This Wreckage

Sean is joined by @DaneilTutt, host of the @torsion_groups and @emancipations_ podcast, to talk about the life of Friedrich Engels through the Tristam Hunt's 2009 biography Marx's General.

Is there truth to the argument, developed in the 1920s, that Engels was responsible for a serious distortion of Marx's theory? What do we make of his 'double life' as both a carousing bourgeois and a disciplined revolutionary? How did the political views of Marx and Engels change over he course of the 19th century? What was The Dialectics of Nature and how has so-called 'dialectical materialism' helped to dogmatize scientific socialism? And what remains of Engels' thought and practice today?

Join us for a fun and informative episode on one of the revolutionary greats. For the full discussion, and tons more bonus content, become a patron at patreon.com/theantifada

Song: Dispatch - The General

Recording of a discussion last Saturday with Michael Hardt at Woodbine for a discussion of his new book The Subversive Seventies and our contemporary autonomist experiments in Queens, Atlanta, and elsewhere.

Michael Hardt is a philosopher and political theorist whose work focuses on autonomist social movements since the 1960s. In his books co-authored with Antonio Negri - Empire, Multitude, and Commonwealth - Hardt theorized the changes in capitalism and struggle taking place at the turn of the 21st century. The frameworks Hardt and Negri developed together were among the most popular and influential political theories influencing the activism of the last 25 years, helping define the movement contexts that birthed spaces like Woodbine.

In his new book, The Subversive Seventies, Hardt focuses on dozens of movement predecessors, including Black autoworkers and militants in the US, intersectional radical feminists, gay liberation revolutionaries, the Italian autonomists, and antinuclear activists. While the radicalism of the 70s is often understood as responding to the defeat of the spirit of '68, Hardt argues that these movements, by pursuing their own agendas without claiming supremacy over other struggles, developed a model of contemporary intersectionality that solidified as an antithetical pole to neoliberal globalization.

For the rest of our series about the revolutionary cultures of the 60s and 70s check out our Armed Love collection page: https://www.patreon.com/collection/87680

Song: Alfredo Bandelli - Mort Allende

With neo-Keynesian hacks like Will Stancil crowing about the alleged successes of Bidenomics, it seemed fitting to bring on Jamie Merchant, author of many incisive articles in Paul Mattick's Field Notes section of the Brooklyn Rail and elsewhere to discuss capital, finance and permanent crisis. Topics include the enduring legacy of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, the limits of 'financialization' discourse, the politics of crisis theory, the limits of industrial policy, the Brenner-Riley debate, anti-anti-globalization, so-called Political Capitalism and more.

In the bonus section we discuss the outlines of what a determinate negation of globalization might look like and how to turn global production into international proletarian power. Lastly, Sean, Andy and Jamie take a first pass at an internationalist perspective on fast-moving events in Palestine and what the outcome of resistance might be for the people of Gaza, the West Bank and the broader Middle East.

To access the full episode and a ton more bonus content, become a patron at www.patreon.com/theantifada

Articles by Jamie Merchant:

https://brooklynrail.org/2022/03/field-notes/Endgame-Finance-and-the-Close-of-the-Market-System

https://brooklynrail.org/2018/02/field-notes/Fantasies-of-Secession-A-Critique-of-Left-Economic-Nationalism

https://brooklynrail.org/2018/07/field-notes/Dreams-of-National-Capital-Market-Socialism-Past-and-Present

https://brooklynrail.org/2023/07/field-notes/The-Economic-Consequences-of-Neo-Keynesianism

Riley and Brenner’s 7 Theses on American Politics and further debate:

https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii138/articles/dylan-riley-robert-brenner-seven-theses-on-american-politics

https://jacobin.com/2023/09/robert-brenner-marxist-economics-falling-rate-of-profit-stagnation-overcapacity-industrial-policy

https://jacobin.com/2023/10/stagnation-productivity-profit-crisis-brenner-debate-1970s-economics

Taylor Swift - End Game

Sean and Andy talk about their moves/life showers, and the next chapter of our lives. We go on to discuss the influx of asylum seekers to NYC, the crisis of the WTO and rules-based international order, and right-wing opposition to a Chinese EV battery plant in Michigan and a munitions plant in East Germany. In the bonus we talk about Trudeau's "Bonzo goes to Bitzburg" moment and if this is historical revisionism or something else

. For the full episode and access to the Discord support the show at patreon.com/theantifada

