The Dig

Featuring Edward Goetz on his book New Deal Ruins: Race, Economic Justice, and Public Housing Policy. Goetz tells the story of American public housing and then its destruction and dismantling, which took off in the 1980s and accelerated during the 90s under the Clinton Administration’s Hope VI program. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig and get our weekly newsletter by email plus swag. Check out Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire haymarketbooks.org/books/1861-light-in-gaza

Featuring Gail Radford on her classic book Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era. Radford tells the story of Catherine Bauer, the Labor Housing Conference, and the struggle to make the American housing system a radically social one. In place of the two-tier system that won out, Bauer and her allies proposed a massive federally-backed system of noncommercial housing that would appeal to and house the majority of Americans. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out Revolutionary Social Democracy: Working-Class Politics Across the Russian Empire (1882-1917) by Eric Blanc haymarketbooks.org/books/1907-revolutionary-social-democracy

Astra Taylor interviews William Hogeland on his book Founding Finance: How Debt, Speculation, Foreclosures, Protests, and Crackdowns Made Us a Nation. Hogeland recovers a fascinating crop of mostly-forgotten rebels, the movements they led, and their radical demands that put the landlords and lenders of their day on edge. He also recounts the complex and sometimes deadly machinations that went into suppressing them in order to create a nation that was safe for the owning and investing classes. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig

Featuring Daniel Denvir on the Citations Needed podcast (as guest, not host) debunking the argument that “woke mobs” (liberal or left identity politics) drove white working-class men into MAGA’s arms. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our vast archives and newsletters at thedigradio.com

Featuring Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi and Golnar Nikpour on the history of modern Iran. This is the fifth and final episode in what is now a FIVE-part series. We begin this episode in 1997, with reformist cleric Mohammad Khatami’s surprise landslide election to the presidency. Then we cover the reformists running into hardliner repression and George W. Bush’s War on Terror, the 2005 election of hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, his 2009 reelection and Green Movement protests, Hassan Rouhani and the nuclear accord that Trump then tore up, the 2019 mass working-class protests, and the election (but really more coronation) of right-winger Ebrahim Raisi. We end with the death of Zhina Mahsa Amini in the custody of morality police and the current mass protest movement that erupted in response. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our vast archives and the rest of this series at thedigradio.com Buy Daring to Struggle, Daring to Win by Helen Shiller haymarketbooks.org/books/1952-daring-to-struggle-daring-to-win

Featuring Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi and Golnar Nikpour on the history of modern Iran. This is the fourth episode in what is now a FIVE-part series. We pick up in the wake of the Islamic Revolution as Khomeini consolidates power, represses his rivals, and confronts an invasion from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. We continue through the Iran-Iraq War, the mass execution of thousands of leftist prisoners, and Khamenei and Rafsanjani’s rise to power after Khomeini’s death. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our vast archives and newsletter at thedigradio.com

Featuring Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi and Golnar Nikpour on the history of modern Iran. This is the third episode in our four-part series. We pick up in the wake of the US-British 1953 coup against Mossadegh, assess the Shah’s repression and attempts to manufacture consent through passive revolution, and then close by laying out the 1979 Islamic Revolution in all of its wild complexity. If you love The Dig, support the podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our newsletter and archives at thedigradio.com

Featuring Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi and Golnar Nikpour on the history of modern Iran. This is the second episode in our four-part series. We begin in 1941 with the British-Soviet occupation of Iran, the ouster of Reza Shah and his replacement by his son, Mohammad Reza Shah. We continue with the rise of the Tudeh communist party, the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, Mohammad Mosaddegh’s National Party coming to power, and the 1953 US-British coup that overthrew Mosaddegh and reinstalled Mohammad Reza Shah as dictator. His brutal reign continued until the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which is where we will pick up in episode three. Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out The Sinking Middle Class by David Roediger haymarketbooks.org/books/1879-the-sinking-middle-class

Featuring Eskandar Sadeghi and Golnar Nikpour on the history of modern Iran, from 1906 through the present. This episode is the first in a four-part series, covering the period from 1906 until 1941, from the Constitutional Revolution that imposed constitutional limits on the Qajar dynasty through the 1921 coup that brought to power Reza Khan—who then in 1925 deposed the Qajars and became Reza Shah, the first shah of the Pahlavi dynasty. We end just before the 1941 occupation of Iran by longtime imperial powers, Britain and the Soviet Union, which forced Reza Shah out and replaced him with his son, Muhammad Reza Shah—which is where we will pick up in episode two. RIP Mike Davis. Listen to his Dig interviews here: thedigradio.com/tag/mike-davis Please support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig Read our newsletters and explore our vast archives at thedigradio.com

