Jacobin Radio

Dan discusses The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte — Marx's take on revolution and reaction in mid-nineteenth-century France, the broader theories he develops about history and the relationship between politics and the class war, and how this all might apply to today — with political sociologist Dylan Riley.Check out Dan's recent NYT op-ed, "The Case Against Border Security."Thanks to NACLA, reporting on the Americas since 1967. Check out their collection of articles on Latin American politics at nacla.org. And thanks, as always, to Verso. Check out their huge collection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.com.Please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig!

Dan talks to Eric Levitz — who at New York magazine provides the sort of consistently thoughtful and deeply contextualized analysis that is often quite hard to find on mainstream news sites — about the increasingly impossible to reconcile immanent contradictions shaking the Democratic and Republican parties.Thanks to University of California Press. Check out American Prophet: The Life and Work of Carey McWilliams by Peter Richardson, with a foreword from Mike Davis.Please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig!

What might Bernie 2020 look like, particularly now that almost everyone claims to be for Medicare for All (whatever they might mean by that)? Will Harris's track record as a law-and-order prosecutor doom her, or will her appeal as a woman of color rally a decisive number of votes? And will Biden being exposed as utterly unfit for the 2020 Democratic base send his poll numbers crashing? What impact will AOC have on defining what voters want and demand? Dan discusses all of this and more with Briahna Gray, Dave Weigel, and Waleed Shahid.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge collection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.com.Please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig.

<font color="#000000">The state of the economy is, despite assertions to the contrary, not strong; it is being plundered by the alliance of top corporate managers, leading financiers and political leaders from both parties. Suzi talks to </font>Robert Brenner on politics and the state of the economy — matters of great confusion if you only pay attention to the business press and politicians, who say the economy is robust, with record low unemployment, rising wages, and the recovery of the stock market. But the Fed stopped raising interest rates, wages are stagnant, precarity and insecurity are the norm, homelessness has exploded, student debt is staggering and suffocating — and teachers are striking to force states to reinvest (stop under-investing) to save public education. So what is the real story, and if the economists and pundits are getting it wrong — why is that the case? Is it cheerleading for the status quo? We get Brenner’s analysis.

Two left-wing Muslim women newly elected to Congress—Palestinian-American Rashida Tlaib and Somali-American Ilhan Omar—are resetting the Congressional debate over Palestine. In response, they have been met with slanderous attacks. On the one hand, this is exciting: we've never had people in Congress not only criticizing Israeli brutality but also supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. On the other hand, the current debate is a sobering reminder of how amongst American elected officials, overwhelming, and nearly unconditional, bipartisan support for Israel remains the norm even as Democratic voters move leftward—and in increasing opposition to the occupation. Dan speaks to organizer Linda Sarsour on the politics of Palestine in flux—and how partisan polarization on the issue is accelerating, and why that's a good thing.Thanks to Verso. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.comPlease support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Alejandro Velasco, Gabriel Hetland and Naomi Schiller on the profound economic, social, and political crisis in Venezuela. More than three million refugees and migrants have fled the country. Opposition figure Juan Guaidó has declared himself president. Trump and other right-wing leaders throughout the Americas quickly recognized him as just that. The US imposed new sanctions on Venezuela's oil and has hinted at the possibility of a military invasion. It's unclear what comes next, but foreign intervention would make an extremely bad situation catastrophic.Meanwhile, many reactionaries throughout the Americas are pointing to Venezuela as proof that socialism cannot work. What is the correct analysis? What does solidarity with the Venezuelan people mean for today's left? These are all extremely complicated and urgent questions. Today, Dan interviews three experts on Venezuela to help answer them.Thanks to Verso. Check out their huge collection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.comPlease support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, a leader of Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel, is on trial in New York. After twice making his way out of Mexican prisons, he was extradited to the United States. This is what counts as a major victory in the never-ending US war on drugs, which the US has in recent decades exported to Mexico. Yet El Chapo's arrest, like that of so many others, has done nothing to stop Mexican drug cartels from continuing to export massive quantities of cocaine and heroin and other drugs. Neither has it caused cartels to pause the murderous bloodbath that they have visited upon the Mexican people. The Mexican state continues to be a corrupt one, and the domestic deployment of a Mexican military deeply implicated in human rights violations is set to continue. And there is still no justice for the disappeared students from Ayotzinapa. Dan interviews legendary Mexican investigative journalist Anabel Hernández.Thanks to Verso. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.comPlease support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

#Red4EdLA: Los Angeles teachers lead the way for the labor movement — striking FOR public education — using the strike weapon to reverse the damage of decades of neoliberal assault on everything public. Suzi talks to Joel Jordan, an education strategist currently coordinating nine of the largest urban teacher unions in California, including UTLA, about the strike strategy behind UTLA’s extraordinary historic victory. Joel lays out how UTLA’s Union Power leadership wielded the strike weapon as part of a long-term strategy explicitly linked to upcoming strikes in Oakland and elsewhere and discusses the limitations the union faced, and the broad support they built and enjoyed.<o:p></o:p>

Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of the Los Angeles teachers’ union and Jane McAlevey, author and organizer, on the union’s great victory in their LA strike, protecting public education against the plutocrats’ attacks

Historian Andrew Bacevich tries to make sense of Trump’s foreign policy. Then, Steven Maher (author of this article) on the rise and fall of GE.