Words Are Wind
In this episode Dave (@withsobersenses) and Jon (@JonPiccini) discuss Humphrey McQueen’s A New Britannia. This is the first of three books we are reading as part of a series on race and capitalism in Australia,
We try to come to grips with his argument and its explanation of racism as arising from the specifics of class formation in Australia, how it challenged established Leftwing thought and its implications for today.
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Music by Redgum
This is part 1 of our new reading series on race in Australia and the struggle against it. Over the next 3 or so months Jon (@JonPiccini) and Dave (@withsobersenses) will be reading A New Britannia by Humphrey McQueen, White Nation by Ghassan Hage and The White Possessive by Aileen Moreton-Robinson. In this episode we set out why we are doing this, our thinking at this point in time and briefly discuss what the White Australia Policy was and wasn’t and the whys and whynots.
We encourage all our listeners to read with us and join us in the discussion.
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Correction: I mention Nelson Peery as being a member of DRUM/League of Revolutionary Black Workers. He wasn’t. You can find an interview with him about his life and works here
As for DRUM and the League you can find an interview with Darryl ‘Waistline’ Mitchell and Donald Abdul Roberts here
You should read Hard Crackers and its recent offshoot (split?) Gasoline and Grits too
Insurgent Notes has a special issue dedicate to the life and works of Noel Ignatiev
Music by Wyatt Waddell
In this episode Jon (@JonPiccini) and Dave (@withsobersenses) have a chat with Anthony O’Donnell (@AnthonyODonne13), a Senior Lecturer from La Trobe and author of ‘Inventing Unemployment: Regulating Joblessness in Twentieth-Century Australia’. Anthony shows us how the category of Full Employment was invented and why and undermines the claim that the low levels of post-War unemployment were due to the magic powers of a white paper written under the Chifley Government rather than, say, the general dynamics of the boom. At the time it was low levels of unemployment that presented an issue for capitalism and the groundwork of the punitive regime the poor are subjected to today was developed then. Great stuff.
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In this episode, Jon (@JonPiccini) has a long delayed conversation with Shan Windscript (@ShanWindy), Phd student at University of Melbourne and organiser, who has played key roles in the fight for casual workers in the tertiary sector and the rights of international students. We talk about how the Coronavirus has served to weaponise long standing fears about China in Australia, how supporting movements for change in Hong Kong is not incompatible with working for political and economic rights on the mainland, and how Shan’s research on the inner lives of everyday activists in Maoist China undermines attempts to present the present CCP regime as omnipotent.
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Shan’s writing includes
Can Chinese Students Abroad Speak? Asserting Political Agency amid Australian Nationalist Anxiety
How to Write a Diary in Mao’s New China: Guidebooks in the Crafting of Socialist Subjectivities
Music by RE-Tros
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
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
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
[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:
Anti-politics and how to watch election night
Fully Automated Luxury Communism? | Ash Sarkar meets Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi
Sojourner Truth Organisation: Understanding and Fighting White Supremacy
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:
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
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
Class War #73 Class War is Dead…Lone Live the Class War
Music by Tom Waits
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
