Sean is joined by labor activist and historian Jeff Schuhrke to discuss his new book Blue Collar Empire: The Untold Story of US Labor's Global Anticommunist Crusade out now from Verso Books.
Why did American unions become a junior partner in US Empire during the Cold War ? How did anti-communists co...
2024-10-30 10:00:00 +0000 UTC View Post
Friend of the show, Rax King, is doing an intensive in-person writing course in Brooklyn next week and still has a few spots open!
If anyone in the NYC area wants to sign up, you can follow this link right here: http://raxkingisdead.com/classes
She is a great writer and teacher, you won't regret it!
2024-10-29 15:13:10 +0000 UTC View Post
Aidan Beatty, author of The Party is Always Right: The Untold Story of Gerry Healy and British Trotskyism joins us to trainspot the British Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP), a Trotskyist cult that was tight with Qaddafi, boasted Vanessa Redgrave as a member, and collapsed after the revelation of years of its leader's sexual abuse of membership.
In the fun half we talk...
2024-10-23 10:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post
We talk about the box office disaster Joker 2 in the second part of Fight Club Club. Is it all a big joke on Joker 1 fans? How did Todd Phillips go from GG Allin and John Wayne Gacey to Joker? How does Harley Quinn match up with Marla Singer? And what will the Joker Revolution be like?
New Yorker article on Fight Club, Joker, and the incels: https://www.newyork...
Jason, Daniel, and Andy talk about Fight Club to celebrate to the 25th anniversary of the movie and the Battle of Seattle that followed it. We look at the history of the book and Chuck Palahniuk's situationist influence and his embrace of his rightwing fans, the Gen-X ennui behind the creation of Tyler Durden, the politics of Project Mayhem, and Marla Singer's character as the story's ethical core.
Check out Jason's 2024-10-21 10:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post
Sean and Andy are joined by returning guest and cofounder of ILC-Chicago Jamie Merchant (@pathtopraxis) to discuss his new full-length monograph, out now from Reaktion Books, called Endgame: Economic Nationalism and Global Decline. In it, Jamie provides a masterful, insightful and readable account of t...
2024-10-15 10:00:00 +0000 UTC View Post
&nders Lee and AP &y guest on the Quorators podcast to field questions about UFOs, cyptids, Pompeii, and, of course, ampersands.
video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Udhh_BrLui8
NEWS EP! We talk about the hurricane disaster, the Middle East disaster, the Ukraine disaster, and the Longshoremen's strike as a prelude to the war on Christmas. In the bonus we look at a proletarian get-rich quick scheme, an LAPD robbery gone wrong, and speculate on the REAL reason the Feds are taking down Mayor Eric Adams.
Organized abandonment & campaign strategy in Appalachia: 2024-10-02 10:00:13 +0000 UTC
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While Marxist friend and historian Cosimo Pataleoni was in town from Italy, Sean decided to bring along Ross Wolf to get a taste of some badass history of piracy.
We discuss Cosimo's work on the Uskoks, Croatian rebel sailors of the early modern period, as a lens for understanding the rise of commercial capitalism, proletarianization, debt bondage, and ...
2024-09-24 10:00:00 +0000 UTC View Post
Sean and Varn are joined by special guest, A.P. Andy of the Antifada podcast, to round out their previous conversation on current impasses on the left.
How did Andy’s Platypus Affiliated Panel go? What’s new with the American Communist Party and how have they Stalinized Bordigism? What has happened to make Marxism-Leninism into an anachronistic meme ideology? And, in the bonus section, out of all this decay what hope is there in some sort of renewal? (We’ve got some ideas on this...
2024-09-18 10:00:15 +0000 UTC View Post
NEWS ep! We talk about Sean's upcoming well-deserved Alaska vacation before shifting into some preliminary analysis on Israel's brief anti-Netanyahu general strike, the contradictions of the Israeli working-class and war economy, and the legacy of labor Zionism.
In the second half we talk about AfD's victory in Thuringia and the meaning of the cleavages within neoliberalism, including Brazil banning Twitter and the absence of left partisanship in free-speech discourse.
...
Rachel Kushner joins us to talk about her new novel Creation Lake--the story of an American agent-provacateur infiltrating a rural commune in France.
We go through some of the inspirations behind her characters in this and past books (including Jacques Camatte, Julian Coupat, and Ben ...
2024-09-04 10:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post
REUPLOAD of our 2020 collaborative commentary with Swampside Chats! of S3ep11 of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
In this two part episode, the crew goes back in time to a San Francisco homeless camp at the time of the a riot against neo-liberalism on September 1, 2024 that spiraled into international revolution. Written in the '90s, the episode presciently predicts the economic crises of the current...
2024-09-01 15:44:37 +0000 UTC View Post
Enjoy this seventh episode of a sideproject with Varn, Sean, and Regrettable Century, where they "explain right-wing thought to you so you can actually do something with it."
In this episode they read chapter 5 of Dugin's Fourth Political Theory" on the au courant topic of multipolarity. What does this Russian dingbat have to say about the New World Order?...
2024-08-30 23:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post
Bronx expat Zhana Kurti reports back from the Chicago DNC and the protests against it. We go through the context of the 1924 and 1968 DNCs, the issues of Palestine and race in the election, how the left should relate to the elections, and if we should even be talking about it all.
