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The Tragedy of American Science with Cliff Conner

Alex and Rudy welcome historian Cliff Conner for a discussion of his recent book The Tragedy of American Science: From Truman to Trump. They discuss how this tragedy is a tragedy of capitalist science which is seen across the capitalist world, the role of science as an unchallengeable source of authority, and how that is squared with the anti-intellectualism needed to sustain a power structure, the influence of money in regulation and research, the precautionary principle and the risk-assessment principles for commercializing new products and the use of reductionism in research and how that is inseparable from the bourgeois mentality. The conversation then moves to the American university and the effect of the Bayh-Dole Act, and the relationship between military spending and research, including the US’s economic addiction to “weaponized Keynesianism” and how American policy makers do not care about the failures of military technology as long as the money keeps flowing. They discuss the ideals of objectivity and neutrality,  ‘value-free’ science as an ideological tool, and how the social sciences can strive for objectivity. They end off talking about what changes and what things will stay the same with Biden, and how non-capitalist economies have shown that other models of science are possible where innovation did not rely on profit as a motive.

Details on the financial interests behind Operation Warp Speed, by Marjorie Cohn:  https://truthout.org/articles/trump-administration-is-paying-big-pharma-billions-in-rush-for-vaccine/
Science for the People can be found here: https://scienceforthepeople.org

 

Buy Cliff’s book here. For early access to podcast episodes and other rewards, sign up for our Patreon.

 

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Pull the Plugs? Labor, Power, and the Rise of Fossil Capitalism

Join the Cosmonaut Ecocrew as they discuss Andreas Malm’s piercing 2016 text Fossil Capital and attempt to dispel the myriad of myths that have been erected around the energetic transition to coal. The fateful intertwining in mid-19th century British cotton districts of capital and fossil fuels is examined in the context of class struggle, the ascendancy of the steam engine, and alternative futures that were incompatible with the logic of capital.

Check the previous episodes of this series:

Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy with Red Library

Capitalism in the Web of Life: A Discussion

Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature

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Organizing the Oppressed with Mara & Janaya of Philly Socialists

Rudy and Annie join the two co-chairs of Philly Socialists, Mara and Janaya, for what starts as a conversation on the issues women and non-men comrades face when organizing, and ends up being a discussion of Philly Socialists’ base-building activities and their philosophy on the party. The episode starts off with a discussion of the experiences in PS to make the spaces more welcoming to everyone, the role of child-care and of strong sexual harassment policies, and how to provide spaces for everyone to become leaders.

This is grounded in what PS calls base-building: for example, their English as a second language classes, their work in the Philadelphia Tenants Union and their community garden, where PS organize neighborhood residents to fight back against gentrification and reclaim land in Philadelphia. The conversation continues to PS’s view of how the party should arise, before cycling back to the issues that started it.

As always, support us on Patreon for early access to episodes and more.
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The Politics of Drugs and Harm Reduction with Michael Gilbert

Annie and Cliff join Michael Gilbert, a public health technologist and a harm reduction organizer for a conversation on how communists should relate to harm reduction efforts. They discuss the reasons why people use drugs, the role of drug availability in harm reduction, how international regulations shape the drug trade, and how that is used to justify politics such as strong borders and even invasions. They also discuss the roots of drug criminalization in the US and how that relates to public health outcomes, how harm reduction can be both self-organization of drug users and something brought from outside,  the particularity of the words harm reduction, and how that reflects on the ethics of drug use.  Finally, they touch on Michael’s personal experiences organizing around harm reduction, and how to go beyond just being a red charity.

As always, support us on Patreon for early access to episodes and more.
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Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy with Red Library

Remi and Niko join Comrade Adam from Red Library to discuss Kohei Saito’s Capital, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy: Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism. We discuss the concept of metabolism, Marx’s evolution of thought on ecology being the core realm of capitalist crisis, agricultural chemistry, the role of a Marxist ecosocialist perspective to stop the destruction of capital across the planet, and much more even including Žižek’s thoughts on ecology!