Featuring Laura Mason on her book The Last Revolutionaries: The Conspiracy Trial of Gracchus Babeuf and the Equals. Mason discusses Babeuf’s call to abolish property, his radically egalitarian conspiracy against the Directory government, and the end of the French Revolution. How a centrist government turned its back on popular democracy, presided over growing inequality and working-class poverty, and abetted the rise of the reactionary right that would ultimately overthrow it. Check out the newsletter and our vast archives at thedigradio.com Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig

Featuring Anton Jäger and Dominik Leusder on Europe and the European Union from the crises of social democratic welfare states in the 1970s and 80s, the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, through the eurozone crisis, to the present moment of war in Ukraine, renewed NATO expansion, and a resurgent far right. Listen to Anton and Dominik’s Eurotrash podcast patreon.com/eurotrash Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig to get our weekly newsletter by email Check out those newsletters and our vast archives at thedigradio.com

Featuring Daisy Pitkin on her book On the Line: A Story of Class, Solidarity, and Two Women’s Epic Fight to Build a Union, a memoir that powerfully captures the drama of an organizing drive—and so much more. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out The Dig newsletter at thedigradio.com Subscribe to n+1 at nplusonemag.com/thedig. Enter THEDIG at checkout for a discount.

Featuring Laura Weinrib on The Taming of Free Speech: America’s Civil Liberties Compromise. Did you know that the ACLU was founded as a radical labor organization allied with the IWW? Weinrib traces the rise of the modern civil liberties movement, and modern constitutional liberalism more broadly, from World War I through the New Deal. She explains how the ACLU went from defending free speech as a means to revolutionary ends to a liberal position exalting free speech as an end unto itself—including the anti-union speech of bosses and the political speech of corporations. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America by Joshua Frank haymarketbooks.org/books/1940-atomic-days Abolishing State Violence: A World Beyond Bombs, Borders, and Cages by Ray Acheson haymarketbooks.org/books/1883-abolishing-state-violence

Featuring Thulani Davis on The Emancipation Circuit: Black Activism Forging a Culture of Freedom, a monumental history of freedpeople organizing amid the Civl War and Reconstruction. Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out A Spectre, Haunting: On the Communist Manifesto by China Miéville haymarketbooks.org/books/1990-a-spectre-haunting

Featuring Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Robin D.G. Kelley, and Ruth Wilson Gilmore on racial capitalism, intergenerational organizing, internationalism, and a whole lot more. Dan’s live Dig interview from the Socialism 2022 conference in Chicago. Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our archives and weekly newsletter at thedigradio.com Check out Breaking the Impasse by Kim Moody haymarketbooks.org/books/1873-breaking-the-impasse

Featuring Rahmane Idrissa on Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso. The region has been beset by jihadist insurgencies and, in the case of Mali and Burkina Faso, recent military coups. This is a comprehensive interview that puts the present conflict—which has drawn in French military and then Russian mercenary intervention—into deep historical and political-economic context from struggles over the slave trade, through French colonialism, to the neocolonial imposition of neoliberalism. Idrissa’s work: newleftreview.org/issues/ii132/articles/rahmane-idrissa-the-sahel-a-cognitive-mapping newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/kabores-defeat nybooks.com/daily/2022/05/25/potent-policies-of-empire lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n23/rahmane-idrissa/countries-without-currency” rel=”noopener” target=”_blank”>lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n04/rahmane-idrissa/coup-contrecouplrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n23/rahmane-idrissa/countries-without-currency Special outro music from Ali Farka Touré. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out Inside the Second Wave of Feminism: haymarketbooks.org/books/1887-inside-the-second-wave-of-feminism

Featuring Quinn Slobodian on his book Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism. The story of neoliberalism’s Geneva School—including Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Wilhelm Röpke—and their vision for a new global order to protect the market from democratic forces in the metropole and across the decolonizing world. An interview from archives first conducted in November 2018. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out these Haymarket titles: Keywords for Capitalism by John Patrick Leary haymarketbooks.org/books/1886-keywords-for-capitalism Struggle Makes Us Human by Vijay Prashad haymarketbooks.org/books/1869-struggle-makes-us-human

