Ep 388 - From Theory to Praxis: Lenin's Revolutionary Formula with Breht O'Shea

Ep 388 - From Theory to Praxis: Lenin's Revolutionary Formula with Breht O'Shea

**We’re listening to and discussing this episode on Tuesday, July 14 at 8pm ET/5pm PT, in our online gathering Macro ‘n Chill. We’ve invited Breht to join us, so bring your questions. Register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/PXkazv5WTWW7b7kMExA8uw [https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/PXkazv5WTWW7b7kMExA8uw] "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need." Steve's guest, Breht O’Shea of Rev Left Radio and Red Menace podcast, believes that dedicating one's life to fighting for this vision, even without knowing the outcome, is more meaningful than pursuing capital's vision of wealth and status. Steve invited Breht to help tackle one of the most misunderstood and weaponized texts in Marxist theory: Vladimir Lenin's Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder, a book sometimes misused as a cudgel to pressure leftists into voting for the Democratic Party. To set the record straight, Breht places the 1920 pamphlet in its proper historical context. It was written after the successful Bolshevik Revolution to advise European socialist movements on how to avoid fatal mistakes. Together, Breht and Steve break down Lenin's dual critique: the ultra-left "infantile" error of purity-spiraled sectarianism, and the right-wing "opportunist" error of liquidating the revolutionary movement into bourgeois liberal politics. Lenin's strategic genius lies in maintaining firm revolutionary principles while remaining tactically flexible. The discussion extends beyond the text to cover the necessity of organization and discipline (democratic centralism), the constant threat of counter-revolution, the failure of social democracy, and how fascism functions as capitalism's immune response to left-wing threats. Breht O’Shea is the host of Rev Left Radio, the co-host of the Red Menace podcast, and author of the upcoming book “Letters to a Young Revolutionary” published by Iskra Books. Breht is also a longtime organizer in Omaha, Nebraska, a union electrician, and married father of three.

Ep 387 - Judgment of Gender with Allison Butler

**Tuesday evening, at 8 pm ET/5 pm PT, we’ll be listening to this episode and discussing it during our online gathering, Macro ‘n Chill. Bring your thoughts, your insights, your questions. July 7th at at 8 pm ET/5 pm PT. Use this link to register: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/ay2YXuCvRLOp1dV5yh8HKw [https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/ay2YXuCvRLOp1dV5yh8HKw] Women in politics, media, and public life are often placed at the center of the spectacle while being silenced on the issues that matter. Media scholar Allison Butler talks to Steve about her book, Judgment of Gender, exposing how patriarchal power and capitalist media institutions weaponize pop culture and construct narratives that fixate on appearance, personality, and scandal while obscuring questions of class and power. The conversation reveals a core dialectical contradiction: women are centered in media only to be silenced. Their personhood is reduced to superficial tropes. The critiques of political candidates Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, and even Nikki Haley, focus on pantsuits, headbands, voice, and age instead of their actual policies, their service to capital, and their imperialist actions (hello? Clinton's role in Libya? “We came, we saw, he died.”) The media's obsession with superficiality silences substantive class-based critique. Allison’s highlights the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women. This is critical. It is not a fringe issue but a stark example of state-sanctioned violence and the super-exploitation of the most oppressed. That the legacy media's silence on this horror renders these lives invisible is a feature, not a bug, of a system that treats Indigenous lives as disposable Allison Butler is a Senior Lecturer, Associate Chair, and the Director of the Media Literacy Certificate Program in the Department of Communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she teaches courses on critical media literacy and representations of education in the media. She serves as Vice President on the board of the Media Freedom Foundation. She is the author of numerous articles and books on media literacy, and she is a co-author of multiple practical resources for media literacy education. IG: @atbutler5 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allison-butler-190882108/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/allison-butler-190882108/] Project Censored IG, X, Facebook: @projectcensored

Ep 386 - Who Do You Serve: Neoliberalism & Oligarchy Through an MMT Lens with Bill Mitchell

Modern Monetary Theory explains how sovereign currency systems work, but it doesn’t tell us who controls the state or whose interests state power serves. Economist Bill Mitchell suggests that a dialectical understanding of capitalism is essential for answering that question. He and Steve discuss MMT not as a policy prescription but as a lens to dissect the capitalist state, not a neutral arbiter but an instrument of class conflict. Bill traces the motion of capital from the post-WWII "Golden Age," which was a temporary compromise forced by a strong working class. He takes us through what he calls the neoliberal counter-revolution, epitomized by the Powell Memorandum, wherein capital consciously exercised control to reverse social gains and redistribute income upward. The government’s “fiscal crisis” is an ideological fiction (a fetish of money) that obscures the material reality: a currency-issuing government faces no inherent financial constraint, only real resource limits. From the erosion of labor power and the rise of think tanks to militarism, financialization, climate crisis, and AI-driven social control, Bill contends that today's crises are not policy mistakes but the logical outcomes of capitalism's extreme contradictions. The conversation explores why understanding monetary sovereignty is only the beginning, but reformism and electoralism are insufficient. The material conditions are driving toward a necessary rupture. William Mitchell is Professor of Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE) at the University of Newcastle, NSW Australia. He is also the Docent Professor of Global Political Economy at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and Guest International Professor at Kyoto University, Japan. He is one of the founders of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). His daily blog is one of the world’s leading economics blogs. Follow Bill’s work and find his books at https://billmitchell.org/blog/ [https://billmitchell.org/blog/]

