Colette Shade, author of Y2K: How the 2000s Became Everything, talks about culture at the turn of the millennium. Tim Shorrock discusses the political crisis in South Korea.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

Foregrounding workers’ material interests used to be commonplace among socialists. But as the Left faced decades of defeat, a materialist approach to politics fell out of favor. In this episode of Confronting Capitalism, Vivek Chibber defends materialism from its critics and discusses how a materialist perspective understands rationality, the challenges around collective organizing, and cultural differences.

Read the article mentioned in this episode: https://catalyst-journal.com/2024/12/the-flight-from-materialism

Confronting Capitalism with Vivek Chibber is produced by Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy, and published by Jacobin. Music by Zonkey.

Featuring Michael Denning on Stuart Hall’s Marxism—a Marxism without guarantees. This is a comprehensive introduction to Marxism as a method to analyze historically specific, complex and contradictory capitalist social formations, and what that means for making, rather than assuming the existence of, a working-class socialist politics. Next week Dan interviews Denning on Policing the Crisis, a 1978 book collectively authored by Hall and his colleagues; it’s a remarkable project that anticipates today’s politics around anti-immigrant xenophobia, mass incarceration, and Trumpism.

Listen to Hall’s full 1983 Inaugural Karl Marx Memorial Lecture in Sheffield youtube.com/watch?v=IP_OWahR-Gc

Our two-part series on Gramsci with Denning: thedigradio.com/podcast/gramsci-hegemony-w-michael-denning/ thedigradio.com/podcast/gramsci-organization-crisis-w-michael-denning/

Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig

Buy Set the Earth on Fire at Haymarketbooks.com

Use code "DIG" for 30% off a subscription to The-Syllabus.com

This week is a best of 2024, with Rashid Khalidi, Pankaj Mishra, Annelle Sheline, Aziz Rana, Anna Kornbluh, Brooke Harrington, and, in memoriam, Jane McAlevey.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

Branko Marcetic, staff writer at Jacobin and author of Yesterday's Man, says farewell to Joe Biden (and takes some shots at Joe Scarborough too). Santiago Pérez, co-author of a recent paper, discusses his research on how little the class composition of elite college student bodies has changed.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

In the wake of Kamala Harris's defeat, the Left's association with identity politics has been a major focus of public debate. But what identity politics is or who primarily benefits from it remains contested.

In this episode of Confronting Capitalism, Vivek Chibber discusses the Democrats’ long-standing attachment to identity politics, why this form of politics can't fight oppression, and the real history behind struggles for justice.

Confronting Capitalism with Vivek Chibber is produced by Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy, and published by Jacobin. Music by Zonkey.

Suzi recently participated in a conference in honor of the dissident sociologist Boris Kagarlitsky, who is languishing in Putin's prison for speaking out against the war in Ukraine. On this episode of Jacobin Radio, we bring you a panel from the conference discussing Boris's latest book, The Long Retreat, published while he was in prison.

Three activist-scholars, Bill Fletcher Jr., Alex Callinicos, and Jayati Ghosh, present their appreciation and their critiques of Kagarlitsky's analysis of the rise of the Right and the decline of the Left over the last forty plus years. Our speakers address Kagarlitsky's internationalist account of left organizations across the globe that, he argues, remain stuck in the past, unable to come to terms with new realities. The speakers also address Kagarlitsky's critique of identitarian politics of difference, which makes forming broad mass political projects difficult.

Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Featuring Bassam Haddad on the historical and geopolitical origins of Assad’s rise and fall — and what might happen next. We think through the contradictions: honoring the joy felt by Syrians at Assad’s ouster while simultaneously taking stock of a truly bad geopolitical outcome.

Want to learn more? Listen to “Thawra,” our series on the 20th-century political history of the Arab East thedigradio.com/Thawra

Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig

Buy Palestine in a World on Fire at Haymarketbooks.com

Buy Against the Crisis at versobooks.com

The Dig goes deep into politics everywhere, from labor struggles and political economy to imperialism and immigration. Hosted by Daniel Denvir.

Trita Parsi and Joshua Landis analyze what’s been going on in Syria. Tina Gerhardt reviews the annual UN climate conference, COP29, where little happened.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

As with many other periods, the history of the Roman Empire has often been told from the vantage point of a minoritarian social elite. Sarah Bond, a professor of classics at the University of Iowa, set out in her research to uncover something different: a "history from below" detailing the class struggle in ancient Rome. She joins Long Reads to discuss this project. Sarah's book Strike: Labor, Unions, and Resistance in the Roman Empire will be published in February of next year.

Long Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s longform writers. Hosted by features editor Daniel Finn. Produced by Conor Gillies, music by Knxwledge.

Featuring Patrick Blanchfield on assassination and political violence: from the routine to the extraordinary; authored by the state, capital, the left, the right, the unwell and alienated; as an anxiety, in our fantasies, as a morbid symptom and repetition compulsion; and as expressing distinctively American logics of domination and human disposability.

Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig

Listen to the Ordinary Unhappiness podcast at ordinaryunhappiness.buzzsprout.com/

Read Patrick’s essay on the death drive late-light.com/issues/issue-1/death-drive-nation

Buy China in Global Capitalism at haymarketbooks.com

Use code “DIG” for 30% off a subscription to The-Syllabus.com

The Dig, hosted by Daniel Denvir, is a weekly interview podcast going deep into politics everywhere, from labor struggles and political-economy to imperialism and immigration.