Following their Trip episode about Cleaning, the ACFM crew take a closer look at the hidden labour that keeps the economy running. Would public canteens solve 80% of our problems?

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In the socialist utopia of our dreams, who exactly is doing the cleaning? Nadia, Jem and Keir confront a tricky topic in this ACFM Trip. With music from X-Ray Spex, The B-52s and more, they offer their weird-left perspective on everything from dirty dishes and bodily secretions to circumcision, pollution and the caste system.

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Following the recent Trip episode on Heroes, Keir and Jem return with a Microdose focusing on the masked, the winged and the mutated. Why are superheroes such a cultural mainstay? What psychological and political desires do they fulfil? Are they inherently reactionary? From Superman to Batman, Wonder Woman to 2000AD, it’s a weird left reading of superheroes and comic book culture.

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The ACFM crew offer a weird-left perspective on the role of the hero (and heroine) in politics and culture. Nadia, Jem and Keir assess theories of Great Men, the myth of the hero’s journey and the lure of the anti-hero with ideas from Weber and Hegel and music from Tina Turner and Sonic Youth.

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The ACFM gang gather for a springtime reading of a prototype acid-communist text by Russian revolutionary Alexandra Kollontai.

Download the text and follow along as Nadia, Keir and Jem get their teeth into Make Way for Winged Eros! A Letter to Working Youth, published in 1923.Check out the AK-47 podcast mentioned in this show: https://kristenghodsee.com/podcast

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The gang present a milestone 50th Trip all about acid: a drug, a genre, a political concept, a mental tool and a thought corrosive. Looking back on six years of the podcast, Nadia, Keir and Jem decide if ‘acid’ is still a useful way of thinking about left-wing politics.

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What’s the point of the arts when the world is on fire? To follow the pipeline from creativity to activism and back again, Nadia Idle is joined by Amber Massie-Blomfield, former chief of theatre company Complicité and the author of Acts of Resistance: The Power of Art to Create Better World.

They discuss Dan Edelstyn and Hilary Powell’s Power Station, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot, the Gaza Free Circus,
Rebecca Solnit’s Hope in the Dark, Blood of the Condor (1969), the writer Edouard Louis, Billie Holiday’s ‘Strange Fruit’ and the artist-activist Jay Jordan.

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After last week’s ACFM on the meaning and morality of personal debt, Keir and Nadia zoom out to the macroeconomics of debt.

Joining them to make sense of concepts like sovereign debt, structural adjustment and international ratings agencies is Heidi Chow, executive director of Debt Justice. She explains how and why countries borrow money, why Global South countries end up mired in debt, and how the climate crisis will affect national borrowing.

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The concept of debt is as slippery as it is powerful. In this Trip episode, Keir, Nadia and Jem explain why debt is more like a belief than a calculation, and wonder how to imagine a society without it.

From credit cards to dowries, they discuss the reality and fantasy of debt, with ideas from David Graeber and Deleuze and music from Crass and Gwen Guthrie.

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The ACFM gang gather for a midwinter reading of one of the most influential political tracts ever written. Download a version online and follow along as Nadia, Keir and Jem reassess The Communist Manifesto, published in 1848 by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

Find the books and music mentioned in the show: https://novara.media/acfm

Help us build people-powered media – pledge your support from as little as £1 a month: https://novara.media/support