Upstream

When we think of health under capitalism, it's easy to go straight to the fight for universal healthcare, and understandably — that battle is one of the most contentious and important in the ongoing class war between the mass of people and those who rule us, the capitalist class.

But it would be a mistake to think that that's where our battle ends, that there isn't an expanded struggle over the ways that health and sickness are even conceptualized under the capitalist ideological framework which shapes how we value ourselves and how we are either utilized or abandoned by this system.

In this episode, we'll take a deep dive into all of the different places where health overlaps with capitalism, with Beatrice Adler-Bolton, co-host of the podcast Death Panel and co-author, along with Artie Vierkant, of Health Communism: A Surplus Manifesto.

This conversation glides from Marxist economic analysis to healthcare policy to history and to some of the most foundational philosophical underpinnings of the political economy of health. Beatrice directs a striking blow against any perceived possibility of true health ever existing under capitalism, arguing that we must fight for our lives, literally, to bring forth the fall of capitalism and to build a new system that works for everyone — what she calls health communism.

Thank you to Carolyn Raider for this episode's cover art and to Fugazi for the intermission music. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert Raymond/Lanterns.

Further Resources:

• Health Communism: A Surplus Manifesto, by Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant
• Death Panel Podcast
• Death Panel Medicare For All Week
• Decarcerating Disability: Deinstitutionalization and Prison Abolition by Liat Ben-Moshe
• Mad World: The Politics of Mental Health by Micha Frazer-Carroll

This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky.

You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Elements of capitalism have existed throughout history — in institutions like markets, class relations, ownership laws, credit systems, etc. But they were never dominant until they came together, escaping the isolated, laboratory conditions in which they once existed, to coalesce and form a world-dominating capitalist order.

How did the bubonic plague, the world-shattering pandemic occurring in Western Eurasia in the 14th century, along with the Little Ice Age that followed it, give rise in the 1600s to the mode of production that has now come to take hold of the entire world? What is capital, and how is it a social relation, as Marx wrote? And what exactly is the relationship between capitalism and the state? Are these two opposed, like many on the reactionary right tend to assume, or are they one and the same thing, there to support and uphold one another? And what about capitalism itself — what different stages or phases of capitalism exist? How did we go from the more classic mercantile capitalist system to industrialization, culminating in monopoly, imperialism, and now what we tend to call neoliberal capitalism? And what's coming next?

To help us zoom out and give us a historical and overarching understanding of capitalism as a system and a process, we've brought on investigative journalist and scholar, Christian Parenti. Christian is the author of books such as Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence, and, more recently, Radical Hamilton: Economic Lessons from a Misunderstood Founder.

And just in case you were wondering, yes, Christian is the son of the political scientist, academic historian and cultural critic Michael Parenti, author of classics like Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism, as well as Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media. You might have come across Michael Parenti on our Instagram where Robert loves to post so-called Yellow Parenti lectures and memes — check out our Instagram page @upstreampodcast if you want to know more.

This conversation is also an excellent complement to our recent documentary, The Myth of Freedom Under Capitalism, which you can learn more about at upstreampodcast.org

Further resources:

Radical Hamilton: Economic Lessons from a Misunderstood Founder

The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time By Karl Polanyi

Thank you to James Xerxes Fussell for the cover art. Upstream's theme music was composed by Robert Raymond.

This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky.

You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

It's perhaps more important than ever in these especially tumultuous, lonely, and oppressive times that we continue to believe that another world is possible. Simply reimagining the way we raise our children, the homes that we dwell in, the property we horde or share, and the form of the families we choose — can have profound and long-term impacts on the quality of our lives and on the world we're living in more broadly. By challenging these seemingly ordinary structures of everyday life we can spark and re-spark our collective and individual desire to live in a more just and equitable world.

This is the premise of new book Everyday Utopia: What 2,000 Years of Wild Experiments Can Teach Us About the Good Life, written by Kristen Ghodsee. In this conversation, we take a journey around the world and through time, exploring some of the most fascinating, inspiring, and sometimes quirky, experiments in alternative ways of living. From Plato to the Buddha, from the Bible to the Communist Manifesto, from ancient Athens to the Soviet Union, we'll explore what utopian thinking and practice has achieved, not just materially, but also in igniting our capacity for hope, radical imagination, and militant optimism.

Kristen Ghodsee is a Professor of Russian and East European Studies and a member of the Graduate Group in Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the critically acclaimed author of Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism: And Other Arguments for Economic Independence and Red Hangover: Legacies of Twentieth-Century Communism.

Further resources:

Just on the Horizon: Nine Utopian Books to Deprogram Our Brains

Thank you to Alice Phoebe Lou for the cover art. Upstream's theme music was composed by Robert Raymond.

This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky.

You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

The music we know today as jazz has deep and contested roots, but likely arose in New Orleans, Louisiana in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The music is based on the musical traditions of Africans, newly freed from slavery, and particularly by the tradition of the blues, an art form known for expressing the suffering and hardship of Jim Crow America.

