Whatstherumpass

joined 4 years ago
 

Comrades! A deep deep dive into the history and the man that was Josef Stalin. Nearly 3 full hours! o7

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TMBS #150. (podcasts.google.com)
 

RIP Michael. The team takes Q & As & discusses where we go from here along with book recommendations & much more.

 
[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 years ago

You're right and even if diagnosing them as Trots seems harsh it's not wrong.

I'm reading 'What Is To Be Done' for the first time & came across this passage (one of many) that highlights the problem quite plainly:

"However, the Bernsteinian and “critical” trend, to which the majority of the legal Marxists turned, deprived the socialists of this opportunity and demoralised the socialist consciousness by vulgarising Marxism, by advocating the theory of the blunting of social contradictions, by declaring the idea of the social revolution and of the dictatorship of the proletariat to be absurd, by reducing the working-class movement and the class struggle to narrow trade-unionism and to a “realistic” struggle for petty, gradual reforms. This was synonymous with bourgeois democracy’s denial of socialism’s right to independence and, consequently, of its right to existence; in practice it meant a striving to convert the nascent working-class movement into an appendage of the liberals."

 

From the description: *It’s 2015 and one Brooklyn middle school is about to receive a huge influx of new students.

In this episode, Chana Joffe-Walt, a reporter, follows what happens when the School of International Studies’ 6th grade class swells from 30 mostly Latino, Black and Middle Eastern students, to 103 — an influx almost entirely driven by white families.

Everyone wants “what’s best for the school” but it becomes clear that they don’t share the same vision of what “best” means.*

Comrades, I'd be very interested to read your reactions, there are two episodes so far I have listened to the first episode only. A pure Marxist interpretation of the various class/race antagonisms and the subtle way they are enshrined in one Brooklyn public school. Check it out!

 

A pure & in-depth Marxist analysis of nearly a century of US political economy, labor and race/class antagonism. So much ground covered. The interview is based on Davis' book by the same name written at the height of Reaganomics with most elements totally relevant today.

 

A 3 pt series looking at life under capitalism in the midst of a pandemic. Described as a "Commie This American Life" by the host Daniel Denvir.