Jacobin Radio

Weissman interviews Tariq Ali, filmmaker, activist, and author of numerous books, on his new book The Dilemmas of Lenin: Terrorism, War, Empire, Love, Revolution and the legacy of Vladimir Lenin 100 years after the Russian Revolution.

The Dig normally serves up ice cold, well-digested takes. Sometimes, however, something important happens and Dan finds someone who can help us understand it quickly. Last weekend’s election in France, which advanced the far-right National Front’s Marine Le Pen and neoliberal centrist Emmanuel Macron to a runoff, is one such event. Sebastian Budgen is an editor for Verso Books, a contributing editor at Jacobin, and a member of the editorial board at Historical Materialism.

Putting “black faces in high places,” Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor argues, has not only failed to benefit the working class and poor black majority — it has actually harmed them by pushing an individualistic, meritocratic narrative that blames poor black people’s condition on their own personal failings. Taylor is a professor of American-American studies at Princeton and the author of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, from Haymarket Books. She is a regular contributor to Jacobin and contributed a chapter called "What about racism? Don't socialists only care about class?" to The ABCs of Socialism.

RL interviews Chantel Johnson, whose brother Richie was one of the hundreds of young black men murdered in gun violence in Chicago in recent years. She and RL discuss the ties between violence and austerity in the city, the feeling of "conspiracy" against Richie and other poor black men like him in her neighborhood, and how anger at inequality in the city has become part of her grieving process.

Politicial scientist Thea Riofrancos on Ecuador's elections, the state of social movements and the Left there, and the decline of the pink tide in Latin America. Philosophers Landon Frim and Harrison Fluss on Jason Jorjani and the philosophy of alt-right.

Prisons don’t just keep inmates in; they keep the public out. Even at a moment when mass incarceration is under unprecedented criticism, it is hard for people on the outside to empathize with people who they cannot see or speak to. My guests today are Brett Story and Jordan Camp. Story is a filmmaker who has made an incredible new documentary called The Prison in 12 Landscapes, which shines a harsh light on America’s prison archipelago without ever taking a peek inside. Jordan Camp is a scholar of the American carceral state.

The Right has long looked to lower taxes, especially for rich people, out of a belief that rich people deserve to keep their money because they earned it. In other words, taxes impinge on their freedom. Mike McCarthy argues this is the wrong way to think both about taxation and about freedom. Mike McCarthy is a sociologist at Marquette University in Milwaukee and the author of Dismantling Solidarity: Capitalist Politics and American Pensions Since the New Deal. He has a chapter in The ABCs of Socialism called “Don’t the rich deserve to keep most of their money?”The ABCS of Socialism is available for only $5 on Jacobin’s web site. You can get it at jacobinmag.com/store. Also, be sure to listen to the other podcasts in our ABCs series, which tackle questions that include Why do socialists talk so much about workers? Doesn’t human nature make socialism impossible? Is socialism a western, Eurocentric concept? And isn’t the United States already king of socialist?

Max Sawicky on Republican tax schemes and Vijay Prashad on Syria.

Trump’s oligarchic regime is an extreme version of the imperial and economic vision that has guided presidents of both major parties. But the popularity of Trump’s chauvinist, xenophobic appeal points to a major crisis in the ideological and political-economic regime of the United States and the world for decades. That’s neoliberalism, a system that isn't quite over under Trump. But as Nicole Aschoff argues in the most recent issue of Jacobin, it has radically changed. Today, my guest is Nicole Aschoff, managing editor at Jacobin and the author of The New Prophets of Capital, part of Jacobin's Verso Series. You can read her article "The Glory Days Are Over" in the new issue of Jacobin and at jacobinmag.com.

Suzi Weissman talks with Verso Books editor Sebastian Budgen about the French elections.

Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, authors of Inventing the Future, on getting beyond folk politics to a world where robots work more and people (supported by a universal basic income) work less.