Note: The episode ends a bit abruptly as technology bailed on us in the final moments.

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Different Horizons of Science Fiction under Socialism with Virginia Conn

Rudy and Medway are joined by recently graduated Dr. Virginia Conn to discuss her research on science fiction in the USSR, the German Democratic Republic and China. We discuss what the purpose of science fiction under socialism is, the continuities and ruptures of science fiction in the People’s Republic of China during its diverse political periods, how the new Soviet citizen contrasted with the Chinese new citizen, the figure of Bogdanov within Russian Cosmism, how the particularities of the GDR reflected in its Science Fiction, and how many male-written stories in socialist science fiction both succeed and fail in capturing the intricacies of gender and social reproduction.

Read Virginia’s article “Economic Circulations: Blood-Based Systems of Value in Alexander Bogdanov’s Red Star” here.

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From Trade-Union Consciousness to Socialist Consciousness with Chris Townsend

Three of our writers are joined by veteran union organizer Chris Townsend for a podcast discussion on labor organizing across history and in the present day. Chris, Remi, Peter, and Annie will explore how to do what Lenin emphasized had to be done: how do we inject the political ‘good news’ of socialism into the workers’ economistic struggle? They recapitulate how the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party situated itself in the labor organizing of the early 1900s, how the ‘third period’ of the Comintern laid the basis of the formation of the CIO in the US, and attempt to extrapolate what can we learn from those tactics to apply in the present day.

As always, please subscribe to our Patreon for early access to podcasts and other rewards.

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Che Guevara and the Economics of Socialist Transition

Christian, Donald, and Rudy sit down for a podcast discussion on Che Guevara’s program for a socialist transition using Helen Yaffe’s book Che Guevara: The Economics of Revolution as a background.  We visit the economic “Great Debate” of Cuba in the early 1960s, the different approaches to using the law of value for socialist transformation, Che’s critique of market socialism, his model of Cuba as a single socialist factory, and how this model compares to contemporary approaches such as the People’s Republic of Walmart. We emphasize how Che’s humanistic outlook in molding new humans prefigured some of the problems that other socialist societies such as Yugoslavia or the Brezhnev USSR would face, and how his contributions add to the debate around cybernetical socialism today.

As always, please subscribe to our Patreon for early access to podcasts and other rewards.

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Capitalism in the Web of Life: A Discussion

Join us for the second installment in Cosmonaut’s critically acclaimed ecology podcast series to discuss Jason Moore’s “Capitalism in the Web of Life”. Niko, Matthew and Remi discuss how this work merges concepts from Marxist ecology and world-systems analysis to reveal how capitalism organizes nature as a whole oikeios, and how this sets limits to capitalist accumulation once “the Four Cheaps” (energy, food, work and raw materials) become scarce and capitalism is forced to shift to new regimes of accumulation. The team talks about how Moore’s concepts of oikeios and capitalism-in-nature extends the dialectical relationship of organism and environment, and how this can be applied for a socialist project, as well as addressing the critiques of Moore’s work from other ecosocialist schools.

As always, please subscribe to our Patreon for early access to podcasts and other rewards.

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Protests, Guerillas and Revolution in Iran with Yassamine Mather

Donald and Lydia interview Yassamine Mather, former Fedayeen (minority) guerrilla fighter, chair of the Hands off the People of Iran coalition and editor of Critique. The episode starts off with the history of the debates leading to the formation of the minority Fedayeen faction, and why they decide to break from the majority Fedayeen faction, take up arms and start a guerilla/focoist campaign against the Iranian Republic after the 1979 revolution. Yassamine also offers her account of why the left failed to take advantage of the 1979 situation, the problems with focoism and guerilla tactics, as well as her thoughts on the 2019 protests in Iran, and how the international left and Iranian exiles should relate to the Islamic Republic.

Yassamine’s writing can be found on the Weekly Worker website. We especially recommend her talk “Learn the lessons of the Fedayeen“, as well as her general archive.

As always, please subscribe to our Patreon for early access to podcasts and other rewards.