Jacobin Radio

We're on to Part II of The Making of the English Working Class. We cover chapter six and seven--"Exploitation" and "The Field Labourers," plus discuss the 1986 film Comrades, which follows the Tolpuddle Martyrs, a group of laborers who were transported to Australia for organizing an early trade union.

No secondary reading this week, though if you can find Comrades online, watch it! In the United States at least, it's available on Vimeo.

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Dan interviews Frank Rosenthal on the history of the radical science organization Science for the People and Nafis Hasan on everything about a left-wing politics of science.

Subscribe to Science for the People at magazine.ScienceForThePeople.org

Please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

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Readings discussed in this episode:

Louis Althusser, For Marx

https://www.versobooks.com/books/35-for-marx

Louis Althusser, “Contradiction and Overdetermination” (from For Marx)

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1962/overdetermination.htm

Louis Althusser, Etienne Balibar, Roger Establet, Pierre Macherey, and Jacques Rancière, Reading Capital

https://www.versobooks.com/books/2042-reading-capital

Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses”

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1970/ideology.htm

Perry Anderson, “Origins of the Present Crisis”

https://newleftreview.org/issues/I23/articles/perry-anderson-origins-of-the-present-crisis

Perry Anderson, Arguments Within English Marxism

https://www.versobooks.com/books/576-arguments-within-english-marxism

Asad Haider, Mistaken Identity: Race and Class in the Age of Trump https://www.versobooks.com/books/2716-mistaken-identity

Karl Marx, Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/appx1.htm

E.P. Thompson, “The Peculiarities of the English”

https://www.marxists.org/archive/thompson-ep/1965/english.htm

E.P. Thompson, “An Open Letter to Leszek Kolakowski” https://www.marxists.org/archive/thompson-ep/1973/kolakowski.htm

E.P. Thompson, “The Poverty of Theory: Or, An Orrery of Errors” https://www.marxists.org/archive/thompson-ep/1978/pot/intro.htm

E.P. Thompson, “Outside the Whale”

https://www.marxists.org/archive/thompson-ep/1978/outside-whale.htm

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Dan is playing catch up. Here's a fav interview from the archives: critical theorist Nancy Fraser on how a total analysis of capitalism requires analyzing capitalism's totality, including socially reproductive work that makes possible the world that capitalism exploits. This is painfully relevant today as people everywhere do the work of staying at home and social distancing to beat this pandemic while capitalists reap the rewards of the world's reproduction.

Please support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

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We cover Chapter Five, but first have an extensive discussion of the debate between Thompson and Perry Anderson and Tom Nairn over the history of social class and economic development in England, with sociologist Jonah Stuart-Brundage. What should we make of liberalism in England at the end of the eighteenth century and what it meant for the prospects of revolution?

Secondary readings:

Perry Anderson, “Origins of the Present Crisis” https://newleftreview.org/issues/I23/articles/perry-anderson-origins-of-the-present-crisis

Perry Anderson, “Socialism and Pseudo-Empiricism,” https://newleftreview.org/issues/I35/articles/perry-anderson-socialism-and-pseudo-empiricism

Arno Mayer, The Persistence of the Old Regime: Europe to the Great War https://www.versobooks.com/books/475-the-persistence-of-the-old-regime

Tom Nairn, “The British Political Elite” https://newleftreview.org/issues/I23/articles/tom-nairn-the-british-political-elite

Tom Nairn, “The British Working Class” https://newleftreview.org/issues/I24/articles/tom-nairn-the-english-working-class

Tom Nairn, “The Anatomy of the Labour Party: Part I” https://newleftreview.org/issues/I27/articles/tom-nairn-the-nature-of-the-labour-party-part-i

Tom Nairn, “The Anatomy of the Labour Party: Part II” https://newleftreview.org/issues/I28/articles/tom-nairn-the-nature-of-the-labour-party-part-ii

E.P. Thompson, “The Peculiarities of the English” https://www.marxists.org/archive/thompson-ep/1965/english.htm#n1

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