Эпизоды
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In this episode, recorded in October 2024, Jon and Dave chat with friend of the show and all-around good egg Elizabeth Humphrys about the Labour Movement’s (both the ALP and Trade Unions) actions to put the CFMEU under administration. Just what is going on?
You can read more of Liz’s prolific output here.
Listeners may be interested in this building industry rank and file newsletter Hard Hat
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In this episode Dave chats with Nick Southall about his new book Disaster Communism and Anarchy in the Streets
You can buy a copy of Nick’s book from the publisher Kembla Books
Nick’s blog is Revolts Now . Here you can find a collection of his work: including that on the Wollongong Out of Workers Union, his PhD thesis, reflections on his life in the Communist Party of Australia, his experiences on being on the last fraternal delegation to the USSR and much much more!
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Пропущенные эпизоды?
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Well it’s been a while, but Living the Dream is back!
Jon and Dave welcome in 2024 by discussing how in 2023 the Albanese Hegemony disintegrated. We discuss what the Laborist project looked like coming out of the 2022 election, and how over 2023 between the costs of living crisis and the failure of the Voice referendum the wheels fell off and more importantly why we should or should not care.
Jon has been very busy being a historian you should follow him on the social media formally known at Twitter - @jonpiccini. Dave has been largely occupying himself with table top games but also has contributed to this research project Class and Capital in Australia
Stuff we read, listened to etc and may have discussed in this episode include:
Megan Davis Truth After the Voice
Irene Watson There is No Hope in a Voice to Parliament
Noel Pearson Boyer Lectures
Laura Tingle Regaining control over the national political conversation will be Anthony Albanese's one great challenge in 2024
Jonathon Green Wither Progress?
Jim Chalmers Capitalism After the Crises
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Hi All
Long time no listen!Dave has launched a game on Kickstarter and is using Living The Dream to shameless promote it!
Go here and pledge
Share the link with your friendshttps://www.kickstarter.com/projects/babyboomer/baby-boomer-have-it-all-relaunch
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In this episode Dave (@withsobersenses) and Jon (@jonpiccini) discuss The White Possessive by Aileen Moreton-Robinson. Aileen Moreton-Robinson is a Goenpul woman from Minjerribah (Stradbroke Island), Quandamooka First Nation (Moreton Bay) in Queensland, Australia and is Professor of Indigenous Research at the University of Queensland.
Moreton-Robinson’s work provides a root-and-branch critique of modernity from the perspective of Indigenous Sovereignty and produces a set of critical concepts to think against the operation of race and whiteness both within Australia and beyond.
Other sources mentioned include The Act of Disappearing (meanjin.com.au) by Amy McQuire and the work of Onyeka Nubia, David Roediger and Noel Ignatiev
Listeners should be aware that this show discusses racism, including racist violence.
Music by Chasing Ghost
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Recorded just before Xmas in this episode Jon (@JonPiccini) and Dave (@withsobersenses) talk about 2021. Unsurprisingly we talk a lot about the global pandemic and the attempts to manage it. We discuss the continual rise of an insurgent Right that seems to have become the pole for much of social rebellion at the same time large sections of the Left have further invested in fantasies of the state, the current condition of global capitalism beset by a logistics crisis, labour insubordinations and inflation and more!
Stuff we mention include
Conspiracy and Social Struggle – Wu Ming
The Specific Character of Today’s Crisis – Sergio Bologna
Immunodemocracy
Dear Agamben, I write to you – Donatella Di Cesare
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In this episode Dave (@withsobersenses) chats with two anarchist comrades Tommy (@correnterosso) and Charlie about Tommy’s recent article Anarchy and Its Allies: The United Front and the Groupings of Tendency and the related rise in anarcho-communist organisations in Australia. We chat about how anarchism is developing andthe current appeal of Platformism and Especifismo . Topics of discussion include the role a theoretical framework plays and where it comes from, class composition and the history of organisations, and the relationship of revolutionaries to class struggle.
A key text mentioned is Social Anarchism and Organisation
Tommy is a member of Geelong Anarcho-Communists and says sorry for how they pronounced the group TMA
Charlie is a member of Black Flag Sydney
They recommend reading Red and Black Notes
You used to be able to find the archives of the Mutiny Zine at Jura but their website is having issues.
