Mentions: jonpiccini

Living The Dream with a Green New Deal

In this episode of Living The Dream Jon (@JonPiccini) and Dave (@withsobersenses) catch up with Tash Heenan (@tashellenheenan) and Jeremy Poxon (@JeremyPoxon) to discuss the Green New Deal. Jon, Tash and Jeremy are partisans of the Green New Deal, seeing it as a way of addressing immediate concerns and opening pathways to more radical transformations whilst Dave remains something of a half-reformed ultra-left curmudgeon who can do nothing more than yell ‘but the value-form’ at worried passer-bys.

We chat about what a Green New Deal may or may not be, if it is an attempt to save or destroy capitalism, its relationship or not with creating communism, the hard limits the environmental crisis imposes, the disappearance of the commons as a concept, and a whole lot more.

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Writings we reference include:

Australia Needs A Green New Deal, Not More Centrism

We need a Blak New Deal to fight the climate crisis

A Red Deal

Three Ways a Green New Deal Can Promote Life Over Capital

Responsible minerals sourcing for renewable energy

Trade Unions for Energy Democracy

Between the Devil and the Green New Deal

Music by Meatraffle

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Living the Dream with ScoMo

Now that the hot-takes have gone cold and are stale as bricks @JonPiccini and @withsobersenses take out their artisanal slow-cooker take on the recent Australian Federal election. Why did we get it so wrong? Why did #changetherules suck? What will a Morrison Coalition government look like and what does it mean for our strategy?

CW: This show contains a discussion of misogyny and domestic violence.

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Stuff we mention includes:

Elizabeth Humphrys – We Live in Anti-Political Times

Amy Thomas – Federal election 2019: What the hell just happened? Five arguments

Jeremy Poxon, Tash Heenan & Jon Piccini – Australia Needs A Green New Deal, Not More Centrism

Music by Class War

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Living The Dream during #Ausvotes2019

[Edit – the audio file was replaces at 4pm 15/5/2019]

In this episode Jon (@JonPiccini) and Dave (@withsobersenses) try to work out if we have anything useful to say about an election that is all hype but actually a snoozefest. What does it tell us about the state of Australian society, what can anticapitalists draw from it? Are we about the #Changetherules or will Clive Palmer be leading us into a Kangaroo Reich? What happens the morning after?

We also address some criticisms we have received and try to muddle through some blindspots in our thinking.

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Stuff we mention includes:

Whiteness and Class Struggle

Anti-politics and how to watch election night

Fully Automated Luxury Communism? | Ash Sarkar meets Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi

Whiteness Again

Sojourner Truth Organisation: Understanding and Fighting White Supremacy

Floodcast 10 Petition Me Daddy

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Living The Dream reads On Fairness by Sally McManus

In this episode Jon (@JonPiccini) and Dave (@withsobersenses) review ACTU Secretary Sally McManus’ book On Fairness.We try to dig in to how McManus fails to understand the actual dynamics of capitalism – rather blaming bad people and bad ideas for the problems we face. This means the book points us in the wrong direction. Rather we need to address the core dynamics in our society if we want to fight exploitation and oppression today and struggle for and create a society where we can live lives worth living.

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You can find Jon’s article on Labor, Trade Unions and the White Australia Policy here:

            A White Working Man’s Country

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Living The Dream in 2019!

Living The Dream in 2019!

2019! Wooooo! In this episode of Living The Dream Jon (@jonpiccini) and Dave (@withsobersenses) take off the party-hats, pick the streamers from their shoulders of their tuxedo jackets, set aside the Champagne flutes and have a chat about what 2018 was all about what we think is going to happen in 2019. Climate Change, fascism, #libspill, disaster communism, power prices, radical social democracy, #changetherules, #metoo, book recommendations and angry clowns air boxing whilst riding unicycles – this episode has it all!

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Stuff we mention includes:

Cronulla 2.0? : Racist assembly @ St Kilda Beach, Saturday, January 5, 2019

Kieran’s Review

Stephen Wertheim – Return of the Neocons

Keir Milburn and Bertie Russell – What can an institution do? Towards Public-Common partnerships and a new common-sense

Cinzia Arruzza – From Women’s Strikes to a New Class Movement: The Third Feminist Wave

Endnotes – The Holding Pattern

Salvage Editorial Collective – Salvage Perspectives #6: Evidence of Things Not Seen

Out of the Woods – The Uses of Disaster

The Dig – The Green New Deal with Kate Aronoff

Madeline Lane-McKinley – #MeToo From Below

What’s going on with Change the Rules? A report from the Melbourne Delegates Meeting 25th September

Jobs You Can Count On – a secure work future for Australia

Goodbye Neoliberalism

Class War #73 Class War is Dead…Lone Live the Class War

The Universalism Debate

Music by Tom Waits

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Living the Dream after the Plebiscite and amongst the Alt-Right

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In this episode Dave (@withsobersenses) and Jon (@jonpiccini) catch up with Simon Copland (@SimonCopland) ‏ again. We talk about how despite the plebiscite being a fantastic victory the Left (for lack of a better term) seems determined to see it as a defeat and what the impact of this is. Simon also talks about going to, live tweeting from and then writing about a recent Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux talk and his thoughts about how the struggle against reaction can be renovated.

