In this episode, Oden speaks to Left Voice writer Maryam Alaniz about the revolt taking place in Iran. Maryam explains both what's happening and the broader context of the mass mobilizations, including the devastating economic effects of sanctions and popular uprisings in recent years. Importantly, we discuss the need for the Iranian working class to forge a way forward — independent of the repressive Khamenei regime and independent of imperialist powers like the U.S. which seek to install a puppet monarchy under Reza Pahlavi. A victory for the Iranian working class would reverberate across the region, and could be the foundation of genuine democracy, inseparable from the socialist reorganization of society.

Learn More:

- Iran: Against Repression and Imperialist Threats — for an Independent Path of the Working Class!

- “Workers Must Lead Fight for Liberation, Not Authoritarian Forms of Power or Foreign States”: Statement from Workers in Iran

- Revolt in Iran: Only Workers Can Turn the Tide Against Khamenei and Pahlavi

- Permanent Revolution in Iran

- Black Friday: The Massacre that Ignited a Revolution in Iran

Check out our episode about Venezuela.

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In this episode, Oden speaks to Left Voice editor Samuel Karlin about President Trump's attacks on Venezuela. Sam explains how these escalations are about U.S. imperialism — not drug trafficking — and about reasserting U.S. hegemony in Latin America. We also discuss Republicans' and Democrats' responses, and the ways in which imperialism is bipartisan. Importantly, we talk about the tasks for the international working class. Liberation for Latin America and the defeat of U.S. imperialism in the region can only come from international, working-class unity, without supporting repressive, anti-worker governments like that of Nicolás Maduro. Workers make the economy and imperialism run, which means that we can grind imperialism to a halt. 

Learn More:
- U.S. Attacks on Venezuela Are a Threat to All of Latin America and the Caribbean

- Trump Doesn't Care About Drug Trafficking, He Cares About Domination

- Hegseth Threatens Greater Military Aggression in Latin America with Operation Southern Spear

- What the PSL (and the Campist Left) Gets Wrong About Venezuela

Check out our episode about U.S. imperialism in Mexico on Spotify or Apple. 

Support this podcast on Patreon 

Follow us on social media! We’re on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok as @left_voice and Facebook as @leftvoice. Follow us on Bluesky at leftvoice.bsky.social.

In this episode, Oden talks to rank-and-file union member and college professor Jason Koslowski about Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's book Abundance, and the roadmap it puts forward for the crisis-ridden Democratic Party. They discuss the problems with the authors' policy prescriptions, and the broader capitalist and imperialist crises motivating the book. 

Abundance is already everywhere — it's just abundance for the bourgeoisie, at the expense of workers and the oppressed. Capitalist abundance, as advocated by Klein and Thompson, hinges on even more exploitation and immiseration for the working class, as well as greater ecological devastation. 

However, the crises the book is trying to address holds an opening for the working class. We make society and the economy run, and we can fight to create a truly abundant world under socialism — one without private property, exploitation, oppression, borders, and ecological devastation. But this requires independent organization, without the Democratic Party and its capitalist abundance agenda. 

Learn More:
- The Reactionary Patchwork of Abundance

- Left Voice Magazine: "The Mamdani Moment and the Fight Against the Far Right"

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In this episode, Oden and fellow Left Voice member Julia Wallace interview Luca Otello Gieri, a Master's Student in Journalism at the University of Bologna, Italy who is a militant of Frazione Internazionalista Rivoluzionaria and has been active in the movement for Palestine for the past two years. They discuss the powerful worker- and student-led actions in Italy in solidarity with Palestine, including huge strikes and mobilization in September and October, and organizing amid the far-right government of Giorgia Meloni. 

 Learn More:
- “Blocchiamo Tutto!” Strikes and Blockades Paralyze Italy in Solidarity with Gaza

- 2 Million People Paralyze Italy in a General Strike for Gaza and the Flotilla

Luca is also a contributor to Left Voice's sister site, La Voce delle Lotte.

Support Left Voice on Patreon 
 
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In this episode, Oden talks to Julia Wallace, member of Left Voice and SEIU 721, and Hector Rivera, a queer, Chicano, socialist educator who writes for Tempest Magazine. They discuss what's going on in Los Angeles, California, which has become a flashpoint in President Trump's war on immigration and attacks on the working class. Hector and Julia also describe the ways that communities have been fighting back, including independent self-organization, and how the struggle against the Far Right is connected to the fight for other democratic rights. 

The working class, community organizations, the immigrant rights movement, and other social movements can unite their forces and go even further to definitively push federal agents out of the city and win rights for immigrants — in California, and beyond. 

 Learn More:
- Los Angeles Demands: ICE Out of Our Communities!

- 2,000 Troops Withdraw from Los Angeles, but the Fight for Immigrant Rights Isn't Over. Fuera ICE!

Support Left Voice on Patreon 
 
Follow us on social media! We’re on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok as @left_voice, on Facebook as @leftvoice, and Bluesky at leftvoice.bsky.social. 