You’ve probably seen the memes purporting to show just how socialist the United States already is by listing a bunch of government programs, services, and agencies. The idea that any government activity is synonymous with socialism has major political and strategic implications. After all, if our country were already at least partly socialist, then all we would have to do is keep gradually expanding government.But simply electing politicians to office or watching the government expand by its own momentum has never been, and never will be, enough. Economic power is political power, and under capitalism the owners of capital will always have the capacity to undermine popular democracy—no matter who’s in Congress or the White House.This is the last episode of The ABCs of Socialism, a four-part series taking up some of today's common questions asked about socialism. Each of those questions is also a chapter in The ABCs of Socialism, which was produced by Bhaskar Sunkara and the editors of Jacobin, and published by Verso Books. You can buy the book for just $5 at the Jacobin store: https://www.jacobinmag.com/store/ The sessions are recorded at the Verso loft in Brooklyn, New York, in front of a live audience.Chris Maisano is a contributing editor at Jacobin and a union staffer in New York.

Medicaid expansion saved Obamacare from repeal. There’s a lot to hate about Obamacare, but that expansion did something very good on a very large scale — and it made just enough Republicans very nervous about taking it away. It's an important lesson about economic policy generally: the more universal a program is, the greater the number of Americans who become advocates for its preservation — a fact conservatives know and fear thanks to Medicare and Social Security but that many liberals don't. Today, my guest is Matt Bruenig, a writer who is one of most incisive analysts of poverty, inequality and welfare systems, and the political conflicts that surround them.

Doug Henwood interviews Jodi Dean on why the temptations of populism should be resisted, and Jane McAlevey, author of No Shortcuts, on real organizing, not fake organizing.

Suzi Weissman interviews documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis on why the Left has to present a compelling, alternative vision of a better future — or it's doomed.

Socialism is in the air. But the idea of socialism is under attack—and not only from the Right. Within the Left itself, there is suspicion of an ideal many view as single-mindedly focused on economic issues and distant from other everyday sufferings, especially those of black and brown people.The underlying assumption is that socialism, a supposedly Western and white ideology, while capable of addressing economic injustices, can't speak to the lived experience of oppression and discrimination in the Global South and to oppressed groups elsewhere. Is there any validity in this criticism? We pose the question to Nivedita Majumdar, an associate professor of English at John Jay College and secretary of the Professional Staff Congress, the CUNY faculty and staff union.This is the third episode of The ABCs of Socialism, a four-part series taking up some of today's common questions asked about socialism. Each of those questions is also a chapter in The ABCs of Socialism, which was produced by Bhaskar Sunkara and the editors of Jacobin, and published by Verso Books. You can buy the book for just $5 at the Jacobin store: https://www.jacobinmag.com/store/ The sessions are recorded at the Verso loft in Brooklyn, New York, in front of a live audience.

What a moment to read, or to re-read, The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin, political scientist Corey Robin’s 2011 collection of essays — especially if you need to disabuse friends and family of the notion that Trump is some historic degradation of conservatism’s good name rather than a malignant, nasty outgrowth of a long history of violent reaction against left movements for equality. Robin is a professor of political science at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center and a contributing editor at Jacobin. We’ll take a look back at The Reactionary Mind and discuss how its pre-Trumpian insights apply to a political moment quite that is quite different but, upon closer inspection, still all too familiar. A new edition of The Reactionary Mind is due out in September with new chapters on Trump and Trumpism, a chapter on Burke and his economic theory, and a chapter on Hayek, Nietzsche and neoliberalism.

Doug Henwood interviews the former Greek minister of finance Yanis Varoufakis, discussing the interminable euro crisis, austerity, Brexit, the nationalist international (Trump, Le Pen, etc.), and DiEM25, among other things.

