Jacobin Radio

Dan’s guest today is Thea Riofrancos, a political scientist at Providence College. They discuss Ecuador’s 2017 elections, in which the left won a narrow victory despite the crisis hitting the Pink Tide of left governments throughout the region.Former President Rafael Correa accomplished much for the country’s poor majority. Unfortunately, he did so thanks to a commodity boom that has since gone bust, a strategy that has put the government in conflict with indigenous and environmental movements.

Doug interviews two guests. First, Tim Shorrock on the two Koreas: while South Korea has a recently-elected leader, the North continues testing missiles while the US continues threatening engagement. Then, Margaret Corvid updates us on British politics in the week following the recent surprise election.

Doug interviews two guests. First, investigative journalist Alex Kotch talks about the Koch academic network. Then, Alfredo Saad Filho, a professor of political economy at the SOAS, University of London, updates us the political and economic situation in Brazil. This episode was recorded the day before Lula was found guilty on corruption and money-laundering charges, and Filho sent an update for the show's listeners, which Doug reads on the show.

Dan talks with Dara Lind, the immigration reporter at Vox. They discuss how Trump has made Obama's massive deportation machine into a terrifying spectacle in a bid to to scare undocumented immigrants from the country.

In the latest episode Suzi will cover election results across the globe. First, Tom Ferguson, Professor Emeritus at U Mass Boston, will discuss the Democratic Party’s recent election defeats, the party's ties to finance, and their rejection of the Sanders political line within their own base. Then, Sebastian Budgen will join from Paris for an analysis of the recent Parliamentary elections that gave Emmanuel Macron's new Party "En Marche" a majority.

Workers have for years faced a neoliberal onslaught administered by a bipartisan establishment of technocratic elites who have ensured the redistribution of wealth into the hands of the rich. This is an elite that has abetted the decimation of labor unions and whose primary disagreement are over how severely those expelled from the labor market should be allowed to suffer. Dan's guest today is journalist Sarah Jaffe. Jaffe talks about the state of work, particularly the manufacturing and retail workers she writes about in recent pieces at The Nation and racked.com. Thanks to supporters at Verso and University of North Carolina Press.

Naomi Klein takes on President Donald Trump’s brand, and offers some thoughts as to how to tarnish it, in her new book “No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump's Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need.”

Mass incarceration controls poor people and populations that have been excluded from the labor market. Politically, tough-on-crime rhetoric has for decades been a tool for politicians to appeal to white voters’ racism. But what’s less discussed is the complicated history of criminal justice politics within black communities and amongst black politicians. Yale Law professor James Forman talks about his new book Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America.

Joining Suzi are Maria Svart, National Director of the Democratic Socialists of America, and Becky Bond, co-founder of the Knock on Every Door campaign and former advisor on the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign. They will review the recent People's Summit conference as well as take a deep look at the Democratic Party. Specifically, they'll explore how the party can and should be engaged as well as the party leadership and its hostility to the pro-Sander's contingent.

Bernie would have won. And in the UK, he sort of did last week. The Labour Party, under left-wing leader Jeremy Corbyn (full name: Jeremy Bernard Corbyn) came far from behind and stripped Prime Minister Theresa May of her majority in parliament — after the punditocracy had confidently predicted that radicals had doomed Labour to electoral oblivion. Dan speaks to Richard Seymour, the author most recently of Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical politics, and a founding editor of Salvage.

In These Times editor Miles Kampf-Lassin cracks open a cold one with the boys in the Stockton to Malone studio/supply closet. Micah, Miles, and RL discuss their experiences walking with striking workers at the AT&T picket lines on Chicago's south side last month. RL closes out the episode by making fun of Slavoj Žižek. He was then struck by a car in a mysterious hit and run ten minutes after they finished recording. He's okay now, but be warned, Slavoj's got shooters!Follow us on Twitter at @RLisDead, @MilesKLassin, and @MicahUetricht.

Doug interviews two guests. First, Yasha Levine, author of the forthcoming Surveillance Valley, discusses Russia, the NSA, and the Intercept election hacking leak. Then, Angela Nagle, author of Kill All Normies, chronicles the alt-right's rise.

Dan interviews journalist David Dayen on President Trump's financial policy. Despite espousing white populist rhetoric on the campaign trail, Donald Trump has stacked his administration with Big Finance elites. Dodd-Frank is on the chopping block and Wall Street is set to deepen its predatory financial practices. Thanks to our advertisers at The Nation! Get a deal on magazine subscription at thenation.com/dig and find their podcast at https://www.thenation.com/authors/start-making-sense/

Suzi interviews two guests about the surging Jeremy Corbyn and the fate of leftwing class politics in the coming UK elections. Journalist and author Paul Mason joins the conversation from London. Blogger and analyst Kevin Ovenden is based in Athens.

