Cosmopod

Entropy and the Capitalist System with Robert Biel

May 29, 2023

Rudy joins Robert Biel, author of The Entropy of Capitalism, The New Imperialism and Sustainable Food Systems for a discussion on systems approaches to analyzing capitalism. They cover Robert's earlier work on entropy and capitalism, how the capitalist system externalizes disorder on the periphery, the role of China...

Letter: On Sortition and Democratic Decision-making

May 25, 2023

This letter is in response to Conquering Democracy, Abolishing Political Representation by the Cibcom Collective. I appreciated the comrades’ thought-provoking work and the opportunity to clarify my ideas in response. I have several peripheral agreements regarding the importance of democracy and the utility of...

Neither Vertical nor Horizontal: A Theory of Political Organization with Rodrigo Nunes

May 21, 2023

Rudy and Harry join Rodrigo Nunes, author of Neither Vertical nor Horizontal: A Theory of Political Organization for a discussion on Rodrigo's approach to thinking about the problem of organization. We cover the need to move beyond certain dichotomies like vertical and horizontal, self-organized vs organized from...

The Beijing Revolutionary Women’s Conference of '49 with Elisabeth Armstrong

May 8, 2023

Annie joins Elisabeth Armstrong, author of Bury the Corpse of Colonialism: The Revolutionary Feminist Conference of 1949 for a discussion of the Beijing conference and the international women's movement of the period. They discuss the composition and politics of the Women’s International Democratic Federation,...

Is This the Left that Jacobin Wants?: Chris Maisano’s Perilous Drift Towards Post-Marxism

May 4, 2023

A recent Jacobin piece by Chris Maisano argues that building “a Left that matters” requires focusing on Democratic Party electoral work, but we must be clear about the consequence of such an orientation: a middle-class Left that remains disconnected from the proletariat and abandons the fundamentals of Marxism. By...