Cosmopod

Donald and Rudy join John Smith, author of Imperialism in the 21st Century: Globalization, Exploitation and Capitalism's Final Crisis for a discussion on imperialism and unequal exchange. We discuss the history of three global commodities: t-shirts, iPhones and coffee and what they can tell us about the worldwide social relationships of capitalism, why GDP and productivity are illusions that hide exploitation and super-profits, the concept of labor aristocracy and super-profits and the political programs of Arghiri Emmanuel, Samir Amin and Ruy Mauro Marini. We then turn to the present, including capitalism's crisis, decaying US hegemony, the possibilities of North-South solidarity and the existing actual solidarity links in trade unions. We finish by discussing what fair trade relationships between socialist countries could look like.

Roxy Hall makes an intervention into debates around transgender issues, critiquing both trans liberalism and anti-trans radical feminism to stake out a position that seeks the abolition of gender. Annie Rose reads the article aloud.

Matt and Rudy join Sasha Durakov Warren from An Unsound Mind for a discussion on the history of psychiatry reform movements and radical mental health. We discuss how the definition of mind has changed across history, and how the internal movements to reform psychiatry and mistakenly grouped under broad umbrellas that hide a myriad of approaches and contradictions. We also discuss the Franco Basaglia's Democratic Psychiatry movement and Fanon's decolonial psychiatry, and end by envisioning what therapy could look like in a communist society.

Written by Bolshevik philosopher, economist, and statesmen Nikolai Bukharin in 1921, Historical Materialism: A System of Sociology was the standard primer on sociology and the historical materialist method in the early Soviet Union. Christian Cail introduces the text in the latest offer from Cosmonaut Press, which Cliff Connolly reads aloud. The book is available for purchase at cosmonautmag.com and a reading group starting Sept 30th will be available to all Patreon subscribers.

Donald and Rudy join Daniel Tutt for a discussion on the history and present of psychoanalysis and its relationship to Marxism. We discuss whether psychoanalysis can be considered a science and how psychoanalysts produce knowledge before explaining the libidinal economy and possible psychoanalytic interventions in the sphere of exchange. We also discuss Wilhelm Reich: his claim to being the first Marxist psychoanalytic as well as his writings on fascism and its relationship to the family. We continue with family abolition, psychoanalysis in the New Left, and Christopher Lasch's project in the context of psychoanalysis, and finish with the relevance of Ernst Bloch and utopia in Marxist propaganda today.

Rudy joins Paris Yeros editor of Reclaiming the Nation: The Return of the National Question in Africa, Asia and Latin America and Reclaiming the Land: The Resurgence of Rural Movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America for a discussion on the agrarian and national questions in the 21st century, with a focus on the Zimbabwe land occupations of the 2000s. We discuss the semi-proletarization and land hunger in the Global South, the relevance of the peasantry as a social class, national sovereignty and South-South cooperation before moving on to discuss the land occupations and land redistribution process in Zimbabwe that started in 2000 and how they centered the race and national questions. We also discuss the challenges Zimbabwe has faced since then, and compare the militancy of the Zimbabwe occupations to other movements today such as La Via Campesina and MST in Brazil.

Further reading: Paris Yeros - A New Bandung in the Current Crisis Sam Moyo - The Land Occupation Movement and Democratisation in Zimbabwe: Contradictions of Neoliberalism Sam Moyo & Paris Yeros (2007), The Radicalised state: Zimbabwe's interrupted revolution, Review of African Political Economy, 34(111), 103–121. Sam Moyo & Paris Yeros (2013), 'The Zimbabwe model: Radicalisation, reform and resistance', in S. Moyo & W. Chambati (eds), Land and agrarian reform in Zimbabwe: Beyond white-settler capitalism (pp. 331–358). Dakar: CODESRIA.

Rudy and Brendan join Tyler Shipley, author of Canada in the World: Settler Capitalism and the Colonial Imagination, for a discussion on the past, present and future of the Canadian state. We discuss the terms "Settler Capitalism" and "Colonial Imagination", the formation of Canada through Confederation, the historical policy of Canada towards indigenous people and the current debates around residential schools and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW), how Canada is falsely posited as a gentler alternative to the U.S. and the difference between the "Canadian mosaic" and "American melting pot" approaches to immigration. We also discuss the centrality of decolonization and the impossibility of santizing the signifier of Canada.

We strongly recommend checking out American Indian voices on the topics covered. Aside from the classics by Howard Adams: Prison of Grass and A Tortured People, and Glen Sean Coulthard's Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition, the book Stringing Rosaries: the History, the Unforgivable, and the Healing of North American Indian Boarding School Survivors by Denise Lajimodiere and Mary Annette Plumber's numerous articles are good ways to continue learning.

M. Gouldhake's writings are also an invaluable source on the Canadian context and aswell as a resource on Marxism/anarchism and Indigenous people. We also recommend the following Red Nation Podcast episodes as a basic introduction to the ways indigenous people are organizing around these issues: No Apologies, Land Back (on Boarding Schools) and MMIWG2S+: No more red hand prints!

We also alluded to (non-indigenous) Patrick Wolfe's Traces of History: Elementary Structures of Race in the episode.