Featuring Adom Getachew on the story of how decolonization struggles across the Black Atlantic tried to not only cast off European rule but also to remake the entire world system. An October 2019 episode from the archives. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig

Featuring Kojo Koram on his brilliant book Uncommon Wealth: Britain and the Aftermath of Empire. How neoliberalism reorganized colonial capitalist plunder to survive the Third Worldist challenge, and then boomeranged back into the British metropole—a history obscured by rendering “decolonization” into a symbolic culture war battle. Check out How to Sell a Poison: The Rise, Fall, and Toxic Return of DDT by Elena Conis hachettebookgroup.com/titles/elena-conis/how-to-sell-a-poison/9781645036753/ Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig

Featuring Matt Christman on how American history brought us to this awful present. Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Featuring Nancy Fraser on why a total analysis of capitalism requires taking Marxism beyond a narrowly economistic view: what everyday labor exploitation requires from politics, care work, war-making, borders, appropriation of nature, sexism, racism, and more. Dan’s 2018 interview from the archives. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig

Featuring Evgeny Morozov on his essay “Critique of Techno-Feudal Reason.” Thinkers from the Marxist left all the way to the neoliberal and even neo-reactionary right are convinced that we’ve exited capitalism entirely and entered neo-feudalism. Morozov argues that our bleak moment is in fact still a thoroughly capitalist one. Evgeny’s essay: newleftreview.org/issues/ii133/articles/evgeny-morozov-critique-of-techno-feudal-reason Evgeny’s website: evgenymorozov.com The Syllabus: the-syllabus.com Register for Socialism 2022: socialismconference.org Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig Read our newsletter and explore the archives at thedigradio.com

Featuring Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò on his essay “Being-in-the-Room Privilege: Elite Capture and Epistemic Deference,” an interview first posted in December 2020. This pairs well with last week’s Jared Clemons interview on In This House We Believe antiracism. Since 2020, Táíwò has published a book expanding on these ideas: Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else). Read Táíwò’s essay: thephilosopher1923.org/post/being-in-the-room-privilege-elite-capture-and-epistemic-deference Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Read our newsletter at thedigradio.com

Political scientist Jared Clemons on feckless liberal anti-racism: how In This House We Believe racial liberalism leaves racial capitalism’s inequalities in place and why, drawing on Martin Luther King and A. Philip Randolph, the Black Freedom Movement instead needs solidarity with the multi-racial working class. Read Jared’s article: jaredkclemons.weebly.com/uploads/1/1/7/5/117532940/clemons_2022_-_from_freedom_now_to_blm.pdf Interview with Matt Sitman and Sam Adler-Bell from February 2021: thedigradio.com/podcast/conservative-intelligentsia-with-sam-adler-bell-matt-sitman/ Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig

Know Your Enemy hosts Matthew Sitman and Sam Adler-Bell on terrifyingly protean right-wing American politics. Check out our newsletter: thedigradio.com/newsletter Read James Pogue on the New Right: vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right-where-peter-thiel-is-placing-his-biggest-bets Read Mie Inouye’s Boston Review article on union salts: bostonreview.net/articles/labors-militant-minority/

Patrick Blanchfield analyzes the long history of US gun violence and the American death drive. Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig and get our weekly newsletter by email. Check out our most recent newsletter on the Progressive Era roots of Clintonism’s conception of the “deserving poor” thedigradio.com/newsletter32 Register for Socialism 2022 socialismconference.org

Dan’s second episode with historian Lily Geismer, who he interviewed in 2019 about Don’t Blame Us: Suburban Liberals and the Transformation of the Democratic Party. This interview is on Left Behind: The Democrats’ Failed Attempt to Solve Inequality, which details the long history of Clintonism and the Democrats’ neoliberal turn. Read the latest newsletter. It’s on what Ruthie meant when she said abolition was another word for communism: thedigradio.com/newsletter31 Listen to Geismer’s first Dig interview: thedigradio.com/podcast/race-and-class-in-the-liberal-suburbs-with-lily-geismer Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig

What role does mass incarceration play in American political economy? What does that reveal about what sort of politics are required to overcome it? Ruth Wilson Gilmore with Alberto Toscano and Brenna Bhandar, who edited the new collection Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Buy Assata Taught Me: State Violence, Racial Capitalism, and the Movement for Black Lives by Donna Murch haymarketbooks.org/books/1650-assata-taught-me