Ep 385 - MAGAcademy: The Hostile Takeover of Higher Ed with Nolan Higdon

** Don't forget about Tuesday’s Macro ‘n Chill, the online gathering where we listen to the podcast together and discuss the issues it covers. Bring your insights, questions, and good-faith disagreements. June 23, 8pm ET/5pm PT. Use this link to register https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/yI-UE7W1TcGglJSZ2l-Ffg [https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/yI-UE7W1TcGglJSZ2l-Ffg] As much as we'd like to blame Donald Trump for the near-destruction of higher education, the rot set in long before he ever set foot in the White House. Political analyst and author Nolan Higdon is back to talk with Steve about his new book, MAGA Academy: How Corporatism Paved the Way for the Hostile Takeover of Higher Ed. Nolan makes the case that Trump's hostile takeover of the academy was only possible because fifty years of neoliberal corporatization had already reduced universities to profit-driven enterprises. (He also points out that this was spearheaded largely by so-called liberal Democrats.) From the weakening of faculty power and the crushing weight of student debt to the erosion of academic freedom and the treatment of students as mere customers, the stage was set long before MAGA became a political force. If higher education had a civic mission, it has been gutted. Critical inquiry is replaced by vapid careerism and market logic. Steve and Nolan examine how federal funding and corporate influence turned campuses into compliant institutions, more concerned with their bottom line. Steve brings the crucial macro-economic, challenging the false scarcity that puts the kibosh on public investment in education. As he often reminds us, the federal government is the issuer of the currency. It is not revenue-constrained, yet we continue to accept austerity and tuition hikes as if there were no other way. The conversation highlights how higher education reflects broader class relations and power structures within capitalism. MAGA's higher education agenda is part of a longer historical process that leads to today's intensified struggles over knowledge, ideology, and power. Nolan Higdon is a prominent political analyst, author, and media scholar. He teaches in Merrill College and the Education Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. A veteran of the "corporate university" era, Higdon has authored numerous books, including The Anatomy of Fake News and Surveillance Education. His latest work, MAGAcademy, exposes the bipartisan neoliberal roots of the modern authoritarian shift in American higher education. Find his work on Substack: nolanhigdon.substack.com @NolanHigdonCML [https://twitter.com/NolanHigdonCML] on X

Ep 384 - Metabolic Rifts: Capitalism's Assault on the Earth System with Ian Angus

** Come to Macro ‘n Chill, the online gathering where we listen to the podcast together and discuss what we learned and where we agree or disagree. Tuesday, June 16, 8pm ET/5pm PT. Use this link to register: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/Qm85bGIOSF2H_uNMwOmWtQ [https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/Qm85bGIOSF2H_uNMwOmWtQ] Ecosocialist author, Ian Angus, talks with Steve about his book Metabolic Rifts: Capitalism's Assault on the Earth System. They explore the deep, sometimes invisible ways that capitalism disrupts the planet’s fundamental life cycles –– from soil depletion and artificial fertilizers to the carbon cycle driving global warming. Ian traces the concept of “metabolic rift” from Marx and Engels through a long socialist lineage, making the case that ecological critique has always been central to the Marxist tradition. (Indeed, some Marxists might argue that “eco-” is an unnecessary qualifier; “socialism” is enough!) Steve brings up the MMT basics challenging the austerity narrative that blocks ecological reconstruction. He reminds us that the state, as the currency issuer, can de-commodify the essentials of life, namely food, water, housing, and healthcare. However, as Ian bluntly states: “The problem is that it’s not our government, it’s their government.” Reformism and electoralism are dead ends. While listeners may disagree with some of Ian's interpretations of Soviet history, those comments do not negate the episode's compelling analysis that capitalism’s DNA demands endless accumulation and profit. Combating the ecological crisis is inseparable from the struggle to overcome capitalism. Ian Angus is founder and editor of the online ecosocialist journal, Climate & Capitalism and a founding member of the Global Ecosocialist Network. Among his many books are The War Against the Commons: Dispossession and Resistance in the Making of Capitalism [https://monthlyreview.org/product/the-war-against-the-commons-dispossession-and-resistance-in-the-making-of-capitalism/] (Monthly Review Press, 2023), A Redder Shade of Green: Intersections of Science and Socialism [https://monthlyreview.org/product/a_redder_shade_of_green/] (Monthly Review Press, 2017) and Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System [http://monthlyreview.org/product/facing_the_anthropocene/] (Monthly Review Press, 2016). His most recent is Metabolic Rifts: Capitalism’s Assault on the Earth System. [https://bookshop.org/p/books/metabolic-rifts-capitalism-s-assault-on-the-earth-system-ian-angus/863f82dbe1cb58d1] (Monthly Review Press, 2026), @ecosocialism1 on X