Marxism

Mon 12.31.12 | Victor Serge: Conscience of a Revolution

Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary NYRB, 2012 

Richard Greeman, Beware of Vegetarian Sharks Lulu, 2009

 

 

Victor Serge lived a remarkable life in the cause of revolution. Translator and biographer Richard Greeman reflects upon the journalist, novelist, and poet's anarchist youth in France with the Bonnot Gang, his involvement in the Bolshevik Revolution, his imprisonment in Stalin's gulag, and his enduring dissident or libertarian Marxism during some of the darkest days of the 20th century. He discusses Serge's belief in the double duty of the revolutionary: to protect the revolution from threats from without, and to defend it from authoritarianism within.

Wed 8.29.12 | Selma James on Class and Gender

Listen to this Program:

Download program audio (mp3, 49.03 Mbytes)

Many on the left see the working class as the primary agent of radical change. Where does this leave people like housewives and others whose work goes uncompensated? Selma James sees unwaged work as crucial to capitalism's operation and continuation. She addresses the relationship between gender and class, and examines power relations within the working class. (Encore presentation.)

Tues 4.17.12 | Victor Serge: Conscience of a Revolution

Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary NYRB, 2012

International Victor Serge Foundation

Richard Greeman, Beware of Vegetarian Sharks Lulu, 2009

 

 

 

 

 

Listen to this Program:

Download program audio (mp3, 48.19 Mbytes)
Victor Serge lived a remarkable life in the cause of revolution.  Translator and biographer Richard Greeman reflects upon the journalist, novelist, and poet's anarchist youth in France with the Bonnot Gang, his involvement in the Bolshevik Revolution, his imprisonment in Stalin's gulag, and his enduring dissident or libertarian Marxism during some of the darkest days of the 20th century. He discusses Serge's belief in the double duty of the revolutionary: to protect the revolution from threats from without, and to defend it from authoritarianism within.

Wed 4.04.12 | Selma James on Class and Gender

Listen to this Program:

Download program audio (mp3, 49.03 Mbytes)
Many on the left see the working class as the primary agent of radical change. Where does this leave people like housewives and others whose work goes uncompensated? Selma James sees unwaged work as crucial to capitalism's operation and continuation. She addresses the relationship between gender and class, and examines power relations within the working class.

Mon 1.09.12| Rosa Luxemburg's Legacy

Annelies Laschitza, Georg Adler, and Peter Hudis, eds., Letters of Rosa Luxemburg Verso, 2011

 

 

 

Listen to this Program:

Download program audio (mp3, 51.8 Mbytes)
Proponent of the mass strike and socialist democracy, advocate of anticapitalism and anti-imperialism -- Rosa Luxemburg is a thinker for our tumultuous times. Peter Hudis, editor of the planned 14-volume The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg, talks about the pioneering Marxist theoretician and leader, and explains why her radical politics and vision endure nearly a century after her assassination.

Mon 11.21.11 | Césaire on Colonialism

Robin Kelley, "A Poetics of Anticolonialism," Monthly Review

Robin Kelley, Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times Harvard U. Press, forthcoming

Listen to this Program:

Download program audio (mp3, 49.07 Mbytes)
Colonialism in both its traditional and contemporary versions is not just about power and coercion: it's about how the "other" is thought and talked about. Aimé Césaire took a radical anticolonial stance inflected with surrealist and Marxist notions. Robin D. G. Kelley discusses Césaire's ideas and their relevance today.
All user-submitted comments owned by the Poster. All other content © Against the Grain, a program of KPFA Radio, 94.1fm Berkeley CA and online at KPFA.org. Against the Grain logo designed by Lise Dahms. A.T.G.'s theme music is by Dhamaal.