Things we mention include:

Simon Copland – Racists on speaking tour: rethinking our response

Alison Pennington – On the Plebiscite: Beyond Defeatism, Moralism and the Politics of Scarcity

Red Action – Declaration Of Independence

You can find Simon’s work here and our older episode with him here

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Music by Idles

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Living The Dream wth the Communist Party of Australia and Indigenous Struggles during the 1920s and 1930s.

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CPA Banner circa 1982 courtesy National Museum of Australia

In this episode Dave(@withsobersenses) and Jon (@jonpiccini) chat with Padraic Gibson (@paddygibson) about his research into the Communist Party of Australia and its early, or lack there of, engagement with Indigenous struggles in the 1920s and 30s. Not only is the history fascinating but Paddy also really digs into what was wrong with socialist and communist thought at the time, and the inheritance of Marx and Engel’s work, that made it hard for the CPA to connect with these struggles. How and why did this change? And how do these concerns play out today?

Sadly Jon’s internet dropped out 15 or 20 minutes into the conversation

Paddy is a member of Solidarity and his work can be found there.

Paddy would like to acknowledge that the history about the links between the Garvyist movement and Aboriginal activists in Australia in the 1920s he talks about comes from John Maynard’s book Fight for Liberty and Freedom

Paddy was nominated as an interviewee by John Passant when John donated to Living the Dream. Thanks John!

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Living The Dream in the feminist moment

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In this episode of Living the Dream Jon (@jonpiccini) and Dave (@withsobersenses) chat with Eleanor Robertson (@marrowing) about if we are living in a feminist moment and what that means. We focus our conversation on two of her articles from Meanjin. We discuss why it is that so much of contemporary feminism focuses on representations in popular culture – what does that tell us about both feminism and popular culture? From here we talk about the complex history of 2nd Wave feminism, the limitations of the intersectionality/class debate and then move into broader discussion about the possibilities of radical politics. Is there any value in radical reformist projects? When capital so dominates our lives what’s the possibility for radical collective self-activity? We return to the common questions we dwell on at Living the Dream: is there any role for agency and if so what kind? What can and is to be done?

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Articles, people and things we talk about include:

Eleanor Robertson Get mad and get even

Eleanor Robertson Intersectional Identity and the Path to Progress

Amber A’lee Frost All Worked Up and Nowhere to Go

Moishe Postone

Maria Mies

Paolo Virno Virtuosity and Revolution: The Political Theory of Exodus

Monsieur Dupont Nihilist Communism

E.P Thompson The making of the English Working Class

The Combahee River Collective Statement

Endnotes

Wildcat Migration and national social democracy in Britain

Nothing is Ever Lost

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Living The Dream antipolitically

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In this episode of Living the Dream Jon (@jonpiccini) and Dave (@withsobersenses) talk with Tad Tietze (@Dr_Tad) about the idea of antipolitics he developed with Elizabeth Humphrys(@liz_beths). We talk about what politics is and how it relates to capitalism and the state. Tad argues that politics is increasingly detached from society and what this means and how communism as ‘the real movement’ can and should related to politics. Tad argues that this analysis has serious and devastating implications for what we call The Left and Activism. We debate if there is any role, before the emergence of social movements, for the agency of anticapitalists.

 

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We are currently trying to raise some cash to improve our recording capabilities. You can donate here

 

Tad provided the following reading list

On anti-politics in general (with Liz Humphrys): https://left-flank.org/2013/10/31/anti-politics-elephant-room/

On anti-politics and neoliberalism (with Liz Humphrys): https://oxfordleftreview.com/olr-issue-14/tad-tietze-and-elizabeth-hymphreys-anti-politics-and-the-illusions-of-neoliberalism/

On Greece: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/08/syriza-referendum-podemos-austerity/

On Australia: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/09/labor-tony-abbott-rudd-gillard-shorten/

On Trump: https://left-flank.org/2016/01/25/the-trump-paradox-a-rough-guide-for-the-left/

On recuperating politics: https://left-flank.org/2017/02/03/why-better-politics-cant-make-anti-politics-go-away/

The Piping Shrike on Corbyn: http://www.pipingshrike.com/2017/06/the-confusions-of-anti-politics-uk-edition-an-update.html

 

We also mention a debate between Plan C and Angry Workers of the World over Directional Demands

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