Check out last week's episode of Party Girls podcast for more in depth discussions of the protests in ...
2024-08-26 10:00:09 +0000 UTC View Post
Situ-Punk Bill Brown of "NOT BORED!" zine fame chats with Andy about Raoul Vaneigem's The Revolution of Everyday Life and its influence on the punk counterculture from the seventies to the hipster aughts. Towards the end of the episode we talk about his Vaneigem's prediction of the "End of Christianity" in relation to heresy and queerness.
Greil Marcus’s Liptick Traces 2024-08-21 10:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post
Sean and Varn are back to talk about the various paroxysms of the American left: why are the sects getting weirder and weirder? Why do we have to pay attention to capitalist politics while realizing we have no stake in it? Why do we focus on labor and what the hell is the Independent Labor Club trying to do?
Song: Gary Numan - This Wreckage
2024-08-14 10:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post
Ross Wolfe, Alex Gendler, Morgan, and Matthew Donovan join us for an extensive review and analysis of last week's Hegelian E-Girl Sympos...
2024-08-09 10:00:10 +0000 UTC View Post
Our France correspondent Henry J. Wallis returns to give updates since the New Popular Front's surprise victory on July 7. Will Macron block them from power after the Olympics? Will the French return from vacation in fighting mode? And how does Kamala's emergence compare to the antifascist electoral block?
First episode with Henry: 2024-08-05 10:00:11 +0000 UTC
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Our favorite engineers of the fouriest future return! We talk about an obscure marxist concept, dispels some myths of multipolarity, and provide some updates on the US Fire Festival-esque attempts to onshore/friendshore/reshore tech manufacturing.
In the bonus half we share our utopian visions for the world to come when the children of Bordigists, instead of Gramscians, take over the Democratic Party to lead the communization revolution.
Check out our first episode wi...
2024-07-31 10:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post
The world is ending. Home Depot workers are responsible, and Alexander Edward and Tony Boswell of Minion Death Cult join Sean to document it.
Check out Sean's other appearance on MDC this week
2024-07-26 10:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post
&ers, &y, and Sean look at the career of New Left sociologist JACK SCOTT, who founded a "Jock Liberation Army," overhauled the Oberlin Athletics Department, and linked up with the Symbionese Liberation Army.
Jack Scott:
https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/kw/jack-scott-the-athletic-revolution/
2024-07-24 10:00:12 +0000 UTC
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Sean sits down with Los Angeles-based Antifada political economy correspondent, Jason Smith of the Brooklyn Rail, to discuss demographic decline, a hot button issue relatively untouched by the Marxist left.
Why has fertility gone up in the past? Why has it gone down in the developed world? What do Marx, Adam Smith and Keynes have to say about ...
2024-07-17 10:00:11 +0000 UTC View Post
Audio from ILC's first Independent Labor Assembly July 7th, 2024 assembly at Talon Bar in Brooklyn with guest Gregory Butler
The Independent Labor Club is an organization that seeks to bring workers together from all ov...
2024-07-10 10:00:13 +0000 UTC View Post
We consult with our Berliner Critical Theorist rabbi Jacob Blumenfeld about his recent Cured Quail essay Managing Decline. How do we shift the climate crisis from disaster communism and inhabitable barbarity to a communism of repair?
Read and preorder: https://curedquail.com/Managing-Decline
Climate Barbarism: 2024-07-03 10:00:07 +0000 UTC
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Our France correspondent/flaneur Henry J. Wallis takes us on a leisurely derive through the French political spectrum and explains his support as an Appelist for the Popular Front opposition to Le Pen and Macron in the upcoming snap elections.
Check out Henry's 2024-06-26 10:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post
Enjoy this fifth episode of a sideproject with Varn, Sean, and Regrettable Century, where they "explain right-wing thought to you so you can actually do something with it."
In this episode they read chapters 2 and 3 of Dugin's Fourth Political Theory" and ask: "What is it that liberalism does? Who is it's actors? What is the political economy? All th...
2024-06-21 15:36:29 +0000 UTC View Post
NEWS EPISODE! We talk about the the 4hr Star Wars Youtube video, and strike updates, Russian War Keynesian updates, COVID propaganda updates, and a preview of Sean's new AI show.
Spectacular Failure of Star Wars Hotel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0CpOYZZZW4
Daniel returns to tell us about the Chicago encampments, Andy reports back from the New School occupation, and we re-read two Moishe Postone essays on anti-zionism and anti-semitism in light of the new movement.
New School divestment vote:
https://www.newschoolfreepress.com/2024/05/20/new-school-trustees-will-hold-a-vote-on-divestme...
2024-06-11 09:30:00 +0000 UTC View Post
Anarcho-Anon Film Critic Daniel and Andy discuss the politics of Furiosa and the rest of the Mad Max franchise through the theories of Pierre Clastres, Donna Haraway, Maggie Nelson, Bruno Latour, Nick Land, Hillary Clinton, punk, and disaster anarchism. I considered calling this episode "Anya Taylor Armed Joy" but decided against it.
2024-06-07 09:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post