Music by Ernst Busch
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In this episode Jon (@JonPiccini) and Dave (@withsobersenses) continue their discussion about race, whiteness and Australia. This time they are reading Ghassan Hage’s classic of 90s Theory White Nation. We talk through his ideas about Whiteness, White Nationalism and fantasy, his critique of tolerance and multiculturalism and try to work out what these ideas give us and also what they miss. How does Hage’s work reflect the changes in Australian society, its internal conflicts and the ruptures and continuations in radical ideas?
We finish this episode with Joe Dolce’s Shaddap You Face – picked as an example of a particular kind of humour produced by 70s/80s multiculturalism. Since then we have discovered that Joe Dolce, a self-declared Leftist, has moved over to writing for Quadrant, largely it seems due as a reaction to cultural debates. So there you go.
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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 for racism arising from the specifics of class formation in Australia, how it challenged established Leftwing thought and its implications for today.
We reference
Two Radical Legends: Russel Ward, Humphrey McQueen and the New Left Challenge in Australian Historiography
Music by Redgum
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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.
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
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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 of Living The Dream Dave (@withsobersenses) talks with Anna Sturman (@anna_sturman) author of ‘Climate Emergency’, COVID-19 and the Australian capitalist state . Anna draws on the work of Nicos Poulantzas to present an understanding of the state, a diagnosis of the contemporary conjuncture of Australian capitalism and suggest ways that we can struggle for dignity and lives worth living. We talk through the possibilities of the present, the opportunities for creating and using power and cut the gordian knot of the great debate of 2019 – Jobs Guarantee or Universal Basic Income.
Music by Chumbawamba
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In this episode of Living The Dream Dave (@withsobersenses) chats with Godfrey Moase (@gemoase) a director of the United Workers Union.
The UWU, a recent a fusion of the National Union of Workers and United Voice, has been receiving a lot of attention due to the industrial actions of its members, its claims to be revitalising internal democracy and its Workers’ Plan To Survive Covid-19 Crisis : a broad vision to address the immediate impacts of the COVID-19 crisis in a way that points beyond capitalism. This interview with Tim Kennedy the National Secretary of the UWU in Jacobin is very useful: “We Can Use This Crisis to Reconceptualize the Economy” .
Here Godfrey explains the strategy and organisational direction of the UWU, gives a critique of the #changetherules defeat and presents what he thinks is a viable way forward to accumulate class power.
Music by Meatraffle
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In this episode of Living The Dream Dave @withsobersenses talks about the questions that COVID-19 is forcing us to confront – and then goes on to do an analysis of a report from Macquarie Wealth Management stating conventional capitalism is dying and finishes by looking at the latest developments in the provision of stimulus from the RBA and the Federal Government.
After recording this episode I found out that the story about dolphins in Venice wasn’t true. Bum.
Articles mentioned include:
The Age of Mass Protests: Understanding an Escalating Global Trend
Conventional capitalism is dying: Macquarie warns
Music by Cable Ties
Image: If the unemployed are dole bludgers, what the fuck are the idle rich? - Redback Graphix remixed by Wendy Murray
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In this episode Dave @withsobersenses takes a moment to think about how and why COVID-19 is impacting the capitalist mode of production, what are the drivers of the looming recession and depression and why various Keynesian arguments get it wrong.
You should read Social Contagion
Music by Assück
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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.
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
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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.
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
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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.
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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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 blind-spots in our thinking.
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
On Christchurch, lone wolves, and the threat of fascism
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In this episode Dave (@withsobersenses) chats with Keir Milburn (@KeirMilburn ). Keir is from Leeds and has been an anti-state communist for a respectable amount of time (and an all round good egg). Previously a member of Class War and the Leeds May Day Group/ The Free Association he is now part of Plan C. Recently he has been trying to think through how anti-capitalists can related to the rise of Corbyn and the return of social democracy. We talk through the arguments and deal with some of the critiques. He has a new book Generation Left out now.
Some stuff we mention includes
Acid Corbynism is a gateway drug
Class War is Dead… Long Live The Class War
On Social Strikes and Directional Demands
Turbulence: What would it mean to win
What can an institution do? Towards Public-Common partnerships and a new common-sense
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