In this episode, Oden talks to Sasha Yaropolskaya, a Russian revolutionary trans activist and immigrant in France, about the rightward shift on LGBTQ+ rights. They discuss what it means to be at the end of the era of progressive neoliberalism, and how decades of pursuing a strategy of lesser evilism has led to betrayal for the oppressed. But LGBTQ+ people are not powerless in the face of these attacks. The antidote is working-class unity and revolutionary politics to overcome the Right's divisive tactics. It means building up a working-class party with an internationalist, socialist perspective, able to fight exploitation and all oppression. 

Sasha is organized in Revolution Permanente (Left Voice's sister group) and its feminist and LGBT group, Du Pain et Des Roses. 

Listen to our previous episode about the fight for trans rights. 

 Learn More:
- A Marxist Take on the Attack on Trans Rights

- The Working Class Must Fight for Trans Rights

- Nancy Fraser and Counterhegemony

- The Antidote to Midterm Despair Is Socialist Feminism

Support Left Voice on Patreon 
 
Follow us on social media! We’re on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok as @left_voice, on Facebook as @leftvoice, and Bluesky at leftvoice.bsky.social. 

In this episode, Oden talks to rank-and-file union member and college professor Jason Koslowski about President Trump's tariffs. They discuss the growing capitalist crises that have led to these policies, and what Trump is hoping to gain  from them — both internationally and domestically. Importantly, Jason explains why labor leaders' support for the tariffs is a form of chauvinism that will only hurt workers in both the U.S. and abroad. The working class paid the price for neoliberalism, and we will also pay the price for protectionism. We cannot fight on the capitalists' terrain. Instead, we need to organize from below to fight for a different system. 

 Learn More:
- Trump's Tariffs Are Causing Chaos on Wall Street, but It's the Working Class Who Will Pay the Price

- Notes from a Wall Street Sewer: Tariff Edition

- Why Is Shawn Fain and the UAW Leadership Supporting Trump's Trade Policies?

- Trump, Engineer of Chaos

Support Left Voice on Patreon 
 
Follow us on social media! We’re on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok as @left_voice, on Facebook as @leftvoice, and Bluesky at leftvoice.bsky.social. 

In this episode, Left Voice editor Samuel Karlin interviews immigrant rights activist and writer Silky Shah about the growing attacks on immigrants. They discuss the root causes of migration, the divisive narrative of “good” and “bad” immigrants, and how both parties have helped build the war on immigrants in recent years. Most importantly, Silky explains how we resist these attacks through unity across movements and countries, and by fighting U.S. militarism and deportations.

To read a transcribed version of this interview: https://www.leftvoice.org/immigrants-have-become-the-target-interview-with-silky-shah/

Read Silky Shah's book, Unbuild Walls: Why Immigrant Justice Needs Abolition

Learn More:
- To Stop Deportations, We Need a Mass Movement of the Working Class and Oppressed
- Trump's War on Immigrants Pulls from a Long U.S. History of Creating Domestic Enemies

- "It's Time for Us to Speak Up and to Demand Better": Interview with an Undocumented Activist

Support Left Voice on Patreon

Follow Left Voice on social media! We’re on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok as @left_voice, on Facebook as @leftvoice, and Bluesky at leftvoice.bsky.social. 

In this episode, Oden talks to Leonie Lieb, a revolutionary socialist running for a seat in the German parliamentary elections as part of the Revolutionary Internationalist Organization (RIO). Leonie explains the rightward shift in German politics, the popularity of the AfD, and Die Linke's failed strategy of defeating the right in elections rather than through class struggle.

RIO's candidates are providing an example of an independent socialist political alternative to the bourgeois parties, and fighting to promote the independent self-organization of the working class. 

Building a socialist alternative is the way to fight the growing Far Right, whether in Germany, Europe, in the United States, or elsewhere. And it’s the only way to win victory for the working class.

 Learn More:
- Revolutionary Socialists Are Running in the German Federal Elections
- Government Crisis in Germany: 10 Theses on the Political Situation for 2025

- Millions of People in Germany Protest Against the Right — and the Parties Respond by Shifting to the Right
- Who Should Socialists Vote for in the Upcoming German Elections?
- What Is Class Struggle Unionism?

Support Left Voice on Patreon

Follow Klasse Gegen Klasse on Instagram

Follow Left Voice on social media! We’re on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok as @left_voice, on Facebook as @leftvoice, and Bluesky at leftvoice.bsky.social. 

In this episode, Oden talks to Left Voice editor James Dennis Hoff and union organizer and college professor Jason Koslowski about how labor prepares for the second Trump term. They discuss the kinds of attacks on workers that we can expect from the new administration, and how neither Democrats nor Republicans offer anything to the working class. Most importantly, they explain why unions need to break from their failing approach of constraining themselves to laws that are meant to limit our power as the working class. In the coming period, class struggle will be decisive — and the labor movement needs to be ready to break laws, disobey leaders when we have to, and build power from the bottom up. 

 Learn More:
- Is the Labor Movement Ready for Trump 2.0?
- Class Struggle and the Relation of Forces Under Trump 2.0: Three Counter-Tendencies to the Rightward Shift
- No, the NLRB Is Not on Our Side and Never Has Been
- What Is Class Struggle Unionism?

Support Left Voice on Patreon 
 
Follow us on social media! We’re on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok as @left_voice, on Facebook as @leftvoice, and Bluesky at leftvoice.bsky.social.