Please support our Patreon.  For early and ad-free episodes, members-only content, and more.

Jeff is a teacher in Jefferson Parish, a Union member, and the host of Morning Comrade. We discuss the history of Unions in New Orleans, challenges to education, and the current situation.  Jeff will be coming back to expand on this conversation in the future.

Abandon all hope ye who subscribe here.   

Crew:
Host: C. Derick Varn
Audio Producer: Paul Channel Strip  ( @aufhebenkultur )
Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.
Intro Video Design: Jason Myles

Links and Social Media:
twitter: @skepoet
Facebook
You can find the additional streams on Youtube

Send us a text

Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to Bitterlake

Support the show

Crew:
Host: C. Derick Varn
Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.
Intro Video Design: Jason Myles
Art Design: Corn and C. Derick Varn

Links and Social Media:
twitter: @varnvlog
blue sky: @varnvlog.bsky.social
You can find the additional streams on Youtube

Current Patreon at the Sponsor Tier: Jordan Sheldon, Mark J. Matthews, Lindsay Kimbrough, RedWolf, DRV, Kenneth McKee, JY Chan, Matthew Monahan, Parzival, Adriel Mixon

Please support our patreon.  For early and ad-free episodes, members-only content, and more.

Sudip Bhattacharya is a Ph.D. candidate at Rutgers University, an activist, and a writer.  He researches the history of organizing and labor movement. We reference two of his articles: Intellectuals and Activism and Striving for Solidarity.

IF you would like to help support his mutual aid work with the New Jersey DSA, you can donate at  Venmo @ CNJ-DSA-MA


Abandon all hope ye who subscribe here.   

Crew:
Host: C. Derick Varn
Audio Producer: Paul Channel Strip  ( @aufhebenkultur )
Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.
Intro Video Design: Jason Myles

Links and Social Media:
twitter: @skepoet
Facebook
You can find the additional streams on Youtube

Send us a text

Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to Bitterlake

Support the show

Crew:
Host: C. Derick Varn
Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.
Intro Video Design: Jason Myles
Art Design: Corn and C. Derick Varn

Links and Social Media:
twitter: @varnvlog
blue sky: @varnvlog.bsky.social
You can find the additional streams on Youtube

Current Patreon at the Sponsor Tier: Jordan Sheldon, Mark J. Matthews, Lindsay Kimbrough, RedWolf, DRV, Kenneth McKee, JY Chan, Matthew Monahan, Parzival, Adriel Mixon

Please support our patreon.  For early and ad-free episodes, members-only content, and more.

Jules Taylor of No Easy Answers comes on to talk to me about what it means to be Communist in this time where nothing seems certain, the "Democratic socialist" revival seems to be beached on the sands of the Democratic party, geopolitical complications are everywhere, and many people have lost the narrative


Abandon all hope ye who subscribe here.   

Crew:
Host: C. Derick Varn
Audio Producer: Paul Channel Strip  ( @aufhebenkultur )
Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.
Intro Video Design: Jason Myles

Links and Social Media:
twitter: @skepoet
Facebook
You can find the additional streams on Youtube

Send us a text

Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to Bitterlake

Support the show

Crew:
Host: C. Derick Varn
Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.
Intro Video Design: Jason Myles
Art Design: Corn and C. Derick Varn

Links and Social Media:
twitter: @varnvlog
blue sky: @varnvlog.bsky.social
You can find the additional streams on Youtube

Current Patreon at the Sponsor Tier: Jordan Sheldon, Mark J. Matthews, Lindsay Kimbrough, RedWolf, DRV, Kenneth McKee, JY Chan, Matthew Monahan, Parzival, Adriel Mixon

Please support our patreon.  For early and ad-free episodes, members-only content, and more.

In today's episode, we talk to Patrick Toole.  Patrick Toole is a cofounder of the Lefty Book Club.  We discuss the horizon of opportunity and limits of leftist education and educational projects.


Abandon all hope ye who subscribe here.   