Historian Margarita Fajardo on her book The World That Latin America Created: The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America in the Development Era. Fajardo discusses the Latin American economists at the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL) who conceptualized the division of the global economy between center and periphery, and how that later gave rise to dependency theory and world systems theory. Plus Cuban Revolution and the Alliance for Progress, Allende’s democratic road to socialism and right-wing coups in Chile and Brazil—and more. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig

Live from New York: Dan interviews Amazon Labor Union president Chris Smalls, Jaz Brisack of Starbucks Workers United, SEIU Local 1199NE president Rob Baril, Jacobin writer Alex Press, and Labor Notes writer Luis Feliz Leon on the return of labor militancy that we see sweeping Amazon, Starbucks, and workplaces all around the US. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig

A timely interview from the archives: legal scholars Aziz Rana and Amna Akbar, and Movement for Black Lives lawyer Marbre Stahly-Butts, on SCOTUS, liberal court veneration, and other big questions on the law and politics facing the left. Find Eslanda at haymarketbooks.org/books/1769-eslanda Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig

Ayşe Zarakol on her book Before the West: The Rise and Fall of Eastern World Orders. How centuries of Asian empires from Genghis Khan to Timur and the early Ming Dynasty through the Ottomans and Mughals built dominant world orders and, ultimately, shaped the rise of Europe—and how that all might shape how we think about the crisis in the world order today. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out phenomenalworld.org

Destin Jenkins on his book The Bonds of Inequality: Debt and the Making of the American City, which makes a powerful argument about how the ubiquitous and in many ways invisible dependence of American cities on municipal debt to fund basic infrastructure has devastating consequences for democracy and entrenches spatial, racial, and wealth disparities. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Tickets for live NYC show on The Return of Labor Militancy: eventbrite.com/e/the-return-of-labor-militancy-with-the-dig-and-jacobin-tickets-320732338057

Mariame Kaba and Geo Maher discuss police, the politics of policing, abolition, reform—and more. Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Rupert Russell and Isabella Weber discuss Russell’s book Price Wars: How the Commodities Markets Made Our Chaotic World and also the current politics of inflation. Listen to Weber discuss her book How China Escaped Shock Therapy: thedigradio.com/podcast/how-china-escaped-shock-therapy-w-isabella-weber/ Look at Rupert’s precious puppy: twitter.com/rupert_russell/status/1511428696409837573?s=20&t=OPVNgfXuokFY6ZQYRkxe4g Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Astra interviews Achal Prabhala on the lethal persistence of global vaccine apartheid. Moderna is selfishly refusing to share or even sell (license) its mRNA technology, leaving much of the world unprotected from the pandemic and incubating new variants. Moderna’s annual shareholder meeting is April 28th. Join Justice is Global, Boston DSA, and others to challenge vaccine profiteering at their Cambridge headquarters. Sign up at bitly.com/modernaaction Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

The second of our two-part interview with sociologist Ho-fung Hung on Chinese political and economic history. This episode covers the 2008 financial crisis, how China’s response deepened global and domestic economic imbalances and (alongside the US) heightened geopolitical conflict, the current situation—including Russia’s invasion—and a lot more. Listen to part one first if you haven’t already. Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Part one of a two-part interview with sociologist Ho-fung Hung on Chinese political economic history from the 18th century to 2008: why capitalism took off in England and then elsewhere but not in China; and then, how Maoist policy laid the groundwork for China’s ultimate capitalist takeoff and boom. Episode two will focus on the 2008 financial crisis, the deepening imbalances and heightened geopolitical conflict that resulted, and the current situation—including the impact of the crises surrounding Russia’s invasion. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig

Sophie Pinkham and Nick Mulder on the war, its origins, how it’s being experienced by Ukrainians, Russians, Europeans, and Americans—and also its geopolitical and global economic ramifications, particularly sanctions. Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig Buy Angela Davis: An Autobiography haymarketbooks.org/books/1741-angela-davis

