This week we start a new series where we read from Rodney Hilton's collection of essays about the Crisis of Feudalism. These are pretty short essays, but we will no doubt be talking about them forever.

Hilton, Rodney. Class Conflict and the Crisis of Feudalism. A&C Black, 1985.

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Welcome to our fourth reading group episode on Revolution: An Intellectual History, by Enzo Traverso. This week we discuss the revolutionary intellectual. 

Traverso, Enzo. 2021. Revolution : An Intellectual History. London ; New York: Verso.

https://www.versobooks.com/products/2783-revolution

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We think degrowth is going to be necessary, but we also think the debate about degrowth has been all wrong.  We read the newest issue of Monthly Review and had a discussion about the politics of degrowth.

Planned Degrowth: Ecosocialism and Sustainable Human Development

https://monthlyreview.org/2023/07/01/planned-degrowth/ 

Nine Theses on Ecosocialist Degrowth

https://monthlyreview.org/2023/07/01/nine-theses-on-ecosocialist-degrowth/ 

(Here’s the whole issue)

https://monthlyreview.org/product/mr-075-03-2023-07/

Music: Bad Religion- Watch it Die 

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Back with another book that Chris read in grad school, this time we are dealing with the problem of repopulating the Soviet Union after the Second World War. 
Please forgive the intermittent audio problems with Jason's track, we are still trying to figure out how to record in the same room and actually make it sound good.

Mie Nakachi. Replacing the Dead : The Politics of Reproduction in the Postwar Soviet Union. New York, Ny: Oxford University Press, 2021.

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This week the Law Boyz are back with a special guest, Kevin. We discuss the concept of the lumpenproletariat and their historical role as foot soldiers of reaction. Then we all argue about the police.

Peter Stallybrass (1990) Marx and Heterogeneity: Thinking the Lumpenproletariat, Representations, No. 31, Special Issue: The Margins of Identity in Nineteenth-Century England, pp. 69-95

Nicholas Thoburn (2002) Difference in Marx: the lumpenproletariat and the proletarian unnamable,  Economy and Society, 31:3, 434-460

Robert L. Bussard (1987) The ‘dangerous class’ of Marx and Engels: The rise of the idea of the Lumpenproletariat, History of European Ideas, 8:6, 675-692

Music: Johnny Cash- This Side of the Law

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I know we said we were done with our Czechoslovak Socialism series, but like George Lucas we just couldn't leave well enough alone and have made a prequel. It turns out there is an interesting pre-history to Czechoslovak Socialist Republic that is worth discussing.

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No Royal Road is back with part four of our discussion of Evegny Morozov's
 "Critique of Techno-Feudal Reason."

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Our third reading group episode on Revolution: An Intellectual History, by Enzo Traverso. This week we discuss Concepts, Symbols, and Realms of Memory. 

Traverso, Enzo. 2021. Revolution : An Intellectual History. London ; New York: Verso.

https://www.versobooks.com/products/2783-revolution

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Kevin recently gave a talk about William Morris' transition from romantic anti-capitalism to Marxism and is thus well suited to school us on the subject. We decided to record it and share it with all of you.  

How I Became a Socialist (William Morris)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/1894/hibs/hibs.htm

Under an Elm-Tree, Or, Thoughts in the Country-Side (William Morris)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/1889/commonweal/07-elm-tree.htm

Facing the Worst of It (William Morris)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/1887/commonweal/02-facing-worst.htm

William Morris (E.P. Thompson)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/thompson-ep/1959/william-morris.htm

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This week we return to an old favorite topic of ours, the warm stream, romantic, or gothic in Marxism. This time we are joined by an accredited expert in all things gothic, Jon from the Horror Vanguard.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/horror-vanguard/id1445594437

https://twitter.com/TheLitCritGuy

Bloch, Ernst, Neville Plaice, and Stephen Plaice. The Principle of Hope. Vol. 1. MIT Press, 1995.

Music: Sisters of Mercy- She's a Monster 

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