The Democratic Socialists of America are growing — suddenly and explosively. Last June ahead of the Democratic National Convention, DSA counted 6,500 members. Today, after a presidential bid from a self-proclaimed democratic socialist and Trump’s terrifying election, membership has grown to more than 19,000 and counting. People are considering socialism, long a dirty word in American politics, in far larger numbers than in decades past — especially young people. Today, Daniel Denvir talks to DSA National Political Committee member Sean Monahan and National Director Maria Svart to discuss some tough questions about the fight for socialism in the coming months and years, both for DSA members and those who aren't.You can support the Dig by visiting its Patreon site: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4839800

We are happy to announce that we will be hosting journalist and author Doug Henwood’s show Behind the News on Jacobin Radio.In addition to writing a number of excellent books and many articles on finance and politics over the years, Henwood has hosted a consistently excellent radio show, interviewing experts on a wide range of topics both domestic and international. Behind the News is one of the best radio shows on the Left, and we’re proud to be a home for it. For his first show on Jacobin Radio, he interviews Steffie Woolhandler of Physicians for a National Health Program on Ryancare, Obamacare, and the prospects for single-payer, and Cinzia Arruzza on what’s next after the March 8 women's strike.

Since leaving the joke-rap/not-joke-rap group Das Racist in 2012, Victor Vasquez, AKA Kool AD, has stayed busy. His many artistic endeavors—music, visual art, a novel, and even a kids book ('The Selfish Shellfish')—frequently seek to imagine life in a post-capitalist utopia.In an interview with Jacobin's Tanner Howard, he discusses gentrification in Oakland, "the hustle" under capitalism, and why Karl Marx would make a great rapper.

Suzi Weissman interviews longtime Marxist writer Mike Davis on the questions facing the Left in the wake of Donald Trump's victory. How did Hillary Clinton and Democrats lose this election so badly? How should we think about the white working class in Trump's win? Can the Sanders coalition be kept alive as an independent movement bridging the racial and cultural divides among American working people?You can read Mike Davis's piece "The Great God Trump and the White Working Class" at jacobinmag.com. The piece comes from the forthcoming first issue of Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy, edited by Vivek Chibber and Robert Brenner.Mike Davis is the author of many books including Planet of Slums, City of Quartz, and Late Victorian Holocausts.

Sure, the concept of socialism sounds nice, but people aren’t very nice, right? Isn’t capitalism much more suited to human nature — a nature dominated by competitiveness and venality? Isn't socialism great in theory but terrible in practice? Adaner Usmani, a PhD candidate in sociology at New York University, answers these questions in a discussion with Jacobin's Jason Farbman.This is the second episode of The ABCs of Socialism, a four-part series taking up some of today's common questions asked about socialism. Each of those questions is also a chapter in The ABCs of Socialism, which was produced by Bhaskar Sunkara and the editors of Jacobin, and published by Verso Books. You can buy the book for just $5 at the Jacobin store: https://www.jacobinmag.com/store/The sessions are recorded at the Verso loft in Brooklyn, New York, in front of a live audience.

On the Left, few forms of mainstream journalism are more detested than political reporting. It often substitutes the horse race for substance, dresses up conventional inside-the-Beltway wisdom as real analysis, and resorts to the false balance of he-said-she-said instead of establishing facts. Political reporters took a serious hit after Donald Trump won the Republican primary and then the presidency, and Bernie Sanders mounted a real challenge to the Democratic Party’s anointed candidate. Trump is now using his bully pulpit to wage an assault on empirical reality, clinging to his own “alternative facts” and labeling the media as an opposition party purveying “fake news.” My guest today is Dave Weigel, a reporter at the Washington Post who is amongst the best in the game. Weigel has also worked for Slate and, in his early years, at the libertarian outlet Reason. He doesn’t come from the Left, but he gets us better than any mainstream reporter out there.