In his book, Jazz and Justice: Racism and the Political Economy of the Music, author and scholar Dr. Gerald Horne examines the economic, social, and political forces that shaped jazz into what we know today.

In this conversation, Dr. Horne guides us through the emergence of jazz as a musical art form, the brutal realities of white supremacy and economic exploitation faced by jazz musicians, and how this music blossomed into a force that has shaped and defined so much of U.S. American culture in so many profound ways.

Thank you to Elvis Phillips for the intermission music and Carolyn Raider for the cover art. Upstream's theme music was composed by Robert Raymond.

This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky.

You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

We've been taught to think of staggering economic inequality, the disposability of nonwhite labor populations, hyper-exploitation, and minority rule as bugs within the capitalist system — things to be corrected by capitalist technology and innovation — but in fact, all of these things are anything but bugs — they are features of this system, baked deep into it at its very core.

And, in many respects, the birthplace of modern, global capitalism, with its exclusion of racialized others, its rabid anti-labor ideology, its universalized immiseration, and its unrelenting push for hyperproductivity, is a place that might surprise you at first: California. Specifically? Silicon Valley. Even more specifically? Palo Alto.

In his book, Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World, author Malcolm Harris traces a very bold line from early Californian history, with its brutal enslavement of Indigenous peoples, its railroad and agricultural barons, the codification of corporations as people, and the founding of Stanford University — the intellectual heart of modern capitalism — all the way to our modern tech-dystopia, marked by permanently unstable and low wage gig jobs, unimaginably harsh housing markets, and one of the deepest divides between the working and owning classes that this country has ever seen. And it all comes back, over and over again, to Palo Alto.

Thank you to Dead Kennedys for the intermission music. Upstream's theme music was composed by Robert Raymond.

This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky.

You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Although its intellectual handmaidens love to insist otherwise — capitalism is not a system that truly embodies freedom. We all feel it, of course — that nagging sense that we lack any agency over the choices that shape our lives, the frustration we feel at our bosses, the tension we feel with our landlords, the sense that we're all just stuck in a rat race. We might lack the language to articulate it, or a framework within which to situate it, but we all know, deep down, that this ain't it — that there's something deeply wrong.

In this episode, we explore why this is — why, despite what we're constantly being told — that we currently live under the freest system ever — that we're not actually free — and why we're all imprisoned within capitalism.

We start with a brief history of how we got here, what different conceptions of freedom have meant historically — and how they can be applied to our current condition — and then we take a deep dive into the mechanisms this system uses to keep us all imprisoned, and, finally, how we can break free.

Featured Guests:

• Matt Christman: Co-host of Chapo Trap House
• Ayesha Khan: Infectious diseases scientist, germ doctor, grassroots organizer, writer, astrobiologist, and educator
• Corey Mohler: Creator of Existential Comics
• Jessica Gordon Nembhard: Professor of Community Justice and Social Economic Development in the Department of Africana Studies at John Jay College of the City University of New York and author of Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice
• David Bollier: Activist, Scholar, and blogger focused on the commons and author of The Commoner's Catalog for Changemaking: Tooks for the Transitions Ahead.

Music by Collections of Colonies of Bees, Peder, Mammoth Star, Do Make Say Think, and Chris Zabriskie,

Thank you to Bethan Mure for the cover art. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert Raymond.

You can read the full transcript of this episode here.

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

At the beginning of the 20th century, economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that within a century, thanks to the growth of wealth and the advances of technology, that no one would have to work more than 15 hours a week. The challenge, in Keynes's view, would be how to fill all of our newfound leisure time without going crazy.'

That obviously never happened — so, what went wrong? Technology has advanced to the point where we could all be working much less, and with all sorts of time-management apps and tips from experts, why does it somehow feel like there's never enough time in the day?

In this episode, we've brought on someone who might help us figure that out. Oliver Burkeman is the author of 4000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals — a book about why life today often feels like a battle against endless to-do lists. In this conversation, we explore with Oliver how time has been instrumentalized under capitalism, why it's important to "waste time" on activities that are not productive and cultivate the feeling of a "joy of missing out" as opposed to FOMO, the "fear of missing out," and how to connect with what is truly most important to us right now and full-heartedly embrace our finite time, our mere 4000 precious weeks, on planet earth.

Thank you to The Weakerthans for the intermission music and to Carolyn Raider for the cover art. Upstream's theme music was composed by Robert Raymond.

This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky.

You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Our transgender comrades are under attack — not just by incendiary reactionaries on the right, but also by many of those on the more liberal or even left side of the political spectrum. The attacks come in many forms, from outright violence, to genocidal language, to the often arbitrary and reactionary demarcations around what constitutes "womanhood," to the "just asking questions" industrial complex led by liberal institutions like the New York Times.