Woodbine Reservoir journal release party: https://www.thetranspecos.com/cal/2023/10/4/woodbine-presents-the-reservoir-communion-issue-no-2-release-party

show notes:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/01/magazine/economy-illegal-immigration.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

https://www.reuters.com/business/wto-growing-disregard-trade-rules-shows-world-is-fragmenting-2023-10-02/

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/03/business/gotion-chinese-subsidiary-michigan-protests.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Designed to Kill: https://crimethinc.com/2011/05/22/designed-to-kill-border-policy-and-how-to-change-it

Ukriaine articles:https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/02/us/politics/putin-ukraine-spy-united-states.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

• https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/03/world/europe/germany-defense-ukraine-war-weapons.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare east germans don’t want arms productions
• myth of the clean SS https://www.politico.eu/article/fight-against-ussr-nazi-waffen-ss-trooper-yaroslav-hunka-world-war-ii-soviet-union-germany/

song: Moldy Peaches - NYC's Like a Graveyard

Sean and Varn continue the second part of their miniseries on left strategies and orientations. Central to the discussion is the definition and role of what is called 'Rank and File' organizing, something that means many things to many people, but whose bases are often conflated in literature and debate, for example in the DSA. This episode tackles, in turn, the tendencies associated with Joe Burns, Jane MacAlevey, Kim Moody, Marxist-Leninists and syndicalists.

Taking a cue from current events, the conversation revolves around the ongoing United Autoworkers strike in the Midwest: what it might mean for the industry, how a victory might galvanize the broader working class, and how a defeat might play out.

Become a patron of The Antifada for the extended, two-and-a-half hour audio episode, and/or a patron of VarnVlog to watch the video recording.

UAW Strike updates! We hear Sean's analysis of the struggles of US autoworkers since 2018, various strategies the government has used to intervene, evaluated the takes of Brandon and Drumpf, ponder a Titoist Obama, and discuss the revolutionary position.

For the full episode subscribe to the show at http://patreon.com/theantifada

In the fun half we summarize the positions of the Trotsyist SEP and WSWS, a critique from the Bolshevik Tendency, and argue why abolishing the value form would be a more popular demand than electing a socialist politician or taxing the rich. Some of the stuff we read for the episoe:

https://labornotes.org/2023/09/no-justice-no-jeeps-scenes-auto-workers-strike https://labornotes.org/2023/09/auto-workers-strike-plants-all-three-big-3

https://jacobin.com/2023/09/united-auto-workers-strike-shawn-fain-big-three-automakers

Alex press on democracy now: https://www.democracynow.org/2023/9/15/uaw_strike_big_three_automakers

https://jacobin.com/2023/09/the-uaw-strike-matters-for-the-entire-us-working-class

Ex wildcat-leader Jim Cramer maulding: https://twitter.com/MorePerfectUS/status/1702318383642112082

Biden audio: https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1702723784506056705

Trump audio https://twitter.com/MorePerfectUS/status/1702733477517357310

Hate listen fodder from NYTimes: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/12/podcasts/the-daily/ford-general-motors-strike.html

Contradictions at the heart of Bidenomics: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/15/us/politics/biden-uaw-strike.html

Hamilton Nolan: https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/whose-fault-is-it

-WSWS https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/09/15/nvxk-s15.html -Critique of SEP: https://bolsheviktendency.org/2022/11/07/will-lehmans-uaw-presidential-campaign-a-poison-pill/

Adam Green and Ben Kweller - Kokomo

Audio from our live gig last week in Brooklyn! Find out if this the end of podcasting as we know it.Then we hang with Minion Death Cult a week later to sift through the wreckage of the Well There's Your Problem show in Philly, out trip to Citi Field to woo Mrs. Met, nasty notes to UPS drivers, NY in the post-Bloomberg era, and boys being cats.For full episode support the show at http://patreon.com/theantifadaSongs:Woodie Guthrie - Jarama Big Soda - Swearin'

Since we're in Philly this week to perform with Well There's Your Problem, enjoy this classic episode from December 2019 with Roz!

Have you ever asked yourself what weird 1980s Hollywood live-action/cartoon crossover films have to say about the infamous General Motors Streetcar Scandal of the mid-20th century? Well do we have a film for you!Sean sits down with fellow socialist railfan Justin Roczniak, AKA donoteat1, to get at the real and sordid history behind Robert Zemekis' 1988 blockbuster Who Framed Roger Rabbit? How the hell was this crazy film made? What does it tell us about the history of public transit in Los Angeles and elsewhere? Why is Elon Musk full of shit? How would rail fit into the Green New Deal and socialism broadly? Most importantly, how did our fans get us to watch hentai?

support the show at patreon.com/theantifada