Socialists put the working class at the center of their political vision. But why, exactly?Vivek Chibber, Professor of Sociology at New York University and the author of Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital, answers this question here, as well as capitalism's inability "to deliver the goods" for workers, who exactly workers are, the precarity of work today, and the problems with the twenty-first century labor movement. Chibber is in discussion with Jason Jacobin's Farbman.This is the first episode of The ABCs of Socialism, a four-part series taking up some of today's common questions asked about socialism.Each of those questions is also a chapter in The ABCs of Socialism, which was produced by Bhaskar Sunkara and the editors of Jacobin, and published by Verso Books. You can buy the book here: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2219-the-abcs-of-socialismThe sessions are recorded at the Verso loft in Brooklyn, New York, in front of a live audience.

The Movement for Black Lives’ insistence that black lives matter is deceptively straightforward and minimal. But it has transformed black politics, and American politics as a whole. From the tension and contradiction of the Obama years, in which a black man became the most powerful person on earth but conditions continued to worsen for black people as a whole, the Movement for Black Lives erupted and made radical demands for social and economic justice, and to an end to police violence and mass incarceration. The movement now has to find a way forward in the time of Trump’s law-and-order backlash.

Episode 2 of Stockton to Malone. No interview here, just RL and Micah discussing RL's performance of the socialist equivalent of Kendrick Lamar's "Control" at the Young Democratic Socialists conference, Micah's years speaking with extreme vocal fry to atone for his white male privilege, that time Obama took the bowling alley out of the White House and replaced it with a basketball court, and RL's cousin who was in Kriss Kross.Follow us on Twitter at @RLisDead and @micahuetricht.Thanks to Tanner Howard for producing the show.

Mass incarceration should be central to any analysis of American political economy. It's also a moral monstrosity. But before The New Jim Crow and anti-mass incarceration activists across the country loudly insisted this was the case, it received little attention. Marie Gottschalk, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, is the author of Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics, and The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America. She talks with The Dig about prisons in American life. You can read Gottschalk's recent piece for Jacobin "Conservatives Against Incarceration?" here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/12/carceral-state-mass-incarceration-conservatives-koch-trump/

American slaveholders before the Civil War oversaw an incredibly brutal economic system that generated enormous wealth for a tiny elite while denying enslaved Africans the most basic rights. But they also presided over American foreign policy, overseeing US territorial and economic expansion. As historian Matt Karp explains in This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy, they didn't just want an independent slaveholding south — they wanted to spread their empire of slavery to the entire United States and beyond. In November 2016, Karp spoke at the New School in New York City with historian Eric Foner, Dewitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University and author of many books on the Civil War including Reconstruction and The Fiery Trial. Karp is an assistant professor of history at Princeton University and a contributing editor at Jacobin. Follow him on Twitter at @karpmj.Produced by Tanner Howard.

The horrors of the Trump administration have shown no signs of slowing in the month he has been in office. But so far, neither has the pushback we've seen in the streets. The protests have reminded Ellie Mae O'Hagan of the anti-austerity protests in the United Kingdom — both in terms of the hope they represent and the potential dangers and pitfalls they face. O'Hagan wrote about this in a recent article for Jacobin, "Lessons from the Anti-Austerity Movement," which you can read here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/02/lessons-from-the-anti-austerity-movement/ Ellie Mae O'Hagan is a frequent contributor to the Guardian who lives in London. Follow her on Twitter at @MissEllieMae.

Donald Trump's viciously xenophobic policies have put the word "sanctuary" on many people's lips. But immigrant rights organizers under Trump don't have to reinvent the wheel: the 1980s saw a vibrant sanctuary movement in response to US intervention in Central America.Hilary Goodfriend is a researcher based in San Salvador, El Salvador, who has covered Central America for Jacobin. Here, she talks about the sanctuary movement's history, its practical and ideological components, and the movement's lessons for today. You can read Goodfriend's article on the Central American sanctuary movement here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/02/sanctuary-movement-central-america-el-salvador-trump-deportations/ And you can follow her on Twitter at @HilaryGoodfrien.Produced by Tanner Howard.