Crew:
Host: C. Derick Varn
Audio Producer: Paul Channel Strip  ( @aufhebenkultur )
Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.
Intro Video Design: Jason Myles

Links and Social Media:
twitter: @skepoet
Facebook
You can find the additional streams on Youtube

Send us a text

Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to Bitterlake

Support the show

Crew:
Host: C. Derick Varn
Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.
Intro Video Design: Jason Myles
Art Design: Corn and C. Derick Varn

Links and Social Media:
twitter: @varnvlog
blue sky: @varnvlog.bsky.social
You can find the additional streams on Youtube

Current Patreon at the Sponsor Tier: Jordan Sheldon, Mark J. Matthews, Lindsay Kimbrough, RedWolf, DRV, Kenneth McKee, JY Chan, Matthew Monahan, Parzival, Adriel Mixon

Please support our patreon.  For early and ad-free episodes, members-only content, and more.

John Michael Colon and Steve Mann are editors of Strange Matters magazine.  We discuss the limits of the popular versions of Modern Monetary Theory, the deep history of money, and the theories of FOREX,  focusing on more modern history and the transition to the current fiscal situation.   This is a continuation of this discussion.

Abandon all hope ye who subscribe here.   

Crew:
Host: C. Derick Varn
Audio Producer: Paul Channel Strip  ( @aufhebenkultur )
Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.
Intro Video Design: Jason Myles

Links and Social Media:
twitter: @skepoet
Facebook
You can find the additional streams on Youtube

Send us a text

Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to Bitterlake

Support the show

Crew:
Host: C. Derick Varn
Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.
Intro Video Design: Jason Myles
Art Design: Corn and C. Derick Varn

Links and Social Media:
twitter: @varnvlog
blue sky: @varnvlog.bsky.social
You can find the additional streams on Youtube

Current Patreon at the Sponsor Tier: Jordan Sheldon, Mark J. Matthews, Lindsay Kimbrough, RedWolf, DRV, Kenneth McKee, JY Chan, Matthew Monahan, Parzival, Adriel Mixon

Please support our patreon.  For early and ad-free episodes, members-only content, and more.

In today's episode, we talk to Dr. Clyde Barrow on lumpenproletariat and other groupings that result from finance capital. Dr. Clyde W. Barrow is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. He is the author of Toward a Critical Theory of States: The Poulantzas-Miliband Debate After Globalization (SUNY Press, 2016), The Entrepreneurial Intellectual in the Corporate University (Palgrave MacMillian, 2018),  and his newest book is The Dangerous Class: The Concept of the Lumpenproletariat (University of Michigan Press, 2020).  We will discuss the centrality of the lumpenproletariat to finance capital, the new social groupings that have emerged with deindustrialization, and the history of the lumpen question.



Abandon all hope ye who subscribe here.   

Crew:
Host: C. Derick Varn
Audio Producer: Paul Channel Strip  ( @aufhebenkultur )
Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.
Intro Video Design: Jason Myles

Links and Social Media:
twitter: @skepoet
Facebook
You can find the additional streams on Youtube

Send us a text

Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to Bitterlake

Support the show

Crew:
Host: C. Derick Varn
Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.
Intro Video Design: Jason Myles
Art Design: Corn and C. Derick Varn

Links and Social Media:
twitter: @varnvlog
blue sky: @varnvlog.bsky.social
You can find the additional streams on Youtube

Current Patreon at the Sponsor Tier: Jordan Sheldon, Mark J. Matthews, Lindsay Kimbrough, RedWolf, DRV, Kenneth McKee, JY Chan, Matthew Monahan, Parzival, Adriel Mixon

Please support our patreon.  For early and ad-free episodes, members-only content, and more.

Rebecca E. Karl teaches History at New York University. She is the author of China's Revolutions in the Modern World: A Brief Interpretive History,  Mao Zedong and China in the Twentieth-Century World: A Concise History (Duke 2010) and Staging the World: Chinese Nationalism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (Duke 2002).

Abandon all hope ye who subscribe here.   