Doug interviews two guests. First, James Whitman on the U.S. origins of Nazi race law. Second, Alex Gourevitch discusses strikes and their challenge to bourgeois law.

Donald Trump pledged to build a big, beautiful wall on the border with Mexico. For liberals, the wall now shares a toxic association with Trump. But until recently, militarizing the border with Mexico was accepted as a core piece of the commonsense, bipartisan establishment immigration and drug policy agenda. Dan talks about border policy with Peter Andreas, a professor at Brown University and the author of Border Games: Policing the US-Mexico Divide.

The drug war is winding down around the country and heating up under Trump at the same time. Rick Lines of Harm Reduction International lays out the humane and evidence-based alternative to the war on drugs.

Hope is more than a mood or feeling — it's the basis for all political action, argues Ronald Aronson in an interview with Suzi Weissman. Bernie Sanders's campaign inspired collective action to make the world more equal; the Trump campaign and presidency are its mirror opposite. Aronson's book We: Reviving Social Hope is out now.

Jacobin's latest issue, "By Taking Power," asks: What has the Pink Tide accomplished? What is its future? When the Pink Tide emerged in Latin America, the U.S. Left was done with governing. The Pink Tide was a confident call back to the old-time religion, a return to not ceding state power to the Right, but wielding it to improve lives in the here and now.Jacobin editor and publisher Bhaskar Sunkara spoke with Rene Rojas, a PhD student in sociology at NYU, to discuss the ebb and flow of the Pink Tide at the Verso Books offices on May 16.

Micah and RL finally release their take on Jordan Peele's film "Get Out." Micah sees the story as standard brocialist propaganda, an ode to unionized public sector workers and the social democratic investments that produce them. RL can't get past the protagonist picking cotton and turning into the "Terminegro" at the film's climax. But like Saul on the road to Damascus, RL sees the light and Micah converts him mid-take. This episode is in honor of Yale maintenance worker Corey Menafee, MTA employee Darryl Goodwin, and all the other unionized workers who have stood up to racism on the job. Follow us on Twitter at @RLisDead and @micahuetricht.

What’s the matter with Appalachia? Many liberal elites think they know the answer. Since Trump’s campaign began, the region has become a symbol of all that is wrong with Red State America: guns, bigotry, a willingness to get swindled by right-wing snake-oil salesmen. There is, indeed, a lot wrong with Appalachia. But what’s most wrong is that a region where people waged militant labor struggles has now been devastated by coal company greed, automation, shifts in global commodity markets, and, of course, by Republican reaction and neoliberal neglect. Sarah Jones, social media editor at the New Republic, explores the possibilities for left-wing revival in Appalachia and discusses her own life in the region.

Micah welcomes RL to the Jacobin staff family. RL immediately pitches "Marxistpiece Theater," making Micah instantly regret their new work situation. Later, Micah interviews Erik Forman, a labor organizer and former salt. They all discuss their experiences organizing as low wage workers, as well as the history of salting in both radicalism and the labor movement. Listen closely for Micah's horrible lefty dad humor and RL's ridiculous Easter egg. Follow us on Twitter at @RLisDead and @micahuetricht.

The Women’s March on Washington showed the power of women's leadership in the battle against Trump and the Right. But significant divides that pervaded the 2016 primary campaign remain. Those debates continue to divide the feminist movement and the Left.Dan’s guest today is Liza Featherstone, a member of The Nation’s editorial board and the editor of False Choices: The Faux Feminism of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Doug interviews two guests. First, Margaret Corvid on the British election, the Labour Party—and sex work. Second, Emre Öngün on Turkey’s deeper slide into authoritarianism.

Why do Republicans only seem to care about deficits and debt when they’re trying to cut social welfare programs? Dan's guest for this special episode is Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He discusses Trump’s regressive tax proposal and the GOP's never ending efforts to redistribute wealth the super-rich.

Under President Trump, the media has become a part of the story like never before. Journalistic probing has irritated our touchy president. But media outlets have also played a role in Trump’s rise. During the campaign, cable news outlets provided him with wall-to-wall free advertising and, more recently, lauded Trump as “presidential” because he decided to bomb Syria. Adam Johnson, a writer at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, breaks it down.

Sebastian Budgen on the second round of the French elections, pitting a centrist against a fascist. And Sofia Japaridze on how foreign NGOs turned Georgia (the country) into a broke libertarian paradise.

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.