All eyes have turned to the judiciary. It’s the one potential institutional check on Trump on the federal level (aside from the national security state). But the judiciary, despite pretenses to the contrary, is fundamentally political. It has historically shred civil rights and economic protections more often than it has protected them.Today, Dan Denvir speaks to Jed Purdy about the judiciary and other matters. Purdy is a professor at Duke Law and the author of three books on American political identity including The Meaning of Property. His most recent book is After Nature: A Politics for the Anthropocene and he has published articles in many, many publications.

The Salvadoran Civil War is one of the most brutal conflicts in recent history. The United States funded far-right, quasi-fascist forces who had no qualms with bathing the country in blood in the name of anti-communism. Few incidents illustrate this better than the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, the country's top Catholic leader, whose brief period speaking out on behalf of the poor and against the military led to his murder while giving mass. Matt Eisenbrandt is the author of Assassination of a Saint: The Plot to Murder Óscar Romero and the Quest to Bring His Killers to Justice, a fast-paced, often heartbreaking look into a uniquely depraved period of the Cold War. Eisenbrandt is a former attorney at the Center for Justice and Accountability, which brought a case in the United States against Romero's killers. Here, he walks through the history of the Salvadoran conflict and the attempts to pursue the architects of the archbishop's assassination in both the United States and El Salvador.

The first episode of Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman, featuring a wide-ranging interview with Bhaskar Sunkara and Robert Brenner that covers prospects for resistance with a rising anti-Trump sentiment but a weakened labor movement, the Democrats' refusal to learn any lessons from November's election, and the widespread support for a social-democratic agenda that the Left can capitalize on.Bhaskar Sunkara is the founding editor of Jacobin. Robert Brenner is the director of the Center for Social Theory and Comparative History at UCLA, author of numerous books including The Economics of Global Turbulence, and coeditor with Vivek Chibber of Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy, forthcoming from Jacobin.

Betsy DeVos is now Secretary of Education. A far-right billionaire heiress to a pyramid scheme — sorry, alleged pyramid scheme — who has never spent a day teaching but has devoted much of her career to dismantling public education, her tenure will likely prove disastrous for schools. But DeVos's nomination also drew unprecedented pushback, forcing a tie on her confirmation vote that Vice President Mike Pence had to break in her favor. Activists actually turned her away from a public school in Washington, DC, last week by blocking an entrance. While things look bleak for public education, there is also an opportunity for teachers and parents to fight back, as Megan Erickson, a public school teacher in Brooklyn, explains in this conversation. Erickson is a member of Jacobin's editorial board and the author of Class War: The Privatization of Childhood. You can read her articles for Jacobin here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/author/megan-erickson/ And buy her book here: https://www.versobooks.com/books/1954-class-warThanks to Tanner Howard for producing this segment.

Mark Blyth wasn't surprised by the rise of Donald Trump, nor Brexit, nor the crises spreading across Europe. He actually predicted them all. Blyth, the author of "Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea" and professor of political economy at Brown, explains how economic crisis has led to upheaval in a political establishment that worked obsessively to eliminate inflation and maximize profits at the expense of general wellbeing. This crisis has produced horrific peril, as the Trump administration's first weeks have made clear. But for the Left, it also provides historic opportunities.Blyth recently spoke with Daniel Denvir in a live taping of the Dig in front of a crowd of 150 in Providence, Rhode Island.

Welcome to the first episode of Stockton to Malone, a podcast from Jacobin magazine. For the first episode, ahead of protests and counterprotests at Planned Parenthood clinics around the country and forthcoming attacks on abortion rights under President Donald Trump, hosts RL Stephens and Micah Uetricht interview Judy Wittner. Before Roe v. Wade in 1973, abortion was illegal throughout most of the country. In 1969, Wittner, who was involved in the feminist movement in Chicago, discovered she was pregnant and wanted an abortion. She sought out assistance from doctors around the Chicago area but was turned away. Eventually, she turned to an illegal feminist abortion service, the Jane Collective, and ended up receiving an abortion on her kitchen table in Evanston, Illinois. We sat down with Judy in that same kitchen to talk with her about that experience and the state of reproductive rights today.

