redeveloped as private "mixed-income" development (and was a model for the federal policy "HOPE VI").Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/peopleshistorypod

Sofia Japaridzeon Congressionally protected wage theft in the libertarian paradise of post-Soviet Georgia. Then, Margaret Kimberley, author ofPrejudential, on the long, oppressive relationship of presidents to black people.

The protests have subsided but coronavirus has only created a deeper crisis for government legitimacy. Dan interviews long-time Hong Kong activist and writer Au Loong Yu.Please support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

John Clegg, co-author of this article, on the economic roots of mass incarceration. Then, Tobita Chow and Jake Werner, authors of this paper, on the US–China trade war

Dan interviews philosopher Martin Hägglund on how the way we conceive of our finite lives here on earth shapes our critique of capitalism and construction of socialism.Please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Six members of the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America won election to the Chicago city council last year. One of them is Rossana Rodriguez, elected as alderwoman of the 33rd ward on Chicago's Northwest Side. If you want the full backstory of Rossana's life, you can listen to the episode of The Dig that I guest hosted back in 2018: https://blubrry.com/<wbr />jacobin/38881826/the-dig-<wbr />rossana-rodrguez-sanchez-a-<wbr />socialist-for-chicago/ We talked about what her eight months in office have been like, why she's supporting Bernie Sanders for president, and the continued battering of her native Puerto Rico by both weather and climate change and austerity. The Hurricane Maria relief fund that she mentions in the interview can be found here: https://www.mariafund.<wbr />org/

Jessica Whyte, author of The Morals of the Market, on the relations between neoliberalism and human rights politics. Then, Michele Masucci and Joanna Warsza, editors of Red Love, on Alexandra Kollontai and her views on love, comradeship, and the family.

Daniel Denvir shamelessly interviewed on his own podcast by Astra Taylor about All-American Nativism.Upcoming events:1/24 All-American Nativism Brooklyn book launch with Aziz Rana facebook.com/events/606979320053356/1/27 Race for Profit: A Conversation with Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor [Live Dig interview in Providence] facebook.com/events/1416403061860397/1/28 Rhode Island Students for Bernie Kickoff Rally with Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor and Linda Sarsour facebook.com/events/618607768707911/Book tour (more to be announced soon!):1/31 Providence facebook.com/events/2432419893664520/2/24 Philly facebook.com/events/462775997752533/2/26 DC at solidstatebooksdc.com2/28 Baltimore facebook.com/events/509390186368309/3/4 Boston at tridentbookscafe.com3/11 New Orleans: All-American Nativism and A Planet to Win double book event with Thea Riofrancos at octaviabooks.com3/17 Austin at monkeywrenchbooks.org3/18 Dallas at deepvellum.org

Bernie Sanders is not just the candidate with the strongest left platform as well as the only candidate with a vision of social and political change coming from the bottom-up rather than the top down. He is also the most electable candidate. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Meagan Day is a staff writer at Jacobin. She's the coauthor, with Matt Karp, of "Bernie Is the Candidate Who Can Beat Trump. Here’s Why" in Jacobin, which you can read here: https://jacobinmag.com/<wbr />2019/12/bernie-sanders-vs-<wbr />donald-trump Preorder our forthcoming book from evil Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/<wbr />Winning-Political-Revolution-<wbr />Democratic-Socialism/dp/<wbr />1788738381

In the turmoil of busing, Betty Ann Jones advocates armed defense. Betty Washington and Dorothy Haskins lead a "wade-in" to protest segregation.This is the penultimate episode of the first season of People's History Podcast! "The Point: Rebellion and Resistance in Boston Public Housing" traces a social history of Boston from the urban rebellions of the 1960s, through busing in the 70s, into the Clinton era.We investigate these events from the lens of one community: Columbia Point, the largest public housing project in New England. Built on an isolated landfill site next to the Boston city dump, it was the site of major organizing, from welfare rights to a Free Breakfast for Children program. It was also the first public housing project to be sold off and redeveloped as private "mixed-income" development (and was a model for the federal policy "HOPE VI").Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/peopleshistorypod