Crew:
Host: C. Derick Varn
Audio Producer: Paul Channel Strip  ( @aufhebenkultur )
Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.
Intro Video Design: Jason Myles

Links and Social Media:
twitter: @skepoet
Facebook
You can find the additional streams on Youtube

Send us a text

Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to Bitterlake

Support the show

Crew:
Host: C. Derick Varn
Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.
Intro Video Design: Jason Myles
Art Design: Corn and C. Derick Varn

Links and Social Media:
twitter: @varnvlog
blue sky: @varnvlog.bsky.social
You can find the additional streams on Youtube

Current Patreon at the Sponsor Tier: Jordan Sheldon, Mark J. Matthews, Lindsay Kimbrough, RedWolf, DRV, Kenneth McKee, JY Chan, Matthew Monahan, Parzival, Adriel Mixon

Please support our patreon.  For early and ad-free episodes, members-only content, and more.

Ikoi Hireo is a substance dependency disorder counselor, co-host of It's Not Just In Your Head, and a long-time internet friend of mine. We talk about the crises in care work and the limitations we see in the field.  This is a long and informal, even a bit personal, conversation on the topic.

Abandon all hope ye who subscribe here.   

Crew:
Host: C. Derick Varn
Audio Producer: Paul Channel Strip  ( @aufhebenkultur )
Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.
Intro Video Design: Jason Myles

Links and Social Media:
twitter: @skepoet
Facebook
You can find the additional streams on Youtube

Send us a text

Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to Bitterlake

Support the show

Crew:
Host: C. Derick Varn
Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.
Intro Video Design: Jason Myles
Art Design: Corn and C. Derick Varn

Links and Social Media:
twitter: @varnvlog
blue sky: @varnvlog.bsky.social
You can find the additional streams on Youtube

Current Patreon at the Sponsor Tier: Jordan Sheldon, Mark J. Matthews, Lindsay Kimbrough, RedWolf, DRV, Kenneth McKee, JY Chan, Matthew Monahan, Parzival, Adriel Mixon

Please support our patreon.  For early and ad-free episodes, members-only content, and more.

Steve Mann, a member of the Strange Matters coops, will discuss the limits of our understanding of inflation and his article, "Notes Towards a Theory of Inflation."  We will talk about classical theories of inflation, MMT, and the limitations of all the current models.

Abandon all hope ye who subscribe here.   

Crew:
Host: C. Derick Varn
Audio Producer: Paul Channel Strip  ( @aufhebenkultur )
Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.
Intro Video Design: Jason Myles

Links and Social Media:
twitter: @skepoet
Facebook
You can find the additional streams on Youtube

Send us a text

Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to Bitterlake

Support the show

Crew:
Host: C. Derick Varn
Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.
Intro Video Design: Jason Myles
Art Design: Corn and C. Derick Varn

Links and Social Media:
twitter: @varnvlog
blue sky: @varnvlog.bsky.social
You can find the additional streams on Youtube

Current Patreon at the Sponsor Tier: Jordan Sheldon, Mark J. Matthews, Lindsay Kimbrough, RedWolf, DRV, Kenneth McKee, JY Chan, Matthew Monahan, Parzival, Adriel Mixon

Please support our patreon.  For early and ad-free episodes, members-only content, and more.

In honor of May Day,  Chapo Trap House's and CushVlog's Matt Christman comes on today to speak about the situation of the US left and how we got here.   Labor has had some major victories in the past few weeks, but the trends are in general still negative.  How did we get here and what can we do about it?

Abandon all hope ye who subscribe here.   

Crew:
Host: C. Derick Varn
Audio Producer: Paul Channel Strip  ( @aufhebenkultur )
Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.
Intro Video Design: Jason Myles

Links and Social Media:
twitter: @skepoet
Facebook
You can find the additional streams on Youtube

Send us a text

Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to Bitterlake

Support the show

Crew:
Host: C. Derick Varn
Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.
Intro Video Design: Jason Myles
Art Design: Corn and C. Derick Varn

Links and Social Media:
twitter: @varnvlog
blue sky: @varnvlog.bsky.social
You can find the additional streams on Youtube

Current Patreon at the Sponsor Tier: Jordan Sheldon, Mark J. Matthews, Lindsay Kimbrough, RedWolf, DRV, Kenneth McKee, JY Chan, Matthew Monahan, Parzival, Adriel Mixon