George Cicariello-Maher is professor of political science at Drexel University and author of several books, including Building the Commune: Radical Democracy in Venezuela, published by Verso as part of the Jacobin Series. He recently drew the ire of white supremacist, "alt-right" trolls after a mocking tweet about "white genocide," including death threats to his family.Perhaps more concerning was the response from Drexel Administration, which almost immediately released a statement calling his tweets “utterly reprehensible, deeply disturbing,” and stating that they “do not in any way reflect the values of the University.” Drexel eventually backed off after a public campaign in defense of Cicariello-Maher. He discusses the incident as well as issues of violence and free speech in the United States.

On a recent episode of the podcast Bad with Money with Gaby Dunn, Gaby explored some basic questions about capitalism with Jacobin managing editor Nicole Aschoff: what is it? Why does it encourage companies like Facebook to monetize our personal lives? Why do young people think it's so bogus? Why is it so bogus?Thanks to Gaby for letting us use the interview. You can subscribe to Bad with Moneyhere.Nicole Aschoff is also the author of The New Prophets of Capital, which you can buy here.

On January 20, 2017, just a few hours after the inauguration of Donald Trump, one thousand people gathered in Washington, DC’s Lincoln Theatre (and 200,000 across the United States and abroad watched at home or at livestreaming parties) for The Anti-Inauguration, an event from Jacobin, Verso Books, and Haymarket Books.The event featured author and activist Naomi Klein, journalist Anand Gopal, the Intercept‘s Jeremy Scahill, the Guardian‘s Owen Jones, and Princeton African-American Studies professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, with introductions by Jacobin editor and publisher Bhaskar Sunkara.You can watch the video from the event here and download a free ebook from Jacobin, Verso, and Haymarket here.

The depravity of Donald Trump’s fear-mongering, xenophobic, anti-Muslim politics are now in full swing. The new president has barred people from seven Muslim-majority countries — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen — including, to an unclear and ultimately-walked back degree, lawful permanent residents, from entering the United States for ninety days. All refugees are barred for 120 days, and refugees from Syria are barred indefinitely. What’s gotten less attention, but is also quite serious, is that Trump slashed the overall number of refugees slated to be admitted this year by more than half.Today, we bring you two interviews. The first is with Nicholas Espíritu from the National Immigration Law Center, one of the groups mounting legal challenges against the ban, who will explain the legal and constitutional challenge to the Muslim and refugee ban. The second is with Linda Sarsour, the executive director of the Arab American Association of New York, a leading supporter of Bernie Sanders’ primary bid, and co-chair of the Women's March on Washington.

<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" summary="Blog Post / Episode Notes"><tbody><tr><td colspan="3" align="left" valign="top">Donald Trump has nominated Betsy DeVos, a free-market, far-right Christian billionaire dedicated to privatizing public schools, to be his Secretary of Education. In her confirmation hearing, DeVos made it painfully clear that she has little understanding of public education aside from her dedication to destroying it. She is the heir to an auto parts fortune, and her husband, Dick, is the heir to a fortune derived from the direct sales company Amway, which the FTC at one point decided was not a pyramid scheme. Interestingly, she is also the brother of Erik Prince, who founded the infamous mercenary army Blackwater has now, according to The Intercept, been quietly advising the Trump Administration. The couple, thanks to their money and relentless ideological drive, are heavy-duty power players in Michigan politics, where they have wreaked havoc on Detroit public schools.In many ways, this oligarch’s nomination is the extreme and cartoonesque outcome of decades of bipartisan corporate-aligned policy that pushed charters and high stakes testing, and attacked the teachers unions that stood in their way.Today, we’re joined by historian Diane Ravitch, one of the country’s leading scholars of education policy and a vocal critic of corporate reform efforts that promote privatization and high-stakes testing as the solution to problems largely created by segregation, poverty and funding inequity. Amongst many other books, Ravitch is the author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.</td></tr></tbody></table>