In this episode, we explore a robust rebuttal to anti-trans and transphobic narratives and actions — from an explicitly Marxist perspective. And we've brought on the perfect guest to lead us in this.

Alsyon Escalante is the co-host of Red Menace — a podcast that explains and analyzes revolutionary theory and then applies its lessons to our contemporary conditions. The conversation we're going to have is inspired by a cross-over episode of Red Menace and Revolutionary Left Radio titled, "Our Transgender Comrades: Dialectical Materialism, Marxist Feminism, and Trans Liberation."

The first half of our conversation with Alyson focuses on that episode and lays out a theoretical rebuttal of liberal, bourgeois, and radical feminist approaches to feminism and gender. We lay out a principled Marxist, materialist analysis of gender and 'womanhood' and how they differ from post-modern and idealist conceptions.

The second half of our conversation brings the discussion back down to eye-level, and explores the current political, social, and economic realities faced by trans people and why it's more important than ever for us to stand in solidarity with our transgender comrades and to fight against the reactionary right and their liberal accomplices.

Thank you to Against Me! for the intermission music and to Carolyn Raider for the cover art. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert Raymond.

Resources:

• Red Menace and Revolutionary Left Radio
• Upstream: Revolutionary Leftism with Breht O'Shea (In Conversation)
• Upstream: Feminism for the 99 Percent

Editor's note:

A member-organizer with the Freelance Solidarity Project (the digital media division of the National Writers Union) and one of the co-authors of the NYT contributors' letter wrote in with a small correction: "I wanted to flag that the initial labor support for the letter came from Freelance Solidarity Project members—the Writers Guild is great and members signed their own letter in support of trans people as part of a broader solidarity effort. The NYT staff are also represented by The NewsGuild of New York—the letter defending signing as protected activity was by NewsGuild of NY President Susan DeCarava."

This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky.

You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Imagine this week you spent half your time growing, harvesting, preserving, and cooking food for yourself, your family, and perhaps your community — and the other half your time doing something else that you love, something that brings you joy — perhaps writing, podcasting, coaching, caring for others, or anything else. How would you feel? What would change about your relationship to food, to place, to work, and to the seasons? This is the lifestyle model championed by farmer and writer Naoki Shiomi.

Since the 1990s, the idea of "Half Farmer, Half X" — combining sustainable farming with an income-generating "X" variable that represents one's calling, has inspired people across Japan and other parts of Asia to abandon corporate-capitalist modes of mass production, mass consumption, overwork, and long commutes — and to instead realign their priorities and make dramatic life changes to empower food sovereignty, community sufficiency, and meaningful livelihoods.

In the first half of this conversation, we'll speak with Mika Furugori, a practitioner of Half Farmer Half X who quit her corporate job to move to the Japanese countryside to grow and cook food. And then, in the second half of the show, we'll speak with Naoki Shiomi, the originator of the Half Farmer Half X concept — his words will be translated by Mika. Together we explore why people are turning to this model, how it connects with larger movements for systemic change, and how we can start embracing Half Farmer Half X no matter our living situation.

Thank you to Yujiro Kudo for the intermission music and to Carolyn Raider for the cover art. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert Raymond.

This episode was brought to you by The Decolonizing Economics Summit: The 4th Annual Post-Capitalism Conference from Thursday, April 20th – Saturday, April 22nd. The conference will be virtual, with an in-person Earth Day celebration on April 22nd in McKinleyville, CA. We invite you to join us at this radically new look at how to transform our economy, from a decolonizing and solidarity economy perspective.

Also, we're excited to share about a new, free course from our friends at ECONOMICS FOR EMANCIPATION — it's a collaboration over decades between grassroots social justice and union organizers — and heterodox economists out of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. E4E is a seven-module introductory course that covers economics, politics, and the history of movements for economic justice in the US. It creates spaces for learning about alternatives to capitalism and applying the lessons to craft organizing strategies and community projects.

This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky.

You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

For the past couple of years, the city of Atlanta, Georgia, has been pushing forward a project known as "Cop City" — a tactical training compound featuring a mock city which has been referred to as a kind of 'war base' where police will learn military-style tactics and maneuvers. The $90 million compound would be built on somewhere between over 300 acres of forest in Atlanta — a space known as the Weelaunee Forest, one of the largest urban forests in the country.

As a result of this controversial and extremely unpopular development, a grassroots response has taken shape to stop Cop City. In today's episode, we've brought on two individuals who are part of that movement.

Keyanna Jones is an interfaith leader and member of the Faith Coalition to Stop Cop City. She's lived in the neighborhood around the Weelaunee Forest for her whole life. Matthew Johnson is a minister at Beloved Comnmune, an activist, and also a member of the Faith Coalition to Stop Cop City. Both Keyanna and Matthew are organizers who have been integral to the movement.

Thank you to Fugazi for the intermission music and to Zara Wilkins for the cover art. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert Raymond.

This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky.

You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.