Cosmopod

Cliff Connolly argues for a culture of sobriety within our organizations, drawing from the example of Austrian Socialism.

Alex and Rudy welcome historian Cliff Conner for a discussion of his recent book The Tragedy of American Science: From Truman to Trump published by Haymarket Books. 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 antiintelectualism 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 unseparable 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 economy addiction to "weaponized Keynsianism" 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 and how non-capitalist economies have shown that other models of science are possible where innovation did not rely on profit as a motive.

----

This article's author, Richard Hunsinger, is currently being held without bail in an ICE detention facility and could use our support. Donations to the Atlanta Solidarity Fund help political prisoners like Richard, and can be made at https://atlsolidarity.org/ Letters can be sent to Richard by emailing [email protected] Donations to his commissary can be sent on Venmo to Kat-Richards-1 or cashapp to $KatRichards.

Discourse related to the concept of emotional labor can highlight the way capitalism distorts our humanity or merely naturalize capitalism, argues Richard Hunsinger. Cliff Connolly reads the article aloud.

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 which 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

Donald Parkinson responds to Taylor B's Beginning's of Politics: DSA and the Uprising, arguing that a workers' party is necessary to advance an emancipatory politics. Cliff Connolly reads the article aloud.

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.

Matthew Strupp examines economic debates in China during the leadup to the Great Leap Forward and assesses comparisons made between Mao and Bukharin. Cliff Connolly reads the article aloud.

Parker and Peter join August Nimtz, the author of Lenin's Electoral Strategy (now reprinted as The Ballot, The Streets-- or Both) to discuss how Lenin and the Bolsheviks approached electoral politics and what we can learn from them to apply to today's situation. They talk about the origins of Nimtz's research project as an attempt to refute the point that electoralism must mean programmatic compromises, the influence on Lenin of Marx and Engels' 1850 address to the Communist League and how Lenin's relation to the ballot depended on the temperature of the street and meant alternating boycotts with participation on an independent ballot line. They pivot towards analyzing the behaviour and discipline of the Bolshevik faction including the consistent attempts to build an alliance with the peasantry, and the contrast between the Bolsheviks and the pre-WW1 German Social-Democratic Party, and the role of democratic centralism in disciplining parliamentary factions. They end with a reflection of what the ballot means today.

---

Check out August Nimtz's Amazon Author Page.

Works mentioned: Marx & Engels, Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League (1850): https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/communist-league/1850-ad1.htm

Marx & Engels, Demands of the Communist Party in Germany (1848): https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/03/24.htm

Marx & Engels, Circular Letter to Bebel, Liebknecht, Bracke and Others (1879): https://marxists.catbull.com/archive/marx/works/1879/09/18.htm

For the first instalment of our in-depth study of Soviet Science, Djamil, Donald and Rudy sit down to discuss the scientific institutions and the practice of Science in the early Soviet Union up to the conclusion of the Stalin Revolution. They start off with a survey of the Tsarist Academy, and what kind of structures and specialists the Bolsheviks inherited. The conversation continues with the changing ways the Bolsheviks related to specialists during the Civil War and the NEP, and how they were trying to assimilate the culture of specialists when they realized it was impossible to seize cultural power, and how this relates to the present day debate around the Professional Managerial Class. They then discuss the role of the two anti-specialist trials that kick off the Stalin revolution: the Shakhty affair and the Industrial Party Trial, and how that served to strengthen Stalin's hand in taking over the politbureau and resulted in a culture of blaming specialists for the failure of five-year plans. They finish by analyzing the resulting academy and intelligentsia of the 1930s, fully loyal to Stalin, and how that sets the stage for the rise of someone like Lysenko.

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.