Tony Wood returns to The Dig to discuss Russia’s invasion, what it reflects about Russian politics and geopolitics today and historically, and how the Left should be thinking about it all. Tony’s LRB essay: lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n04/tony-wood2/why-didn-t-they-stop-it Listen to past Dig eps for context on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: Tony Wood on Russia and Putin: thedigradio.com/podcast/russia-beyond-putin-with-tony-wood Volodymyr Ishchenko on Ukraine: thedigradio.com/podcast/ukraine-w-volodymyr-ishchenko Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan interviews historian Kim Phillips-Fein on Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan. Listen to Kim’s Dig interview on Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics thedigradio.com/podcast/fear-city-with-kim-phillips-fein/ Listen to past Dig eps for context on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: Tony Wood on Russia and Putin: thedigradio.com/podcast/russia-beyond-putin-with-tony-wood Volodymyr Ishchenko on Ukraine: thedigradio.com/podcast/ukraine-w-volodymyr-ishchenko Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig

Feminist political theorist and organizer Verónica Gago on Argentina’s massive feminist movement and strike, the ties that bind domestic labor and financial exploitation, neoliberalism from below, and more. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out Coup: A Story of Violence and Resistance in Bolivia haymarketbooks.org/books/1745-coup

Industrial capitalism and colonialism are literally making us sick. Raj Patel and Rupa Marya on Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice. Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Olúfẹmi Táíwò guest hosts an interview with Daniela Gabor and Ndongo Samba Sylla on how financial power has shaped the global economic order from colonialism through Bretton Woods, the Washington Consensus, and today’s Wall Street Consensus. Read Daniela’s work: people.uwe.ac.uk/Person/DanielaGabor Read Ndongo’s work: rosalux.de/en/profile/es_detail/N8SVHTS8SA/ndongo-samba-sylla?cHash=ccf0c8d371bde0fecbac8337bbc6f832 Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Buy The Border Crossed Us by Justin Akers Chacón: haymarketbooks.org/books/1655-the-border-crossed-us

An in-depth interview on the historical and political-economic context of the Ukraine crisis with Ukrainian sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko. Read Volodymyr’s work: truthout.org/articles/ukrainians-are-far-from-unified-on-nato-let-them-decide-for-themselves/ ponarseurasia.org/how-maidan-revolutions-reproduce-and-intensify-the-post-soviet-crisis-of-political-representation/ lefteast.org/ukraine-in-the-vicious-circle-of-the-post-soviet-crisis-of-hegemony/ lefteast.org/contradictions-post-soviet-ukraine-failure-ukraine-new-left/ Tony Wood on Russia: thedigradio.com/podcast/russia-beyond-putin-with-tony-wood/ Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig

Epidemiologist Justin Feldman makes a comprehensive and devastating critique of Biden’s pandemic response. Read Justin’s essay: jmfeldman.medium.com/?p=88452c696f2 Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig Buy Angela Davis: An Autobiography haymarketbooks.org/books/1741-angela-davis

Historian Gabriel Winant discusses The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America. It’s a fascinating study of the emergence of the service sector and a new working class out of the wreckage of deindustrialization through the story of the rise and fall of unionized steel in Pittsburgh and its replacement by a massive hospital industry. Listen to my past interview with Winant on the social worlds that make US politics and how that sociality is rooted in the economy, carceral state, social media, religion, and more thedigradio.com/podcast/the-social-question-with-gabriel-winant Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out The After-Normal: Brief, Alphabetical Essays on a Changing Planet, by David Carlin and Nicole Walker rosemetalpress.com/books/the-after-normal

Everyone feels bad right now because conditions are awful and the outlook is bleak. What is going on, and where might things be headed? How might we become unstuck from this interregnum? Dan interviews returning guests Aziz Rana, Nikhil Pal Singh, and Wendy Brown. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig

Episode two of our two-part series on cryptocurrency: political theorist Stefan Eich on how crypto fits into Hayek’s old neoliberal dream of private money and why that vision emerged in a new form in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Read Stefan’s article: static1.squarespace.com/static/5ae8a7b625bf02c0b85aec02/t/5c923c13eef1a1ce843836ff/1553087508427/Stefan+Eich%2C+Old+Utopias%2C+New+Tax+Havens+%282019%29.pdf Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out We’re Not Here to Entertain: Punk Rock, Ronald Reagan, and the Real Culture War of 1980s America by Kevin Mattson global.oup.com/academic/product/were-not-here-to-entertain-9780190908232

Edward Ongweso Jr. and Jacob Silverman on cryptocurrency, NFTs, Elon Musk, the metaverse, meme stocks, and techno-utopianism amid the crushing reality of our neoliberal hellscape. The first in a two-episode series on crypto. Read Dan’s new essay on border control politics: nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/border-crises/ Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig