Cosmopod

Annie joins Chris Townsend, longtime organizer with both the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers (UE) and the Amalgamated Transit Union for an oral history on UE from the second World War, through their split with the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the offshoring wave of the late 20th century and the collapse of the USSR. They discuss how UE develops a militant class consciousness in its members, their survival through the dark years of the 1990s, organizing the unorganized, their attitude towards union bureaucracy and much more!

Check out Chris's Letter to the Socialists, Old and New and his previous podcast appearance in From Trade Union Consciousness to Socialist Consciousness.

Nicolas D Villarreal argues against populist appeals for a common front between the working-class and small business owners. Mick Labas reads the article aloud.

Anton and Donald join Mike Macnair for a discussion on law in history and in Marxist thought. They discuss the purpose of law, the different schools of philosophy of law, how Hegel conceived law and the state, and what Marx and Engels took from it, the legal theories of the Soviet theoretician Pashukanis, the role of the constitution in a bourgeois state, what is the role of judges in capitalism and how to organize law in a socialist society.

References: Mike Macnair - Law and State as Holes in Marxism

A brief and short introduction to philosophy of law is provided by the aptly titled Philosophy of Law: A Very Short Introduction by Raymond Wacks.

Stani Bjegunac lays out the ways a planned economy could contribute to the project of transgender liberation, focusing on the issues of bathrooms and medical transition. Marina reads the article aloud.

Rudy joins Roxy Hall and Giacomo Bianchino for a discussion on the past, present and future of the Australian state. We talk about the history of Australian colonization with its differences and similarities with US and Canada, the squatter vanguard of settler-colonialism, the failed attempt at a bourgeois revolution that was the Eureka Stockade and the process of Federation. We then turn to the formation and pivotal role of the Australian Labor Party in Australian politics, outlining the broad pacts between labour and capital which included White Australia, the Whitlam government and the New Left period, and finish off by discussion the present prospects for struggle around the AUKUS military pact, migrant workers, housing and the environmental and indigenous struggles.

Check out Jack's article on Agricultural Labor in Australia.

Further reading:J. Roberts - "Massacres to Mining: the Colonisation of Aboriginal Australia" H. McQueen- "A New Britannia: An Argument concerning the social origins of Australian radicalism and nationalism." R. W. Connell and T. H. Irving - "Class Structure in Australian History " E. Humphrys - "How Labour Built Neoliberalism: Australia's Accord, the Labour Movement and the Neoliberal Project"

Erratum: Harold Holt was the Prime Minister that enfranchised indigenous peoples.

In light of the Taliban's consolidation of power in response to U.S. withdrawal from the region, Rob Ashlar predicts not the foreclosure of class struggle in Afghanistan but new beginnings. LC reads the article aloud.